‘Sometimes I think my mother was right.’
I remember the roadside blurring, my field of vision narrowing until I could only see what was immediately in front of me. I looked at Philip—his self-righteous face—and I shouted something and Philip shouted back at me, and then he cried, ‘Look at the road, for God’s sake!’ and there was a strange rumbling and I braked instinctively and came to an abrupt halt. The car stopped with a jolt and then it was suddenly very, very quiet.
I hit something, I thought, glancing across at Philip, who was staring at me, his eyes wide with horror.
‘Was that a deer?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’
I swallowed heavily. I looked in the rear-view mirror, but couldn’t see anything behind us. I got out of the car and heard Philip do the same. I walked round the car. Then, in the red glow of the brakelights, I saw it.
A person. A man? A woman? I didn’t know. But I knew at once that whoever it was was dead.
I surface from the memory, gasping for air, stunned.
How could I have forgotten?
How could I have forgotten what happened?
What kind of a person am I?
How could I blank out such a thing?
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
I curl up on the kitchen floor like a wounded animal mustering its last strength to drag itself back to its lair.
I ran someone down.
I killed someone.
The rumbling.
The shock.
The blood on my hands.
I remember.
I have no idea how long I lie there.
I don’t seem able to get up. The memory weighs too heavy. It’s all come rushing back to me, not just the night itself, but what came afterwards—the guilt, the pain, the weeks after, when I went about feeling as if I was shrouded in cotton wool. Even now, that time is a strange blur—only one moment stands out sharp-edged.
Philip and I are sitting opposite one another at the kitchen table. Leo is asleep, Philip is drinking wine, I’m crying into my glass.
Philip says, ‘You do nothing but cry—stop crying all the time.’
I say nothing. We sit and drink in stubborn silence.
Then he says, ‘Do you remember the night before our wedding? You asked me what the worst thing was I’d ever done. Because you wanted to know what kind of a man you were going to marry. Do you remember?’
I nod.
‘I didn’t have an answer,’ says Philip. ‘Do you remember?’ He drains his glass. ‘Today I’d have an answer,’ he says.
Another tear drips off my chin into my white wine.
This woman who goes to school day after day to hold forth on English grammar and German literature to teenagers—this woman who jogs through the local streets, helps out in the refugee hostel and does the shopping for her elderly neighbour—this single mother who so touchingly attends to all her son’s needs and manages everything so admirably, although life has been so hard on her—this woman is a murderer.
Leo’s mother is a murderer.
I look about the kitchen, and it’s as if I were seeing everything for the first time, as if I could suddenly perceive the true essence of things. Everything here in the house has a soul, I realise all at once. This house sees and hears and feels everything—it soaks up love and tears, anger and forgiveness like a sponge. I frown. Was Leo’s lunch box always such an intense blue? Did the basil on the windowsill always smell so pungent? Was the light of the kitchen lamp always so bright? Weren’t the fridge and the table further apart? Not much, but enough to make a difference? I blink, but the strange sensation remains.
Something has shifted.
Again my eyes fall on the moth, now perched calmly on the white wall.
A bloodstain, I think. The moth is the shape of a bloodstain.
I start—I can hear footsteps.
Is that it? I wonder. Is that why the stranger is here? What does he know about that night?
How could he know? Did someone see Philip and me? Did we leave something at the crime scene that gave us away? Was Philip right? Was I wrong to call him paranoid and ridiculous—to say he was a coward?
Less than two seconds later, the stranger appears in front of me again. He looks down at me lying on the kitchen floor, my face streaked with tears, and he shakes his head as if contemplating something at once repugnant and fascinating.
‘Self-pity!’ he says sarcastically. ‘How touching!’
And he laughs.
I sit up—it’s as much as I can manage.
‘Do you know,’ he says, ‘I don’t have a crumb of pity for you. The person I really feel sorry for is your son.’
I wipe the tears from my face.
‘How old is Leo again?’ he asks. He pretends to think it over. ‘Eight, isn’t he? That’s right, eight. At that age you have some idea of what’s going on. What do you think—how long will it be before he works out what kind of a person his mother is?’ He stares at me, as if he were seriously expecting an answer. Then he shrugs and, with perfect sangfroid, turns to pour himself a glass of water.
He’s right, I think. Poor Leo. But he must never find out. I’m all he has.
I look up. The stranger has his back to me. His T-shirt has slipped slightly, and I see the sharply drawn line between the tanned skin of his neck and the paler skin below. Amazing, the way he can turn his back on me like that—entirely at his ease. He knows he has me round his finger. He’s known all along.
I leave the room and trudge up the stairs, my body moving on autopilot. There’s only one thought in my mind: Leo must never find out. I go into my bedroom and open the wardrobe door. I have to go up on tiptoe to reach the top shelf where the case is hidden. I push the T-shirts aside and grope around to the left and right, but I feel only cloth and the back wall of the wardrobe.
The gun is gone.
Fear grips me like a fever. I close my eyes for a moment. Then I take the piles of clothes down from the shelf one by one and almost laugh with relief. The case is still there—of course it is. I hid it too well, that’s all.
