the floor. We went from room to room, but nothing seemed to be missing. In the downstairs bathroom, the toilet paper had been yanked violently off the roll and lay strewn across the floor.
Kennet looked at me with an odd expression. “Do you have any unfinished business with anyone?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not as far as I know,” I said. “Obviously, I meet a lot of damaged people in my work. Just like you.”
He nodded.
“They haven’t taken anything,” I said.
“Is that normal, Dad?” asked Simone.
Kennet shook his head. “It isn’t normal, not if they break a window. Somebody wanted you to know they’d been here.”
Simone was standing in the doorway of Benjamin’s room. “It looks as if someone has been lying in his bed,” she said quietly. “What’s the name of that fable? Goldilocks, isn’t it?”
We hurried into our bedroom and saw that somebody had been lying in our bed too. The bedspread had been pulled down and the sheets were crumpled.
“This is pretty weird,” said Kennet.
There was silence for a little while.
“The ferrule!” Simone exclaimed.
“Exactly. I thought about it and then I forgot,” I said. I went into the hall and got it from the stand.
“My God,” said Kennet. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a boy.”
“It was outside our door yesterday,” said Simone.
“Let me have a look,” said Kennet.
“They used to use it for corporal punishment,” I said.
“I know what it is,” said Kennet, running his hand over it.
“I don’t like this at all. The whole thing feels creepy,” said Simone.
“Has anyone threatened you, or have you experienced anything that could be construed as a threat?”
“No,” she replied.
“But perhaps that’s how we should regard it,” I said. “Perhaps someone thinks we should be punished. I thought maybe it was just a bad joke, because we coddle Benjamin so much. I mean, if you didn’t know about Benjamin’s illness, we’d seem pretty neurotic.”
Simone went straight to the telephone and called Benjamin’s nursery school to check that he was all right.
That evening we put Benjamin to bed early; as usual, I lay down beside him and told him the entire plot of a children’s film about an African boy. Benjamin had watched it many times and almost always wanted me to tell him the story when he settled down to go to sleep. If I forgot the smallest detail he would remind me, and if he was still awake when I got to the end, Simone got to sing lullabies.
That night, he fell asleep easily. I made a pot of tea, and Simone and I settled down to watch a video. But neither of us could focus on the movie, so I paused the machine and we talked about the break-in, reassuring ourselves with the fact that nothing was stolen; someone had just unrolled the toilet paper and messed up our beds.
“Maybe it was some teenagers who wanted a place to screw around,” said Simone.
“No, I don’t think so. They would have left more of a mess if that were the case.”
“But don’t you think it’s a bit strange that the neighbours didn’t notice anything?” asked Simone. “I mean, Adolfsson doesn’t usually miss much.”
“Maybe he was the one who did it,” I suggested.
“Screwed around in our bed?”
I laughed and pulled her close. How good she smelled! She was wearing my favourite scent, Aromatics Elixir, heavy, but not cloying or sweet. She pressed herself to me, and I felt her slim, boyish body against mine. I slipped my hands inside her loose shirt, running them over her silky skin. Her breasts were warm, her nipples hard. She groaned when I kissed her throat; a blast of hot breath shot into my ear.
We undressed by the glow of the television, helping each other with rapid, seeking hands, fumbling, laughing, and kissing again. She drew me to the bedroom and pushed me down onto the bed with playful severity.
“Time for the ferrule,” she said.
I nodded, transfixed, and watched as she moved closer to me, bowing her head to allow her hair to trail over my legs; she smiled as she moved steadily upward. Her curls cascaded over her slender, freckled shoulders. Her arm muscles tensed as she straddled my hips. Her cheeks flushed deep red as I pushed inside her.
For a few seconds the memory of some photographs flickered through my mind. I had taken the pictures on an isolated beach in the Greek archipelago, two years before Benjamin was born. We’d taken a bus along the coast and got off at what we thought was the prettiest spot. When we realised the beach was completely deserted, we decided not to bother with swimsuits. We ate warm watermelon in the sunshine and then lay naked in clear, shallow water, kissing and caressing each other. We made love perhaps four times that day on the beach, growing ever warmer and more indolent. I recalled Simone’s skin, sticky with salt water, her heavy, sun-drenched gaze, her introverted smile. Her small, taut breasts, her freckles, her pale pink nipples. Her flat stomach, her navel, her reddish-brown pubic hair.
Now Simone leaned forward, chasing her orgasm. She thrust backwards, kissed my chest, my throat. She was breathing faster, her eyes closed; she gripped my shoulders and whispered. “Don’t stop, Erik, please don’t stop.”
She was moving faster, heavier, her back slippery with sweat. She groaned loudly, still thrusting backwards, over and over again, stopping with quivering thighs before starting again; she stopped, whimpering, gasped for air, moistened her lips, and supported herself on my chest with her hands.
I parked my bike outside the neurological unit and stood for a little while, listening to the birds rustling in the trees; I could see their bright spring colours among the dense leaves. I thought about waking up next to Simone this morning and looking into her green eyes.
My office looked just as I had left it; the chair on which Maja Swartling had sat while she interviewed me was still pulled out, and my desk lamp was on. I switched it off. It was only half past eight, and I had plenty of time to go through my notes from yesterday’s abortive hypnosis session with Charlotte. It was easy to understand why it had turned out as it had: I had forced the pace of events, striving only to reach the goal. I should have known better. I was far too experienced to make that kind of mistake. It’s impossible to force a patient to see something she absolutely does not want to see. Charlotte had gone into her room but had not wanted to look up. That should have been enough for one session, it was courageous enough.
I changed into my white coat, disinfected my hands, and thought about the group. I wasn’t completely happy with the role Pierre had assumed; it was a little unclear. He often hung around
