Disclaimer (5 page)

He shrugs again. ‘Bit nerdy.’

‘What, all of them?’

He shrugs again.

‘Oh dear.’ Catherine makes an effort to sound as if she is giving Nicholas the benefit of the doubt, but she imagines his flatmates are bright, engaged, focused. They probably read, and that’s what makes them nerdy in his eyes.

‘They’re all students,’ he says.

‘You’re still enjoying work though?’ She struggles to cover the awkwardness between them.

‘It’s fine.’ He shrugs. ‘You know.’

She doesn’t know. How can she know if he doesn’t tell her? Nicholas is working in the electrical department at John Lewis – it’s not quite what she and Robert had imagined for their son, but considering he left school at sixteen with a handful of GCSEs it seems a godsend. There was a time when they were unable to imagine him ever being able to commit to any kind of job. She remembers how hurt she had been by the phone calls from other mothers, even close friends, who couldn’t wait to tell her about their children’s results, asking the cursory question about Nicholas and all the while knowing damn well he’d be lucky to come away with any passes. It was a long time ago, yet she’s never quite forgiven them. It wasn’t sisterly – it was cruel. Anyway, Nicholas has stuck it out at John Lewis, so there must be something he likes about it.

‘I’ll take this with me,’ he says, and pulls out a mobile. Aeroplanes. Delicately made from balsa wood and paper, wings a little torn, strings tangled.

‘And Sandy?’ He shakes his head at the balding dog Catherine holds in her hand. Her turn to be hurt now. She is trying to coax him back to boyhood memories: to the time when he couldn’t sleep without his cheek resting on Sandy; when he couldn’t sleep without her tucking him in. It’s so bloody complicated. She wants him to be a grown-up but she also wants him to remember how much he loved her once. How much he needed her. She is nervous too that he still needs her more than is good for him and it makes her tougher and it makes her relieved, in the end, that he is leaving Sandy behind. She stops at the door and turns to him.

‘You do understand, Nick, don’t you?’

He has hooked the mobile on the corner of a shelf, and is trying to untangle the strings.

‘What?’

‘About us moving. You know. We just didn’t need such a big place any more.’

He doesn’t answer, and she knows she should resist pushing it, yet she can’t.

‘Don’t you want to be independent? We’re here if you’re ever in real trouble, but it’s time, Nick. Isn’t it?’

He shrugs. ‘If that’s what you want to tell yourself, Mum.’

‘The match is about to start,’ Robert calls from the sitting room and Nicholas brushes past her to join his father, leaving her with the sting of his words.

Catherine returns to the kitchen and pours the rest of the bottle into her glass and slides open the door on to the terrace. She lights a cigarette, alternating between dragging on it and slugging wine from her glass. She thinks it calms her down. It doesn’t. It jangles her nerves. Makes her twitchy. She wants to punish herself. The cigarette is part of that, a slow self-destruction, and the book is another. She returns to the kitchen and takes it out from under the Sunday papers, where she had buried it earlier, and opens the first page. No, there’s not a hint here of what is to come. It is gentle. Soft. She flicks ahead to the part she knows will hurt her. She is lost in it, sinking beneath its weight. Its injustice. Her eyes close, the words washing over her, to the sound of a roar from the TV. A goal. Silence.

She must have fallen asleep. She doesn’t know how long for. It’s getting dark outside. She is groggy. The TV has been turned off and she hears whispering in the hallway, by the front door. Then footsteps coming into the kitchen.

‘I’m off.’ Nicholas raises his hand in goodbye and comes towards her. He’s going to kiss her, and she leans forward, standing up to meet him halfway. His lips brush past her ear. ‘Oh, I’ve read that.’ Her heart stops. Her throat closes. ‘I enjoyed it.’ Sweat pricks her top lip.

Robert smiles: ‘Your mum’s struggling with it.’

‘Really? Not like you, Mum,’ and she feels the book leaving her hand and moving into her son’s. He misreads her face. ‘Yes, I did finish it. I do read, you know.’

‘No, no I didn’t … Is this your copy? Did you send it to me?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe you left it here?’

‘No. I didn’t. Mine’s in the flat.’

‘How come you’ve read it?’

‘Catherine—’ Robert thinks she’s being unnecessarily provocative.

