After this curt answer there seemed to be no need to worry any more about the coming night and a possible customary goodnight kiss Nadia might have forgotten to mention. Michael went out of the kitchen, visibly disgruntled. From the hall he shouted, “I might be late, don’t bother to wait up for me.” Then the front door slammed.
The monitor over the fridge lighted up again. She saw Michael dashing off and gave the mobile among the pots and pans a speculative look. Ring up the old folks’ home? Use all her powers of persuasion to convince her mother there was no need for tears? “Whatever the police have said, or might say in the future, Mama, I’m fine. I’ll explain everything later.” She hadn’t the energy to do it.
She took the dirty plate off the table. It was the work of a moment to scrape the pathetic remains of the meal into the waste bin and another to put the plate in the dishwasher. Then she was confronted with another problem. The pans, including the frying pan and the colander, fitted in the machine and were quickly loaded; the detergent was in the cupboard under the sink. But she couldn’t find the switch. Her mother-in-law had had a dishwasher and that had had several knobs on the door. All this one had was a smooth surface.
Since she didn’t know what to do with the rest of the day anyway, if she wasn’t to go out of her mind, she emptied the dishwasher and washed everything by hand. Then she polished the cooker, the worktop, the wall tiles and the sink until they gleamed, fetched a bucket and the latest thing in mops from the utility room and did the floor.
Shortly after five a muffled ring roused her from her gloomy thoughts. It came from the kitchen while she was in the basement putting the cleaning stuff back in the cupboard. The mobile had rung seven times before she reached it, but at the eighth she’d picked it up and gasped a breathless “At last!”
In her relief she missed the first word, presumably the caller’s name. Again it was the man with the harsh-sounding voice. The second word had been “here”. Ignoring her reaction and his first call, he said, “Frau Barthel was good enough to give me your new number. Unfortunately I can’t make the appointment on Monday.”
“Pity,” she said.
“How does Wednesday look?” the man asked.
“Fine,” she replied.
“The let’s shift our meeting to Wednesday. Is one o’clock OK?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to it,” the man said and put down the receiver.
She spent some minutes trying to work out how she could discover who’d been ringing. The name Helga came to mind. Nadia’s advice for emergencies suggested that Helga worked in the same office and could give information about Nadia’s appointments.
In her mind’s eye she saw the row of numbers in small writing at the bottom of the torn sheet of paper from Alfo Investment that she’d fished out of her rubbish bin. She risked it. After she’d dialled the first number she heard the fax tone and after the second a polite, businesslike female voice: “Alfo Investment. Please leave your name and number and we’ll call you back.” Closed, she thought resignedly.
The next call came half an hour later. By that time she was watching the television, which she had managed to switch on after a number of experiments with a variety of remote controls. The mobile was on the couch beside her. As soon as it rang she had it at her ear. Rather hesitantly she said, “Trenkler.”
“Are you not alone?” Nadia asked.
A dam broke inside her and relief came spilling out of the gap, but anger as well. “Oh, I’m alone all right,” she hissed, “and I’ve been waiting for hours. I kept ringing but there was no answer. I thought something must have happened to you.”
“’I’m not surprised,” said Nadia and poured forth her own problems. “The battery gave up the ghost. You can’t imagine the problems I’ve had. The car conked out halfway there and I couldn’t even call the recovery service. It wasn’t how I imagined my weekend. Anything on at your end?”
“Only Channel Four.”
Nadia laughed at the joke, such as it was, complimented her on her new-found quick wit and explained the various remotes: one for the video, one for the stereo, another for the satellite dish and a fourth for the television.
“I worked out what the fourth one’s for all on my own.”
“You don’t sound very happy,” Nadia said.
“You’ve a nerve! I almost went mad here.”
“Oh, come on now,” said Nadia.
“It’s all right for you to talk. Everything’s been happening here.”
