Renée Knight - Disclaimer

“My son raped your wife. She told me and I believe her. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything….”

Poor man. It is a lot to take in. I have been too abrupt. We are sitting in the café at the hospital. He has brought me a cup of tea. Insisted on it. I tried to stop him, I said I didn’t want one, but he was trying to put me at ease, to make me feel welcome. He said he was getting one for himself anyway. He misread my nervous state — he thought I was anxious because of what had happened the last time I was here. He had only just put the cup down when I told him. I say it again more slowly.

“My son raped your wife. She told me what happened and I believe her. I am ashamed to say it, but I believe my son was capable of that… I’m so sorry.”

I want to say more but I make myself stop. He needs time to digest. He will have questions, and I will answer them.

“My wife told you that?”

“Yes.”

“Catherine?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe her?”

I nod but he looks beyond me, over my shoulder. There are people sitting nearby, but we have a table to ourselves. We look like a father and son. People will assume that my wife, his mother, is in a ward and that we are there to comfort each other.

“I am sure she was telling the truth.” I repeat myself. “Your wife was raped by my son.”

“When did she tell you?” His voice is flat, as if he is speaking under hypnosis.

“Yesterday. She came to my house….”

He takes this in but avoids my eyes. They graze my shoulder as they move down to look into his tea, both hands wrapped around the cheap china.

“Yesterday?”

“Yes. She came to my house yesterday morning.”

Then he looks up at me and I see his exhaustion. His eyes are blue and his hair, once blond, is now washed out with grey.

“Why didn’t she tell me? She should have told me , not you.”

I cannot answer that. Ask me something else. Ask me something I can answer. The silence grows, chewing at the air between us, and I see anger build inside him. He is waking up… four, three, two, one.

“Why didn’t you tell me before? You must have known. You bastard. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know until yesterday. I hadn’t met your wife before. But when she sat down in front of me and told me what happened, I knew she was telling the truth. No one wants to believe their son is capable of such a thing.” He is grasping around, searching for something. He is mind fucked. Now I know what that means. We have both been mind fucked.

“He raped her?”

I nod.

“You think he was capable of that and you didn’t say anything… he’d done it before…”

“No, no, I’m sure he hadn’t,” I protest. “It was hearing her describe to me what happened, the details, the knife and… I know she was telling the truth.”

“But the photographs…”

And I watch the guilt begin its descent on him. He reaches over and grabs me by the coat, spilling scalding tea on my legs. A woman at the next table turns to look. She must wonder why I don’t move or make a sound, but I don’t feel a thing.

“I felt sorry for you,” he says. “I was grateful to your fucking son….”

Then he pushes me away and sinks his face into his hands.

“I needed to tell you face-to-face — I couldn’t do it over the phone.”

And oh shrivelling creep that I am, I remind him that it was my wife who wrote the book not me, and I see revulsion crawl onto his face. I sound as if I am blaming her but I am not. I believed what she wrote and I felt I owed it to her to make it known. It was her book, her words.

“She never meant anyone else to read it. I should have left it where it was….”

“You sent it to my wife. And my son. You sent me those photographs. Jesus Christ. How could you not know? You’ve admitted you thought him capable of it, so why didn’t you question it?”

“Why didn’t you?” And I squirm under the pain my question inflicts on him.

“Why didn’t I question it?” His face sags into his hands. I watch his shoulders shake and I want to put my hand out and touch him, but I can’t. I can’t comfort him, there is nothing I can say which will ease his guilt or take away the image of his wife reading that vile book and feeling as if she was being raped all over again. I have no business here anymore. It is done. He knows. I leave him there and go up to the ICU. I don’t go in, I just look through the window hoping for a glimpse of Nicholas, and I see her on her knees at her son’s bedside. She looks as if she is asleep.

He kneels down beside her and she feels his arm across her shoulders. She keeps her eyes closed. His face is close to her neck. It is wet. He is shaking.

“Forgive me, Cath. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I know what happened. He told me what his son did….” These last words are buried in her neck. Still, her eyes remain closed. She is dizzy. He takes her hand and she opens her eyes but it is Nick’s who meet hers, not Robert’s. Nick who is looking right at her, seeing her. It had happened before Robert came, not just opening his eyes, but being able to focus. Catherine was holding his hand at the time and his head shifted a little and then he looked at her and she knew he could see her, recognise her, and a wave of happiness swept through her and she smiled and cried.

“Hello, my darling,” she said. He hadn’t answered, just looked at her. She had texted Robert. She hadn’t known he was already in the hospital with Stephen Brigstocke. A nurse had been with her, and for the first time in a while, Catherine received a smile from her. And then the doctor came and confirmed what they already knew. This was real progress. If he keeps this up he could be out of the ICU within a week.

And then Nick closed his eyes again, and she closed hers. And then Robert came in.

“Dad’s here,” she whispers to Nick. Robert had been too busy looking at Catherine to notice his son open his eyes, but she hears him gasp now and feels the joy pulse through him like the low hum from electric pylons.

“Nick,” he says. “We’re here. We’re both here. It’s going to be okay.” He squeezes Catherine closer to him. Nicholas looks at his parents smiling down at him. There is bafflement in his eyes as they move from one to the other.

“I’ll call the doctor,” Robert whispers to her.

“He knows,” she says and tells him the good news.

They stay there until late into the night. Side by side, occasionally one of them going off to bring back something to eat and drink. They dare not leave Nick’s side in case he speaks. It is possible. And they don’t want to miss his first words. By one AM they decide it is time to go. Part of Catherine dreads it. They will have to speak now and she is too tired.

Robert drives them home. It is late and she feels a sting of guilt that she won’t be with her mother tonight but she called her and thinks she understood that Nick is on the mend and Catherine is going home with Robert. Catherine is drained. All she wants is to be taken home and put to bed, so exhausted she doesn’t say much, but her quiet is calm and peaceful and there’s a stillness in the car, as if she and Robert have been vacuum-packed inside it. He is in no hurry to talk either — he is as shattered as she is. They go upstairs and Catherine showers and washes the hospital smell away. She goes to bed with wet hair, relishing the cold on her head, keeping the heat away. Robert lies down next to her and reaches for her hand, but there is nothing searching about it, he just wants to hold it and she lets him. She stays facing him, although she would like to turn away. She sleeps more comfortably on her right side, but she stays on her left, careful of his feelings.