Safe as Houses (6 page)

‘You can hear us, can't you? I think you can hear us,' she says. ‘It feels like something has changed. Look, your eyelids are fluttering again! Are you trying to tell me something? Try again?'

Her eyelids flutter; she blinks, opens her eyes wide and blinks several times more. Above her, there is a disappointed sigh. ‘Well, perhaps it's asking too much. Let's look at your brain first. Good luck, sweetheart.'

She is rolled into a room where her body is lifted by several hands and pushed into something. The voices around her fall silent and a loud buzzing fills her head. Slowly she sinks away. When she becomes aware of her surroundings again, she is back in her own room.

There is a visitor.

‘Where has she been?' A stool is shifted next to her bed, and a male voice speaks with a nurse. It is a familiar voice, but she can't attach a face or a name to it.

‘We've been on a little trip,' the nurse says. ‘We did an MRI scan.'

‘But you'd already done one, hadn't you?'

‘Yes, but we have reason to believe she's in the process of waking up, so the doctors wanted to see if there was increased brain activity.'

‘And?'

‘We haven't had the results yet, sir.'

Brisk footsteps on lino – the nurse is walking away. The stool's legs scrape on the floor as it is moved closer to the bed.

Warm lips gently brush her forehead. ‘Hello, darling.'

It must be someone she knows really well. Perhaps her boyfriend or husband. Is she married? In any case, there are people worrying about her, which is a comforting thought.

The man is sitting on the right-hand side of her bed; suddenly she hears another voice on the left. The light, young voice of a child, a young boy, followed by another, that of a girl. They are talking to each other, and now and then to her, but she is too tired to concentrate on the meaning of their words. They put earplugs in her ears and she hears music. She feels them holding her hands, the boy her right one and the girl her left, and she hears the word ‘squeeze'. She understands what she is supposed to do, but doesn't have the strength to do it.

‘Mummy,' the girl's voice says tremulously. ‘Mummy, can you hear me?'

Mummy? So she's a mother and she has a daughter. And a son too. Oh God, she can't remember any of this. What is she going to do when
she wakes up? And what if she never wakes up and has to float around in this void for ever?

‘If you can hear me, squeeze my hand, OK? If I feel anything at all, it'll be enough.'

‘Yes!' she screams at her daughter. ‘I can hear you! I can hear you!'

The girl takes her hand and intertwines their fingers.

She squeezes as hard as she can, enough to give her daughter a bruise, surely. She waits for her reaction.

‘Senta?' The male voice sounds tense.

Her entire body is frozen in shock, completely rigid.

Senta.

At the sound of her name, she is suddenly allowed a glimpse into her memory. Something clicks inside her head, and her brain whirrs into motion. It produces a slow stream of information that she tries to piece together, joining the parts like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She is called Senta, she is forty-three, married to Frank, the mother of three children. This morning, if it is in fact the same day, she left home early to get to Oss; she is a journalist and was making her way home from there. One at a time, the details of that morning come back to her, and she feels a warm wave of relief. If her memory is coming back, her body will start to work again too.

She tries to see what else she can remember, because she's now sure that something must have happened on the way home. The first thing that occurs to her is the mist. That treacherous, fast-rising mist that suddenly floated up around the car and obscured her view of the road. Did she have an accident? She can't remember; there are no more images. The last thing she can remember is attempting to read the signs at a crossroads. As she thinks back, she gets a flash of herself cursing and swearing from pothole to pothole on a barely navigable road.

Think again – it'll come back, she tells herself. If you try hard enough.

But nothing else comes. The mist, the crossroads and the bumpy road – this is all her memory will give up.

She turns to her family then, the names of her children. What kind of a mother is she, if she can't remember her children's names?

The girl's voice has released a flood of emotion that she can translate only as motherly love. Even if she cannot remember her daughter, the sound of her voice is enough to trouble her heart. Her lovely, unconfident, rebellious, adolescent daughter.

Denise.

Out of nowhere and without any effort, her memory has given her back her children: Denise, Jelmer and Niels.

