Renée Knight - Disclaimer

Catherine braces herself, but there is nothing left to come up. She grips the cold enamel and raises her head to look in the mirror. The face that looks back at her is not the one she went to bed with. She has seen this face before but hoped never to see it again. She studies herself in this new harsh light and wets a flannel, wiping her mouth then pressing it against her eyes as if she can extinguish the fear in them.

“Are you okay?”

Her husband’s voice startles her. She hoped he would stay asleep. Leave her alone.

“Better now,” she lies, switching off the light. Then she lies again. “Must have been last night’s takeaway.” She turns to him, a shadow in the dead-hour light.

“Go back to bed. I’m fine,” she whispers. He is more asleep than awake, but still he reaches out and puts his hand on her shoulder.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” she says. All she is sure about is that she needs to be alone.

“Robert. Honestly. I’ll be there in a minute.”

His fingers linger on her arm but then he does as she asks and goes back to bed. She waits until she is sure he is asleep before returning to their bedroom.

She looks at it lying there facedown and still open where she left it. The book she trusted. Its first few chapters had lulled her into complacency, made her feel at ease with just the hint of a mild thrill to come, a little something to keep her reading, but no clue to what was lying in wait. It beckoned her on, lured her into its pages, further and further until she realised she was trapped. Then words ricocheted around her brain and slammed into her chest, one after another. It was as if a queue of people had jumped in front of a train and she, the helpless driver, was powerless to prevent the fatal collision. It was too late to put the brakes on. There was no going back. Catherine had unwittingly stumbled across herself tucked into the pages of the book.

“Any resemblance to persons living or dead…” The disclaimer has a neat red line through it. A message she failed to notice when she opened the book. There is no mistaking the resemblance to her. She is a key character, a main player. Names may have been changed but the details are unmistakeable, even down to what she was wearing that afternoon. A chunk of her life she has kept hidden. A secret she has told no one, not even her husband and son — two people who think they know her better than anyone else. No living soul can have conjured up what Catherine has just read. Yet there it is in printer’s ink for anyone to see. She thought she had laid it to rest. That it was finished. But now it has resurfaced. In her bedroom. In her head.

She tries to dislodge it with thoughts of the previous evening, before she picked up the book. The contentment of settling into their new home: of wine and supper; curling up on the sofa; dozing in front of the TV and then she and Robert melting into bed. A quiet happiness she had taken for granted: but it is too quiet to bring her comfort. She cannot sleep so gets out of bed and goes downstairs.

They still have a downstairs, just about. A maisonette, not a house anymore. They moved from the house three weeks ago. Two bedrooms now, not four. Two bedrooms are a better fit for her and Robert. One for them. One spare. They’ve gone for open plan too. No doors. They don’t need to shut doors now Nicholas has left. She turns on the kitchen light and takes a glass from the cupboard and fills it. No tap. Cool water on command from the new fridge. It’s more like a wardrobe than a fridge. Dread slicks her palms with sweat. She is hot, almost feverish, and is thankful for the coolness of the newly laid limestone floor. The water helps a little. As she gulps it down she looks out of the vast glass windows running along the back of this new, alien home. Only black out there. Nothing to see. She hasn’t got round to blinds yet. She is exposed. Looked at. They can see her, but she can’t see them.

I did feel sorry for what happened, I really did. He was only a child after all, seven years old. And I was, I suppose, in loco parentis, although I jolly well knew that none of the parents would have wanted me being in loco anything. By then I had sunk pretty low: Stephen Brigstocke, the most loathed teacher in the school. Certainly I think the children thought so and the parents, but not all of them: I hope some of them remembered me from before, when I had taught their older children. Anyway, I wasn’t surprised when Justin called me into his office. I’d been waiting for it. It took him a little longer than I’d expected, but that’s private schools for you. They are their own little fiefdoms. The parents might think they’re in control because they’re paying, but of course they’re not. I mean, look at me. I was barely interviewed for the job. Justin and I had been at Cambridge together and he knew I needed the money, and I knew he needed a head of English. You see, private schools pay more than state and I had had years of experience teaching in a state comprehensive. Poor Justin, it must have been very difficult for him to remove me. Awkward, you know. And it was a removal rather than a sacking. It was decent of him; I appreciate that. I couldn’t afford to lose my pension, and I was coming up for retirement anyway, so he just hastened the process. In fact we were both due for retirement but Justin’s departure was quite different from mine. I heard that some of the pupils even shed a tear. Not for me though, well, why should they? I didn’t deserve those kinds of tears.

But I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m not a paedophile. I didn’t fiddle with the child. I didn’t even touch him. No, no, I never, ever touched the children. The thing is, I just found them so bloody boring. Is that a terrible thing to say about seven-year-olds? I suppose it is for a teacher. I got so sick of reading their tedious stories, which I’m sure some of them laboured over, but even so, it was that sense they had of themselves, that at seven, for crying out loud, they really had anything to say that I might be interested in. And then one evening I had just had enough. The catharsis of the red pen no longer worked and when I got to this particular boy’s essay, I don’t remember his name, I gave him a very detailed critique of why I couldn’t really give a shit about his family holiday to southern India where they’d stayed with local villagers. Well, how bloody marvellous for them. Of course it upset him. Of course it did and I’m sorry for that. And of course he told his parents. I’m not sorry about that. It helped speed up my exit and there’s no doubt I needed to go for my own sake as well as theirs.

So there I was at home with a lot of time on my hands. A retired English teacher from a second-rate private school. A widower. I worry that perhaps I am being too honest — that what I have said so far might be a little off-putting. It might make me appear cruel. And what I did to that little boy was cruel, I accept that but, as a rule, I’m not a cruel person. Since Nancy died though, I have allowed things to slide a little. Well, okay, a lot.

It is hard to believe that, once upon a time, I was voted Most Popular Teacher in the Year. Not by the pupils at the private school, but by those at the comprehensive I’d taught at before. And it wasn’t a one-off, it happened several years running. One year, I think it was 1982, my wife, Nancy, and I both achieved this prize from our respective schools.

I had followed Nancy into teaching. She had followed our son when he began at infants’. She’d taught the five- to six-year-olds at Jonathan’s school and I the fourteen- to fifteen-year-olds at the comp up the road. I know some teachers find that age group a struggle, but I liked it. Adolescence isn’t much fun and so my view was, give the poor buggers a break. I never forced them to read a book if they didn’t want to. A story is a story after all. It doesn’t just have to be read in a book. A film, a piece of television, a play. There’s still a narrative to follow, interpret, enjoy. Back then I was committed. I cared. But that was then. I’m not a teacher anymore. I’m retired. I’m a widower.