They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and how patiently Becky’s enemies had waited with their stories on ice until Lord Steyne’s lackeys came calling.
The only person that Becky could forgive was Rawdon because his revenge wasn’t cold. It was the fiery-hot act of someone recently betrayed and Rawdon always did have very poor impulse control. But what she couldn’t forgive Rawdon for was serving divorce papers on her and naming some man she didn’t even know as her lover. Not when he was using the same firm of lawyers who did all of Steyne’s dirty work.
It wasn’t just Steyne’s newspapers. The rest of the fourth estate couldn’t wait to line up and give her a kicking too. They were all there outside the house. Ringing on the doorbell, banging on the windows. Her phone was ringing off the hook with everyone from The Times and Access Hollywood desperate for the inside scoop while Phillip and Holly wanted Becky live on the This Morning sofa so that their viewers could phone up and call her terrible names.
The Sunday Sport had even found a troupe of stripper dwarves called The Seven Inchers who claimed that they’d all had her during one riotous, chemsex-fuelled night in a Blackpool Travelodge. She’d never even been to Blackpool!
Only the Guardian had come to her defence in some long-winded opinion piece about social mobility and how there weren’t many routes open to working-class girls from broken homes, and so who could blame Becky for weaponising her sexuality?
Becky pushed the papers off the bed with her bare feet because she couldn’t stand to see her downfall spelt out in black and white and 72 point on all those front pages. Even as a little consoling voice in her head said, ‘Still, you made the front pages. At least you didn’t end up on page seven or worse!’
It wasn’t that much of a comforting thought and Becky burst into tears again. She’d cried so much over the last three days that she expected Amelia Sedley (about the only spectre who hadn’t drawn up a seat at the feast) to sue her for copyright.
In seventy-two hours, Steyne had destroyed everything that Becky had achieved in the last four years. Her reputation, her carefully constructed image and those lovely, lucrative sources of income – all gone!
She’d been fired by every single one of the companies that had kept her little gravy train chug-chug-chugging along. One of them had even sent round a couple of recovery agents to repossess all the clothes they’d given her.
Becky’s publicist had blocked her number, her agent had put on an Eastern European accent when Becky had got through then pretended to be the cleaner, and her business manager had said, ‘No offence, sweetheart, but right now I’d rather deal with an incurable case of herpes than with you.’
And all because she wouldn’t sleep with Tom Steyne, though she doubted the evil old gnome could even get it up. For one tiny moment, Becky even wondered if she should have just let him have his way with her, but the thought of Steyne thinking he’d conquered her, owned her, would have been more than she could bear. Even when she’d had nothing, she’d still had her pride. Though even her pride had taken a beating over the last three days.
‘How could I have been so stupid?’ she wept and she was still weeping when Briggs, with the help of Firkin and a video they’d watched on YouTube, took her bedroom door off its hinges so they could finally gain admittance.
It had been three days since Briggs had taken up the papers in trembling hands, and the only reason they knew Becky hadn’t killed herself was that they could hear her crying at all hours of the day and night.
They found their mistress a snivelling, snuffling, forlorn heap on the bathroom floor. Her glorious red curls tangled and matted, the face that had launched a thousand #spon #ads swollen and blotchy from crying so long.
‘Oh, Becky, this will all blow over,’ Briggs said consolingly but not at all truthfully as he met Firkin’s eyes over Becky’s sobbing figure. Firkin made the sign of the cross so that they wouldn’t be struck down for such a wicked lie. The former foes were now united once more – the only people in the world prepared to stand by Becky Sharp, because hadn’t she done the right thing by them?
So, they would be Becky’s staunch defenders and willing supporters, until such a time as she could no longer afford to pay them.
‘Mrs Crawley, don’t cry. Sadness wrecks the complexion,’ Firkin said. She patted Becky’s shoulder. ‘Have a shower, wash your hair, because it smells like old socks, and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’
They shared another helpless look as Becky wailed and writhed on the bathroom tiles.
‘Honestly, Becky, I understand that you’re grief-stricken but … Oh!’ Briggs scooched back from his kneeling position as Becky unfolded herself and he could finally see her face.
