Renée Knight - Disclaimer

After the carousel was the helter-skelter. Not too high, just right for a child his size. She didn’t follow him up, certain she’d get wedged in the narrow slide, so she watched him go up the steps, carrying his mat, and then she stood at the bottom, smiling as he shot towards her, his face shiny and golden. He flew off the end into a heap of giggles. A soft landing. Safe. And then it was time to go back to the hotel, so they went in search of a taxi rank, Nick tired now and complaining. He wanted to be carried but she held his hand firmly and told him it wasn’t far. She promised they’d come again tomorrow, on their last night. They did do that. They returned to the little fair, but it wasn’t the same. She tried to make it the same, but she couldn’t.

They found a taxi rank. There were no taxis, just a sign with the word TAXI and a picture of one. They were the only ones waiting, but there were lots of people around, in cafés, looking into shops, walking out in the early evening. She picked Nick up and he snuggled into her, sleepy and smelling of sugar. And then she saw him, Jonathan, whose name she still didn’t know. He was sitting next to a girl in a café across the road. The girl was looking at a map and he leaned over and looked at it too. The girl seemed surprised, and Catherine remembers wondering whether they knew each other, or whether they had just met. Then he looked up suddenly and caught Catherine staring and she squirmed, turning away and looking up the road for a taxi. She remembers her relief when one came, three in fact, all at once. She put Nick down and leaned in to tell the driver where they were going. She remembers looking out of the window as they pulled away and seeing Jonathan watching.

She picked up the key from reception, and went to the room. Nick brushed his teeth, put on his pyjamas, and then she closed his shutters and sat on the edge of his bed and read him a story. He was happy to sleep in his own bed as long as she kept the door open between them and she promised she would. He could see her then from his bed if he woke up. He was asleep before she’d finished reading, and she kissed him, and went into her own room and lay on the bed. Her shutters were open and she could hear the street outside, busier now in anticipation of the night. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt a swell of happiness. One last treat, she had thought, and decided to finish her evening with a glass of wine and a cigarette on her balcony.

She went downstairs, locking the door after her, and ordered a large glass of white wine. The bar was empty, which wasn’t surprising. Why would anyone want to sit inside in this rather soulless hotel bar? She signed for her drink and took it upstairs, struggling not to spill it as she unlocked the door. She checked on Nick. He had kicked off his sheet and was lying with his arms up, hands against the pillow, in the way he had as a baby. They had had a special day together, she and Nick. Robert hadn’t been there but she hadn’t missed him. She had forgotten that. Only now does she remember that actually, she hadn’t missed Robert that day. She had relaxed into being with Nick and she had enjoyed it. The slight dread she’d felt when she’d woken in the morning, of a long day ahead trying to keep Nicholas happy, trying not to get irritated, had passed without her even noticing and she had slipped into just being with him, as she had always hoped she would. Only now does she remember thinking that perhaps it had been a good thing that Robert had gone. She had completely forgotten that. It had been wiped out. When she’d yelled at Robert recently, a few weeks ago, that he shouldn’t have left her and Nick alone, that she had been depressed and hadn’t wanted him to leave them, she had thought it was true. In a way it was, but she had forgotten how nourished, how satisfied she’d felt, from a day of simple pleasure with her son. Yes, she only remembers that now. It had been wiped out, until now.

She took her glass of wine and cigarettes onto the small balcony, sat down, and looked at the world passing by, for once not wanting to be part of it. She was happy. She recognises now, as she sits in her car outside Stephen Brigstocke’s house, that she had been happy at that moment. Her eyes brim up, and the tears begin again as she wonders whether, in truth, that was the last time she had been truly happy. Has all the “happiness” after that been a pretence? Not quite, not quite. But that happy feeling, she hadn’t told the old man about that. That wasn’t part of the story he needed to hear. She didn’t want to confuse things. She had got to the meat of it with him.

She finished her wine and went back into the room, closing the doors and shutters behind her. It was still quite early, but she was tired. Shower, book, bed. Her feet were already bare and she was taking off her top when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She had pulled her top over her head and she turned to look, her arms half in, half out of the sleeves, held in front of her like a straightjacket. It was dark now the shutters were closed, but she could see someone standing in front of the door. Tall, broad. She could smell him. Maybe she smelt him before she saw him. That was possible because his aftershave was thick and sickly. The door was shut and she could hear the jangle of a key in his hand. She must have left it in the door when she was trying not to spill her wine. Her fucking wine. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves and held her top in front of her, trying to cover herself. Before she could shout, tell him to get out, his hand was over her mouth. His large, hot hand. She could taste the sweat on it. She can still taste it. She told the old man that. That she can still taste the fear, or was it excitement, on his son’s hand all these years later. Taste and smell: senses imbedded in the memory. Impossible to shake off. How sick that she had forgotten the happy memory so easily but remembered so clearly the foul ones.

His other hand grabbed hers when she tried to hit him, and her top fell to the floor. He looked down at her body and she struggled, trying to pull her hands away and he let go, and put his finger to his lips, glancing at the open door through to Nick. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a penknife. He pulled out the blade and rested the point on her left nipple. Pushed it down under the cup of her bra and pressed, lightly. His other hand grabbed her by the throat, and he dragged her with him as he went over and closed the door to Nicholas’s room and locked it with the hand holding the penknife, his other still on her throat.

“If you make a sound I will slash your face and then your son’s.”

He didn’t threaten to kill her. Maybe if he had she would have fought more. Perhaps she wouldn’t have believed him, but she did believe that he would cut up her face and then her child’s. He took the knife and ran it down the inside of his arm — a straight line, and then another, forming a cross, clean and red. He was showing her how efficient his blade was. Then he held his arm out to her and made her lick off the blood.

She was surprised when she heard him speak. She was shocked by the hatred in his voice. Before that moment, in the days before when she had been aware of him looking at her, when he had raised his bottle of beer to her from the beach, when he had smiled at her from his stool in the hotel bar, she had imagined other words coming from his mouth. And she had imagined his voice differently too. She’d thought it would be gentle. Stupid bitch. The shame of that: the shame of assuming that she was being admired. Why hadn’t she recognised that to him she was not human? To him she was nothing more than a small animal to be tormented, something to take his frustration and hate out on. She had assumed his desire was harmless, playful. She forced herself to remember these details, but she hadn’t told them all to the old man, to his father. She is the one who must remember the minutiae; she must excavate these details and blow away the dust then look at them and see them for what they are. She must spare herself nothing.