Safe as Houses (12 page)

He places a chair under the bedroom doorhandle. To prevent Anouk unexpectedly coming in, he explains. He knows Lisa wouldn't like that. He always felt uncomfortable himself about his children catching him in the act.

Lisa doesn't dare look at the chair for long. Maybe she can toss it aside, pull open the door and run away.

And then? Kreuger is determined to have sex with her, and there is no escape. If she had any doubt about this, the erection, visible through the sturdy fabric of his jeans, dispels it.

What would happen if she resisted? He'd probably take it out on her struggling body, angered by her protests and tears. She can't afford to make this man angry.

Kreuger observes her from a few feet away. ‘Take that top off, will you?'

Lisa doesn't move.

‘Didn't you hear me? I said take that top off.' Kreuger sits down on the stool in front of her dressing table and waits.

The thought that he wants a striptease suddenly hits Lisa. Oh my God, this can't be happening . . .

She slowly pulls the white top over her head. She is wearing a T-shirt underneath it, which she also takes off slowly after a nod from Kreuger. Then she stands before him in her jeans and bra – a white lace bra that he appears to find very exciting. His mouth gapes slightly and a twinkle appears in his eyes.

‘I think there are lovely tits under there,' he says softly.

She has to force herself not to cover herself up with her T-shirt. She drops it to resist the temptation.

Kreuger leans back. He doesn't seem about to approach her. Let's keep it like this: stay where you are.

‘You must find yourself pretty,' he says. ‘Especially when you walk round in a tight top and all the men stare at your tits. I'm sure you like that, don't you?'

‘Yes,' Lisa confirms.

He doesn't have a reply to that.

‘All women like to be looked at. It's a compliment,' she says in a defensive tone.

Kreuger's face suggests that her comment is a revelation to him. ‘Yes, I guess so. They like that. Even if they get whistled at or are the butt of sexist jokes. They just walk on pretending to be annoyed, but deep in their hearts they like it. If you don't whistle at them, they're even offended. All women have double standards. There's no telling with them.'

Why are they having this conversation? Isn't he going to rape her? Did he just want to frighten her? No, his eyes are still fixed on her breasts.

Kreuger moves slowly towards her.

Lisa's mind races. ‘Anouk was born in this room,' she says, nodding at the bed. ‘It was a terrible birth. That's why we never had a second: I never wanted to go through that torture again.'

Lisa pretends not to notice Kreuger's frown. She lowers her voice as though sharing a deep secret. ‘The midwife misjudged it. I should have gone to hospital, but we ran out of time. Luckily I didn't see the knife they cut me open with. But Mark did; he was standing next to me. He almost fainted. Can you imagine? They just chop your vagina open. And then they shoved in a vacuum pump and pulled
out Anouk. We used to have a carpet, but we had to get rid of it. It was covered in blood.'

She looks at the floor, as though she can see through the laminate to the bloodstains below, and experiences the satisfaction of Kreuger's gaze also being pulled down.

‘I could hardly walk for weeks,' Lisa tells him. ‘Peeing was incredibly painful, and of course sex was out of the question. I had stitches everywhere. Mark didn't feel like having sex for ages either. He said: “Once you've seen a vagina in that state, lust abandons you.”'

Kreuger's face contorts in disgust.

‘How were your children's births?' Lisa inquires.

‘Really easy. Angelique just shat them out and a week later we were having sex again.'

His body is closer now; she smells his sweat.

‘Really?' Lisa takes a step back and leans against the door of the wardrobe. ‘Life's not fair. Why should one woman suffer so much and another woman's children just pop out? But anyway, I'm just happy I live now. A lot of women used to die during labour.'

‘Can't you shut up for two seconds?' He comes and stands right next to her, puts his hands on her breasts and squeezes.

Lisa inhales sharply. He seems to take this as a sign of pleasure, because he squeezes harder. Then
he moves one hand to her buttocks and pulls her against him. She feels his cock growing and a wave of nausea washes over her.