She told her about the appointment with a man whose name she didn’t know being shifted from Monday to Wednesday. Nadia said that was nothing to get excited about. She was touched by Joachim Kogler’s bouquet but also a little annoyed because Susanne wasn’t supposed to answer the door when it rang.
“It didn’t ring,” she said. “It barked and growled. It almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Oh God,” Nadia sighed. “I’d forgotten the bell. Anything else?”
She was surprised at Michael coming back so early. That really wasn’t usual, she said. She laughed at Susanne’s misunderstanding about Olaf’s imminent demise and she found her problem with the dishwasher amusing too. “If you pull the door down there’s a row of sensor buttons along the top. I’m sorry I didn’t think of such minor details, I didn’t imagine you’d be slaving away in my kitchen. You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself. Did you have to wrestle with the vacuum cleaner as well?”
Nadia’s mockery annoyed her immensely. She couldn’t resist getting her own back a little. “No, but with Michael I did. It’s possible he may have noticed something. He wanted to work here with Kemmerling.”
“He must have been out of his tiny mind,” was Nadia’s comment. “I’ve told him a thousand times, but he keeps on trying. That nerd’s quite capable of compressing the hard disk into a stock cube. I hope you gave him a very clear no.”
“Not at first,” she replied, explaining that she’d assumed the big computer was Michael’s. “And the pair of them working here wouldn’t have bothered me.”
She could hear Nadia’s sharp intake of breath, but she rattled on, enjoying the effect she was having. She told her how the penny had only dropped when Michael had promised not to let Kemmerling touch her files. Then, she went on, she’d said she had to work herself and had left her laptop in the office.
This produced another sharp intake of breath from the mobile and Nadia’s outraged voice. “Are you crazy?”
She had no problem giving her voice a slightly guilty undertone and serving up such a convincing mixture of truth and invention that Nadia wasn’t the least bit suspicious: that Michael had asked a few stupid questions about the laptop, that she hadn’t answered but had gone upstairs and tried to start the big computer; that he’d followed her and seen she was getting nowhere.
At the other end of the line Nadia let out a long breath. “I told you at the airport that I always leave the laptop in the car. I should have thought it was obvious. A simple no would have been sufficient.”
She grinned but said nothing. It was a small victory, but a victory all the same. For a few seconds the mobile was quiet. Nadia seemed to be considering. Then she asked, “Where is he now?”
“At Kemmerling’s.” That was probably the truth, but then she proceeded to mix it with invention. “He wants to fetch the streamer from yesterday. And then have a talk about who’s been bringing in the money for the last two years.” It was a bit risky, but the prospect of Nadia rumbling her after a couple of exchanges with Michael was nothing compared with what she’d been through that afternoon.
“Shit,” said Nadia. “On no account must you let him use the computer. And if he asks about the laptop again, tell him Philip lent it to you.”
Philip! The name set off a faint echo in her mind. She hadn’t heard it from Nadia, of that she was sure. But she had heard it, only recently, and she didn’t talk to that many people. “Is Philip this acquaintance you work for?”<
br />
“Who else? Now go next door and start the computer up. I’ll explain what to do.”
She followed Nadia’s instructions. The password was Arosa. Nadia told her how to start a particular programme. Something appeared on the monitor that reminded her of the timetables from her schooldays, one empty box beside another. “You can type in figures for as long as you need to,” Nadia said. “But don’t touch the other programs, do you hear.” Oh yes, she heard. She looked at the empty boxes feeling she was bring treated like a child who’s been sent out in the garden to play - “But don’t pull up any flowers.”
Nadia then explained how to shut down the computer and said, “Make a note of the number of the hotel. If there’s any problem you can leave a message at reception if I’m not in the room. I’ll call back as soon as I can.” She read out some numbers. The first were definitely the dialling code for a foreign country.
“Where are you, anyway?” Susanne asked.
“In Luxembourg. If Michael’s still determined to use the computer tomorrow, you’ll have to stay in the house.”
