Disclaimer (2 page)

She doesn’t need a fucking book to tell her what happened. She hasn’t forgotten any of it. Her son had nearly died. She has been protecting Nicholas all these years. Protecting him from knowing. She has enabled him to live in blissful ignorance. He doesn’t know that he almost didn’t make it into adulthood. And if he
had
held on to some memory of what happened? Would things be different? Would he be different? Would their relationship be different? But she is absolutely sure that he remembers nothing. At least, nothing that would bring him close to the reality of it. For Nicholas, it is simply an afternoon that has merged in with many others from his childhood. He might even remember it as a happy one, she thinks.

If Robert had been there, it might have been different. Well of course it would have been different. It wouldn’t have happened. Except Robert wasn’t there. So she didn’t tell him because she didn’t need to – he would never find out. And it was better that way. It
is
better that way.

She opens her laptop and googles the author’s name. Almost a ritual, this. She has done it before, hoping there’ll be something there. A clue. But there is nothing. Simply a name:
E. J. Preston
. Made up, probably. ‘The Perfect Stranger
is E. J. Preston’s first and possibly last book.
’ No clue as to gender even. Not
his
or
her
first book. It is published by Rhamnousia; when she looked that up it had confirmed what she had already suspected, that the book is self-published. She hadn’t known what Rhamnousia meant. Now she does. The goddess of revenge, aka Nemesis.

That’s a clue, isn’t it? About gender, at least. But that’s impossible. It can’t be. And no one else knew those details. No one still living. There were others, though – anonymous others. But this has been written by someone who really cares. This is personal. She looks to see if there have been any reviews. There are none. Perhaps she is the only one to have read it. And even if others do, they will never know that she is the woman at its heart. Someone does, though. Someone knows.

How the fuck did this book get into her home? She has no memory of buying it. It just seemed to appear on the pile of books by her bed. But then everything has been so chaotic with the move. Boxes and boxes full of books still waiting to be unpacked. Perhaps she put it there herself. Took it from a box, attracted to the cover. It could be Robert’s. He has countless books she has never read and might not recognize. Books from years ago. She pictures him trawling through Amazon, taking a fancy to the title, to the cover, and ordering it online. A fluke. A sick coincidence.

But what she settles on and begins to believe is that someone else put it there. Someone else came into their home, this place that doesn’t yet feel like home. Came into their bedroom. Someone she doesn’t know laid the book down on the shelf next to her bed. Carefully. Not disturbing anything. On her side of the bed. Knowing which side she slept on. Making it look as if she had put it there herself. Her thoughts pile up, crashing into each other until they are twisted and jagged. Wine and anxiety, a dangerous combination. She should know by now not to mix her poisons. She grips her aching head. Always aching these days. She closes her eyes and sees the burning white dot of sun on the book’s cover. How the fuck did this book get into her home?

4

Two years earlier

It had been seven years since Nancy died and yet I still hadn’t got round to sorting through her things. Her clothes hung in the wardrobe. Her shoes, her handbags. She had tiny feet. Size three. Her papers, letters, still lay on the desk and in drawers. I liked coming across them. I liked picking up letters to her, even if they were from British Gas. I liked seeing her name and our shared address written down officially. I had no excuse once I’d retired though. Just get on with it, Stephen, she would have said. So I did.

I started with her clothes, unhooking them from hangers, taking them out of drawers, laying them out on the bed, ready for their journey out of the house. All done, I’d thought, until I saw a cardigan that had slipped off its hanger, and was hiding in a corner of the wardrobe. It is the colour of heather. Lots of colours, actually. Blue, pink, purple, grey, but the impression is of heather. We had bought it in Scotland before we were married. Nancy used to wear it like a shawl: the sleeves, empty of her arms, hanging limply at her sides. I have kept it; I’m holding it now. It is cashmere. The moths have got at it and there is a small hole on the cuff that I can fit my little finger through. She hung on to it for over forty years. It has outlived her and I suspect that it will outlive me too. If I continue to shrink, as I undoubtedly will, then I might soon be able to fit into it.

