Christian Jungersen - The Exception

It upsets us to hear about children hit by C. We want to apologise to their parents.

What can we do to improve things?

It is true that Clara has been aggressive towards friends who have come home to play. (OK, we’ll accept that they call her ‘unusually aggressive’ but will stand for nothing stronger. Do not tell them about the episode with Victor in our house.)

Stress this: Our willingness to cooperate. Remind them that we both turned up for the PTA day in August (try shifting talk away from the other meeting).

Important — remember: we have not had any anger-management problems with Clara before and we both believe that she will get over this phase soon.

(Agree with A-L in the car.)

ONLY if necessary: That the family is angry about other matters and it might have affected Clara. Not angry at her. She is not to be blamed.

No problems, that is, apart from her mother’s terrible situation at work.

Stress that we’re optimistic.

We hope that the Centre will become part of Human Rights, surely quite soon. Then A-L gets new colleagues. We’ll become stronger as …

At this point the paper is too stained to read. The only other words she can read are ‘in confidence’.

What a relief. She’s found something!

With clumsy gloved fingers, she folds the notepaper and puts it into her jeans pocket too. She becomes aware of an itch on her shin, just above the strap for the knife. She tries to scratch it with the toes of her other foot but her knee bangs into the open door of a kitchen cabinet and it slams shut.

On tiptoe she runs back to the sitting room and takes up the same position as before, the poker ready to smash the glazed garden doors. She stands absolutely still. Her heart is thumping and her mind is churning with fantasies about Henrik coming into the room brandishing a baseball bat … or maybe a gun.

She must get back to the study, unless it’s already too late! There is no time to investigate the basement now.

But as she stares out of the window, she discovers that something in the garden has changed. When she stood here earlier, she could see quite distinctly the straight silhouette of the nearest tree trunk. The trunk looks thicker now and its outline is irregular. Either something is leaning against the tree or someone is trying to hide behind it.

Her heart hammers wildly in her chest and her mouth suddenly goes dry. She feels so faint that she is scared of falling over — someone has followed her here. She thinks at once of Omoro’s Kenyan friends. And she thinks of Mirko Zigic. He cut the arm off one of his victims and drew on the walls with her blood. He tied a cable round the neck of another woman and tightened it over a hook in the ceiling before he and his men raped her.

Iben feels a cold sweat covering her whole body.

She forces herself to think that she’s mistaken: it’s a play of the moonlight, or maybe it’s a different tree. There will be a simple explanation. Her fears are compulsive, irrational. She moves quickly towards the hall. She is close to the bottom of the staircase when she spots a door to the space under the stairs. Could she barricade herself in there if someone was waiting for her at the top of the stairs?

She opens the door and takes a peek, switching on her little lamp. It’s another study. Papers are arranged in very orderly piles. It must be Anne-Lise’s work space.

She should be getting out now, but she can’t miss the opportunity. She must have a look. She checks a whole series of drawers. No time to turn on the computer, but isn’t Anne-Lise likely to have made a back-up CD of her files?

The battery in her lamp is about to die. The red light is fading gradually.

Iben leafs through the stacks of papers, trying to leave them as tidy as before. It’s hard holding the lamp in one gloved hand and turning the sheets with the other.

At last she finds a collection of CDs in a drawer. Those marked with dates are presumably back-ups. She doesn’t take the most recent so Anne-Lise won’t notice; instead she picks three disks from somewhere in the middle. Now she can leave.

She returns the remaining CDs. A piece of paper has slipped to the back, squashed by all the other stuff in the drawer. She pulls it out. The lamplight is so weak she can hardly see the letters even when she holds the lamp immediately above it:

… because of the fantasies of revenge against Iben and Malene. But more and more, they are turning against myself. The images are terrifyingly real and I’m part of them now, as if all three of us, Iben, Malene, me, are merging. Something deep inside me must have been destroyed when I punish myself instead of them. As I did that time when I had what Henrik calls my ‘breakdown’. I would do anything, give anything — except my family — if I could be sure that I don’t completely fall apart before we merge with Human Rights …

There seem to be more papers like this one, but time is running out. Iben stuffs the CDs and the piece of paper inside the waistband of her trousers. Craning to see if there is anyone on the stairs, she suppresses an almost irresistible urge to run up them.

Nobody is at the top of the stairs. Henrik’s snoring has stopped. All is still. Once inside the study, with the chair jammed once again under the door’s handle, Iben sighs with relief. Soon she’ll be outside. She puts the lamp back under the plastic bag and takes a good look around to make sure that she hasn’t left the slightest hint that would give her away. Everything looks fine.

Just as she starts to remove the chair, the handle jerks up a little. Someone on the other side has also blocked the door.

The handle doesn’t move.

Iben runs towards the window.

A man’s voice roars: ‘Now! Now!’ His voice sounds as desperate as Iben feels. He shouts even louder: ‘Take it away now. Then RUN so he can’t hurt you!’

Over by the window Iben realises that the ladder is already gone.

Just below the window a heavily built man and his large black dog stand guard. The man is calmly talking on his mobile and is close enough for Iben to hear.

‘I’m not running anywhere. Burglars don’t usually carry guns. If you’re found with anything like that on you, the jail sentence is tripled.’ The man is wearing a long black coat with pyjamas sticking out underneath. He’s probably a neighbour called in by Henrik.

The man has brought a flashlight. He shines it towards the study window, but Iben manages to move out of sight just in time. He shouts in the direction of the window: ‘You there! Looking forward to three months inside, hey? Maybe five! And that’s on top of whatever else is waiting for you.’

Iben could kick herself. Why did she even think about breaking into the house? She should’ve known it could only go one way.

The light’s beam travels across the ceiling. She takes care to keep out of the way and settles down on the floor, leaning against the wall with her knees drawn up. She is shaking.

Neither of the two men has mentioned phoning the police, presumably because one of them has already done so. The police could be here any moment.

A sleepy child speaks on the other side of the door. It’s a boy. ‘What are you doing?’

Henrik answers his son. ‘Your daddy has caught a burglar.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s locked in the computer room.’

‘Wow.’

The next voice is Anne-Lise’s. ‘NO!’

‘Why, what? Mummy?’

‘You mustn’t go so close to the door.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because. Stay over here, next to me.’

‘Can he shoot through the door?’

Anne-Lise speaks quietly. ‘No, darling, he can’t.’

Iben waits until the cone of light leaves the window for a few seconds, then throws herself across the desk and grabs her jacket and shoes from the window hook. The man in the garden hears her and shines the light back in the window, but Iben is already lying flat on the desk.