Considering the fact that she was a late sleeper, she’d got into the shower fairly early today. Given what awaited her, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.
Oh God, Feli thought and put a hand to her mouth. Did I really just think ‘what awaited me’?
Her best friend Jasmina would bust right in with Sigmund Freud himself if she knew. And Jasmina wasn’t even a psychiatrist, unlike her. Though Jasmina’s teacher–parent evenings where she had to grapple with the parents and legal guardians of her primary school students often demanded even greater finesse than Feli’s shifts working the mental health hotline.
‘I’m delighted. I really am delighted!’ Feli said and put on a wide smile that she held while she shampooed and rinsed her hair.
After a minute and a half at the most, the brain could be duped into actually making you feel happy, even when the smile was fake. The method was called facial feedback, which worked even when patients simply held a pen in their teeth crossways.
But that’s not something I actually need.
I really am happy.
Feli turned off the faucet and stepped out of the shower.
‘Today is my lucky day!’
She wrapped a towel around her wet hair and dried it off before slipping into her bathrobe.
Janek tended to just stagger across the bathroom dripping all over and pull his grey terry robe over his wet skin, but Feli hated it when fabric got damp on her body.
She liked it warm, dry and cosy.
But it was the differences that bound people.
Still smiling, yet still not feeling any endorphin release, she stepped up to the sink and used a make-up tissue to wipe off the rest of the toothpaste that had miraculously made it from Janek’s toothbrush to the tip of the faucet once again.
‘Roll?’ she heard him shout from the bedroom.
‘Prefer toast,’ she shouted back and added a ‘I’ll be right there, honey.’
Right then her phone buzzed. She grabbed it off the edge of the bathroom counter, where the vibrating alert made it travel in a circle, and tried making sense of the number.
It seemed familiar to her but wasn’t saved as a contact.
She answered, not feeling great about it. And the feeling got even worse when she heard the voice on the other end. Noisy signal, far away, echoing a little. It was as if the man were standing in a wind tunnel.
That always pointless round of phone-greeting Jeopardy ensued.
‘Feli?’
‘Mats?’
Her colleague and once closest friend. He wasted no time, got right to the point.
‘I… I need your help.’
‘What’s happened?’ Feli asked, falling automatically into her emergency hotline routine. She would’ve preferred to hang up. Or at least screamed:
‘You need my help? What are you thinking? Four years of radio silence and suddenly you call. Just like that? And TODAY, of all days?’
But she held back her anger along with all justified criticism. For now.
‘Nele, she’s… I think she’s in danger.’
‘In what way?’
‘I just spoke to Charité Hospital in Virchow. She was supposed to deliver there today.’
Feli nervously scratched at her neck, which was starting to itch. She hated getting blotchy from stress, and she definitely didn’t need it on a day like today.
‘Nele’s pregnant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘She was scheduled for a caesarean this morning. But she never made it to the location in Virchow. Someone there who I went to school with confirmed it for me.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Feli’s itch got worse, but she managed to keep her hands off her neck this time.
‘I tried the number I have of hers by the way. She didn’t pick up.’
‘Okay, that does sound weird. But maybe she decided to go to another hospital.’
‘You can’t just switch to a new operating room, Feli, as you know. There’s something else…’
‘Something else?’
Mats paused a moment, and Feli thought she faintly heard what sounded like an announcement over a speaker.
‘Are you on a train?’ she guessed, since the noise on the line kept getting louder in between speaking.
‘On an aeroplane.’
‘You?’
Didn’t he once tell her that he’d rather spend ten hours at the dentist than a single hour up in the air?
‘What are you doing on a plane?’
He sighed. ‘Nele didn’t want to be alone after the birth. So I’m on my way to Berlin from Buenos Aires right now. But…’
‘What?’
‘Right after take-off, I got a phone call. Someone has kidnapped Nele and is threatening to kill her.’
‘Oh, God…’ She put her hand to her mouth again, like she had in the shower. She turned away from the mirror and whispered, ‘Is this, I mean… is this true?’
‘This is what I’m trying to find out. I don’t see any reason so far to doubt the threat, unfortunately.’
‘Fine, I’ll call the police.’
‘No. Under no circumstances.’
Feli laughed nervously. ‘But how am I supposed to help you?’
‘Please drive over to Nele’s apartment.’
‘To do what?’
‘I’m not sure. Look around. Go through her stuff.’
‘Hold on. How am I supposed to get in?’
‘That’s true. Sorry. I’m not exactly thinking clearly, being so worked up. But, maybe by going over there you’ll find some kind of clue as to who’s behind this. Speak to the neighbours or the building caretaker. I know it sounds desperate, but you’re my only hope.’
‘What do the kidnappers want from her?’
A pause. The hissing grew worse, reminding her of an old kitchen blender. It broke off when Mats said, ‘That’s… what I can’t tell you.’
‘You’re such an asshole.’
‘I know. I know.’
Her lower lip quivered, and Feli hated how shaky her voice sounded. ‘It’s been four years since you just, just vanished out of thin air. Okay, it was only one night, and maybe it was a mistake, but that does not give you the right to abandon me like some whore.’
‘True.’ Mats could only agree again.
‘So that gives you no right to ask me for a favour.’
‘You’re right. I… I just don’t know who I can turn to. I don’t know anyone in Berlin I can trust like you.’
‘You bastard,’ Feli snapped. Then she hung up. Shut her eyes in exhaustion.
She found it hard to breathe, her chest trembling.
‘Was that him?’
She turned around, startled.
His dark eyes were a shade more melancholic than usual. It had been a mistake telling Janek about Mats. But she’d sworn to enter into their relationship with honesty and no baggage, and Mats had been the biggest piece of baggage she’d been schlepping around. Even though they’d never been a couple and he had never reciprocated her passion. Except for that one night…
‘Yes, that was Mats.’
Feli added an apologetic nod and took a step towards Janek. Their foot-and-a-half difference in height made her look up to him.
If he wasn’t holding that tray she would’ve pressed right up against his hairy chest, closing her eyes, breathing in his warm body scent of cedar and musk.
‘What did he want?’
‘To congratulate us,’ she said after a suspiciously long pause. ‘I told him he could take his hypocrisy somewhere else.’
Janek tilted his head. ‘Huh,’ he said. Not enough to tell if she’d managed to curtail his mistrust at least a little.
‘Come on, let’s eat.’ She smiled at Janek and pinched him on the hip as she squeezed by.
‘But no more than one slice for you,’ she teased even though he had almost no fat on his muscular body.
He forced out a smile after all. It looked far more natural than the ones she’d managed.
‘Look who’s talking,’ he joked back. ‘Planned on taking off ten pounds by today and only managed, what, six?’
‘Jerk.’ She laughed and threw a little pillow in his direction.
‘Now you’ve done it…’
He placed the tray on the night table and threw himself onto her.
‘Help,’ she panted. ‘Help, I give up.’
As always when she lay in his arms, Feli marvelled how strong his body felt. Like a young man’s, not exactly what you’d expect from a fifty-year-old lawyer.
‘I love you,’ Janek said. ‘Dieting or not, doesn’t matter to me. And there’s one thing I know for sure.’
She let him kiss her, and with her eyes closed she heard him say:
‘You’re going to look so amazing today in your wedding dress.’