I remember Nancy wearing it in the middle of the night when she’d get up to feed Jonathan. Her nightgown would be unbuttoned with Jonathan’s tiny mouth around her nipple and this cardigan draped around her shoulders, keeping her warm. If she saw me watching from the bed she would smile and I would get up and make tea for us both. She always tried not to wake me, she said she wanted me to sleep and that she didn’t mind being up. She was happy. We both were. The joy and surprise of a child delivered in middle age when we had all but given up hope. We didn’t bicker about who should get up or who was stealing whose sleep. I’m not going to claim it was fifty–fifty. I would have done more, but the truth is that it was Nancy who Jonathan needed most of, not me.

Even before those midnight feasts, that cardigan was a favourite of hers. She wore it when she was writing: over a summer frock; over a blouse; over her nightdress. I’d glance over from my desk and watch her at hers, striking out at her typewriter, the limp sleeves quivering at her sides. Yes, before we became teachers Nancy and I were both writers. Nancy stopped soon after Jonathan was born. She said she’d lost her appetite for it, and when Jonathan started at the infants’ school she decided to get a job teaching there. But I’m repeating myself.

Neither Nancy nor I had much success as writers, although we both had the odd story published. On reflection, I would say that Nancy had more success than I, yet it was she who insisted I carry on when she gave up. She believed in me. She was so sure that one day it would happen, that I’d break through. Well, maybe she was right. It has always been Nancy’s faith which has driven me on. She was the better writer though. I never lost sight of that, even if she didn’t acknowledge it. She supported me for years as I produced word after word, chapter after chapter, and one or two books. All rejected. Until, thank God, she finally understood that I didn’t want to write any more. I’d had enough. It just felt wrong. It was hard to get her to believe me when I said it was a relief to stop. But I meant it. It was a relief. You see I’d always enjoyed reading far more than writing. To be a writer, to be a good writer, you need courage. You need to be prepared to expose yourself. You must be brave, and I have always been a coward. Nancy was the brave one. So, that’s when I started teaching.

It did take courage though to clear out my wife’s things. I folded her clothes and put them in carrier bags. Her shoes and handbags I put into boxes that had once held bottles of wine. No inkling, when that wine came into the house, that the boxes it arrived in would leave containing my dead wife’s accessories. It took me a week to pack everything up, longer to remove it from the house.

I couldn’t bear to let everything go at once and so I staggered my trips to the charity shop. I got to know the two women at All Aboard quite well. I told them the clothes had belonged to my wife and after that, when I dropped by, they would stop what they were doing and make time for me. If I happened to turn up when they were having coffee, they’d make me a cup too. It became strangely comforting, that shop full of dead people’s clothes.

I worried that, once I finished the job of sorting through Nancy’s things, I would fall back into the lethargy I’d been in since I’d retired, but I didn’t. As sad as it was, I knew I had done something Nancy would have approved of and I made a decision: from then on I would do my utmost to behave in a way that, if Nancy were to walk into the room, she would feel love for me and not shame. She would be my editor, invisible, objective, with my best interests at heart.

One morning, not long after that clear-out period, I was on my way to the Underground station. I had woken with a real sense of purpose: got up, washed, shaved, dressed, breakfasted and was ready to leave the house by nine. I was in a good mood, anticipating a day spent in the British Library. I had been thinking about writing again. Not fiction; something more solid, factual. Nancy and I had sometimes holidayed on the East Anglian coast and one summer we had rented a Martello tower. I had always wanted to find out more about the place, but every book I’d found on the subject had been so dry, so lifeless. Nancy had tried too, for various birthdays of mine, but all she had come up with were dull volumes full of dates and statistics. Anyway, that’s what I settled on as my writing project: I would bring that marvellous place to life. Those walls had been soaked in the breath of others over hundreds of years and I was determined to find out who had spent time there from then until now. So that morning I had set off with quite the spring in my step. And then I saw a ghost.

