Page 132 of The Sleepwalker
‘We can do it again, a hundred times,’ Ida tells him as she gets out of bed.
She opens the connecting door to the nursery, where the passageway has been reconfigured as a linen closet, and takes two clean towels from the shelf. The doorway at the other side is blocked by the large cupboard containing all of Oliver’s toys.
Sven Erik doesn’t want their son to get into the habit of climbing into bed with them, which means that Oliver just lies there screaming for his mum until she goes through to see him.
Ida and Linus take a shower together. She hands him one of the towels when they step out of the cubicle, but she notices that his back is still beaded with water as he gets dressed in the bedroom.
His hands seem to be shaking as he buttons his shirt.
‘You can stay over, if you like,’ she says, pulling on a purple robe. ‘I could make lemon pasta.’
‘Thanks, but I have to get back and do some work .?.?.’
‘Sure.’
She follows him down to the front door, and they kiss three times before he leaves. Ida locks the door behind him and turns out the light in the hallway.
The endorphins are still making her body tingle as she wanders through to the lounge. She doesn’t want to stand in the window and watch him drive away, but she does it anyway.
Linus walks over to his car and uses the fob to unlock the doors.
As the lights flash, Ida thinks she catches a glimpse of a blonde woman standing by the gateposts.
Up in the bedroom, her phone starts ringing.
Ida climbs the stairs, automatically peering down at thecuddly toy she spotted earlier by the door to the boiler room and the garage.
As she reaches the kitchen, she decides that the woman by the driveway could be the Russian’s new wife. Last spring, the old one got bored of taking the Dachshund out for walks in her fancy Gucci clothes and moved back to St Petersburg.
Her phone has stopped ringing by the time Ida reaches the bedroom, but she sees that she has a missed call from Sven Erik.
Oliver also sent her a message saying goodnight an hour ago, but she was too busy having sex with Linus to notice, and it is now too late to reply.
She tightens the belt of her robe and peers out at the lights from Linus’s car through the hedge. He drives slowly down the road and turns right, and then it looks as though he stops on the hill and turns off the headlights.
Logically, she knows that his car just pulled out of view, behind the neighbours’ extension or something similar, but it really does feel as though he has come to a halt.
The wind howls around the house, and she hears the loose drainpipe out back creaking.
Ida goes through to the kitchen and opens another bottle of red wine. It is the same type as earlier, only older, from long before she was born.
Probably really expensive, she thinks as she fills her glass, swirls the wine and takes a sip.
‘Great Merlot,’ she says, imitating Linus.
The wine leaves a dry, lingering taste of wood in her mouth.
In the windows, the darkness beyond the reflected kitchen looks impenetrable.
Out of nowhere, Ida feels a rush of fear that Linus has hit a child on the hill. She knows it is nothing but a dark fantasy, but hedidhave a glass of wine.
With a smouldering sense of anxiety, she picks up her phoneand sends him a red heart. He doesn’t reply, and she gazes out into the darkness, thinking about theAftonbladetinterview with the boy who witnessed a bloody axe murder while he was sleepwalking.
Ida puts her phone down and realises that she can’t remember whether she locked the door after he left. She goes to the top of the stairs and pauses, listening for sounds like a child left home alone. Other than the usual creaking of the wooden floors, the house is quiet.
With one hand on the banister, she starts making her way down the stairs.
‘Fuck!’
