The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor

feet; jumping in a pool on a hot day and the way your heart seizes up before it decides to carry on beating. My body reminds me what pain feels like. And it reminds me what love feels like—dark and crimson and confusing. I realise what a long time it is since I last touched anyone, or since anyone touched me.
    I wish I could run away from this raw, yearning feeling I’ve come up against. But I’m jogging on a treadmill and I can’t run away, no matter how fast I am. I shake off the thought and ratchet up the speed a notch or two.
    My pulse quickens; I gasp for air. All of a sudden I remember last night and the horrific nightmare from which I had such trouble extricating myself, and from which I finally awoke thrashing about and breathless. It wasn’t my first nightmare about the meeting with Lenzen, but it was by far the worst. Everything had gone so terribly wrong. It all felt so real—my fear, Lenzen’s grin, Charlotte’s blood on his hands.
    But at least the nightmare was good for something. I now know that I have to keep Charlotte out of everything. I don’t want to, but I must. Subconsciously, I’ve known that for a long time, but my fears had made me selfish. Because I hadn’t wanted to face Lenzen without someone familiar at my side, I ignored the fact that I would be exposing Charlotte to incalculable danger by bringing her into contact with a murderer.
    I don’t know why Lenzen murdered Anna. I don’t know whether he is calculating or impulsive. I don’t know whether he killed anyone before or has done so since. I know nothing. I’ll make sure Charlotte doesn’t meet him. A physical attack may be unlikely, but I’m not taking any risks.
    First thing this morning, I took my telephone off charge and rang Charlotte to tell her to take the day of the interview off. So I’ll be alone with Lenzen.
    I finish my work out and stop the treadmill, drenched in sweat. My body is exhausted and I relish the feeling. On the way to the bathroom I pass my old, wilting orchid on the hall windowsill, shy and unprepossessing. I don’t know why, but I feel the need to take it into the house and coddle it up—maybe because I’ve started to coddle myself up. I reach the bathroom and can hardly get my T-shirt over my head, it’s clinging to my body. I get under the shower, turn on the warm water and enjoy the feel of it running down my shoulders, back and thighs. My body is waking up after years of numbness.
    I have the urge to feel more: for loud rock music and the buzz in my ears afterwards, for alcohol-induced dizziness, painfully spicy food. For love.
    My body makes a list of the things that don’t exist in my world: other people’s cats that take a sudden liking to you, coins you find on the street, awkward silences in lifts, messages on lampposts— ‘I saw you at the Coldplay concert last Thursday and lost you in the crowd. You’re called Myriam with a Y and have brown hair and green eyes. Please contact me on 0176…’ The smell of hot tar in the summer, wasp stings, train strikes, emergency stops, open-air theatres, spontaneous concerts, and love.
    I turn off the water and brush these thoughts aside. There’s so much to do.
    Less than ten minutes later, I’m sitting in my study, writing, while on my window the first ice flowers blossom.
    10
    SOPHIE
    The perfect moment came between waking and dreaming.
    As soon as Sophie fell asleep, the same unvarying nightmare would fall upon her, and as she woke, the painful reality would break over her. But the brief instant in between was perfect.
    Today, like every day, it passed in the wink of an eye, and everything came flooding back. Britta was dead. That was the reason for the despair in her heart. Britta was dead, Britta was dead. Nothing would ever be right again.
    Sophie had lain awake in bed for hours until the previous sleepless nights had caught up with her and she had at last dropped off. Now she lay there blinking, trying to make out the digits displayed