“I can’t go home. You’ve got my keys.”
“Oh,” said Nadia, “I didn’t notice. OK then, see you tomorrow.”
She put the mobile down. Following Nadia’s instructions, she shut down the computer, then started it up again. Enter password: Arosa. Combinations of letters and numbers scurried in rapid succession across the screen. Watching this with a sense of satisfaction, she folded up the scrap of paper with the hotel number and stuck it under the mobile. Later she took it down into the hall and put it in her purse. Much later. After she’d written her first letter.
The knowledge that it was Nadia’s computer she was sitting at reduced her inhibitions enormously and tempted her to experiment. And Nadia’s explanations of how to start the program with the empty boxes worked just as well with word processing. She started to type:Dear Frau Lasko,
On 25 August of this year you applied for a position as secretary in our office. Unfortunately an error was made when we returned your documents. We beg you to forgive us this slip, for which we apologize most profusely, and would ask you to come and see us in the course of the next few days. We will be interested to hear your salary expectations and look forward to working with you.
Yours sincerely,
Behringer and Partners
In her mind’s eye she saw herself standing at the acrylic-glass desk holding out this invitation to a bemused Frau Luici. But she didn’t like the letterhead. On the letter from Behringer’s it had been more impressive. And, lo and behold, the word-processing package offered an infinite variety of possibilities. With the help of the handbook, she managed not only to get the characters in exactly the same form and size that Behringer’s used, she also managed to place the firm’s logo in the top left-hand corner.
With that the letter was finished and she couldn’t bring herself to delete it. She gave the printer a speculative glance and tentatively pressed the key. It responded immediately. It didn’t need a password, nor was it locked, and it took no more than a second to spit out her masterpiece. It looked so genuine, it could have been from Behringer and Partners.
By now it was past ten. Her neck and back felt tense and her stomach was trying to tell her that, after the gourmandizing of the past few weeks, it was feeling rather neglected. She got a ready-made meal out of the freezer, heated it through in the microwave and quickly ate it at the kitchen table. Then she was ready for her bath. This time the fragrance she chose also produced mountains of foam.
The towel and underwear were still on the bed. She took the towel, washed off her make-up and eyed the electric toothbrush sceptically. She hadn’t thought of bringing her own toothbrush. With all the fuss about computers she’d forgotten to brush her teeth after breakfast and after the shared escalope too, because of her worry about where Nadia was. Unforgivable. After some hesitation she settled on the blue brush head and washed it out thoroughly in hot water. As she used it, she thought of the fork she’d shared with Nadia’s husband.
Ten minutes later she was lying in the warm water, dreaming away, when suddenly something disturbed her. At once she was wide awake. She thought there’d been a sound and opened her eyes. The tiny monitor beside the door was blank. She strained to listen. There was a noise downstairs: a rattling, but very quiet. Then a metallic click went right round the house, accompanied by the whirring noise of the shutters going down over the windows.
After two, at most three seconds of absolute terror, she calmed down. The alarm had been switched on, activating the central locking and turning the house into an impregnable fortress. So much was obvious. But there must be several combinations. The one she knew wouldn’t have closed the shutters. Steps could be heard coming up the stairs. It could only be Michael.
Her initial reflex was to jump out of the bath, give herself a quick dry, slip under the covers and pretend to be asleep. It was too late for that. He appeared in the doorway, a piece of toast and ham with a bite out of it in one hand, a pickled gherkin in the other. A perfectly ordinary man with nice eyes who was hungry. She gave him a forced smile and whispered, “Hi.”
He showed no reaction, just leaned against the doorframe, took a bite of toast and looked at her appraisingly. It’s Nadia he’s seeing, she told herself, to allay the embarrassment she felt rising inside her. Hesitantly she asked, “How did you get on with Kemmerling?”
He shook his head. “A wasted journey. He’d actually managed to fit everything in. I didn’t believe he could do it. But the sick machine’s going to take three weeks to sort out.”