‘We're going to have a party together,' he whispers in her ear. ‘You and me – how do you like that? I don't think you've been properly fucked for a good long time.'

His mouth descends to her right breast.

Lisa searches for a point somewhere above Kreuger's head and escapes outside – to the tops of the tall trees in the distance, their yellowing crowns rocking gently in the wind.

This isn't really happening, this isn't really happening, she repeats to herself like a mantra.

Kreuger detaches himself from her breast with a slurping sound and nods at the bed. ‘Lie down,' he says.

Before the accident, Senta would often work at night; that way she could avoid being disturbed by ringing phones, colleagues coming in with questions, conversations going on around her. It was impossible to write her articles at work. She saved her creative energy for late in the evening, when the children were in bed and Frank slouched on the sofa watching a film. The night sheltered them then, formed a blanket around them.

But now there's nothing safe about the darkness that creeps towards her from the hall. She doesn't like the silence it brings either. She needs distraction, noises, voices – everything that prevents her consciousness from weakening and those unfathomable depths from opening up beneath her.

She knows that this is nonsense. Dr Reynders
has assured her that the test results were good. But fear prevents her from sleeping.

Senta turns her head to a stream of light that falls into her room from the corridor outside. She is tired, exhausted. After Frank and the children left, the tests continued. The entire evening. And now, now that she is finally alone with her thoughts, they flow over her like a waterfall.

‘What can you remember from the day of your accident?' Dr Reynders had asked her.

She can remember everything, apart from the accident itself. The traffic jam on the way there, the idiot driver who'd hugged her bumper the whole time, her irritation. She'd deliberately slowed down, and when the man had tried to overtake her she'd accelerated, so that he became stuck in the queue in the slow lane. She'd seen in her rear-view mirror that the driver couldn't get back into the busy fast lane, and she remembered the contented feeling with which she'd driven on.

She had told Alexander and he'd laughed heartily. ‘I always do that if someone's chasing me. Bait them a bit. I didn't know women did it too.'

Outraged by his sexist comment, she'd thrown the least dangerous object to hand, a banana, at his head. He had caught it laughing and pointed it at her like a pistol. ‘Surrender or the punishment will be terrible!'

She had run away and he had chased her around the whole house, until their wrestling in the bedroom had turned into the best sex in ages.

She remembered all of it. Her feelings of shame, and the guilt when she drove off in her car, back to Frank and the children. She knew that her relationship with Alexander had to come out at some point, and each time she resolved to stop in order to prevent the major drama waiting for her. But each time she also knew she'd arrange to see him again.

In the beginning, she'd managed to keep her feelings for Alexander in check. After their first meeting, when they'd only kissed, she'd avoided further contact, afraid to start something over which she'd lose control. But, while she'd always given her life an eight out of ten, without Alexander it suddenly lost some of its shine, and she had trouble making a six of it.

Frank had noticed. Of course, he'd noticed; he knew her so well. After more than twenty years of marriage you no longer go weak at the knees with lust for your other half, but having sex once every three or four months was too infrequently. She didn't miss it, but Frank got grouchy.

Their relationship reached an all-time low one night when they were about to go to a party. She'd been wearing a new skirt with a low-cut top and
a matching necklace, and had spent a lot of time styling her dark brown hair, which she'd put in rollers to add extra volume. Frank didn't like thick make-up and nor did she, but it had taken her at least a quarter of an hour to give herself a natural look. She'd come downstairs feeling really pleased with the results.

‘Are you ready at last?' Frank said, picking up the festively wrapped bottle of wine from the table.

When he failed to compliment her, Senta walked past him into the sitting room and combed her fingers through her thick dark hair. ‘Wow, Senta, you look nice,' she said.

Something in her voice made Frank look up and she glared at him accusingly. ‘Do you realise you never pay me any compliments? You never say that I look nice.'

‘You always look nice.'

‘But it's sometimes nice to be told!'

