Renée Knight - Disclaimer

Her son was asleep, on the other side of the door. She had closed it. They were in the room she had shared with her husband. She closed her eyes as he lifted the flimsy cotton over her head, her arms held up as if she were a little girl being undressed for bed. She was wearing her bikini, still sandy from a day on the beach. He pulled the ties at each side of the bottoms and watched them slip to the floor; then he undid the top, a tie at the neck, and one across her back, easily undone. She was naked, but he was still clothed. She didn’t help him undress, she didn’t touch him, she just watched him, and he didn’t notice the hunger in her eyes. He was beautiful and he was a stranger, and she knew he was in her power. She persuaded him to postpone his trip to Tangiers, just for a few days, just until she had to leave….

“Good book?” Robert is startled. He feels as if he has been caught looking at porn.

“Another tea?” the waitress asks. Robert nods, yes, then no. He doesn’t know what he wants, incapable of a decision.

“I’m fine,” he manages and reads on.

… and what John didn’t understand was that what she really loved was the game: the secrecy of sneaking him up to her room, so that the hotel staff knew nothing, so that they still smiled and treated her kindly; the secrecy of seeing each other on the beach but pretending they were strangers. Even her son didn’t realise that the young man lying on a towel a few feet away from them knew his mother more intimately than he ever would. And John chronicled his passion; it would be something to treasure when he was back at home in the real world, not realising that he would never see those photographs, never be able to look back at that time….

Catherine had run after Robert, hoping he would stop. She ran out into the middle of the road and stood there in her dressing gown, watching until the lights of his car disappeared round the corner. She stayed out there for some time, waiting for him to reappear — sure that he would change his mind and drive home again. But he didn’t.

She stayed up all night, hoping that he would at least phone her, but he didn’t do that either. She phoned him, leaving messages, but he ignored them all. She tried to imagine where he was, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine his location, but she could picture him reading the book — imagining which part he was reading and how it would make him feel and a fury swelled up inside her at the violence of this attack. She couldn’t go to bed, she couldn’t even sit down. She couldn’t keep still, her body twitching. She paced up and down, boiling the kettle, making tea, swilling it down, then making more, waiting for him. She wanted to make him understand why she hadn’t told him. It wasn’t for her, it was for them. For Robert, but mainly for Nick. Her silence had been to protect their son and Jonathan’s death had sealed it. There had been no need for anyone else to suffer. But Robert hadn’t come home.

It is light now and she is exhausted. Her limbs are heavy, weighted down like ballast, as if all the tea she has consumed has found its way into them, filling them up and making them heavy. She is a squishy, puffy, soggy thing. When she moves she can hear the liquid moving around inside her. Her head is awash too, buffeted by images she can’t control and memories which have washed up and won’t go away.

She wants to close her eyes and never open them again. Not to die, but just to sleep for a very long time. She drags herself upstairs, lies on the bed, and shuts her eyes. It is almost a relief that Robert knows now, about the death anyway. He has a right to know that much at least. She should have told him before. She should have told him everything before but now she is too tired to think. It is lack of sleep, but it is shock too: the shock of Robert’s anger and his hatred towards her. She had not expected that and it frightens her to think of it, so she embraces the shock and allows it to numb her and close her down. It is not unpleasant to feel nothing and she will make the most of it while it lasts.

She is in a deep sleep when her phone rings. She grabs it, her eyes still shut, dragging herself back to now.

“Hello?” She opens her eyes to check the number. No number, just the word “call.” And no voice either, at the other end.

“Hello?” She tries again and waits, and listens. They listen to each other, neither saying a word: he doesn’t need to, she knows who he is. He is waiting for her. He doesn’t say it, but she can feel it.

… It was the sort of day where, if you weren’t careful, you could get very badly burnt. The sun was strong, but a thin layer of cloud masked its ferocity, and the cooling wind lulled the ignorant into exposing their skin without protection. Charlotte was not ignorant. She had covered her own body in protective oil and was now rubbing cream into her little boy. He made quite a song and dance of it, they both did: Charlotte demonstrating what a conscientious mother she was, and her son, Noah, resisting his mother’s hands and complaining that the cream was stinging his eyes.

His shrieks were particularly grating that day, because Charlotte had a hangover. She knew she was rubbing harder than she needed to, irritated by her son’s willfulness and wanting to force him to her own. He had sand on his body, so it was as if she was stripping him down with sandpaper, and she was careless too with his face, cream catching on the eyelashes of one eye. She dabbed at it with a towel, but he was crying now and she felt like crying too. She just wanted him to go away. She wished she could enjoy just one day, this last day, in the sunlight, with her lover.

John was still asleep in his hotel room, his cheap hotel. It had been five in the morning when he’d returned there after being with Charlotte in her five-star luxury. They had made love all night, her son asleep in the next-door room. The little boy hadn’t heard his mother’s sighs as her young lover pleasured her; he hadn’t heard the clink of their glasses as they drank together, and then made love over and over.

So while Charlotte wrestled with sun cream on the beach, John slept in. He slept well, like an adolescent. At nineteen, he hadn’t quite stopped growing, still exhausted by the demands of his own body, and by those that had been made on it the night before. Charlotte couldn’t get enough of him, she’d worked him hard. She knew her time was running out and though she had persuaded him not to go to Tangiers, she would soon be flying home to her husband. She made the most of him that night, and she anticipated more the following, their last together.

She tried to play her part of mother, but her performance that morning was lacklustre. She lay on her stomach trying to sleep while Noah dug with his spade. He chiselled away at the beach, but the wind, along with his excavations, sent gritty sand into Charlotte’s face. Enough, she thought, and finally said:

“Ice cream?”

Noah stopped digging. “Yep, yep,” he yapped, and Charlotte slipped her cotton dress over her bikini, put a T-shirt on Noah, and, hand in hand, they left the beach.

As they climbed the steps towards the shops, John walked towards them. They passed each other, these lovers, and no one would have known they had ever met. His stomach slid with excitement, and hers with desire at the sight of his sleepy eyes and bedded hair. They almost touched they were so close, they could smell each other and she breathed him in and then smiled, but not at John. She was cleverer than that. She directed the smile meant for John at Noah. But John knew it was for him and Noah was taken in, pleased to see that Mummy was happy, and he smiled back, the little innocent. He was so grateful for that gift which wasn’t even intended for him.