‘No, no, I only meant it’s a weird coincidence. It was sent to me when we moved and I’m not sure who—’

‘Well mine was a present.’

‘A present? Who from?’ She cracks. He looks at her, surprised, shrugging. ‘A grateful customer. Someone I helped, I think. I can’t remember – they left it at the till with my name on it. No big deal.’

‘Who was it?’ she asks again.

‘I don’t know, Mum. I told you. What’s the problem? Why does it matter?’

She turns away, frightened of what he might read in her face, and mumbles her reply: ‘It doesn’t. No, it’s fine.’ She can’t let go though. ‘So, you liked it?’ she says.

‘Yeah, I did. Don’t want to spoil it for you though.’

She waits. ‘It’s OK, I probably won’t finish it.’

‘Well, I’ll see you. I’ll call you during the week.’ He makes his way to the front door with Robert at his heels. She follows them.

‘So what happens?’ She is desperate. ‘I probably won’t finish it,’ she repeats. He opens the front door and turns round.

‘She dies. Sticky end. She deserves it though.’ And then he hugs his father and with a grin wiggles his fingers in farewell to his mother.

10

Eighteen months earlier

The words in Nancy’s manuscript did not break me. They made my heart race, they stirred me up, yet they did not break me. When I’d read ‘A Special Kind of Friend’, written by the young Nancy, I had heard her voice so clearly and it had made me weep. Now, with this later work, her last work, I heard her just as clearly, but as the mature woman I had been married to for over forty years. As the woman I had cared for when she was dying: washed, read to, fed, comforted as best I could. I had not expected to find this woman in print, yet there she was. I had given up on writing, but she had not. And, after spending time with her book, after reading it over and over, her words, which at first had unsettled me, gradually settled down within me, finding little nooks and crannies where they made themselves comfortable, until I trusted them, and they trusted me.

I came to understand that Nancy wanted me to find her manuscript, just as she had wanted me to find the photographs. She had hidden them in places where she knew, eventually, I would come across them. She could have destroyed them, but she chose not to. She was waiting until I was ready – and I hadn’t been ready during her lifetime. I needed time with them on my own. Nancy’s manuscript churned me up, shook me about and sparked some life into me. It reminded me of something Nancy and I had always agreed on: fiction is the best way to clear one’s head.

It had been such a long time since I had put words down on paper and this was the first time I had done it without Nancy being there – she had always been my motivation. Doubts I’d had in the past, questions I’d tormented myself with, vanished because I knew why this book had to be written and I was in no doubt who it was for.

I turned my desk towards the window so I could look out on to the house opposite and watch the comings and goings of the young family who lived there. Off to school in the morning, Mum coming home in the afternoon with the children. Their day was a useful shape for me, it reflected the shape I’d had all those years ago when Nancy would leave for school with Jonathan and return with him at teatime, and I would finish my last sentence of the day.

I had put the photographs out of sight in my desk drawer, but they were at the heart of the story so I took them out and pinned them to the window frame. They formed a collage of sex and deceit: a kind of mood board. Every time I watched that young family coming in or out of their house I was reminded, by the frame through which I viewed them, of how innocence is so easily corrupted. It kept me focused.

I didn’t rush it; I spent months copying out Nancy’s manuscript into my own hand. I wanted to know how she had felt when she constructed those sentences; I wanted to get into her head, to see what she had seen when the words appeared on the page. I wrote by hand because I needed to feel the shape of each letter; for my skin to make contact with the paper and feel its smoothness as my hand moved from left to right, slithering across the page. There could be no distance between me and it. Skin, pen, paper, skin – I wanted them to become one. I took as long as I could and enjoyed the rhythm of the words, digesting every one. There were moments when I felt a sentence could be improved on, but I didn’t stop to make corrections at this point; I pressed on, telling myself that only when I had reached the end would I allow myself to look back, like a climber approaching the summit. Don’t look down.

I remembered how Nancy and I had laughed at writers who made the preposterous claim that they had been possessed by their characters; that it had felt to them as if their book had written itself. For me, at least, this was true. I saw the characters leap from the page, alive, fully formed. Fleshed out and breathing. My hand, slippery yet firm, ejaculating the words as they flowed from Nancy into me.

