This Should Be Written in the Present Tense

19

To help me fall asleep I’d started visualising two guards on the bungalow’s front step. There had to be two so they could come to each other’s aid in an emergency. Sometimes one of them stood by the garden gate, it changed a bit. For weeks I’d been tossing and turning. Whenever I managed to sleep I had nightmares about murders and ferries that sank. Ice drifts, and people who couldn’t be trusted. I woke up all sweaty in my pyjamas, fumbling with the buttons under the duvet until eventually I had to sit up to take them off. I put the light on and found a T-shirt in the cupboard, went to the kitchen and drank some water out of a big glass, sat down in the armchair in the front room. I thought about getting a pet of some sort, or at least some curtains. But in the morning, when it got light and the day got started, it never seemed important any more. I sat there knowing I wouldn’t buy curtain material the next day either. I’d actually seen some that would have been all right, on the fourth floor of Daells Varehus, some unbleached linen. The girl came up and asked if I needed help. She seemed familiar, a young girl with unusually wide nostrils. She moved some rolls of fabric aside so I could have a better look, then looked at me with a smile.

‘Didn’t you used to go to school in Næstved?’ she said.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Me too. You won’t remember me, though. I was a year below.’

‘Oh, but I thought I recognised you.’

‘My hair’s different now,’ she said, and tossed her head. A strand got stuck in the corner of her mouth, she blew it away. ‘Pff. Have you moved here as well?’

‘No. I live in Glumsø.’

‘Oh, right, just out for the day, then?’

‘You could say.’

‘I’m reading psychology, as you can see,’ she said with a laugh, and I laughed too. I put my hand on the roll and felt the fabric, even though I knew I wasn’t going to buy any.

‘Is it for curtains?’ she said.

‘That’s what I was thinking. But I think I’ll wait a bit.’

‘You should get some blinds instead, they’re much easier.’

‘Maybe I should,’ I said, and nodded. I put my hands in my pockets and she moved the top rolls back into place.

‘Have a nice day out,’ she said.

I waved to her from the stairs, then went up to the cafeteria and had a piece of Othello cake and a cup of coffee, it was nearly twelve so it was lunch of a sort. I was having these cravings for sweets, I think it had to do with being tired. I ate too much rye bread with brown sugar on if I had nothing else in, even at night. It was doing me no good, the energy left me again as quickly as it came.

I sat in the armchair with my legs up underneath me. I’d stopped sweating by then. I decided to stay at home the next day and get a grip on things. Make an omelette for breakfast and squeeze some oranges. Draw up a plan for all the jobs I needed to do. Hoover and go to the library, find some self-help books. They had to have something on sleeping problems. I had a feeling I needed help in other areas as well, but I didn’t know which. When I covered my ears with my hands there was a rushing noise inside me that sounded like a whole shoreline. It wasn’t worrying in itself. But I had this little flutter under my breastbone, it felt like homesickness. Perhaps it was just acid reflux.