I open it, look at the gun and force myself to take it in my hand. I tuck it in the waistband of my jeans, then open the bedroom door, step out into the passage and set out in search of the stranger. I’m no longer frightened, no longer crying.
Out on the landing, I feel a bead of sweat run down my forehead, feel my clothes sticking to me, but there’s a chill deep in my bones. The screams of the last swifts of the evening come in at the upstairs windows, and I remember that in an earlier life that noise was the soundtrack of my summer. The gun is pressing against the base of my spine. It is cold, but feels alive. Time to go.
The kitchen. The intense blue of the lunch box on the counter, the brightness of the lamp, the narrow space between table and fridge, the smell of the basil. The stranger. His back.
‘I’m not going to play this game for much longer,’ I say loudly.
Slowly he turns to face me. He’s holding a glass of water in his hand. He raises it to his mouth and drinks in slow gulps, his eyes fixed on mine. Then he puts the glass down.
‘Get out of here!’ I say.
He sits down. ‘Where’s Leo, by the way?’ he asks.
I can only stare at him.
‘At Miriam’s, right?’ he says.
‘Leave my child out of this,’ I say, my voice cracking.
‘Don’t worry,’ the stranger says. ‘If anything happens to you, Leo has me now.’
I feel like pulling the gun and shooting him, just like that. But what would become of Leo then? What would become of my child if I lost my head now? I can’t let myself be so easily provoked.
‘At least tell me what you want from me!’ I cry, although I’m afraid of the answer.
The night. The road…No. He can’t possibly know. This is all about money, no matter what he says.
I cling to this belief like a drowning woman.
Th
e stranger folds his arms behind his head. I spot an inexpertly pricked bluish tattoo on the pale skin of his sinewy upper arm.
‘You know exactly what I want,’ says the stranger. ‘I want the truth.’
The dark road appears before me. The lifeless bundle.
Is it possible?
How can he know?
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say.
I’ll deny it to the end. He’s shown me how it goes.
‘We both know exactly what you did.’
‘Stop it!’ I cry. I make a last, desperate effort. ‘You want money, right? Why all this carry-on if I’m prepared to give it to you?’
The stranger stares at me.
‘It isn’t a problem,’ I say. ‘Money isn’t a problem. I’ve already told you that. You can have all you want.’
I hear his breathing.
I hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.
The stranger says nothing.
‘How much do you want?’
The stranger says nothing.
‘I don’t know what your plans are, or how you’re thinking of getting hold of my husband’s money. But none of this is necessary. You can have the money. Everything I can lay my hands on. Everything I have.’
This is a bluff. Of course I’d pay to get rid of this man and resume my everyday life, but I don’t know if I can. I never took an interest in Philip’s money—I have no idea how it’s invested, and I don’t know if I could get hold of really large sums just like that. And of course I think of Leo. How could I ever forget him? That money is his—it’s his future. If anything ever happens to me, he’ll need it.
Say yes, I think. Please say yes. Say you’ll take all my money and leave me in peace.
‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ the stranger says. ‘You still have no idea who I am.’
He sounds almost sorry for me, but I’m not going to be taken in by him again. The pistol is pressing into my back. It suddenly scares me, as if I had no control of it—as if it had control of me. It whispers to me how easy it would be to drive him away if I had it in my hand—so easy. I shake off the thought.
‘You’re not my husband, that much I do know,’ I say, as calmly as I can.
‘No,’ he says darkly, ‘I’m not your husband.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m your past,’ he says, getting up. He bows his head, muscles tensed, then looks up, looks me in the eye. ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ he asks.
Hate blazes in his eyes—or something else, something more primitive.
But I no longer feel fear. Something inside me shuts down, and I watch what comes next as if I’m watching a film.
The kitchen is lit up like a stage set. The kitchen paraphernalia serves as props, and the sound effects are prerecorded. The man stands there like an actor waiting for his cue.
‘What do you want?’ I ask, giving it to him.
‘The truth.’
No, I think.
‘Just tell me the truth.’
He can’t know.
‘What did you do?’
He can’t possibly know.
‘What did you do, Sarah?’
I say nothing.
‘It was you.’
How can he know?
‘You did it.’
How is this possible?
‘It was you.’
We were alone.
‘You know it was.’
No!
‘Tell me!’
I don’t want to.
‘Tell the truth!’
I can’t.
‘It was your fault!’
That isn’t true.
‘Tell me. Tell the truth for once in your life!’
‘I don’t know what you want from me!’ I cry.
A chasm opens. Everything goes white—not black, this time—and then it all comes crashing down around me: the call from the Foreign Ministry, my nightmares, the airport, the stranger by my bed, the driver of the sedan, the taste of vomit in my throat, Constanze calling me a murderer, my bloody hands, the rumbling, Leo’s voice—I’m scared of that man—the ammunition in my wardrobe, the stranger’s eyes.