Meanwhile she finds herself overwhelmed by an immense loneliness, a howling need to return to the world in which she belongs.

Senta looks up desperately at the surface, suspended like a tough membrane above her head. A whole life is waiting for her, a rich life full of promise. She has to wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.

Pasta sauce. Herbs. Spaghetti. Garlic. Tomato and onions. All laid out on the worktop in front of Lisa, as though it's a normal Monday. The weather forecast had been good: it had been a lovely, warm, late-summer's day. September is warm this year, almost muggy. The trees have begun to change colour, and spiders weave delicate webs in front of the windows, but the sun shines on imperturbably, as though the time to take things down a notch hasn't yet arrived. When this afternoon's mist had closed in suddenly, it was a surprise. It has lifted now, but the sky is still grey.

Lisa tries not to look at the bandage she has just changed. She was shocked by the wound. It didn't look good, with its open flesh and dark edges. Though that doesn't necessarily mean it's serious. The bleeding has stopped, but the pain has not
lessened. Despite the paracetamol, the wound continues to throb.

The extractor fan hums, sucking away the pervasive smell of onions and garlic.

Spaghetti is Anouk's favourite food, and Lisa had decided earlier that they'd have it for dinner. It was a way of making sure that Anouk would eat at least a few spoonfuls. Now she wonders how much she'll be able to get down herself.

The smell of fresh herbs and the delicious juice from the tomatoes on the chopping board do their best to tempt her, but she knows she'll have to force herself to eat. It's important that she eats to keep up her strength. You never know when you might suddenly need it.

From time to time, she checks on Anouk. To her alarm, Kreuger is sitting next to her on the sofa, talking quietly. Anouk is nodding and shaking her head, but not saying a word. Lisa longs to listen in on what Kreuger is telling her; but, whatever it is, Anouk is fending him off, and she pulls up her knees to make a barrier between them.

Has Anouk realised that she should keep on this man's good side, not repel him? Anouk has seen too much to give this uninvited guest the benefit of the doubt. Luckily, she is intuitive, like most children, and seems to know how to behave. She has limited herself to nodding and headshaking so
as not to say the wrong thing, and she's even stopped herself from making the mistake of whining or crying. Instead, she is keeping a keen eye on Lisa and copying her behaviour: a calm, distant, wait-and-see attitude.

With as much composure as she can muster, Lisa goes into the sitting room and sets the dining table. Three placemats, three plates, just like it used to be.

Back in the kitchen, she gathers up the cutlery. Just a fork and spoon – the absence of knives isn't a problem with spaghetti. As she puts the cutlery next to the plates and a trivet for the pan on the table, she strains to overhear something of the conversation Kreuger is having with her daughter.

‘You probably think I'm a really nasty man, don't you?' she hears him ask.

Silence.

‘Answer me now,' Kreuger insists.

Anouk's eyes find her mother's.

Answer him, Lisa wills her.

Anouk takes a deep breath. ‘Yes. You hurt Mummy. And Mummy didn't do anything wrong.'

Her voice sounds as accusing as a five-year-old's can be.

Kreuger slowly holds out his hand to her, and Anouk recoils just as slowly. Every muscle in Lisa's
body tenses, like a predatory animal preparing to spring to protect her young.

Kreuger touches Anouk's cheek gently, as though she might crumble at the slightest touch. He lightly strokes her skin with his thumb.

Anouk's face darkens, as though she doesn't know whether to cry or to bite Kreuger's hand.

‘Mummy didn't do what I said,' Kreuger says in a gentle voice. ‘And you didn't either, but you can't help that. The next time you don't listen to me, though, I'll be even less nice. Do you understand?' His hand moves to her chin and lifts it up. ‘Do you understand me, Anouk?'

‘Yes, she understands. We both do,' Lisa butts in quickly.

Kreuger swings around. ‘Shut your mouth!' he screams at her. ‘I was talking to your daughter, not you!'

Lisa takes a terrified step backwards. ‘All right, all right. I'm sorry.'

