Free The Trap by Melanie Raabe, Imogen Taylor Page B

his weak powers of imagination he was unable to envisage anything else.
    ‘It’s so easy to ridicule,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s so easy to belittle people like Britta—to call them do-gooders. But Britta really was that way: not a do-gooder, but someone who actually did good.’
    Jonas looked at her, trying to picture her together with her sister. The two women were so unalike—the delicate, elfin Britta, with her long hair and who, in all the photos he’d seen of her, emanated shyness and fragility; and Sophie, with her short hair and boyish appearance, who seemed so tough in spite of all she was going through.
    ‘Stabbed seven times,’ Sophie said, and Jonas started. ‘I saw it in the paper. Can you imagine what it did to my parents, reading that?’ she asked.
    Jonas nodded his head automatically—and then shook it. He couldn’t, not really.
    ‘You have to find him,’ Sophie said.
    Jonas looked at her. The light, which had been triggered by the motion detector when he’d approached the house, went out. Sophie’s eyes gleamed in the dark. For a second, Jonas felt himself sinking into them. Sophie returned his gaze. Then the moment passed.
    ‘I’d better be going,’ she said abruptly, and stood up.
    Jonas stood too. He picked up her leather bag from the steps and handed it to her.
    ‘God, it’s heavy. What have you got in there? Weights?’
    ‘Books,’ Sophie replied, swinging the bag over her shoulder. ‘I find it comforting always having something to read with me.’
    ‘I can understand that,’
    ‘Really? Do you like reading too?’
    ‘Well, to be honest, I don’t know when I last picked up a book,’ Jonas said. ‘I don’t have the patience for novels. I used to be obsessed with poetry. Verlaine, Rimbaud, Keats—anything in that line.’
    ‘Oh God,’ Sophie groaned. ‘Right from being at school I couldn’t stand poetry. If I’d had to recite Rilke’s “The Panther” one more time in Year Nine, I think I’d have gone crazy. “Its gaze, from pacing by the passing bars / Is so worn out that it can hold no more…”’
    She shuddered in mock horror.
    Jonas had to grin.
    ‘You’re unfair to good old Rilke,’ he said. ‘Who knows, maybe one day I’ll try to convince you to give poetry another chance. You might like Whitman, or Thoreau.’ Even as he said the words, he cursed himself. What was he doing?
    ‘I’d like that,’ said Sophie.
    She turned to leave.
    ‘Thank you for your time. And sorry for bothering you.’
    She disappeared into the night. Jonas watched her go for a moment. Then he turned back and climbed the steps to the front door.
    He paused in amazement.
    The diving-bell feeling had vanished.

11
    My muscles are on fire. I’m determined to prepare myself as well as I can for D-Day. Apart from anything else, that means physical training. If I’m to stand a chance of holding out in a situation of extreme stress, I must prepare myself physically as well as mentally. A well-trained body can cope better, so I’m working out. For years there’s been a fitness studio in my basement that I hardly ever use. I was plagued with backache for a time, and got the better of it with the help of a personal trainer and disciplined weight training. Apart from that, I have never had much reason to bother about my body. I’m pretty slim and relatively fit and I couldn’t care less about my bikini figure. In my world, there are no beaches.
    It feels good working out. It’s only now that I’m beginning to reinhabit my body that I realise how much I’ve neglected it over the past years. I have been living in my head, forgetting that I also have arms, legs, shoulders, back, hands and feet.
    I work out hard. I enjoy the pain during the last round of weight-lifting—that burning, screeching feeling that tells me that I am still alive, after all. It does something to me. My body remembers different things from my brain: walks in woods and aching calves; nights of dancing and sore