This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

12

The first time I left home I moved in with Dorte. I was in my second year at the gymnasium school, it had been a harsh winter. Every day I cycled two kilometres the back way along the lane between the fields to the bus stop. My wet hair froze into icicles. I got the bus to Næstved station, from there a city bus ran every twenty minutes. Dorte thought it was too hard on me. She’d got herself a two-bedroom flat with a balcony in the centre of Næstved.

In the mornings when I got up the coffee maker was all ready. She wrote me notes on the filter, and put my mug out on a tray along with butter and jam. I made toast and sat down in the living room, I didn’t need to get going until the last minute. Sometimes she’d get stuck with the crossword and leave it for me, her pencil lying like a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. In the evenings we played charades. Dorte’s efforts had us in stitches, we laughed so much the downstairs neighbour phoned to complain.

‘Yes, all right, you miserable old bat,’ said Dorte, almost before she’d put down the receiver, and then we reached for the blankets and laughed hysterically into the wool until it set our teeth on edge.

Dorte was convinced that she was the one who had introduced fake fur coats to mid and southern Sjælland. She’d had four at one stage, but the pink one was worn out and she’d given the long one away to a homeless person. I got the one with Mickey Mouse on it. We stood in her bedroom in front of the mirror.

‘You can have it, it suits you,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t worn it for a year get rid, that’s what I say.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Funeral outfits excepted.’

I did another twirl by the mirror, but then the doorbell rang, and it was my mum. She’d been to the ear, nose and throat specialist and now she was stopping by with a couple of books she thought I might have forgotten. She’d had her hair done, too, Dorte complimented her on it. We stood for a bit in the hall. They couldn’t find a parking space, my dad was waiting outside. I hadn’t missed the books, and my mum didn’t mention the fur coat. Dorte didn’t say anything about the car park round the back either, but she had to be getting back to the shop, she’d only popped home for an hour.

I wasn’t keen on that coat. I wore my old woollen one instead, and hung the fur outside on the balcony so it would be wet with snow when Dorte came home at six. When the front door opened a smell of fried onions filled the air. She put the food in the oven to warm and changed into her jogging pants, then drew her legs up underneath her on the sofa next to me.

‘Don’t you wear it much?’ she said.

‘Not really.’

‘Tell you what, we’ll give it to Vagn’s sister. I think it’s more her style.’

I hadn’t heard about Vagn before, but he came round that same evening. He had funny teeth, and a month later Dorte gave up the lease. I moved back home in the middle of April, the woods were starred with thimbleweed. I biked along the track behind the lane in the late afternoons with my bag on the pannier rack. Everything smelled of soil and sprouting plants, and my mum and dad waved hello from wherever they happened to be in the garden. We never mentioned Dorte all summer. I cycled out to see her in Skelby on the sly and bought new potatoes to take with me from a stall by the road. Vagn lay at her feet on the patio with a cigarette protruding from his front teeth. The potatoes made me feel stupid.

But then autumn and winter came, and before I’d left school Dorte was back in our kitchen on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my mum at the worktop with her back to us, endlessly stirring a pot with some utensil or other.