The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [114]
Dry-mouthed, Morten had nodded. Even though the doctors at the National later pronounced her skull uncracked, Magnus’s words stuck in him, and it was more than a week before he could sleep normally beside her. It felt like the times he had needed to look in on the children when they were tiny, just to make sure they were still breathing.
Less than two weeks later, she was back on the job. And he had a strong feeling that Operation Ravioli had a lot to do with her need to prove that she was on top of it all. Could manage the job and her family, could be a Good Mother, could do it all and be here again.
He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t necessary. That it was okay if she was feeling irritable and tired, that it was okay to resort to easy fixes. If she had anything to prove, it certainly wasn’t as a pasta chef.
He had been looking at her for too long. Caught, as he often was, by the sheer vitality and intensity of her eyes. He had once found a chunk of dolorite that reminded him so much of the stormgray color of her eyes that he had dragged it all the way back from Greenland in his pocket.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked.
“No.”
She held his face between her wrists so as not to get flour on his office shirt and gave him a kiss.
“We’re making three kinds of ravioli,” she said. “One with spinach and ricotta, one with prosciutto and emmentaler, and one with scampi and truffle. Doesn’t it sound delicious?”
“Yes,” he said.
MORTEN HAD STAYED up long after she had fallen asleep, and Nina woke to find him kneeling on the bed next to her. She reached for him, and drew him down. He let himself fall. Kissed her deeply and with a certain ferocity, pressing his fingers into her mouth, then down the curve of her neck, over her breasts, her arms, and wrists. His fingers meshed with hers, and he let the full weight of his body push her into the mattress.
His eyes were nearly invisible in the darkness. Nina saw only a vague glitter of reflected light, and she sensed something, some sort of melancholy grief, settle between them. Or perhaps it had been there the entire time, and she hadn’t noticed.
She turned her head to look at the digital display of the clock radio.
“No.” Morten’s voice was hoarsely insistent. “Not now.”
He tilted the clock so that the numbers were no longer visible. Then he caught her face and turned it towards his in the darkness, drawing her leg slowly but firmly to one side.
She let go. She let herself fall into him, into the feeling, into the warm zone where time meant nothing.
SHE RAN ALL the way home. She couldn’t stop the panic even though she knew she was being hysterical, that he would no doubt be sitting at the kitchen table as usual, with an egg sandwich and a non-alcoholic beer in front of him and coffee brewing on the coffee machine. It was just the way it was—sometimes her father went home even though the school day wasn’t over. It didn’t happen often, three or four times a year at the most, and he was usually back at work the next day. Usually. But sometimes, when it was bad, two or even three weeks might pass by, and then it was “not too good.” That’s what her mother always said when people asked. “No, Finn isn’t feeling too good at the moment.” And then people didn’t ask any more questions, not if they knew him.
EGGS AND CRESS, she thought. He’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, and he has just cut himself a good helping from the somewhat shapeless cress hedgehog that Martin has made in kindergarten. And he is drinking non-alcoholic beer because he has taken his medication.
She looked at her watch. Twenty past eleven. If she could see him at the table, she wouldn’t even need to go in. She could just turn around and make it back to the school in time for her next class.
BUT HE WASN’T at the table. And so she had to go in.
His