Christian Jungersen - The Exception

Clara’s mumbling is getting louder.

Ulrik leans forward. ‘Shut up! Stop making that noise!’

Clara carries on playing with her doll but lowers her voice.

The bedroom air is warm and smells slightly of toothpaste. Anne-Lise can pick up sounds from Henrik’s study. He is trying to do something new with his two computers.

Clara’s mumbling is growing louder again.

Ulrik shouts at her more crossly than before. ‘Shut up! Shut up!’

Anne-Lise reads on about Laura’s father, who is walking in the forest and sees a doe with its fawn. Clara’s voice fades and becomes inaudible again. Without warning, tears well up in Anne-Lise’s eyes. The fawn doesn’t run away. It stands quite still, looking wide-eyed at Laura’s father. The tears are running quietly down Anne-Lise’s cheeks. They keep coming even though there is nothing sad about the story.

After a while, Ulrik notices. ‘Mummy? What’s the matter?’

Laura’s father promises that he won’t go hunting until the baby animals have grown up. Now Anne-Lise has to look up at her son. She smiles. She has no idea what is happening to her. ‘I must have caught a cold.’

Clara puts away her doll. ‘Are you crying?’

‘No, no. It’s just a cold.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No. Not a bit.’

‘Why are you crying then?’

Ulrik shouts at his sister, ‘Mummy’s not crying! She’s got a cold.’

Anne-Lise realises that she is on the verge of falling apart. Her children must not witness this. She has to get away.

Panic grips her. ‘There. That’s it for tonight.’

‘No-oo!’

Anne-Lise fights to suppress her sobbing. ‘Yes, it’s time to go to sleep. No more reading tonight.’

‘No-oo. Please. Read some more. Just a little.’

‘HENRIK! HENRIK! Please come here!’

She runs out. Henrik comes towards her. Her sobbing is out of control.

‘Go to the children. Read them a story.’

She stumbles into their bedroom, shuts the door, and throws herself on their bed, covering her head with a pillow to muffle the sounds she is making.

Once the children are asleep, Henrik returns to Anne-Lise, walks quietly over to the bed and sits down close to her. She doesn’t open her eyes, but senses his body weighing down the mattress next to her head. She is glad that he is there and blindly reaches out her hand to him. He takes it and strokes her temple with his other hand. They do not speak.

Crying has left Anne-Lise feeling hot and completely empty. The sensation of her body dissolving washes over her. She feels as if she is seeping away, through the mattress, draining down through the boards and beams of the house, through the spaces of brick and cement.

Henrik is asking her to please tell him what’s the matter. She mutters in response, pressing her nose in between his thigh and the mattress. It’s good to feel the warmth of him; her hand comes to rest between his legs. He asks her again. She doesn’t answer, only begins to move her hand.

‘Anne-Lise, is this a good idea?’

She looks up at him.

He gets up, closes the door and dims the light. One of the good things about their solidly built old house is that sounds do not travel. Once the door is closed, there is no need to worry about the children.

His chest is against hers. Every pore in her skin is wide open. She’s sweating.

‘What’s happening?’ Henrik asks. She’s never been like this before. ‘I love it,’ he says, and ‘I didn’t think you felt this way.’

And then they are both silent.

A pillow falls to the floor with a faint thump, then the duvet follows, absorbing its own sound as it falls.

This is how I want to die, she thinks. To disappear like this, happy, because in reality, I’m already gone.

Every time he thrusts into her, words form silently inside her. Kill me, she thinks. She must not say it aloud. He would stop at once.

Now she’s nearly reduced to nothingness. Softly, she dreams on.

Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!

Anne-Lise has never experienced anything like this. Not with anyone. She registers his smell.

Something has given way inside the mattress. The springs groan like a giant struggling for breath. Anne-Lise finally slips away while her mind whispers on inaudibly.

Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!

All day long Anne-Lise imagines that everything will change now.

True, she knows that she pays far too much attention to what Malene and Iben do, even to the expressions on their faces. All the interpretation and forecasting exhausts her. Still, today something radically new has happened.

In the morning Iben had phoned from the City Hospital’s rheumatology clinic. She was there with Malene, who was ill. Iben had said that Tatiana planned to write an important article and suggested that Anne-Lise should call Tatiana and offer to help.

None of her new colleagues had ever done anything like this. Anne-Lise phoned Henrik straight away.

‘There, you see. Maybe we’ll collaborate from now on.’

He said ‘Yes’, and was so nice to her. She knows well that he doesn’t take any of her ‘fantasies’, as he calls them, seriously.

A small part of her is aware that real change isn’t very likely. It makes her more vulnerable. Every time they turn on the kindness she can’t help thinking that all the tension might be due to her own misunderstanding, or pile-up of misunderstandings.

The day at DCGI is over and Anne-Lise is about to pick Clara up from her nursery class. As she walks into the small, yellow-brick school, she meets other parents and children she knows. A good day at the office means that she is not her usual worn-out self and a cheerful tune she heard on the car radio is playing in her head. This afternoon she almost feels as she used to feel before DCGI.

She walks through the first, then the second set of doors to the main room. It’s quiet in there. After saying hello to a father who is leaving with his two children, she spots Clara at a table, cutting shapes from shiny pieces of coloured paper. Anne-Lise sits down and helps her stick the shapes onto a plain white sheet.

Almost at once a teacher comes along to tell her that Clara has been involved in fights twice that day. The second time she fought with a boy and hit him on the head with a branch. The teachers had to bandage the wound.

Anne-Lise’s mobile phone rings. It’s Paul. She interrupts the teacher. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s my boss. Do you mind if I take the call?’

Paul sounds as if it’s urgent. ‘Hello, Anne-Lise. All right for us to talk?’

‘Yes, fine.’

‘That’s good. Listen, I’ve just had a call from Iben. She’s in the hospital.’

‘Yes?’

‘She has taken Malene to the rheumatology clinic. They’ve been there all day.’

‘I know. Iben called me earlier.’

‘And she told me, and I’m afraid they are in complete agreement …’

Anne-Lise realises that he’s about to say something bad. Paul is being unusually hesitant. Anne-Lise withdraws into a corner and turns her back to the room.

‘They believe someone has tampered with Malene’s tablets and exchanged her medicine for something that has no effect on — on her arthritis. And that’s why it has flared up so badly.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘And it was extremely painful.’

‘Yes, I see. Of course. Such a …’ Anne-Lise stops. She grasps what Paul is actually trying to say. ‘They think that “someone” removed her proper medicine?’

‘That’s what they believe. I’m really not sure how to say this but … they don’t want to confront you themselves.’

Paul takes a quick breath and speaks again. ‘They say you are the only one who could have exchanged the tablets.’