Free Safe as Houses by Simone van der Vlugt Page B

can’t stay here for ever. She could offer him money and clothing to speed him on his way. If necessary she could take him over the border in her car. Whatever he wants.
    New-found hope takes over, and, in a betterframe of mind, she helps Anouk up the stairs. The television is on in the sitting room, but the curtains are still drawn. Behind the thin fabric, the sun is attempting to shine, but this only serves to highlight the chaos inside. Pages of newspaper have been tossed all around the sitting room – on the sofa, on the floor, on the coffee table – as though he had literally been spreading the news.
    The kitchen is a disaster: the worktop is covered in empty packets and the floor littered with crumbs, cheese rinds and bits of eggshell. Pretty much the entire contents of the fridge have been spread out over the worktop, and there’s a strong smell of coffee and fried eggs. His lordship obviously feels at home. Suddenly Lisa is less convinced that he’ll leave any time soon, and the disappointment translates itself into a throbbing pain behind her eyes.
    As Kreuger whistles his way through the sitting room, Lisa goes over to the worktop, prepares breakfast for Anouk and herself and takes the meal to the small wooden table in the kitchen, rather than to the dining table in the other room.
    â€˜I’m not that hungry, Mummy,’ Anouk says quietly.
    â€˜Me neither.’ Lisa chews reluctantly on a cheese sandwich. The bread forms a sticky ball in her mouth, which she has to wash down with a few large gulps of tea. ‘Try to eat what you can. A fewmouthfuls is enough. Can you manage some milk?’
    By way of an answer, Anouk picks up her glass with both hands and drinks it all. She gives her mother a triumphant look. Lisa smiles approvingly.
    Anouk leans in towards her conspiratorially and asks, ‘Do we have to stay here today?’
    Over my dead body, Lisa thinks. This is still my house.
    â€˜No,’ she says. ‘I’m going to have a word with that man. Maybe we can take him somewhere.’
    â€˜Where?’
    To prison, Lisa thinks. Or a very deep pit.
    She shrugs. ‘Somewhere where they can’t find him.’
    â€˜He’s hiding here,’ Anouk surmises. ‘From the police.’
    Lisa cannot deny it.
    â€˜Can’t the police find him, Mummy?’
    â€˜No. They don’t seem to be able to.’
    Anouk looks out of the kitchen window and Lisa gives her a worried glance. What is going through her head, and how great is the chance she’ll be damaged by it? Anouk has had to watch her mother being hit until she bled and threatened with a knife; and she’s had to spend the night locked up in a dark basement. Although all the ingredients for long-term problems are there, if Kreuger leaves today hopefully the harm shouldn’t be too great.Anouk might be frightened of strangers for a while, but in time she should be able to forget the incident.
    And it could all have been much worse. How can she protect her child from everything that she fears?
    By not holding back cautiously any longer, she realises. She has to take matters into her own hands and convince Kreuger that he’d be better off leaving.
    â€˜Mum?’ Lisa is jolted from her thoughts by Anouk’s hopeful voice.
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Can you please bring my Barbies downstairs?’
    It’s a perfect domestic scene: Anouk in the sitting room playing with her Barbie dolls, Kreuger sunk into his newspaper and Lisa cleaning up the kitchen. Once she’s finished, she automatically switches on the espresso machine, and the smell of ground beans fills the kitchen.
    â€˜Yes, coffee!’ Kreuger shouts from the sitting room.
    Lisa stands in the door opening. ‘Milk or sugar?’
    Kreuger shakes his head without looking up.
    Or would you like something else in it? Lisa adds in her thoughts. Rat poison, an overdose of sleeping pills, a mixture of all the dregs from