The Rabbit Girls(45)

Yes. Of course I am. I am weak because I am strong, because I took from those weaker, when in every other circumstance, I would never have done so. I am weak because in giving Frieda myself I gave her a promise that never needed words: I promised that I would love her, and although I have, I have done so only in private, in words of my own heart.

Maybe I should have tried to find her sooner. Maybe I couldn’t really have loved her, because if I had I’d have gone back for her. Tried, even. Looked and turned over every stone to find the woman I loved. Maybe. But life is not a love story, it is not a fairy tale.

There are no happy endings.





MIRIAM

Leaving the apartment later than she intends, she hurries past shops belching out people, bags in hand and full of laughter. Miriam looks at their faces, scans each one. Checking none of them are him.

The tomorrow of his note has arrived and she doesn’t know when or how she will see him, but she knows she will.

After shaking herself dry in the medical centre, she finds conference room seven from Hilda’s directions. The sign is black, it has peeled away at the corners. She represses the desire to pick at the tip of the ‘7’ as she stands facing the white door, hearing voices within.

‘Excuse me.’ A woman, glasses around her neck and a pad of paper in her hand, moves past her and opens the door, which propels Miriam forward. The chatter and the humidity roll over her as the door closes her in.

She is greeted with the eyes of everyone in the room. Everyone except the man pouring the coffee, the man with his back to her.

The man in his best shirt. He turns.

‘Morning, Mim. Coffee?’ He holds the pot up.

She backs away and knocks into the wall.

He puts the coffee down.

He’s here and she cannot run.

She is stuck. Frozen.

But she is also back: all the way back to a month ago; before she had left; before her father was dying; before the dress; before Eva.

‘Oh, sweetheart. I have been so worried.’ Everyone around the table is looking at him.

Miriam looks at him too. He is clean-shaven and wearing a shirt and suit trousers.

He is also in jeans and a sweater, casually leaning against the fridge, telling her that she couldn’t go. That he wouldn’t let her go to her father. That she was his and his alone. That she couldn’t abandon him as his mother had done. Leaving meant she couldn’t love him.

She says nothing and no one in the room moves to her aid.

She can hear the mechanical whirr of the fridge, his words sharp and pointed. No. She feels the cotton of her dress against her legs, her toes on the cool linoleum. Her back against the wall.

Axel pours a cup of coffee, turning his back to her, and she scans the room for other familiar, perhaps friendlier, faces.

‘What’s he doing here?’ she hisses to Hilda, sitting next to her; the floral bouquet of Hilda’s perfume blocks out the stale smell of confined bodies, and Miriam holds on to that smell to try and stay present.

‘Who?’

She points to Axel.

‘He’s here to support you.’ She smiles as Axel delivers Hilda a coffee.

‘Can you make him leave?’

‘Now that everyone is here,’ Dr Baum says, ‘I think perhaps it might be time to begin.’

There is a scrape of chairs and a flurry of activity.

Axel returns to his seat, opposite Miriam.

Hilda touches her on the arm. ‘There is nothing to worry about.’

She wrings her hands in her coat sleeves, aware she is overdressed but a frost has settled over her stomach and works its way out.

Please, she had begged. Actually begged to be let out of her own home. To go to her dying father’s side.

‘Miriam. Miriam,’ Axel said. ‘Going back now, what good will it do?’

‘He’s dying,’ Miriam murmured.

‘So let him die in peace, my love.’ He moved towards her slowly and touched her gently on the cheek.

‘But . . .’ she said meekly.

‘Welcome . . .’ Dr Baum looks around like a pastor at the podium. ‘I would like to start by thanking you all for . . . well . . . in the weather . . . the current parking issues . . . time from your, well, whatever you would normally be doing.’ As he speaks, he feels each word in his mouth before committing to it.

Before his first sentence is over, Miriam wants to scream.

The clock on the wall has no second hand, time passes in hours rather than minutes here.

Axel is directly opposite her, across the table. He looks the same, but slightly different. Familiar, yet with the novelty of not seeing someone for a while whom you normally look upon daily. His dark hair slicked back revealing his widow’s peak and a healthy dusting of grey just above his ears. She cannot tell what mood he is in. His lips are relaxed, his jaw doesn’t twitch. She studies his face, trying to predict what will happen next.

‘Let us start the meeting, and do this in a methodical, maybe more of a linear way, so that we are all aware of the current situation, as it happens to be, and all the possible alternatives that we can, perhaps . . . the options that are available to Herr Winter, should the opportunity arise and the members of this meeting agree.’

Miriam watches Dr Baum and feels lost to the conversation already. She concentrates on his words, yet finds none of them make sense. Understanding Dr Baum feels like studying a map with no reference point.