Christian Jungersen - The Exception

‘I mustn’t make a mistake when I send this fax!’

Iben laughed. ‘Who is it for then?’

‘It’s for Ole.’

‘Oh, but it’s so-o easily done!’

They didn’t say anything else, but the sneering tone of their voices made it clear that they were making fun of her.

Camilla also made it clear that she wanted to keep her distance from Anne-Lise, even though they had had a few good conversations when the others were not around.

Barely five months into her new job, Anne-Lise was so wound up that she cried almost every evening. She cried in the car on the way home. She cried in the kitchen when she cooked supper and the children watched television. Later on, in bed with Henrik, she sobbed in his arms. Less than half a year ago, she had been happy and her worst problem at work had been boredom.

Henrik tried to comfort her by saying that she could easily get another job, but all that did was make Anne-Lise sob even harder.

‘But don’t you see? There are no other jobs. Everybody is cutting back. And if a place does have a vacancy, they’ll pick someone younger!’

Anne-Lise clung to Henrik. She went over what she had done in the office and regretted everything. ‘If only I’d kept quiet about that window! If only I’d let it be!’

Henrik held her close to calm her. ‘Come on, that’s neither here nor there. It’s such a little thing.’

‘Yes, I know. Such a stupid little thing! I couldn’t know, could I? How was I to know that just mentioning the smell was so frowned upon? The others get their way, always — with everything! And all I wanted was to close the stupid door!’

The next morning Anne-Lise went to an Internet site where she could download a program that traced and recovered files that had been deleted from her hard disk. While the others assumed that she was silently at work, plugging away at her deadly dull cataloguing job, she ran the newly installed program. It turned out that quite a few fascinating things were hidden inside her computer.

Anne-Lise’s predecessor might never have protested to her colleagues about her working conditions, but she certainly emailed both her husband and her friends to tell them how intensely she detested every hour she had to spend at the Centre. She had written to a friend to say what fantastic luck it was that her husband had got the Finnish job, because it was damn near impossible to find another job as a librarian in Denmark.

Anne-Lise also found evidence of wide-ranging communications with the Centre’s users. Clearly, the previous librarian had escaped being corralled into only scanning files and updating the catalogue. Malene had taken over the entire external relations side of the librarian’s job during the three weeks before Anne-Lise’s appointment. Anne-Lise could not imagine what her situation would be like if she tried to reclaim the position. All hell would break loose.

Almost a year has passed since Anne-Lise started working at DCGI. It is late in the afternoon when she steps into the old lift to leave the office. Through the closed main door to the Centre she can still faintly hear Malene laughing. Then the sound of amusement fades as the lift’s whining seals her in.

Soon she’ll be outside the building, the moment she has been looking forward to all day; she even fell asleep last night comforting herself with the thought of it, its never-ending cycle: a few pleasant hours with her family before the dread of the next day at work overwhelms her and then the consoling thought that that day, too, will eventually end.

She breathes in deeply several times.

Near the top edge of one of the lift’s wooden panels someone has scratched three filthy little drawings. Anne-Lise stares at the drawings as the trembling descent of the lift slowly transports her down and away from DCGI.

Today Henrik is collecting the children. He will take them to football practice and dance class and wait for them, doing some of his paperwork in the car. This way Anne-Lise will have at least an hour and a half to herself before she has to prepare dinner. She decided a few days ago that it was about time she had her old friend Nicola over. They haven’t had a real opportunity to chat, just the two of them, in over a year.

Anne-Lise stops to buy cakes for their afternoon tea and is on her way home when, suddenly, she finds herself east of Lyngby, driving on the northbound motorway towards Helsingør. How odd. She must have been in the wrong lane when the motorway divided. She finds a slip road and soon picks up the direction back to the Lyngby bypass.

Anne-Lise and Henrik live in an old-style house with redlimed walls, near the nature reserve at Holte. It stands just a few rows away from the wildly expensive homes with views over Lake Fure and has a larger garden than most of the neighbouring houses. The area is the perfect place to raise children, which is the main reason Anne-Lise and Henrik chose it over the wealthier districts along the Øresund coast.

When Anne-Lise eventually pulls up in front of her home, Nicola is waiting for her on the porch. She looks warm in her short, obviously expensive fur jacket, tight, dark-brown trousers and leather boots. Must be Prada boots, Anne-Lise thinks. Nicola loves Prada.

Nicola is beaming with pleasure. She gives Anne-Lise a big hug, and their friendship immediately picks up where it left off a year ago.

‘I’ve told everybody that dinner will be late tonight, because I want a chance to see Henrik and the kids as well. And I’m so looking forward to seeing what you two have done to the house since last time.’

Over the years Anne-Lise and Henrik have made quite a few changes. They’ve had three walls taken down to enlarge some of the rooms. Together they built a stone table and a huge cupboard in the old scullery at the back of the house and they’ve decorated several rooms with stucco ornaments brought back from Italy. When they were more or less happy with the house, they’d started on the garden.

Anne-Lise unlocks the front door and explains that they haven’t really done anything special since the last time.

Nicola steps inside. ‘Oh, come on. I don’t believe it. I know you two. There’s no stopping you!’

As she fills the electric kettle, Anne-Lise asks Nicola how her son is. Anne-Lise is very fond of Nicola; it’s strange that it’s taken her so long to invite her over.

They met each other many years ago through Jutta, a mutual friend they rarely see now. Jutta’s boyfriend had studied Business Management and both Anne-Lise and Nicola met their husbands through him. Since then Nicola’s husband has become a managing director in Maersk Oil. Although living on one of the most elegant streets in Hellerup has changed Nicola to a certain degree, she has kept her nursing job and remains the kind of person whom Anne-Lise feels she can trust to say exactly what she thinks.

They have their tea and cakes. Afterwards Nicola insists that they do a tour of the house. They end up in the garden, looking at the group of rhododendrons the previous owner planted at least forty years ago. The foliage on the lilac trees is turning an autumnal brown and the leaves from the dogwood bush near the apple tree lie scattered on the ground leaving its deep-red branches almost bare.

Anne-Lise remembers how, just a few years ago, she and Henrik would get up early and spend their Saturdays and Sundays working on their home. At the end of each day, they would stand together and admire their achievements. But apathy has set in and now she’s finding it difficult to whip up enough interest to do anything at all.

The two women go back inside and sit in front of the fireplace. They chat about their families and old friends.

Anne-Lise thinks that Nicola won’t notice any change in her, but as she’s describing Clara’s new dance outfit, Nicola interrupts her: ‘Anne-Lise?’