Free The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor

ago—what I felt, what it felt like to be me. Another life. I think back to a particular night in my old flat and notice a wry smile creep across my face. I had forgotten what it’s like to have a happy memory. I take a deep breath and begin to write, immersing myself in my old life. I see everything in all its colours, hear a familiar voice, breathe in the smell of my old home—relive everything. It feels lovely—almost real. I don’t want to return to the present when I get to the end of the chapter, but I have no choice. It is deep into the night when I look up from the laptop. I am hungry and thirsty. I press save and close the file. But I can’t resist opening it again, rereading and warming myself at the memory of life as it once was.
    After I’ve read it through, I tell myself that it’s too private, that this book isn’t about me. I’m writing it for Anna, not for myself, and nice chapters have no business to be there. I close the file, about to drag it to Trash, when I change my mind; I create a new folder called ‘Nina Simone’ and put it in there. I open a new Word document and psych myself up to write what has to be written next.
    Not tomorrow, but now.
    9
    JONAS
    On the short flight of steps up to his house, someone was sitting, smoking. It had been dark for some time but, as Jonas rounded the corner, he could see the figure from a distance. As he got nearer, he realised that it was a woman. She took a drag on her cigarette and her face lit up in the glow. It was the witness he’d met the other day. Jonas’s heart began to beat faster. What was she doing here?
    He felt uneasy about encountering her like this. He was drenched in sweat from head to foot. Mia was out with her girlfriends, so he’d finally taken the time to go for a long jog in the nearby woods and mull things over. He’d pondered on how swiftly things had changed between him and Mia—and unprovoked. No lies, no affairs, not even the usual rows about having children or buying a house. No major scenes of any kind. They still liked one another a lot. But they no longer loved one another.
    The realisation had hit him harder than the disclosure of an affair. Presumably he was to blame because, even leaving aside what had been going on in their relationship, he’d been feeling odd lately, kind of cut off from life, as if in a diving bell. It wasn’t Mia’s fault; the feeling had been dogging him for ages, a vague phantom pain that made him afraid he’d never be able to understand anyone, or be understood. He felt it at work. He felt it when he was talking to his friends. He’d felt it at the theatre.
    Sometimes he wondered whether this diving-bell feeling was normal, whether this was what it felt like to enter a midlife crisis. But, then, it was a bit early for that. He’d only recently turned thirty.
    Jonas brushed the thought away, took a deep breath and approached the woman with the cigarette.
    ‘Good evening,’ she said.
    ‘Good evening,’ Jonas replied. ‘What are you doing here, Frau…’
    ‘Please, call me Sophie.’
    Jonas knew that he should send her away; it was impertinent of her to come and waylay him in private like this. He should send her away, go inside, have a shower and forget all about this curious encounter.
    Instead he sat down.
    ‘All right then: Sophie. What are you doing here?’
    She seemed to reflect for a moment.
    ‘I’d like to know what happens next,’ she said.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘You asked me what I’m doing here. I’m here to ask you what happens next. In the…’ She faltered. ‘In the case.’
    Jonas contemplated the young woman beside him, shrouded in cigarette smoke, her long legs bent like a wounded grasshopper’s, one arm flung around her body, as if she felt cold in spite of the summer heat.
    ‘Shouldn’t we discuss this in my office tomorrow?’ he asked, knowing he was going to have to take a firmer line if he really wanted to get rid of her.
    Then why don’t I? he