Page 195 of The Sleepwalker

The air was bitterly cold, and the lid to the bin had frozen shut. Erik had to yank it several times before it eventually opened.

Rather than go straight back inside, he walked around the house through the dark garden, gazing towards the bright kitchen where Moa had started to clear the table. Erik turned to the fence. The dead leaves on the bushes behind the overgrown compost heap rustled softly. He kept going and felt a shiver down his spine when he saw the footprints in the thin dusting of snow on the grass by the apple tree.

Someone really had been standing there, watching them.

Erik headed inside and locked the door, drawing the thin curtains as soon as he returned to the kitchen.

They took their wine through to the living room and sat facing each other on the sofa, leaning back against the armrests. Erikput on a Charlie Parker record, and the soft, subdued music made it feel as though they were in a jazz club in the 1940s.

Moa dozed off as Erik talked about the phenomenon of hypnotic resonance, where the hypnotist themselves enters a kind of trance. He tipped his head back and thought about pulling a blanket over her or getting up to load the dishwasher, but when he next opened his eyes it was seven in the morning.

They had both slept all night on the sofa.

‘We must’ve been tired last night,’ she says now, pouring herself another coffee.

‘I liked that we slept so well together.’

‘Just one thing .?.?. I need to know if you thought I was a bit too “forward” last time,’ she says, looking up at him. ‘When I basically threw myself at you and started massaging your shoulders .?.?.’

‘What? No. Stop.’

‘You yelped the minute I touched you,’ she continues, wiping down the table.

‘I didn’tyelp,’ Erik protests with a smile.

‘Ay!’ she imitates him as she hangs up the cloth.

‘No, no, it’s just that I actually have a bit of nerve damage there, from an old knife wound.’

‘On your shoulder?’ she asks.

‘See?’ he says, unbuttoning his shirt to show her the scar.

‘Sorry, but that doesn’tlooklike a knife wound,’ she says with a broad smile.

He turns around and shows her the exit hole on his back.

‘OK, wow! What happened?’

‘It was a patient. Or rather, a client who wasn’t exactly happy with my therapy.’

‘What? Was she trying to kill you?’

‘It was a he, and I don’t know .?.?. I don’t think so. Not really.’

‘Did he bring the knife with him?’

‘No, it was a letter opener from my desk.’

‘OK, I need to see this!’

They get up, and she follows him through to his office. He uses the room to see patients, and it has its own separate entrance. Through the window, the rear of the house is visible, the winter grass glittering.

Erik turns on the Danish desk lamp. The soft glow illuminates the stacks of books and journals, his filing cabinet, armchair and brown leather daybed.

‘My dissatisfied client grabbed this,’ he says, handing her the Spanish knife from the pen pot beside the computer.

‘You’re kidding,’ she says, weighing the long, slim blade in her hand for a moment before passing it back.