Renée Knight - Disclaimer

Catherine stumbles, blaming her high heels, but knowing it’s because she’s had too much to drink. Robert reaches his hand back to grab her elbow, just in time to stop her falling backwards down the concrete steps. His other hand turns the key and pushes open the front door, his grip on her arm still firm as he leads her inside. She kicks off her shoes, and tries to inject some dignity into her walk as she heads for the kitchen.

“I’m so proud of you,” he says coming from behind and folding his arms around her. He kisses the skin where neck curves into shoulder. Her head stretches back.

“Thank you,” she says, closing her eyes. But then this moment of happiness melts away. It is night. They are home. And she doesn’t want to go to bed even though she is desperately tired. She knows she won’t sleep. Hasn’t slept properly for a week now. Robert doesn’t know this. She pretends all is well, managing to conceal it from him. Pretending to be asleep, lying next to him, alone in her head. She will have to make up an excuse now, to explain why she’s not going to follow him straight up to bed.

“You go up,” she says. “I’ll be up in a minute. I just want to check some emails.” She smiles encouragement, but he doesn’t need much. He has to be up early the next morning, which is why Catherine appreciates even more the real pleasure he seems to have got from an evening where she has been the centre of attention and he the silent, but smiling, partner. Not once did he hint that maybe it was time to go. No, he had allowed her to shine and enjoy the moment. Of course she has done this for him on many occasions, but still, Robert had played his part with grace.

“I’ll take up some water for you,” he says.

They have just returned from a party, the aftermath of a television awards ceremony. Serious television. No soaps. No drama. Factual. Catherine had won an award for a documentary she had made about the grooming of children for sex. Children who should have been protected but weren’t because nobody had cared enough; nobody had taken the trouble to look out for them. The jury had described her film as brave. She had been described as brave. They have no idea. They have no idea what I’m really like. It wasn’t bravery. It was single-minded determination. But maybe she had been a little bit brave. Secret filming. Predatory men. Not now though. Not now she is at home. Even with the new blinds, she fears she is being watched.

Her evenings have become a series of distractions to stop herself thinking about the inevitable time when she will be lying in the dark, awake. She has managed to fool Robert, she thinks. Even the sweating, which comes on as bedtime gets closer, she has laughed off as menopause. She has other signs of that, sure, but not this sweating. She had wanted him to go to bed, but now that he has, she wishes he was with her. She wishes she was brave enough to tell him. She wishes she had been brave enough to tell him back then. But she wasn’t. And now it is too late. It was twenty years ago. If she told him now he would never understand. He would be blinded by the fact that, for all this time, she has kept a secret from him. She has withheld something that he would feel he had a right to know. He is our son, for Christ’s sake, she hears him say.

She doesn’t need a fucking book to tell her what happened. She hasn’t forgotten any of it. Her son had nearly died. She has been protecting Nicholas all these years. Protecting him from knowing. She has enabled him to live in blissful ignorance. He doesn’t know that he almost didn’t make it into adulthood. And if he had held on to some memory of what happened? Would things be different? Would he be different? Would their relationship be different? But she is absolutely sure that he remembers nothing. At least nothing that would bring him close to the reality of it. For Nicholas, it is just an afternoon which has merged in with many others from his childhood. He might even remember it as a happy one, she thinks.

If Robert had been there, it might have been different. Well, of course it would have been different. It wouldn’t have happened. But Robert wasn’t there. So she didn’t tell him because she didn’t need to — he would never find out. And it was better that way. It is better that way.

She opens her laptop and Googles the author’s name. Almost a ritual now, this. She has done it before, hoping there’ll be something there. A clue. But there is nothing. Just a name. E. J. Preston. Made up of course. “ The Perfect Stranger is E. J. Preston’s first and possibly last book.” No clue to gender even. Not his or her first book. It is published by Rhamnousia, but when she looked that up it had confirmed what she had already suspected, that the book is self-published. She hadn’t known what Rhamnousia meant. Now she does. The goddess of revenge, aka Nemesis.

That’s a clue, isn’t it? To gender at least. But that’s impossible. It can’t be. And no one else knew those details. No one still living. But there were others there, of course there were — anonymous others. But this has been written by someone who really cares. This is intimate. It’s anonymous, but not really. She looks to see if there have been any reviews. But there are none. Perhaps she is the only one to have read it. And even if others do, they will never know that she is the woman at its heart. But someone does. Someone knows.

How the fuck did this book get into her home? She has no memory of buying it. It just seemed to appear on the pile of books by her bed. But then everything has been so chaotic with the move. Boxes and boxes full of books still waiting to be unpacked. Perhaps she put it there herself. Took it from a box. Attracted to the cover. It could be Robert’s. He has countless books she has never read and might not recognise. Books from years ago. She pictures him trawling through Amazon, taking a fancy to the title, to the cover, and ordering it online. A fluke then. A sick coincidence.

But what she settles on and begins to believe is that someone else put it there. Someone else came into their home, this place which doesn’t yet feel like home. Came into their bedroom. Someone she doesn’t know laid the book down on the shelf next to her bed. Carefully. Not disturbing anything. On her side of the bed. Knowing which side she slept on. Making it look as if she had put it there herself. Her thoughts pile up, crashing into one another until they are twisted and jagged. Wine and anxiety, a dangerous combination. She should know by now not to mix her poisons. She grips her aching head. Always aching these days. She closes her eyes and sees the burning white dot of sun on the book’s cover. How the fuck did this book get into her home?

It had been seven years since Nancy died and yet I still hadn’t got round to sorting through her things. Her clothes hung in the wardrobe. Her shoes, her handbags. She had tiny feet. Size three. Her papers, letters, still lay on the desk and in drawers. I liked coming across them. I liked picking up letters to her, even if they were from British Gas. I liked seeing her name and our shared address written down officially. I had no excuse once I’d retired though. Just get on with it, Stephen, she would have said. So I did.

I started with her clothes, unhooking them from hangers, taking them out of drawers, laying them out on the bed, ready for their journey out of the house. All done, I’d thought, until I saw a cardigan which had slipped off its hanger, and was hiding in a corner of the wardrobe. It is the colour of heather. Lots of colours actually. Blue, pink, purple, grey, but the impression is of heather. We had bought it in Scotland before we were married. Just before we were married. Nancy used to wear it like a shawl: the sleeves, empty of her arms, hanging limply at her sides. I have kept it, I’m holding it now. It is cashmere. The moths have got at it and there is a small hole on the cuff which I can fit my little finger through. She hung on to it for over forty years. It has outlived her and I suspect that it will outlive me too. If I continue to shrink, as I undoubtedly will, then I might soon be able to fit into it.