Renée Knight - Disclaimer

“What the fuck went on?” That voice again. There is more anger than pain in him.

“I should have told you… but… Nicholas didn’t know anything. Really. He didn’t know… it was so long ago… I—”

“I know exactly when it fucking was,” he interrupts. “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. You did this.” He grabs up the photographs and throws them in her face. The shock of it makes her gasp. Most of them fall to the floor, a couple settle on her lap. She brushes them off, leaving them where they lie.

“And Nicholas?” he says. “What did he see? It’s one thing doing it to me, but to him? How could you? I didn’t think you were capable of…” He can’t say it and she waits for him as he struggles to order his thoughts. But it is dangerous to wait. She should step in before he says too much, but she is lost. She is lost back then, remembering.

“Who was it? I want to know who the fuck it was. Did it carry on? Or was it some fucking Spanish waiter — a holiday fling like you were some teenage slut who had a holiday shag. An easy lay. Those fucking English cunts — bit of sunshine and sangria and they’re anyone’s. But they don’t usually have their fucking kids with them. Were you bored? Had to get a bit of attention for yourself?”

“No, no, it wasn’t like that…” It feels as if a stranger has walked into their home. This is not Robert.

“Well, how was it then? He was taking pictures of our son. So tell me. How was it?”

“Stop shouting at me,” she says because he is shouting and she cannot think if he shouts. He is no longer cold; his anger has warmed him up….

“Please. Stop. I will tell you if you listen… just try and listen….” She grabs his whiskey and finishes it. She prepares to say it out loud, to confess why she has never told him. “I didn’t want you to leave us there. Do you remember that? I asked you not to go, not to go back to work, to stay with us…” She stalls, building up to it, but he doesn’t let her. He snatches back control, unable to contain his fury.

“You are unbelievable. You’re saying that it’s my fault? That because I left early that justifies you fucking a stranger under our son’s nose? Exposing him to that? You really think you can justify anything you do, don’t you. That you are always right. That right is always on your side. Saint fucking Catherine.”

She is stunned. He hates her in that moment, she can see it. So quickly he has turned from love to hate. He is hurt, she tells herself, but she fears it is more than that. Clogging, dark resentment bubbles out of his mouth. She watches him, his mouth opening, stuff coming out.

“You couldn’t do without me for four days? You couldn’t manage without sex for four days? As I remember it, we were barely having sex then anyway. That’s why I bought you that fucking underwear.” He kicks at one of the photographs.

“So how long did it go on? Did you have little reunions? Meet up over a glass of Rioja back in England? Oh, maybe all those fucking work trips. Did you take him with you?”

What had she expected? Not this. She looks at the photographs on the floor and bends down to pick them up.

“Where did you get them?”

Robert ignores her, opening his bag and slapping The Perfect Stranger down onto the table.

“So it is about you.”

Sweat soaks into her dressing gown.

“Yes, but it wasn’t like that — not like it is in there…” It feels as if he has jammed his fist down her throat and she can’t get her words out.

“Really? So why were you so worried then? Why did you try and burn it? And you’ve just said that Nicholas knew nothing about it, but he was sent this book too, wasn’t he — so he must have been involved somehow…”

“Yes, but not…,” she starts and then stops. “You haven’t read it?”

“No. I haven’t had the stomach. These tell me enough.” And he kicks at the photographs again. “Did he write it?”

“No,” she whispers.

“What? I can’t hear you.” Scornful. Bullying.

She shakes her head.

“So who then? His wife? Did she find out?”

“His father. I think it’s his father.”

“His father? Oh, for fuck’s sake. He was young? How young exactly? Don’t tell me he was underage.”

And then Catherine raises her voice, but it’s more a scream than a shout. Shrill and desperate.

“He’s dead. He died…” And she catches the shock on Robert’s face. A shock wave which has taken twenty years to travel from her to him, and now has smashed down the defences she had constructed around their life together.

It wasn’t the middle of the night, or three in the morning. It was teatime on a bright, sunny day. Nancy and I had been sitting in our garden, reading the newspapers and drinking tea. We had moved our chairs to the corner of the terrace, making the most of that last bit of sun before our north-facing garden was in total shadow. I didn’t hear it at first, it was only when I went into the kitchen to refill our cups that I saw two figures through the glass of our front door. And then I heard them. I realised later that they had probably been knocking for a while, because what I heard from the kitchen was no longer a knock, but a thump, with a fist. Not aggressive, but urgent. The teapot was in my hand, ready to pour, and I put it down and glanced through the open kitchen door at Nancy, her hat pulled down, shielding her eyes from the sun, lost in concentration. What was she reading? I don’t know exactly, I remember it was the review section, so it would probably have been something about a play or a film, or a concert that she might have circled with her pencil and suggest we get tickets for. But we never did. We never went to the theatre again, or listened to music.

I left her reading and went to the front door. You just know, really, when something is so wrong. And I wanted to leave her as long as possible in that old world where the Sunday papers could be read and sympathy felt for other people’s troubles, not our own.

“Mr. Brigstocke?” he said. And I nodded, not moving from the doorstep, not wanting to let them in.

“Can we come in, sir?” She said this, her eyes determined to hold mine. I hesitated and then stood aside, opening the front door wider, allowing them in.

“Is your wife here, sir?” she said. I nodded.

“What’s happened? Why are you here?”

“I’m afraid it is bad news, sir. Please go and find your wife.”

And I obeyed. They followed me to the sitting room door and said they’d wait there. Then I made the walk through to the kitchen and out of the back door and stood in the shade looking at Nancy, one splash of sun remaining on the edge of her hat.

She looked up.

“What is it?” Her eyes were screwed up, squinting at me in the shadow.

“Stephen?”

“The police are here. In the sitting room.” She continued to stare at me, her mouth partially open, knowing, as I did, that we were about to become old before our time. Bowed and buckled under a weight too heavy to bear. She pushed herself up from the depth of the deck chair, the vitality, it seemed, already having left her. I held out my hand and we walked together into our sitting room and sat in two separate chairs. The police officers had taken the sofa.

“You have a son, Jonathan. Age nineteen? He was travelling in Spain.”

We both nodded. Not dead then, I thought. They used the present tense. Nancy must have thought the same: “We had a postcard from him yesterday. From Seville,” she said and actually smiled as if this was proof somehow that he was fine, confirmation that he was a good boy who loved his parents, who didn’t want them to worry about him.