I no longer see anything, no longer hear anything—all I feel is panic, blind panic. I don’t know where I am. I tear open my eyes, but there is nothing, only glaring white. I’m blind, but a terrible rumbling sound fills my ears, and I don’t only hear it—I feel it all through my body. I feel the car jolt when I brake, the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Past and present mix like toxins. I take a step backwards and then another—blunder into something—crash to the floor. Then I feel a hand at my shoulder and break away from it. I feel something hard against my back. I knock into something and a sharp pain stabs my elbow. I crawl on. I blink—I can see again. Vaguely, very vaguely, I make out the contours of the kitchen. My face is wet, and I realise I’m crying. I put my hand to my face, clumsily wipe away the tears—I can’t let myself go now.
The stranger is a hazy figure, slim and dark, staring down at me. Panic swallows me like a gelatinous mass. I’m dying—this must be what it feels like to die. The dark figure comes nearer and nearer. The funereal smell of lilies is in my nose. I pull the pistol from my waistband and heave myself up, the metal cold and heavy in my hand.
‘Stand back!’ I gasp.
But the dark figure keeps coming towards me.
‘You won’t get rid of me,’ it says. ‘Never. Not as long as I have breath in my body.’
It comes nearer.
And nearer.
I taste blood in my mouth. I cough. My heart is pounding, there’s a rushing in my ears, the world is red—bright red—and I’m dazzled, my entire body numb, fear whispering in my ear, and I raise the gun, the way Philip showed me, in both hands. I take aim and pull the trigger. Twice. I pull the trigger twice.
No sooner have I pulled the trigger the second time than I wish I could turn back the clock. I know at once that I’ve done something irreversible—that for the second time in my life I have done something that cannot be undone.
Angry, I take my eyes off the road for a moment.
Panicking for a split second, I raise the gun.
His arms flailing, the stranger falls back and lies motionless on the polished floor of my dazzlingly white kitchen.
The stranger
She pulled the trigger, I’m thinking, as my body hits the floor. My God, she actually pulled the trigger. I can’t believe it.
I knew she was dangerous, I think. But I underestimated her all the same.
She pulled the trigger, for Christ’s sake.
Sarah
It is quite still in the room. I stare at the figure lying at my feet and stumble back a few steps, as if to distance myself not only from the figure itself, but also from what I have done. I knock into the dining-room table, banging my thighs, and lay the gun carefully on the tabletop, as if in slow motion. For a moment I stare at it lying there like an ugly black animal, and it’s a while before I realise that something’s not right.
Shouldn’t there have been—
The hairs on my neck stand on end.
That means—
I swallow drily. My brain is working painfully slowly.
I pulled the trigger twice and the stranger fell over backwards.
But I didn’t feel any recoil.
And the shots didn’t make a noise.
And there are no bullet holes, no blood.
I stare at the stranger, lying twisted on the floor. He is very still. Then suddenly I see his chest rise and fall, and before my brain can catch up, I hear a roaring noise.
The stranger is laughing.
He opens his eyes, sits up, gets to his feet and looks at me, shaking with laughter. He laughs and laughs for what seems like an age while I look on aghast.
‘Of course I unloaded the gun,’ he says.
My mouth is hanging open.
‘But interesting,’ he adds. ‘Interesting that
you pulled the trigger like that.’ He pauses briefly, as if replaying the moment in his mind. ‘Not once, but twice.’
I don’t know what to say.
There is contempt in the stranger’s eyes, and his mirthless smile is a sharply pencilled dash.
‘Do you know what that’s called?’
I shake my head, bemused.
‘Killer instinct,’ he says, with a hint of respect. ‘That kind of thing can’t be taught.’
My face is numb.
He gives a derisive laugh when he sees my expression.
‘I don’t know what you think you know about me, but you’re wrong!’ he shrieks in a high-pitched voice, and it’s a moment before I realise he’s mimicking me. ‘I’m only a mother! A teacher! I wouldn’t hurt a fly!’ His look is black with disgust. At the same time he seems quite calm.
I’m stunned.
I was in a panic, it’s true. But I pulled the trigger. I pulled the trigger. Twice.
My legs give way again and I keel over backwards. I end up sitting on the bare boards, no strength left in me.
‘Killer instinct,’ the stranger repeats. ‘Here she is at last. The real Sarah Petersen. Who does what has to be done…’
I swallow.
‘…regardless of the consequences.’
He spits the words at me.
‘Your husband may be a coward,’ he says. ‘But you’re not.’ He looks down at me. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You’re different. You’re made of sterner stuff.’ His eyes are devoid of anything human.
‘You’re wrong,’ I whimper.
He shakes his head. A cynical smile appears on his face. ‘Really, Sarah? Are you going to keep this up forever?’
‘What do you want to hear from me?’ I scream—or at least I mean to scream, but what comes out of my mouth is more like a whimper, feeble and pathetic.
‘You haven’t been paying attention,’ he says. ‘I want the truth.’
‘What truth?’ I ask. ‘The truth about what?’
‘The truth about you and Philip,’ he says, slowly and deliberately, as if he were talking to a stubborn child.
‘The truth about that night,’ I say.
That night. Oh God.
He doesn’t reply.
‘Where’s my husband? What have you done to him?’ I ask. I try to heave myself up, but my limbs won’t obey. ‘Where is Philip?’
The Stranger Upstairs Page 19
