The Dinosaur Feather(118)

Johannes was ten years Susanne’s junior and, to begin with, when their relationship was purely sexual, this had been irrelevant. However, when they grew closer and Susanne told Johannes she would like to have a child, Johannes had cooled. Not in a hurtful way, not at all. They talked about it at length and their subsequent split came with considerable sadness. Johannes didn’t want to have children, and she did. They were equally insistent. That was the bottom line. Now she was married to Ulf, whom she had met at a fetish event.

“Johannes and I really liked each other, but we had incompatible views on children. Our breakup was final and clean. Soon after, I met Ulf, I got pregnant, and we stopped being part of the scene.”

“Why?” Søren wanted to know.

“Because we were in love, pregnant, and needed no one else.” Susanne smiled. Søren studied her face. Her expression was open and trusting.

“Just now you described Johannes as ‘gentle,’” Søren said, flicking through his notes even though he hadn’t made any. “Earlier today I spoke to Johannes’s mother and she paints a different picture of her son. She describes him as both ‘ungrateful’ and ‘provocative.’”

Susanne’s eyes darkened.

“Don’t listen to a word she says,” she scoffed. “She destroyed her own daughter, and she tried to destroy Johannes, too.”

Søren looked up in surprise.

“When I spoke to her today, she seemed deeply affected by the loss of her son,” he objected, baiting her.

“I don’t buy that for a moment,” Susanne sneered. “All right, she might worry about what to say to the ladies from the bridge club. It’s fashionable to have successful children in those circles. My son the CEO, my son the lawyer, and so on. I can imagine how inconvenient it must be for her to have to explain why she has no children left. Johannes’s sister killed herself, but you probably know that,” she added, when Søren failed to react. He nodded slowly.

“I thought the tension came mainly from the stepfather, Jørgen . . . ?” Søren continued flicking through his notes.

“Kampe,” Susanne prompted him. “As in Kampe Furniture. Yes, of course, a lot of it came from him, but at some level it suited Janna just fine to have a tyrant for a husband. It meant she never had to take responsibility for anything. And that was precisely how she wanted it. She behaved as the defenseless little wifey who couldn’t help having married a domineering brute who, in my opinion, abused his stepchildren. Not sexually,” she added quickly when Søren’s eyebrows shot up. “Metaphorically. His sister escaped, to some extent, by disappearing into her illness and by becoming just as passive and long-suffering as her mother. Johannes took the brunt of it. He was four years old and his sister was a baby when Jørgen entered their lives. And Jørgen cracked the whip from morning till night. Again, metaphorically speaking,” she repeated. “It was about elitism and winning. The kid should learn to ride thoroughbreds, play golf, sail, dive, stand at attention. He even criticized Johannes’s build; a real man didn’t weigh one hundred and forty pounds, a real man was over six feet tall, real men didn’t have slender, piano-playing fingers. Certainly not in Jørgen’s eyes.” She stopped talking and studied her own hands. They were large and her fingers thick, but the backs of her hands were freckled and soft, and her nails gleamed. Søren looked at the beautiful woman in the far too heavy body.

“I spent my teenage years thinking I should be different.” She glanced shyly at Søren. “My twenties were hard. In those days I truly believed visible ribs equaled happiness. If only I could lose weight, I would find a boyfriend with designer stubble, healthy interests, and a car. If only. When I turned thirty, I hit rock bottom. For nearly two years I languished in a prison of my own making . . .” She smiled at her choice of words and winked at Søren. “But then things changed. I went to therapy, I traveled, and I trained as a therapist myself. I worked as a therapist for nearly five years, then I had had my fill of navel gazing and bought The Apple. I know it might sound absurd, but suddenly I just knew I wanted to do something with apples and furniture. It was fun,” she said, sounding genuinely happy. “Building up the business from scratch. I was thirty-eight, and I was finally having fun. One of my customers, Stella, asked me if I wanted to check out the Red Mask. I knew of their parties, obviously, I had been active on the fetish scene for years, and many of the fetishists belong to both scenes, but until then the goth scene had never really appealed to me. I had joined the fetish scene purely for sex and, quite honestly, I couldn’t see the point of goth culture. But when Stella invited me, I gave it a try. Stella organizes goth and fetish events, and she often pops into the store,” she interposed and continued, “The goth scene changed my life. Here you’re accepted, respected, and valued right away and it continues like that, if you live and let live. Openness and tolerance toward anything outside the norm. I took to it like a fish to water. The third time I attended, I met Johannes. And do you know something?”