The Deadly Space Between by Patricia Duncker

go on, deeper and deeper into the sweating green gloom. Roehm unlocks and relocks door after door, never hesitating over the identical keys. Here are luminous eels flickering in the oxygenated tanks; some of them glow strangely as we stride past, others dive for their artificial caverns. I gaze at Roehm’s heavy, smooth white cheek. He smiles slightly. I am sweating. Everything appears to be afraid of Roehm. We burst through an aluminium grille into the chill and brightness of an underground car park. Roehm relocks the last door behind us. There is nothing written on this door. It could have led to a service unit, a staircase or a lavatory. I look at my watch. It is almost midnight.
    ‘I could catch the last train if we rush.’
    ‘I’ll drive you home.’
    ‘It’ll take hours.’
    ‘Get in.’
    The car was oddly spartan inside. Roehm’s choice of food and wine suggested sybaritic wealth on a Roman scale. But he had no extras. No radio, no phone. And the thing made no sound, neither without nor within. We said very little to each other. He drove fast. I scanned the road for dead eels, lemurs, rabbits. London seemed alien, strange. The suburbs dropped away beneath the motorway. When we reached my mother’s house Roehm pulled up short of the gate on the far side in the same place where I had first identified the car. We got out and stood next to one another, leaning against the panzer. Roehm was very relaxed. His weight appeared to menace the car. He lit a cigarette. He seemed in no hurry to be gone. I lingered, getting colder. My sensations were obscure. I didn’t want to leave him.
    ‘Thanks for the lift. I could have caught the last train.’
    ‘I know. But your mother would have worried.’
    She wouldn’t even have noticed. She was always late. She had no sense of time.
    ‘I looked up your plates. They’re French. 74. That’s the Haute-Savoie. Where we go skiing. Where Françoise has her chalet in the mountains.’
    Roehm chuckled.
    ‘Oh, you looked that up, did you? Find out anything else?’
    ‘No.’
    I blushed, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the house.
    ‘I’m the director of another research institute over there. Near Chamonix. Where you go for your winter holidays.’
    ‘Do you want to come in? She’s still up. Her lights are on.’
    ‘No. She’s not expecting me.’
    It began to rain.
    ‘OK. Well . . . thanks for supper. And for showing me your lab. It was great. Goodnight.’
    ‘Come here, Toby.’
    Roehm unhurriedly flicked his cigarette away into the drizzling suburban dark and placed his right hand on my neck. I felt the eerie chill of his rings. His touch was very cold and slow. I had never been so close to him. He smelled of tobacco and cinnamon. His face loomed, white and blank, close to mine. He suddenly appeared to occupy more space than he had done all evening, like a cartoon drawn on an ever larger scale.
    ‘You’re very like her,’ said Roehm softly.
    I didn’t move.
    ‘So everyone says.’
    Then he kissed me, a soft, cold kiss on my lips. I stood still and frozen, longing for him to take hold of me. But he only smiled slightly, and turned away, nodding his goodnight. I ran across the road and into the house. I didn’t hear the car start. I didn’t look behind me.

3
    BONFIRE
    I dreamed about him that night. I saw him in the laboratory, but there were no more walls, no doors, no locked spaces.
    He is standing by his illuminated computer in a drenched and streaming torrent of thick green, a sinister vegetable green. The plants rustle and gleam all around him, fresh, succulent and suggestive. There is an evil smell of rotting compost. I look carefully into the shifting, glistening vegetation and see the terrified mass of eyes, dilated, feral, all fixed upon him. I am the only person who is not afraid. Roehm’s gaze holds me in thrall. His glare is fertile with intent, but he is waiting, waiting for me to make the first move. I remember his kiss, that