The experience was life-giving, opening the door for Nancy to come back to me; her gentle, loving presence returning to our home. At the end of each day’s writing, when my hand ached from it, I made myself tea and toast and read aloud to her, as if she was sitting in her old chair opposite me.

And then, when I was finally satisfied, I typed it up. Bang, bang, bang went my fingers, nailing each word to the page. Finally it was done. How long did it take? From beginning to end? I spent a year with Nancy’s manuscript, copying it out, but the real beginning of course was years ago, I just hadn’t recognized it at the time. I felt Nancy smiling at me, encouraging me on. She always said that one day my writing would break through.

11

Spring 2013

As soon as the front door closes behind Nicholas, Catherine locks herself in the downstairs loo. The weapon being used to torment her had been practically placed in her son’s hand, although so far Nicholas doesn’t seem to realize that he has a direct connection to the book. She hears Robert outside the door and picks up a magazine, rustling the pages to let him know she’ll be some time. She looks down at her knickers hanging around her ankles and is suddenly awash with self-pity. She doesn’t deserve this. Why torment her? And why now? She begins to cry, almost wanting Robert to hear and comfort her. He is standing on the other side of the door.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine, yes.’ She rustles the magazine again then gets to her feet, pulling up her knickers and blowing her nose under the sound of the flushing toilet. She checks herself in the mirror. She looks like shit, but it’s Sunday, that’s allowed. Pull yourself together, you stupid cow. Read the rest of the book, stop putting it off. Face it. Then you will know what to do, what you are up against. She smiles at her reflection, and almost laughs at the madness of it.

It is three in the morning and Robert is asleep. She had managed to get through their evening together, and when they were in bed had gone through the ritual of lying next to him, feigning sleep, waiting for him to doze off. The moment he did, she had crept downstairs and locked herself in the loo again. Now she is reading a description of her own death. Of how someone else has imagined it. Of how it will end for her. And it is merciless. It is messy. And she sees what she would not be able to see if she was dead. The image others would see when they looked down at her. Her skull crushed, leaking brains. Her tongue severed by her own teeth. Her nose, sliced off, wedged under a cheekbone. That’s what the train would do to her after she’d jumped in front of it. Only Catherine would know, as she fell, that in fact she hadn’t jumped at all. She had been pushed. Very gently, nudged. Tipped over on to the track as the train came into the station. It is busy. There are crowds of people. Such a terrible accident. This is the price she must pay for living the past twenty years as if everything is absolutely fine.

Fear this intense is a distant memory for Catherine. She had forgotten what it was like. She is middle-aged, an age where death sidles up and plays on the mind more frequently, but she has always succeeded in marching onwards, shrugging the pinchy fingers of fear that might snag her progress. Only now she is caught in their grip. The hatred directed at her is undiluted. It’s the sort of hate she imagines being directed at sadistic murderers and child molesters, and she is neither of these. The author has twisted her into something vile. Defaced her character. He or she wants her to explain herself. Why should she? She shouldn’t have to. That is not the role she should be cast in.

Catherine is the one who teases the truth from people. She has made a career out of it. It is what she is good at. She is persuasive, one of the best. Seducing the truth from people, opening them up, filleting out the delicate secrets they’d rather not reveal, then laying them out on a slab for others to look at and learn from; and all done in a perfectly charming way, never ever giving anything of herself away. And she will not open herself up for examination now. She will hunt out the hunter, the one who twisted this story. But who is this? Someone she has never met? Yes, someone she doesn’t know. She reads the last sentence again:
Such a pity she hadn’t realized that doing nothing would be such a deadly omission.

She wants to screw up this book but its two hundred pages are stronger than her. She will destroy it though. She will not be passive. She rises up from her seat, dressing gown flowing, and strides into the kitchen. She finds the matches – long, elegant matches whose only purpose to date has been to light fig-scented candles – and strikes one, holding the flame against the cover of the book. It is slow to burn, the laminated cover resistant, at first only issuing a toxic smell. At last the pages begin to catch, the edges blacken and produce a sliver of red, followed by a blue-and-yellow glow as the fire takes. She holds the book for as long as she can before burning her fingers, and then drops the fiery bundle into the sink, turning on the tap and extinguishing the fire she had started.