The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

I say and swallow hard. ‘Never.’
    ‘ Putain ,’ says Norbert softly. ‘That’s awful.’
    We’re both silent for a moment.
    ‘Why have you never told me this before?’
    ‘I don’t like talking about it,’ I say. ‘I’m not very good at pouring my heart out. Maybe that’s why I’ve never really got over it. I have a different way of dealing with things, you know; I get over what’s happened by writing about it. And that’s exactly what I’m doing now.’
    Norbert is silent for a long time. Then he nods.
    ‘I see,’ he says.
    As far as he’s concerned, that’s the end of the matter. He gets up, searches in the kitchen drawer for a corkscrew, finds one, uncorks the bottle of wine he’s brought me and pours us each a glass. A ton is lifted off my mind.
    One hour, a great deal of talking, three espressi, a bottle of excellent French rosé and three quarters of a bottle of whisky later, we’re sitting at the kitchen table doubled up with laughter. For what must be the tenth time, Norbert is telling me the story of how he once got so smashed in a bar with a certain politician (who in those days was still fat and endearingly slobbish) that afterwards he was caught by two policemen trying to fit his car key into the door of someone else’s Porsche.
    Every time he tells me this story, I laugh. I even smile for Norbert when he gets onto the subject of his fiftieth birthday party and the way I freaked out because the band had the nerve to play All You Need is Love by the Beatles.
    I remember that evening as if through a veil. It was one of the better evenings not long after Anna’s death, in that strange in-between time, after the shock and before the breakdown, when I was by no means myself anymore but still functioning.
    Norbert and I didn’t yet know each other well; I had only recently switched publishers and he had no idea what I’d gone through. Didn’t even know I’d had a sister. I remember drinking Prosecco despite the antidepressants and dancing with Marc, my fiancé, even though I no longer felt anything for him. I remember that I stuck to the dress code and wore white, although I had been going around in black up until then. I remember thinking that this could be my life—going to parties, and drinking Prosecco and dancing, and granting eccentric friends their innocuous wishes. And I remember that I was on the dance floor when the earthquake started—dancing with Marc as the first bars struck up love, love, love —and reality was swallowed up in an insatiable vortex, leaving me behind, leaving me with the blood—with Anna and the blood. I gasped for air and struggled to surface from the blackness, but the song had me in its grasp. I opened my eyes wide. The people around me were singing along. I was gasping for air. Stop! Stop! I cried, inaudibly, and they carried on singing; they didn’t hear me. All you need is love, la-da-da-da-da . Then I really screamed, as loud as I could: Stop! Stop! Stop! I screamed until my throat was sore, and the people around me stopped singing and dancing and turned to look at me, and the band stopped, nonplussed, and I stood there on the dance floor, shrieking: Stop! Stop! Stop! I was still caught in the vortex, still in Anna’s flat, still helpless, still alone, and Marc’s arms were round me and his voice was whispering: Shh, calm down, it’s all okay , and out loud it was saying: Sorry, my fiancée’s had too much to drink. Could you let us through, please?
    Norbert doubles up with laughter as he recalls it. He has no idea what really happened that night—thinks I’d simply had one too many, and suffered from a deep-seated and unaccountable aversion to the Beatles.
    I don’t talk about what happened to Anna now and I never have done. The fact is, there is no longer a single person left in my life who knows that I once had a sister and what happened to her—not counting my parents, that is. No old friends, no classmates, no mutual acquaintances. For