Renée Knight - Disclaimer

“Come on then, mate, let’s get going,” and he gives his son an encouraging smile. He is determined to get through the evening without breaking down.

Father and son. A bottle of red wine. Steak and chips. Robert had persuaded the kitchen to serve them late. A loving father who wishes he had done this before. Wishes he had made a habit of it. He asks Nicholas about work but only half listens as he answers. Being a trainee salesman for John Lewis isn’t the career he and Catherine had hoped for their son, but nevertheless Nicholas seems to have enough to say about it to convince his father he’s all right and he’s perked up now he has eaten. He was ravenous. He tells Robert about training days and staff benefits. But is this really what he wants to do with his life? Is it enough? And does he really enjoy living in such squalor?

“So how are you finding it, the flat?” Robert asks. Nicholas shrugs, but then a smile tickles his mouth.

“Haven’t actually been there much recently,” he says, sticking his fork into Robert’s chips.

“Oh?”

“There’s a girl I’ve met. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time at her place.”

“So tell me about her.” This is good news.

“Not much to tell. Don’t think she’d be Mum’s cup of tea…”

“Well, it’s nothing to do with her, is it.” His tone makes Nicholas look up in surprise.

“So what’s she like?” Robert moves on.

“Nice. We’re hoping to go away this summer, if we can get the money together.”

“Really? Where?”

“Somewhere cheap. Maybe Spain. Or Majorca,” he says and grins.

“Spain.” Perfect. “D’you remember that holiday we went on when you were little? To Spain?” Nicholas looks irritated by the change of subject.

“No, I don’t.”

“You were about five. I had to go home halfway through because of work. You and Mum were there on your own.” He scrutinises Nicholas’s face for a sign, but there is nothing. A blank, revealing surely that something must have been erased.

“Vaguely. Not really.”

“It was only for a few days.” He wants to nudge his son into remembering without causing alarm.

“I felt bad about it at the time. I shouldn’t have left you. On your own. With just Mum.” Nicholas looks at him then shrugs.

“I don’t really remember, Dad. Don’t feel bad about it.”

Robert searches his face again for any flicker of pain, but detects none. Whatever he experienced back then has been buried deep.

“You should take your girlfriend somewhere nice. I’ll help you out. It must be hard on your salary, with the rent and everything.”

Nicholas is thrown. This is surely against the rules, Mum’s rules, but he’s happy to take anything he can get from his father.

“Thanks,” he says.

After Robert has dropped Nicholas back, he drives around until he is sure Catherine will be asleep. He parks outside the house and looks up at their bedroom window. The light is off. He takes the book from his bag, and lighting the first page with his phone, reads: “Victoria station on a grey, wet, Thursday afternoon. The perfect day on which to escape…”

He is too tired to face what it might tell him now, and it is the photographs which have seared his heart. He will read the book tomorrow. He Googles The Perfect Stranger from his phone, and finds the site for the book. But like Catherine, he finds nothing which tells him who the author might be, male, female, young, old. He presumes male, of his age. He reads the review and wonders who wrote it. He gets out of the car, shuts the door, then lets himself into the house. He listens, makes no noise himself, then goes up to the spare room.

This is the second night running that Catherine has gone to bed alone. She had tried to stay awake last night, waiting for Robert to come home, but she couldn’t. When she woke the following morning, there was no sign that he had been to bed at all. It was only when she heard the front door close and ran downstairs that she realised he had, but that then he had left again without wanting to wake her.

He must be really snowed under at work to come back so late and leave so early in the morning. She had wanted to talk to him, ask him why he hadn’t called her and let her know what was going on, why he wasn’t home for supper. He is a thoughtful man. Yes, thoughtful. So thoughtful that he’d slept in the spare room so as not to wake her. He is pleased she is sleeping again and didn’t want to disturb her. And then again in the morning he must have made sure she wouldn’t wake, and she should have been grateful, but she wasn’t. She was uneasy. And her unease had grown during the day when her calls went unanswered and her texts received replies which were slow to come and terse in tone.

And now, on this second night alone, she lies in bed, listening out for him again. It is just before midnight. She hears the rumble of a train; the hiss of cars on the wet road; the grumble of a taxi pulling up. The slamming of a door. She sits up. This could be him. She listens for a key in the front door, but hears nothing except the distant chime of the church bell ringing midnight. She gets up and goes to the top of the stairs. She hears the sound of keys being laid on the hall table. But so quietly that if she hadn’t been listening, she would have missed it. If she had been lying in bed, as she guessed Robert thought she was, she wouldn’t have known that he had come in and was downstairs. What she really heard was the effort he’d put into hiding his return. She waits for him to come upstairs but he doesn’t, so she makes her way down, tightening the cord on her dressing gown, trying to strangle the churning in her stomach.

Robert looks at Catherine, but says nothing. His eyes stay on her as she comes closer and pulls out a chair, joining him at the kitchen table. He drinks from a glass of whiskey he has poured himself, his eyes still fixed on her.

“Robert,” she says quietly, but his name is all she can find to say.

He puts down his glass and reaches into his jacket pocket, taking out an envelope. He tips the photographs onto the table and spreads them out with his fingers, as if he is about to perform a card trick. She looks at them, confused at first, as he had been when he first saw them, but then it comes back to her. She sees the images. Hears the sound. Click, click, click.

“Oh God,” she says as she is dragged back, an unwilling time traveller. She doesn’t touch them, just looks. Then he grabs her wrist and makes her pick them up.

“Look at them. Look at them closely. Look at yourself.” And she does. Tears come to her eyes, her throat closes, dry, choking. She wipes her sleeve across her eyes. She cannot cry — if she cries she will never stop — it will go on and on and she will drown. They will both drown. Is this the worst moment? But she knows it is not.

“I said look at them.” She has never heard him so cold, never felt the chill his voice sends through her now. He doesn’t shout, but love has been stripped out, leaving only fury.

“Look at all of them.” And she is forced to go through them, one by one.

He stops her hand when she gets to a photograph of herself masturbating. There is more than one and he will not allow her to flick through them. She must look at them slowly. Then he snatches them from her and lays three down side by side: a triptych of his shameless wife. His wife spread out in glossy colour on their kitchen table, her fingers sticky, tucked into herself. Light, nimble fingers. And then Robert begins to cry, and it breaks her heart.

“Oh, Robert, I’m so sorry… I should have told you….” She moves towards him, wanting to put her arms around him, to pull him closer, but he pushes back his chair. He doesn’t want her touching him. He snatches up a photograph of Nicholas, on the beach with her.