Frank looked back at her with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. ‘Wow, sweetheart, don't you look nice.'

She shrugged resentfully, went into the hall and put on her coat.

‘What? Now I give you a compliment and it's all wrong!'

‘You should work on your spontaneity,' Senta snapped.

‘If I don't pay you a compliment, you complain that I never pay you a compliment; and then when I do pay you a compliment, you complain that I can't be spontaneous any more. What do you want?'

‘Boy oh boy,' Senta replied irritatedly. ‘As far as you're concerned I could go around in dungarees and a bowl-cut.'

‘You'd be just as pretty,' he said sweetly.

He meant well. That was the problem – he meant everything well, but he couldn't sense what was missing in their relationship. And what was missing was the spark that prevented this kind of argument from happening in the first place.

It's strange to have lost a part of your memory. Even though it was a small part, it was still the most crucial moment of her life. She could have died. She'd thought she was going to drown, and experienced panic and mortal terror. Or had she lost consciousness immediately and been oblivious to the car filling with water and sinking? Is that the reason why she can't remember the accident?

The idea of a sinking car makes Senta shudder. Niels was right: she should be thankful she can't remember anything.

Did Alexander know she was in hospital? There's no telephone in her room, and her mobile is
irretrievably lost. Senta forces herself to think. Of course, there's an advantage to this: no one can one can pick up her voicemail or read her text messages. She is surprised when she realises that she still knows Alexander's number off by heart.

Tomorrow she'll ask Frank to buy her a new mobile phone. As sleep slowly engulfs her, the bitter irony of this plan hits home.

Lisa can't get to the bed: her legs are too weak to control. His saliva burns on her breast, and her knees have almost given way.

‘Don't be nervous. You'll enjoy it.'

He tugs her away from the cupboard and pushes her towards the bed. At the same time he fumbles with the zipper of his jeans.

‘Undress,' he says, repeating his command.

If she wants to survive, there's only one choice, but dear God!

Weary with misery, Lisa sinks on to the bed and lies on her back.

‘Open your trousers,' he says, as he lets his own drop.

She doesn't get much further than opening her zip. She can't bring herself to pull down her trousers.

Kreuger kicks off his shoes with a couple of rapid movements and steps out of his jeans. His legs are skinny and covered in black hairs, and his underpants need a wash.

Lisa quickly looks at something else: the water-colour of a tropical beach hanging on her wall. The mattress creaks; he's beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him looking down at her, supported on one elbow. He traces the curve from her breast to her navel with a finger.

‘Take off your trousers,' he says softly.

Her eyes become damp, but she stops herself from crying. She can't turn into a sobbing wreck. Crying women bring out the worst in men, reminding them of their vulnerability and reinforcing their conviction that they can do what they want with them.

With great difficulty, she wriggles out of her skinny jeans. Kreuger pulls off her shoes and throws them to the ground. The jeans follow.

‘So,' he says as his eyes travel over her body. ‘It would be nice if you didn't look so frightened. Am I that disgusting?'

The threat in his voice quickly causes Lisa to shake her head.

‘Is it such a punishment to have sex with me?' He becomes even more threatening, and again she shakes her head.

‘My hand,' she says weakly. ‘I hurt my hand.'

With an expression that suggests he'd forgotten the violent start to things, he looks at the bandage: a new red stain is showing through. His face relaxes, becoming almost friendly.

‘All right, I was afraid you were taking the mickey. I mean, I feel something between us. Something very special. Don't you?'

She nods wordlessly, and he bends towards her, kissing her on the mouth. ‘So, try and be sweet to me.'

His hand slides into her panties and his fingers begin to search.

Lisa opens her lips. Her body shakes heavily, like the onset of an epileptic fit.

‘That's nice, isn't it?' Kreuger says with a smile as he pushes his fingers in. ‘Now then, darling, now you can do something for me.'

Full of disgust, Lisa rubs his back with the palm of her hand, as though her fingertips were too sensitive to bear contact with his skin.