Free The Quiet Girl by Peter Høeg

gained weight only around the fetus itself. Her stomach was shaped like a roc's egg.
    "That doesn't matter," he said.
    Her jaw began to drop. He knelt between her legs and put his ear to her stomach.
    "A boy," he said. "A slightly more rapid pulse beat, around a hundred and thirty, D-flat major. With a premonition of D-major. Where Gemini slides over into Cancer. Your due date must be about Midsummer's Eve."
    She pushed the chair backward, tried to get away from him. He followed her.
    "Why did she give your name?"
    Steps were approaching, one woman and two men. Just when a bubble of intimacy is about to be created around a man and a
woman, the outer world has a way of interfering, head nurses, angry men, the collective unconscious. It's tragic.
    "There's very little time," he said. "The authorities have no clues. You're probably the last chance."
    He placed his hands on the arms of her chair, his face next to hers; he spoke softly.
    "What if they kill her. And you know you could have prevented it. Every time you look at your own child, you'll think about that."
    She managed to stand up. There was a chink in her armor; she was on the verge of opening up.
    "Who is Kain?" he asked.
    Someone rattled the office door. Without taking his eyes off her, he tried a glass door; it wasn't locked. It opened onto a balcony. The kind Romeo and Juliet had enjoyed. As long as that lasted.
    Someone tried to push in the door, without success. Footsteps moved away to get a key.
    In eight hours he would be sitting on an airplane bound for Madrid. He bent down toward her. Her face became transparent. He suddenly realized that she was too frightened to speak. He let her go.
    He felt in his pockets, found the lottery ticket, tore off a corner, wrote down the telephone number at the trailer. She did not move. He opened her hand and placed the scrap of paper in her palm.
    A key slid into the lock. He opened the terrace door and swung himself over the balustrade.
    Romeo had better odds; he hadn't needed to contend with sea fog and acid rain. The copper was coated with verdigris; there was nearly half an inch of green algae on the marble rail. He slid as if in green soap.
    He hit the lawn flat; the air was completely knocked out of him. When you're six years old and it happens the first time, you think you are going to die. When you're forty-two you know you don't get off that easily. He focused on the starry sky to keep from losing consciousness. Just over the horizon was Taurus, his own persistent constellation. If he'd had a telescope, and if it had been another time of year, in the sympathetic Pisces he could have seen Uranus, the planet of sudden impulsive behavior.
    "The survey," he whispered. "It wasn't just a medical survey. You weren't alone. Someone else was involved."
    She looked down at him. Because of the fall his voice was still breathless. Nonetheless she had heard him.
    Beside her, three unknown faces came into view; the youngest sprang up on the balustrade. He lost his footing and hit the ground like a BASE jumper whose parachute has failed to open. Three feet to the right of Kasper, where the lawn ended and the natural stone chips began. It's these small differences in people's karma that determine if we get up or remain lying on the ground.
    "A female friend," Kasper added. "Blond as the chalk cliffs of Møn. Cold as an icy winter. Sharp as a German razor."
    She looked like Ophelia standing there above him. Well into Act IV. Where the process has become irreversible. He had hit home. He got to his feet. Like Bambi on the ice. He wanted to start running. But found the strength only for a fast walk.
 
 
    13
    He rolled over the garden wall and into one of the narrow passages between Strand Road and Kyst Road, He got up, reached the road. The taxi was gone. He crossed the road, increased his speed. Right now the important thing was to gain the darkness around the racetrack. Headlights blinked far back in a driveway; he ducked into the