Renée Knight - Disclaimer

She is freezing as she dials his number, over and over, but all she hears is another Nick, telling her to leave a message. A bird is singing outside, but it’s not dawn and it sounds wrong. Like her, it’s been squeezed out of its nest too soon. She grabs her coat and bag and leaves the flat. She has no car, so runs to the local minicab company and waits. Five minutes, that’s all, for a sleepy man to pull up and drive her back to her home. A twenty-minute journey at this time of day, with no traffic. She pays him and runs to the front door and lets herself in.

How could Nancy possibly have known what went on between Jonathan and the whore? How could she describe their intimacy in such detail? She had the photographs with their gruesome detail and she used her imagination: it’s what writers do. She played around with some of the facts — I doubt very much whether Jonathan would have been interested in pursuing Orwell, Bowles, or Kerouac. Wishful thinking? Artistic licence. Of course she changed names. To protect the innocent? Perhaps I should have changed them back again. It was a work of fiction, but still, I like to believe that it released the truth from its ballast, it allowed it to float up to the surface. It’s the substance of a story which is important, after all.

Jonathan had travelled out to Europe with his girlfriend, a fact Nancy left intact, but she changed the reason for Sarah’s early return home. Her father hadn’t been taken ill, that’s not why she came home. She and Jonathan had had a row and Sarah had stormed home in a strop. That’s a fact. But it’s not an important one. What is important is that Jonathan continued his travels alone. He was a nineteen-year-old boy, alone in a foreign country. He was vulnerable. I remember how Nancy worried about him being on his own. I didn’t. I suspected he’d have a much better time without his girlfriend there. I thought he might meet someone more fun.

When we’d returned from Spain after identifying Jonathan’s body, Sarah was the first person Nancy called. She didn’t want her to hear about his death from anyone else. It was Sarah’s mother who answered the phone. She said that Sarah was out, but that she would tell her what had happened. We never knew whether she did or not because we never heard from Sarah again. Nancy always sent her cards on her birthday and at Christmas, but we never heard back from her. I was furious and upset of course but Nancy was more generous. She said she understood. Sarah was young, it was too much to expect of her, and certainly her mother would not have encouraged her to stay in touch. Relations with Sarah’s mother had never been easy.

When Sarah had returned home from Europe, I remember Nancy taking a call from her mother. I only heard Nancy’s end of the conversation but I remember her patience while she listened to the woman’s rant. She stayed calm as she repeated over and over that it was up to the two young people to sort out their differences, it was not right for parents to interfere. She managed to end the call with civility, but when she put down the receiver I could see she was white with anger and yet she had not lost her temper and I admired her for that. She has that same even tone in her notebooks. They whisper, they don’t rant. She wishes for things, she doesn’t demand them.

“ 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.”

Catherine puts her key in the door and turns it, almost expecting it to no longer fit, but it does. She lets herself in and runs straight up to the spare room. She takes in the empty bed, the mess on the floor, the state of abandonment. Then she opens the door to her bedroom and stands over Robert. He is fast asleep. On the bedside table is a packet of sleeping pills, and next to them, a much-handled copy of The Perfect Stranger . Once this would have shocked her, but now it sickens her that he is keeping it next to his bed. That he has brought it back into their bedroom. She wonders where the photographs are. Does he keep those in his bedside drawer or has he destroyed them?

“Robert, wake up.” His sleep is so deep he hasn’t heard her run up the stairs, doesn’t sense her presence looming over him, doesn’t hear her voice in his ear. She reaches down and shakes him.

“Wake up.” He groans and turns away. His eyes stay shut.

“Robert,” she shouts, angry now. “Wake up.” She picks up his phone and checks for calls from Nick but there are none, only missed calls from her. How dare he sleep? She picks up the glass of water next to his bed and pours it over his head. Justified, needed, excusable. He splutters and shrivels. He looks pathetic. Her anger and dislike take her by surprise.

“Robert, for fuck’s sake wake up. Where is Nick?” And then he does at last open his eyes and look at her. He is confused, useless.

“What are you…?”

“Where is Nick?”

Still he looks blank, trying to drag himself back from sleep. She waves the book in his face.

“Have you told him?”

He slides away from her and gets out from the other side of the bed, and looks at her. He is naked and she turns away.

“Have you told him?” She yells this time.

He walks to the bathroom, returning in ankle-length towelling. He is calm, not at all worried.

“I haven’t told him anything,” he says. “But I’m going to…”

“Well, it’s a bit late now. Someone’s beaten you to it. He called me at four this morning and now I can’t get hold of him. He won’t pick up, hasn’t answered any of my calls. He left me a message,” she says and shakes her phone at him, “he was in a terrible state.” She starts to cry. “He knows. Where is he? We need to find him.”

“I don’t know where he is. Probably with a friend.” He refuses to join in her panic. “He went off to work this morning — he didn’t come home for supper, but so what? He’s twenty-five.” He is defensive. “I’m sure he’s fine… what do you mean he was in a state?”

“He was crying — he didn’t say anything — all I could hear were his sobs.”

Pain washes across Robert’s face: “Oh Jesus, I wish to God I’d told him. He should never have had to hear it from someone else.” He pushes past her to get downstairs.

“I’ve never heard him like this, Robert… I’m scared.”

He turns on her. “Well, what did you expect?” He looks her up and down until it seems he can no longer bear to look at her. “I should have been the one to tell him… and now he’s had to hear it from a stranger. Can you imagine how shocked he must be?” he says.

“That crazy, fucking bastard has got to him—”

“What?” he interrupts. “You mean the father of the boy who drowned saving Nick’s life? The father of the young man you fucked and then denied you’d ever met? After he had died saving our child? You mean that crazy, fucking bastard? You are unbelievable.” God how he hates her. He is consumed by it. The young man she fucked . He should be worrying about Nick, not attacking her. She despises him for not being able to focus on their son, on not working with her to find him.

“Don’t you get it? Our son is in danger. That man has got to him.” She holds out her phone and plays Nick’s message. It is heartbreaking. Tears come to Robert’s eyes.

“This is your fault. You have done this…” He spits the words at her and she turns away, but he carries on. “I don’t recognise you anymore. What did you expect?” He pulls her round so she is facing him.

“Are you surprised he’s upset? The lies, all the lies over the years. It was inevitable he would find out in the end but I wish it had been me who had told him. You didn’t care about him, did you — you were so caught up with your lover that you left our child alone in the sea when he couldn’t swim. What is he supposed to make of that? He was a kid — you were the adult. You were his mother. You were the one who should have saved him but you’ve never put him first, have you. It’s always about you.” She pulls away from him, turning her back, refusing to defend herself. She needs to concentrate on finding Nick. She can feel Robert’s eyes on her back, despising her. She had never expected it to come to this but she can’t think of that and instead goes through her phone finding the number for the local hospital. She calls it, waits for an answer.