Renée Knight - Disclaimer

He is desperate. Desperate to talk late into the night. He has other friends of course, but they’re as lost as he is. I’ve read their inane banter. And they don’t know him like I do. When I go offline, off he goes to meet them in the real world, his druggy little friends, and then back he comes the following night, tongue hanging out, slathering with anticipation of my arrival, waiting to impress me with his pathetic narcotic adventures. I think it’s time I started making him wait for me now — just ten minutes or so, keep him keen.

It didn’t take long for him to respond to my initial request — it was the photograph of his mother which got his attention. I told him I’d found it hidden in my house. Told him it had her name on the back. Told him I’d tracked him down and I think he liked that. I think it tickled him, the idea that someone had made the effort to seek him out. It was an innocent enough photo, his mother alone on a beach, but it’s given him food for thought. Let him ponder for a while whether we might be related. Did his mother have an affair? Did she have another child? Does he have a little half brother? Could it be me? And there are more pictures to come of course, but he’s not yet ready for those — they will need a health warning. Not that he gave me one when he sent me that filth. Still, I managed to fake my boy’s appreciation well and Jonathan is such an innocent it wasn’t hard to pretend he had never seen anything like that before.

He thinks I hang on his every word, and I do in a way. Poor sod — dribbling out his sorry tales to a boy six years his junior who has been dead for nearly twenty years. He may have opened his heart to Jonathan, but it is me who has marched in: me with Nancy’s voice ringing in my ears, her book of words whispering to me, the source material. And with her at my side, it won’t take much to nudge this feeble specimen to the brink. All I need do is feed his darkness and lead him to a point of no return then leave him there, teetering on the edge.

I wonder whether it’s ever really possible to feel another person’s suffering. Perhaps I am asking too much. But I’d hoped for something. Some words which might have shown an attempt to understand my loss. She said: “Sorry. I wish he hadn’t done it.” What did that mean? Did she wish that someone else had risked their life instead? Did she wish Jonathan was still alive? But she didn’t say that….

I have played her words over and over in my head, trying to make sense of them. Sometimes I wonder if they slipped out from somewhere deep inside. I wonder if they were a confession: whether she wished her son had been left to drown. Is that possible? I try to imagine how a mother could want her child to lose its life. But it happens, doesn’t it? Mothers kill their children through neglect. They put their own needs above those of their children. They forget about their responsibilities. It happens, you read about it. And she was guilty of neglect, why else would her five-year-old son be afloat in the sea alone? Why didn’t she run in to save him?

When we met I had already discovered that she and Jonathan had been intimate, but she told me they had never met before that day. But hadn’t they been staying in the same small holiday resort? And she repeated the lie: “I had never seen him before.” She is a liar. I could have told her I had seen the photographs, but I didn’t. I didn’t have the strength for confrontation, and really, what would have been the point? It wouldn’t bring him back. It took all my strength to stay upright, standing next to her at my son’s grave. I was cold. I was exhausted. I had wanted her to give me something. I wanted to see her son and I did find the strength to ask for that. I hoped that we would meet again and that the next time she would bring him with her, but she refused. There was no other meeting. I never saw her again and I never saw the child who was only alive because of my boy.

I remember how her cheeks glowed pink from the cold, shimmering with health, and I envied her that too, the heat coming off her. The sweat on her lip and her shiny skin. There was heat but no warmth. Her blood is too cold to ever understand what it feels like to have a stranger tell you your child is dead, to not be with your son at the moment he needs you most, at the moment he is crying out for you. And you cannot help him, you cannot hold him, you cannot tell him that it will be all right, that you are there. I wasn’t there to hold Jonathan, to stroke his head, to kiss him and tell him I loved him. Only if that happens to you can you really understand what it is like.

Her little boy is running around aboveground while mine lies rotting beneath. She didn’t even look at Jonathan’s stone, at the words we’d had carved into it: “He was our Angel.” She didn’t look down. She hadn’t brought flowers. Why did she even bother to come? I wish her child knew that he owed his life to my son. I wish he knew that if it wasn’t for Jonathan he wouldn’t be here.

She remembers sitting up, shouting Nicholas’s name. She had fallen asleep on her towel, lying on her front, her feet facing the sea. She had been exhausted. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but she had allowed herself to lie down with her head resting on her hands because Nicholas had been content.

She’d given in and bought him the red and yellow rubber dinghy he’d seen on their first day, when she and Robert had held his hands and they’d walked along the promenade. On that first afternoon she and Robert had steered Nick away from the inflatable dolphins, sharks, and boats, and bought him a bucket and spade and a small truck to play with on the sand. But he’d cried for the dinghy and on that last day she had given in. It would make him happy, and if he was happy, then she could rest.

She looked up now and again to check he was okay and he was, sitting in the dinghy on the sand, happy at being the captain of his ship. But the next time she looked, the dingy was bobbing around in the waves. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She stood up and called his name. The waves were frisky now, and they rocked the boat, back and forth, but he was still smiling, still happy. And there were others in the water, diving in and out of the waves. No one seemed worried. She marched towards the sea, her eyes never leaving Nick, calling his name, louder each time, but he didn’t look up. He was lost in his own little world. Then frisky became rough, and the waves swelled and tugged at the boat.

He was out of his depth and being pulled further by the sea, out to where the ocean became dark, then black. The sun had gone and the wind had come up.

“Help,” she shouted, running now. Then “Help me,” she screamed, shivering, terrified. She remembers her words with shame: “Help me,” not “Help my child.” “Help me .” She ran into the water, up to her waist but it wasn’t she who swam out to her child. She knew she wasn’t a strong enough swimmer and she was scared. She was scared of drowning. She forces herself to admit it.

She dissects that moment, sparing herself nothing. She didn’t risk her own life for her child’s. She knew they would both drown if she swam out. She’d always been frightened in the sea — didn’t even like putting her head under. It’s men who drown rescuing children and dogs, not women. Fathers, not mothers. Strange that, but she can’t remember ever hearing about a woman jumping in to rescue a drowning child, but she can recall plenty of occasions when men had thrown themselves into roaring rivers or dirty canals, not thinking about themselves, just driven on by blind courage. There must be women who have done it, but she can’t remember reading of them. So, she is not quite alone in lacking the bravery to go in after her son that day. If it had been a burning building, or a window ledge at the top of a skyscraper, or a madman pointing a gun, it would have been different. Then she would have found the courage. She would have run through fire, risked falling to her death, jumped in front of a bullet for Nick, but the sea? The sea had thwarted her.