After a few seconds Kreuger calms down again. ‘If you both do exactly as I say, nothing will happen to you. Then I'll be off and you can act like nothing ever happened.'

You pathetic bastard, Lisa thinks. You hold us hostage, you frighten my daughter; she'll have nightmares for years now. And if she doesn't, I will.

With a superhuman effort, she manages to smile and nod. ‘Fine, agreed. Well, I'll finish off the dinner, then. It's almost ready.'

‘This is nice,' Kreuger says.

They're sitting at the table, Kreuger facing them. He is eating with gusto but in a refined manner, not like the savage who forced his way into her kitchen. He must have been a civilised person once, a father and husband, an employee, someone's neighbour in a row of terraced houses in a respectable street. A man who taught his children table manners and complimented his wife on her culinary skills. An attentive and caring man.

They eat without any conversation. The television, which Kreuger wants to keep on all the time, breaks the silence. This, and the sound of their forks and spoons as they twist their spaghetti. Anouk looks a little better: the fever has gone down, and she is actually eating something.

It is still light outside, Lisa notices, but not for long. The darkness falls more quickly each day. It doesn't seem so long ago that they could eat outside and sit on the terrace enjoying the sun for a while afterwards. Yet it still feels warm and summery during the day: yesterday she'd put on a vest and shorts and done some work in the garden.

She keeps looking over Kreuger's shoulder at the
borders in the garden, the blooms of hydrangeas, pink phlox, hollyhocks and salvias fading with the light. Plants that she put in herself when she moved here and that she cherishes; their beauty fills her with happiness each year. She loves September, especially when there's an Indian summer. But now she wonders whether this autumn might be both her loveliest and her last.

She doesn't dare count on Kreuger's promise that nothing will happen to them if they play along. How much can you trust a criminal sentenced to psychiatric incarceration? He is calm now and doesn't look that dangerous; she has to keep it that way. It's still possible that the police might come, but deep inside doubt nags away at her. They should have been here ages ago. How much time does it take to write up a report and investigate the given address? Even if the police didn't take the woman seriously and weren't in any hurry, at least one policeman should have knocked on her door by now.

She cannot imagine that the police would be so lax as to do nothing. The only possible conclusion she can reach is that the woman didn't report it. Maybe she didn't even see Kreuger standing there; and, if that's the case, she would have misread the situation.

Kreuger serves up seconds. At least he's enjoying
dinner. Her dinner – her plate, her fork and spoon, her food. Sitting in Mark's place. As if he's planning on staying for good.

Lisa sips from her glass of water, but she has difficulty in swallowing. The despair flooding through her is suddenly so immense she has to do her best not to burst into tears.

Why has she been fooling herself? The woman hasn't gone to the police, and no one is coming. She's completely on her own.

Of course she has thought about the coming night. Several times the question of who is going to sleep where, and how, has shot through her mind. Lisa doesn't think there's much chance of Kreuger letting them sleep in their own beds, but she has managed to repress the thought for the entire afternoon.

But now that dusk is creeping around the house, nestling into the far corners of the garden, and the sky has taken on a dark blue tint, Lisa knows it is time for the second act.

They have eaten; she has tidied everything away and put the plates in the dishwasher. Anouk is playing a game on the computer at the workstation. Kreuger is sitting on the edge of the sofa, watching TV, tensely leaning forward. He zaps until he gets to the seven-thirty news on RTL4.

The news starts with Kreuger himself. Lisa catches fragments of the coverage from the kitchen and stands as close as she dares to the open door.

‘There is still no sign of the escaped psychiatric criminal Mick Kreuger . . .'

‘If he doesn't take his medicine, he may become dangerous . . .'

‘It is believed a man was killed by Kreuger in the course of his escape . . .'

‘Kreuger was sent to a psychiatric prison two years ago for the murder of . . .'

Lisa rushes back to the worktop and tries to marshal her thoughts. What will happen if Kreuger has to go without his medication for any length of time? All his murderous instincts, usually repressed by the drugs, will surface.