Disclaimer by Renée Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    ‘What are you doing?’ She doesn’t move. Robert thunders towards her and stares down into the blackened mess. They both study it, this thing which, despite all her efforts, is still recognizable as a book. He is standing next to her, searching her face for an explanation. Catherine sidles away from him, pulling her dressing gown tighter.
    ‘Catherine?’
    She shakes her head. Caught. She has been caught. Perhaps she wanted to be. Perhaps it is for the best. Between finger and thumb Robert lifts the sodden pulp and holds it up: Perfect , the only distinguishable word left on the jacket.
    ‘It’s about me.’