No one answered Pauline, who was talking to herself. She repeated the sentence in slightly varied form and concluded that unfortunately she would have to withdraw some of her savings to cover the outrageous eight hundred kroner the hair treatment cost. Pauline Berg yawned. She was comfortable here but really ought to think about starting on dinner. Last night she had slept poorly, and fatigue was gradually starting to get the better of her. Maybe it didn’t matter. She could have a couple of sandwiches for once, and if Asger Graa simply kept his mouth shut and came to dinner and shared the sandwiches with her . . .
She heaved her head up with a start, aware that she was about to fall asleep. Then she set the alarm on her cell phone, which lay on the garden table beside her, and closed her eyes while a cuckoo called from the forest, as if it could not come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t night-time either. She was soon out like a light. A quiet little snore escaped from her nostrils, barely audible unless you were close by.
When she woke up, she was immediately aware that she had slept much longer than planned. It was dusk already and she felt cold even though she had a blanket over her, which surprised her. She didn’t remember bringing it. She picked up her phone. The battery was flat. She had been asleep for almost three hours. She cursed to herself, even though there was nothing wrong with taking an unplanned long nap other than that she might have to postpone her planned painting project until tomorrow. She got up, stretched to get the sleep out of her body, folded up the blanket and went inside. With the blanket over her arm, she locked her garden door and pulled on the handle a few times; the door seemed solid. She thought that she must get a curtain she could close so as to screen off the terrace. Sometime when she had the money.
In the house she briefly considered changing her routine around. She was hungry, but usually did her daily ballet exercises before dinner and not after. She went to her practice room, which was one of the first she had furnished. Here she changed into a leotard, placed herself at the bar and expertly went through her drill. Outside it had grown dark and she observed her own reflection in the window until a twinge of discomfort took hold of her. She was unused to seeing herself with black hair, and the sight reminded her of Saturday’s fiasco with Andreas Falkenborg.
After her exercises she took a quick bath. She was in a strange mood, as if the day was somehow out of sync. She had put the blame on her black hair, but there was something else too. Something was wrong. Maybe it had been a bad idea to call in sick. She seldom took time off for no good reason, and usually had a bad conscience when she did. She was starving besides, which was her own fault, of course, but that didn’t make her any less hungry. She tried to remember what she had in the refrigerator to put in her sandwiches while, feeling oddly ill at ease at being naked, she hurried out of the bath and into her bedroom to get dressed. At the same time she decided to call Ernesto Madsen and ask whether he felt like visiting her. That would be nice, really nice. Then she realised that for that she would need to find the charger for her phone, which was not in its usual place in the socket below the night stand by her bed. She tried in vain to remember where she had put it, and at the same time cursed her customer-unfriendly telecoms company for having a four-week waiting time for a landline connection.
The sandwiches did her good. Both Ernesto Madsen and the charger were forgotten in favour of a quiet evening alone in front of the TV. A rerun of Pretty Woman was exactly what she needed. She took her glass and empty plate and went out to the kitchen. After putting the dishes in the dishwasher she carefully wiped off the kitchen table, although it had barely been used. Then she found a can of cat food in the kitchen cabinet, opened it, took a spoon from a drawer and crouched down while she scooped half the contents into the cat’s bowl. Then it was as if she stalled. A desire to keep sitting there on the floor came over her. As if she had found completely the right place to be, however irrational that might seem. She tried to laugh off her own behaviour but remained sitting for a while, gathering the strength to stand up. Once upright again she put a plastic lid on the cat food can and set it in the refrigerator, while she repressed the urge to sit down again.