50

Konrad’s emotional reaction was forceful.

His hand tensed painfully around Emma’s and from his quivering lip she could see how he was struggling to retain his composure.

‘You’re joking.’

‘No, I’m being serious.’

‘But why?’

‘Lots of reasons. Because of my paranoia I killed Philipp and Palandt. And prevented Sylvia’s life from being saved.’

‘None of it intentional,’ Konrad countered vigorously. ‘None of it your fault.’

Emma shook her head, her eyes were red, but clear. She wasn’t crying any more.

‘Philipp…’ she said. ‘Without Philipp there’s no point to my life. I loved him. I don’t care what a shit he was. I’m nothing without him.’

‘You’re so much more without that cheat,’ Konrad said in a surprisingly loud voice. ‘If there’s anybody who’s to blame for your misery, then it’s your adulterous, self-absorbed husband. It’s bad enough that he was unfaithful and neglected you while he was alive. But even after his death he’s plunging you into deep despair.’ Konrad then tempered his grip and tone, which was a visible effort for him. ‘You’re not to blame, Emma. It was self-defence.’

She sighed. ‘Even if you were to convince the judges, I still don’t want to go on living. Not like this. You have to understand that, Konrad. I’m a psychiatrist. I know the darkest psychological abysses. I could barely cope with looking into them. And now I’m at the very nadir myself.’

‘Emma…’

‘Shh… Listen to me, please, Konrad. I don’t know what to think any more. I was so convinced that I’d been raped. And now? What sort of life is it if you can’t distinguish between madness and reality? Not a life for me. I have to end it. But I can’t do this without your help. I’m sure you know somebody who can get me the medication I’m going to write down for you.’

‘But you’re…’

‘Mad. Precisely.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’

Konrad shook his head. She’d never seen him look so sad and helpless before.

‘Yes, it’s true. I’m off my trolley…’

‘Just a vivid imagination, darling. And stress. Lots of stress.’

‘Others have that too, but they don’t hallucinate about being raped in imaginary hotel rooms.’

‘But they don’t have your power of imagination, Emma. Look. That evening you had a difficult lecture, colleagues were openly hostile and you had to defend yourself. It’s only understandable that you lost control in an extreme psychological situation. I suspect you saw a television report about the Hairdresser and your febrile imagination turned you into one of his victims. It’s going to take a long time, but together with Dr Roth I’m sure we’ll find out the truth.’

‘I don’t want that.’

Konrad squeezed her hand again as if it were a pump to force new vitality into Emma.

‘Emma, just think. You were helped once before. Back when you were a girl, when your imagination was also turning somersaults.’

Arthur.

Gripped by an unexpected melancholy, Emma couldn’t help thinking of the imaginary childhood friend, of whom she’d been so frightened to begin with. Much of her memory was a blur. Only the motorbike helmet and the syringe in Arthur’s hand had stayed with her, even years after her therapy which – it now seemed – can’t have been that successful after all.

Emma’s eyes closed and she no longer fought against the tiredness that brought forth more scraps of memory as harbingers of her dreams.

Her father’s words: ‘Get out right now. Or I’ll hurt you.’

The voice in the cupboard: ‘He said that?’

Her mother’s screams when she lost the child at four months.

The morning-after pill.

Her own voice yelling at Sylvia: ‘I was shaved and raped. There was a man in my room…’

‘Yeah, like Arthur in your cupboard…’

Emma tore her eyes open. Fought her way back to the surface through the fog of torpidity.

‘What’s wrong?’ Konrad said, still holding her hand.

‘How did she know his name?’ Her tongue weighed several kilos; she could barely move it any more.

‘What?’

‘Arthur. How did Sylvia know his name?’

‘Are you talking about the ghost now?’

She looked at Konrad’s puzzled face.

‘Look, I didn’t even tell you his name. You heard it for the first time today when I told you about my row with Sylvia. When she came to my house and accused me of stopping her from having a child, she said something about me lying even as a child. When I made up Arthur. But I only met Sylvia after I’d been through therapy. I never told her about Arthur.’

Konrad shrugged. ‘She had an affair with Philipp,’ he muttered. ‘She probably heard it from him.’

Emma was blinking frenziedly. ‘Listen. Even Philipp knew nothing about it. I kept Arthur’s name to myself. After the therapy sessions in my younger days I never wanted to say it out loud again; it was a superstition. I thought that if I didn’t say it then Arthur would never come back, do you understand?’

I only told my parents and psychiatrist about him. So how did Sylvia know the name?

Emma was shaking. For a split second she knew the answer. And this answer pointed the way to such a terrible, blood-curdling truth that she just wanted to run screaming out of her room.

But then the answer had vanished, together with her capacity to struggle any longer against a loss of consciousness.

And all that accompanied Emma on her deep descent into sleep was a feeling of fear, far worse than the one when she’d accepted the package.