The feeling of embarrassment refused to go away. The mountains of foam had long since disappeared. She squinted down along the surface of the water, trying to assess how much of her he could see from where he was.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but there was something urgent I had to get done. Anyway, you can’t expect me to let Kemmerling get his sticky fingers on my machine. That nerd’s quite capable of compressing my hard disk into a stock cube.”
He gave a brief grin, stuffed what was left of the toast in his mouth and followed it with the gherkin. Then he pushed off the door post and came closer. “You know, if you’d said something, I wouldn’t have asked.”
Remembering Nadia’s words, she said firmly, “Excuse me, but I’ve told you that a thousand times.”
“Seven times in the last five months. I’ve kept count.”
She assumed they were still talking about Kemmerling. “Good. Then you should know I mean it seriously.”
“Oh, I know that,” he declared. “I just hope that this time you can stick to it for more than just one day.”
She had no time to start racking her brains as to what he might mean. He went over to the lavatory, lifted up the lid and seat with one hand, opened his trousers with the other and inserted his hand. It took a great deal of self-control, but she managed to keep looking at his face and not to stare, as if hypnotized, at what was in his hand. His complete lack of inhibition spoke volumes about the intimacy they enjoyed in their marriage and was clear proof that so far he hadn’t had the slightest suspicion that it wasn’t his wife he was talking to.
He looked across at the bathtub, running his eye over the water and, therefore, over her body. She was completely exposed to his gaze. It’s Nadia he’s seeing, she kept repeating to herself, like a mantra. Then she remembered she hadn’t taken the tampons out of the cupboard.
He flushed the lavatory, went to one of the basins and washed his hands. Even as he did this, his eyes were still wandering up and down her body in one of the mirrors and the strange smile stayed on his face. She felt as if she were being frisked. Next he cleaned his teeth, taking, as expected, the blue brush. He didn’t seem to notice that it had been used only a short time previously.
Then he came over to her, sat down on the top step leading up to the bath, dipped one hand in the water and trailed it about a bit. “Shall I keep you company for a while?”
&nb
sp; “No,” she said quickly. “I was just going to get out. I still have a headache.”
That didn’t put him off at all. With a tender gesture he pushed a damp strand of hair back from her forehead. “That’s what I was hoping. Get out.”
She had no intention of getting out of the bath as long as he was there. “I’ll stay in here for a few more minutes. It does my back good.”
With an understanding grin, he said, “What, a sore back as well. Shall I give you a massage?”
A tempting offer. While her mother-in-law had still been alive she’d sometimes enjoyed a massage prescribed by the doctor. Despite that, she shook her head and said, “Thanks, but no. It’s not necessary.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and pressed his fingers into the tense muscles at the back of her neck. “Really? I’ll make a special effort and I can guarantee you won’t think of a cigarette for the next half hour.”
It wasn’t only the tampons she’d forgotten. During his short return home in the afternoon he didn’t seem to have noticed her abstinence. Now he must have noticed the empty ashtrays and drawn his own conclusions.
Heavy smokers became a bundle of nerves when they were forced to give up. They became irascible, unjust and unpredictable. She’d been through all that with her father, when he’d had to curb his addiction on doctor’s orders. Gentleness and patience had flown out of the window, his response to the most harmless request had been more than just a sharp “No”. Michael must have been through that as well and seemed willing to view her odd behaviour and her refusal in that light and to forgive her.
The pressure of his fingers on the back of her neck was by no means unpleasant. If it hadn’t been for her inhibitions, for the frustrating knowledge that she wasn’t the person he thought he was seeing, she could have enjoyed it.
“You really are tensed up,” he declared. “Come on, out you get before you get all wrinkled. I’ll fetch you a towel.” Before she could say no he had gone and came back immediately with a large bath towel. “On the couch with you.”
The Lie Page 13
