Disclaimer
Authors: Renée Knight
About the Book
When an intriguing novel appears on Catherine’s bedside table, she curls up and begins to read.
But as she turns the pages she is sickened to realize the story will reveal her darkest secret.
A secret she thought no one else knew . . .
Disclaimer
is a riveting psychological thriller about a normal life turned upside down by the most subtle, damaging revenge imaginable.
Contents
41. Extract from Nancy Brigstocke’s notebook – October 1998
To Greg, George, Betty and my mother, Jocelyn
1
Spring 2013
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 and 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 OK?’
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, yet 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 for a moment, then he does as she asks. She waits until she is certain he is asleep before returning to their bedroom.
She looks at it lying there face down 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 realized 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. Though the names may have been changed, the details are unmistakable, right 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. 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 any more. They moved from the house three weeks ago. Two bedrooms instead of 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. 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.
2
Two years earlier
I did feel sorry about 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 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, though 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 rather 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 around retirement age anyway, so he merely hastened the process. In fact, we were both due for retirement but Justin’s departure was quite different to 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.
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 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 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 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 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, OK, 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 was assigned 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 any more. I’m retired. I’m a widower.
3
Spring 2013
Catherine stumbles, blaming her high heels, but knowing it’s because she’s had too much to drink. Robert reaches his hand to grab her elbow, in time to stop her falling backwards down the concrete steps. His other hand turns the key and pushes open the front door, his grip on her arm still firm as he leads her inside. She kicks off her shoes, and tries to inject some dignity into her walk as she heads for the kitchen.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ he says, coming from behind and folding his arms around her. He kisses the skin where neck curves into shoulder. Her head stretches back.
‘Thank you,’ she says, closing her eyes. But then this moment of happiness melts away. It is night. They are home. And she doesn’t want to go to bed even though she is desperately tired. She knows she won’t sleep. Hasn’t slept properly for a week. Robert doesn’t know this. She pretends all is well, managing to conceal it from him. Pretending to be asleep, lying next to him, alone in her head. She will have to invent an excuse to explain why she’s not going to follow him straight to bed.
‘You go up,’ she says. ‘I’ll be there in a minute. I want to check some emails.’ She smiles encouragement, but he doesn’t need much. He has to be up early the next morning, which is why Catherine appreciates even more the real pleasure he seems to have got from an evening where she has been the centre of attention and he the silent, smiling partner. Not once did he hint that maybe it was time to go. No, he had allowed her to shine and enjoy the moment. Of course, she has done this for him on many occasions; still, Robert had played his part with grace.
‘I’ll take up some water for you,’ he says.
They have just returned from a party, the aftermath of a television awards ceremony. Serious television. No soaps. No drama. Factual. Catherine had won an award for a documentary she had made about the grooming of children for sex. Children who should have been protected but weren’t because nobody had cared enough; nobody had taken the trouble to look out for them. The jury had described her film as brave. She had been described as brave. They have no idea. They have no idea what I’m really like. It wasn’t bravery. It was single-minded determination. Then again, maybe she had been a little bit brave. Secret filming. Predatory men. Not now though. Not now she is at home. Even with the new blinds, she fears she is being watched.
Her evenings have become a series of distractions to stop herself thinking about the inevitable time when she will be lying in the dark, awake. She has managed to fool Robert, she thinks. Even the sweating, which comes on as bedtime gets closer, she has laughed off as the menopause. She has other signs of that, sure, but not this sweating. Though she had wanted him to go to bed, as soon as he has, she wishes he was with her. She wishes she was brave enough to tell him. She wishes she had been brave enough to tell him back then. But she wasn’t. And now it is too late. It was twenty years ago. If she told him now he would never understand. He would be blinded by the fact that, for all this time, she has kept a secret from him. She has withheld something that he would feel he had a right to know. He is
our
son, for Christ’s sake, she hears him say.