And Cressida told me a great deal over the summer. Carefully. On the black phone. And she told me one thing that I did not understand until the Sunday morning.
She said: “The morning after the first bad one, he gave me a present. Very expensive. Makeup. And he said, Mother’s coming for lunch, cover that and act normal. Same words, Liesel. I’d bet my house on it.”
And I thought she was exaggerating. I actually thought that.
And the rest of that night, which I spent in the bathroom.
I did not sleep. I sat on the floor with my back against the bath and the black phone in my lap, and Margit and I exchanged about forty messages between half eleven and four.
She asked me three things, in this order, and she asked them every twenty minutes until it got light.
Are you safe right now. Is he asleep. Do you need me to call someone.
And every twenty minutes I typed yes, yes, no.
And at about two, she sent something that was not a question.
***You don’t have to decide anything tonight. Tonight you just have to get to morning.***
And I sat there and understood that I had been deciding things for four months. Dates, transfers, bags, lies to tell him about where I had been. Every single day since April I had been running a project.