I didn’t have a clear view of her. There were people between us. A woman pushing her child in a pram. Two youths ambling. Smoking. I knew it was her, though. I would know her anywhere. She was walking quickly, with purpose, and I tried to keep up but she was younger than me, her legs stronger, and my heart raced with the effort and I was forced to stop for a moment. The distance between us grew and by the time I was able to move again she had disappeared into the Underground. I followed, fumbling to get through the barrier, fearful that she would get on a train and I would miss her. The stairs were steep, too steep, and I feared I might fall in my rush to join her on the platform. I gripped the rail and cursed my feebleness. She was still there. I smiled as I walked up to her. I thought she had waited for me. And she turned and looked right at me. There was no smile returning mine. Her expression was anxious, perhaps even scared. Of course it wasn’t a ghost. It was a young woman, maybe thirty. She was wearing Nancy’s coat, the one I had given to the charity shop. She had the same colour hair as Nancy had had at that age. Or at least, that’s what I had seen. When I got up close I realized the colour of this young woman’s hair was nothing like Nancy’s. Brown yes, but fake, flat, dead-brown. It didn’t have the vibrant, living shades of Nancy’s hair. I could see that my smile had alarmed her so I turned away, hoping she would understand I hadn’t meant any harm, that it was a mistake. When the train came, I let it go and waited for the next one, not wanting her to think I was following her.

I didn’t fully recover until halfway through that morning. The quiet of the library, the beauty of the place and the comforting tasks of reading, making notes, making progress got me back to the place I had been when I started my day. By the time I got home in the early evening, I was quite myself again. I’d picked up one of those Marks and Spencer meals as a treat, an easy supper. I opened a bottle of wine, but drank only one glass. I don’t drink much these days: I prefer to have control over my thoughts. Too much alcohol sends them haring off in the wrong direction, like out-of-control toddlers.

I was keen to go through my notes before bed, so I went to my desk to make a start. Nancy’s papers were still littering the desktop. I flicked through circulars and old bills, knowing already that I’d find nothing of real importance. If there had been, wouldn’t it have made its presence felt by now? I tipped the lot into the waste-paper basket, then took my typewriter from the cupboard and set it down in the centre of the cleared desk, ready to start work the following morning.

When Nancy had been writing she had had her own desk, a small oak one which now sits in Jonathan’s flat. When she stopped, we agreed that she might as well share mine. She had the right-hand drawers, I the left. She kept her manuscripts in the bottom drawer and although there were others stacked on the bookcase, the three in the desk were the ones she had had most hope for. Even though I knew they were there, it gave me a shock to see them. ‘A View of the Sea’, ‘Out of Winter’ and ‘A Special Kind of Friend’, all unpublished. I picked up ‘A Special Kind of Friend’ and took it to bed with me.

It must have been nearly forty years since I had read those words. She had written the novel the summer before Jonathan was born. It was as if Nancy was in bed with me. I could hear her voice clearly: Nancy as a young woman, not yet a mother. There was energy in it, fearlessness, and it threw me back to a time when the future had excited us; when things that hadn’t happened yet thrilled rather than frightened. I was happy when I went to sleep that night, appreciating that, even though she was no longer with me, I had been lucky to have had Nancy in my life. We had opened ourselves up to each other. We had shared everything. I thought we knew all there was to know about each other.

5

Spring 2013

‘Wait – I’ll come out with you,’ Catherine calls from the top of the stairs.

Robert turns at the front door and looks up at her.

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, did I wake you?’

She knows how hard he had tried not to; he kept his shower short, tiptoed around while dressing. Catherine, however, had been awake the whole time. Lying there. Eyes half closed. Watching him and loving him for being so considerate. She had waited as long as she could. As soon as he left the room she had scrambled out of bed, dressed, then chased down after him. She couldn’t be alone yet. Later maybe, but not yet.

She sits on the bottom stair, cramming her feet into trainers.

‘I’ve got a stinker of a head. Best thing to do is get out there and clear it,’ she says, tying her laces with shaky fingers. She hears herself, sounding so normal, so plausible. Shaky fingers could be a hangover. She has taken the week off work to unpack and settle them in – to turn their new place into a home – but this morning she cannot face it. And it’s true, she does have a stinker of a head. It has nothing to do with last night’s celebrations though.