Renée Knight - Disclaimer

“Mrs. Brigstocke?” Catherine asks. Could it be Nancy after years of illness, neglect, hair unwashed, too long, thick socks oozing through fraying sandals? Surely this woman is too tall, but still… Catherine takes a step forward, peering into her face, searching but not recognising. The woman pushes past her, shuffling towards the other flat. She puts down her shopping and fumbles a key in the lock.

“I was looking for Nancy Brigstocke. Do you know if she still lives here?” The woman mumbles her reply: “She hasn’t lived here for years.”

“Do you know if she is… where she might be living now?” Catherine hears herself stutter. “We lost touch — I haven’t seen her for a while… the last time we met she was ill….”

The woman is inside her flat now but she keeps the door ajar, keeps an eye on Catherine, looking her up and down, a rude stare which grazes her skin. A stare full of suspicion.

“I’m a friend of the family but we lost touch…,” Catherine tries and the eyes drill into her, detecting her lie, making a silent judgement. Some friend.

“Are you from social services?” the woman asks.

“No, it’s nothing like that…. I lost her address and… then I found it but… I just wanted to talk to her….”

“Has someone been claiming her pension?”

“I’m not from social services, really… I just wanted to see her again….”

“Well, you’re too late. She was dying when they took her away… and that was years ago. Poor soul — all sorts of gubbins she was strapped up to. She’ll be dead now I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry…,” Catherine mumbles and turns away. She should have known. Of course she is dead, and she walks back towards the stairs.

“He might get it though — whatever it was you stuck through the letter box.”

Blood thumps in Catherine’s ears. She turns round.

“Who? Who might get it?”

The woman assesses her, takes her time to decide whether to answer.

“Who might get it?” Catherine repeats, a wisp of fatal panic in her voice. The woman frowns at the question, which doesn’t sound quite right coming from someone who is supposed to be a friend. She begins to close her door and Catherine rushes forward, putting her hand out to stop her, not threatening but desperate.

“Please…”

A cat mews from inside the flat — hungry and vying with Catherine for the woman’s attention.

“Please…,” Catherine tries again.

“Mr. Brigstocke — he comes by from time to time.”

“Mr. Brigstocke?”

“Her husband.”

“But her husband’s dead.”

“I thought you said you were a friend of the family.” The woman’s eyes narrow, seeing Catherine for what she is. A liar.

“Of hers. I knew Nancy Brigstocke. She told me her husband was dead.”

“Maybe she didn’t trust you….”

The words startle Catherine. They could be true and she looks away.

“We were friends,” she tries again. They were not friends. They had never been friends. They barely knew each other and her lie squirms in the air.

“We lost contact with each other… I’m just trying to understand what happened….” There are tears in Catherine’s eyes now and perhaps it is these which make the woman relent.

“Haven’t seen him for a while, but he comes by now and again. It was sad at the end. The place was beginning to stink but she wouldn’t open up, she wouldn’t answer the door, so someone from the Residents’ Association had to phone him and get him over. He had a key, you see. Must have been a terrible state in there. And then the ambulance came and they took her away. That was the last time I saw her.”

“But didn’t he live here with her?”

“No. It’s the son’s flat. She moved in while he was away on one of his trips — always off somewhere he was, that’s what she said. Her husband never lived here, but he looked after her in the end. He was holding her hand the whole time when they took her away. He told her he’d come to take her home so he could look after her. I heard him. I was here watching, just in case they needed anything, you know.

“I like to think they were together at the end.”

“Do you have his number? Or address?” The woman tuts. Enough questions. She shakes her head and closes the door. Catherine stands on the other side, knocks, desperate for more.

“What about his first name? Can you tell me that at least?” She waits. Knocks again. “Please.” But the door stays shut and Catherine makes her way back down the stairs, gripping the cold metal of the banister with a slippery hand. She is shaken by how much she didn’t know and she thinks of her note lying on the other side of the door, written to a woman who is probably long dead. And then she remembers her mobile number written in the middle of it. Shit. How long before he calls her? What will he say? What does he really want? The “dead” husband. And then she begins to wonder whether Nancy left the flat willingly. Or was she too weak to resist? Did he force her? Did he make her go home with him? Nancy told her he was dead. Why? Was she scared of what he might do?

“Stephen.” The name echoes down the stairs. She looks up at the dark shape leaning over the balustrade. “His name is Stephen.”

Catherine continues on down and images from the book flick through her head. He’d got some things right. The details of what she’d been wearing. How would he know? And then she hears a sound echo back from the past: click, click, click.

So, she and Nancy met. Secretly, without me knowing. I found her note when I went back to the flat to return the manuscript. I had to read it several times before I trusted that I had understood it correctly. And when I did it winded me, a sharp blow to the stomach, twisting my gut and leaving me breathless. Discovering they’d met hurt, but not as much as the discovery that Nancy had told her I was dead. That phrase sucked the life out of me: “… when we met, you had recently lost your husband.” She had been “struck” by Nancy’s “dignity.” It had “stayed with her.” She could not believe that “you could possibly be the author of the book which has found its way into my home.” She even wondered whether Nancy was aware of its existence? Well, of course not. She’s dead, you stupid bitch.

What a self-satisfied, smug fool she is. But her tone is respectful, I’ll give her that. She described my wife as a woman of “integrity,” a woman with “great depth of understanding.” She was right about that. Nancy really did understand people. She said she thought she and Nancy “should meet up and talk” and she thoughtfully left her telephone number.

It’s my own fault I was taken by surprise. If I hadn’t dismissed Nancy’s notebooks as idle scribbling and taken them when I took her manuscript, I would have known about their meeting a while ago, because it’s all in there. The notebooks weren’t just ideas for a novel, they were much more than that. It was only after I’d read the note that I turned to the notebooks, and there it all was, the detail of their meeting: the date, the time, the place, even the weather. And Nancy’s delicious description of CR: “cold, as if things washed over her without leaving a mark — as if she has been Scotch-guarded. Nothing seems to stick to her. She’s wiped herself clean — not a trace of dirt on her….” Nancy saw right through her, and she hadn’t liked what she’d seen.

I took those notebooks home with me and read and reread them, finding much to comfort me. I am grateful she’d kept them. Like the photographs, they are pieces of a puzzle. I have sucked up every word in them; I have tasted the ink on their pages; I take them to bed with me and sleep with them under my pillow, dreaming the words swim off the page into my head and Nancy’s most private thoughts are absorbed into mine. I have eaten those pages and swallowed them down. She is in me now, my darling girl. Now we are one. She has given me strength: the outside world can’t touch me, but I can touch it whenever I choose.