‘Do you have thirty pfennigs? We can drive to the nearest telephone box.’
I’m not your darling. You’ve got my brother on your conscience, you bastard. You’re going to help me grab that money and get my boss off my back, that’s all. Payback time!
‘Let’s go!’
He goes ahead. I follow him. Of my own free will! I keep my hands stretched out in front of me so as not to catch myself on the thorns.
It’s a tight fit in the phone box. He gives me a kiss on the shoulder. At least I think he kissed my shoulder. I felt his lips, anyway. Oh, drop that!
‘Dial 68 75 99, then you can hold the receiver to my ear.’ Hans does everything I tell him.
‘Hello, Rüdiger, it’s me. Moni.’
And then I start talking. I’ve been thinking about us a lot these last few days, I say, about him and me. I thought it all through again. I lay the charm on thick. I tell him it was wrong of me to say no, but he has to understand that I simply didn’t trust myself. I go on soft-soaping him over the phone. I say I’d like our relationship to be something really special. Something that belongs just to us. I talk and talk, carry on about being careful because after all he has a wife and children, and I wouldn’t like there to be any gossip among our colleagues. But in the last few days I haven’t been able to think of anything else, only him. That’s why I’ve plucked up all my courage and I’m calling him now. I ramble on and on. My voice sounds totally strange to me, I’m cooing, I’m all lovey-dovey. I hear myself asking if he couldn’t come and meet me. ‘I mean now, before my courage deserts me again.’ I tell him I’ve found a little place hidden away – ‘All for you and me.’ It would be the ideal place, no one would ever find out about it. We’d be all alone there, just the two of us. I chat him up, I flirt, in the end I almost forget to tell him where to go. ‘Oh yes, the address…wait a minute, do you have a pen there?’ I describe the way, explaining very patiently where he has to turn off the road and follow the track through the forest until he can’t drive any further. I tell him he can leave his car behind a Fiesta that he’ll see there, and I tell him the way past the pond and over to the mill. I’d be waiting for him there, I say. ‘Oh and please don’t be alarmed. I’ve bandaged my hands up because I fell off my bike,’ I say, but I can tell him that story later, when he’s with me.
At a sign from me, Hans hangs up.
Right. Now for Part Two of the plan.
Hans smelt my hair when I came out of the phone box. I must stink pretty bad by now, but he seems to like the smell of me.
Keep him on the boil, you still need him. The game is just beginning, and I’m almost enjoying it.