It wasn’t the blotches or the puffiness which stood out, though they were both impressive, but the wild, raging pools of her eyes.
‘I’m not grief-stricken,’ she spat. ‘I’m fucking furious! How dare he! And Rawdon can go fuck himself too! As for Babs and Martha and that whole other parade of losers and sad-sack wankers, I will destroy them. I’m going to make what’s left of their sorry lives an endless round of misery and pain.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Briggs said. He’d heard a similar refrain from Dame Matilda when she’d seen some of her opening-night notices. ‘You get it all out of your system.’
‘I’m going to buy anthrax on the dark net,’ Becky vowed, as Briggs and Firkin helped her slowly to her feet. ‘I’m going to frame Babs Pinkerton for child sex trafficking. I’m going to make sure Martha Crawley gets syphilis and …’
They pushed Becky into the shower as she promised a great and terrible retribution on those who had wronged her, and when she emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, she was calm and composed.
Briggs looked enviously at her smooth, pale face. Not a sign of the traumas and trials of the last three days left.
‘I’m not really going to do any of those things,’ she told Briggs as she sipped on the green tea that Firkin had made her. ‘What must you think of me?’
‘Oh, we all say and do silly things when we’re racked with grief. When my mother died, I tried to kill myself by sticking my head in the oven,’ Briggs recalled fondly. ‘I’d completely forgotten that we had an electric cooker.’
‘I mean, why waste all that time and energy on finding ways to bring them down?’ Becky mused. ‘I should be focusing on myself.’
‘It’s all lies in the papers,’ Briggs said stoutly, though he did wonder about the dwarves. He’d heard from a friend who’d had an uncle who’d worked on The Wizard of Oz that the male munchkins were all hung like horses. Who could blame a girl if that were the case? ‘You’ve never been anything but kindness itself to me.’
‘Dear, sweet Briggs,’ Becky sighed, clasping her faithful retainer’s hand. ‘I’m going to have some time out, I think. Take a dip in Lake Me. Decide what I really want from the rest of my life. Like, spiritually and stuff.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Briggs said. Hopefully Becky wasn’t planning to go to an ashram, expecting him to accompany her. Vegan food went straight through him.
‘Yes, I’m going to dedicate myself to enlightenment and self-improvement,’ Becky said, her eyes shut as if she was already on a higher plane of being. Then her eyes snapped open. ‘But first, I’m going to make that limp-dicked fucker Steyne wish that he’d never been born.’
*
Becky had haemorrhaged Instagram followers over the last three days. The comments on her last picture, of her arranging some flowers in a vase with a beatific smile on her face (due to the huge endorsement fee she was getting from an internet florist), could be summarised with a pithy ‘Die u whore!’
But the followers that she had left, and anyone curious to know what you posted on social media when your entire world had crumbled to dust, were delighted to see a new post from Becky.
There was a ‘play’ symbol to indicate that a clip had been uploaded. But there was no film, just an audio recording of an old man with a cockney accent barking orders at someone who was clearly David Smirk, editor of the Herald, the UK’s biggest-selling daily newspaper:
‘Dave? Tom here. Was just wondering if someone had cut your balls off? Yes, it’s very sad that all those poor little kiddies got mown down by some retarded fucker in an articulated lorry just because their teacher once turned him down for a date. Boo fucking hoo. But I don’t give a fuck that you and your little editor mates have agreed to spare their families at such a difficult time. I want to know which grieving mother is having an affair. I want to know which gutted father has been done for domestic assault. What? They’ve already suffered enough? Good! Suffering sells! Now get into their phones, listen to their voicemails, hack their email accounts. I want every stringer in the North-East on their doorsteps to get me a week’s worth of front-page scoops. Christ, you useless fucker, do I have to think of everything? Hang on … Mrs Crawley, I hope you’re not eavesdropping, I’ll have to spank you if you are … Dave? Are we clear? Doorstep ’em. Hack ’em. Hound ’em. Or I’ll cut off your balls myself.’
And then Becky Sharp disappeared off the face of the earth. Or at least off the face of social media, which was pretty much the same thing.