Outlet Read online

  5.

  The first thing I am conscious of when I open my eyes is that I am not in a bathtub any more. The shower is on, the warm water is beating my back. I look down. An old-fashioned shower tray and a plughole without a cover. The shower tray is surrounded by a semi-transparent plastic screen which looks rather shabby.

  My heart beats faster. I did it. I bloody well did it! I am in the flat above the bookshop. The old place with the high ceilings and the old-fashioned bathroom, decorated in yellow tiles from the 1960s.

  I exhale, releasing the tension from my lungs and breath in again deeply, whilst reaching for my long wet hair. The thick mane of a twenty-year-old. Then my hands shoot to my chest. I observe them grabbing my breasts. Beautiful, firm breasts.

  I wish Evi could see me now!

  I catch my breath when I see a silhouette moving across the bathroom. A skin-coloured shadow that seems to be coming towards the shower cubicle. I automatically fold one arm across my chest the hold the other in front of my crotch. My fears come true. A hand reaches towards the cubicle door and slides it open. In the steam from the shower, Marcel's grinning face becomes visible. A stone-and-a-half younger and with half long hair. He nudges the door further open and steps inside naked, then slides the shower cubicle shut behind him.

  'Hey sweetie, are you nice and clean yet?'

  I swallow, whilst he folds his hands around my bum and pulls me against himself.' I feel his erection pushing hard against my lower tummy. His hands glide over my back and go to my breasts giving them a brutal pinch. Afterwards he presses his mouth against mine and forces his tongue in.

  I push him away roughly, so that he loses his balance, takes a step back and crashes hard against the plastic screen, which creaks at its hinges.

  He rubs his elbow where he hit it and looks at me all confused. I stare at him furiously.

  'What's up with you? Would you rather do it with Eric?'

  'Get lost,' I say quietly.

  He turns around, slides the door of the cubicle open and slams it shut behind him in frustration. Whilst I am catching my breath under the shower, I follow his silhouette moving from the bathroom into the bedroom adjacent. He is making quick movements. The skin colour disappears. There is some commotion, swearing and finally I hear the front door closing.

  'Good riddance,' I whisper to myself with satisfaction.

  I turn the shower off and slide the door of the cubicle open. I smile when I glance around the bathroom. A mirror in a green finish above the brown sink and a matching brown toilet bowl with a green mat in front of it. The yellow tiles and pictures with eastern themes on the wall.

  I take a towel off the rail and start to dry myself. Evi will just need to be patient, one day maybe I will tell her my secret. The secret of ever-lasting youth, ha ha!

  In the bedroom I put on clean underwear and a T-shirt. I walk over to the front window and peer down past the neon lights of the book shop. I see pedestrians, carrying heavy shopping bags, scurrying along the pavement and the road clogged up with rush-hour traffic. It's already dark outside. December's Christmas street-lights are flickering on my retina.

  From the bedroom I move to the kitchen, which I decorated in the theme of an American Diner. Black and white floor tiles, a neon-light flamingo and posters of American film stars on the wall; in the window a table with an aluminium top and a fridge door covered in fridge magnets depicting American cities.

  I take a satisfied look at the calendar which was a freebie from the Chinese around the corner. The red marker is pointing at 17 December. The year is 2002. I feel myself getting light-headed and pull the Ikea stool from under the table to perch on. My eyes rest on the red Cadillac phone with its curly lead standing on the far end of the table. I reach for the roof and lift it off. I know Eric's phone number by heart. Before I have time to change my mind, I dial the number. I hold the roof of the Cadillac against my ear.

  'I have got another chance and I am going to change the past' echoes through my head whilst I am listening to the phone ringing out. Just like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Everything will go differently, and Marcel will have no part in it. No part in the future and no part in the past.

  'It's Eric,' sounding flat.

  ‘Hey Eric!’ I shout, a bit too enthusiastically.

  'Janne.' I hear a sigh. 'You must stop calling me.'

  I am trying to breathe whilst feverishly trying to think of something to say. 'But Eric...'

  'You have hurt me, Janne. Are you going to keep on rubbing salt in the wound?' He is sounding bitter.

  I am calculating in my head. December 2002... When did I and Eric break up exactly? Yes, it must have been around that time. Around now. Just before Christmas I cheated on Eric with his best friend. Marcel.

  'Dammit!' I mutter. 'But listen -'

  A click and the line goes dead. Eric just hung up on me.

  I smash the roof of the Cadillac back on its base and look outside at the swarming crowd of pedestrians, cyclist and cars. Why couldn't I have arrived a couple of weeks earlier? Even a couple of days might have been enough...

  It probably has to be timed exactly with the shower, I realise. Perhaps the points in time must overlap exactly? Maybe the plugholes only form a bridge through time if I have shower on the same day and exactly the same time?

  It must be something like that. I linger a bit longer at the table. The faint buzz from the street penetrates the walls. Here in the kitchen, on the first floor, all is quiet. I hear the ticking of the clock. I get up. I can't stay here. I have to go back to give it one more try.

  Just one more. One last step backwards. I am trying to picture the bathroom from my student accommodation. It's so long ago that I have no idea any more what it looked like. I walk back through the bedroom into the bathroom. When I walk past the sink I can't help glancing into the mirror. I am looking at my nearly fifteen-year younger self. My hair is looking healthy and thick and my eyes are full of energy. Didn't I look good!

  You can't stay here, says the voice in my head, whilst I am examining my youth from every angle.

  Make up with Eric. Or just enjoy being single for a while, seize the day and when the time comes, choose a man who does want to have a family.

  I shake my head. I want to give it one more go. My student days. Those were also nice times. Still carefree. No love troubles. No hassle. I step away from the mirror, take my T-shirt and underwear off again, throw the clothes on the yellow bathroom tiles and slide the shower cubicle door open.

  6.

  Evi is bounding up the staircase with the keys of Janne's flat at the ready.

  'Didn't I ask you to be ready,' she grumbles. 'Probably still too busy in front of the mirror.'

  Evi rings the bell just for show, sticking the key in the slot at the same time and opening the front door. 'Janne?' Are you ready to leave?' She pauses at the entrance before she closes the door behind herself.

  ‘Where are you?’ says Evi, whilst she is walking across the small hallway and peeps around the corner into the kitchen.

  Evi listens and hears water running from the direction of the bathroom. 'Jesus, tell me you are not still in the shower?'

  Evi walks across the room towards the passage leading to the bedrooms and the bathroom. But with her hand on the bathroom door handle she hesitates. Suddenly she feels a nasty foreboding. What if something had happened? If she fell? Or if she reached the end of her tether and had cut her wrists open?

  Evi swallows. She would rather not be the one to discover something gruesome like that.

  For God's sake get on with it!

  Says the voice in her head. Maybe it's still not too late.

  With her heart in her throat she opens the door. The bathroom is filled with condensation. She closes her eyes for a moment, then looks into the bath, only to drop her bag on the floor in fright.

  With one step she is next to the bath. Janne is sitting on her knees with her body folded over. Her face is touching the bottom of the bath,
around the spot where the plughole must be. The water is shallow and the tap is still on.

  Evi's body is flooded by adrenaline. Quick as lightning she turns the tap off and puts her arms over the naked body of Janne. 'Janne, for goodness sake, what has happened? What have you done?'

  Energised by panic, she pulls Janne out of the bath and lays her on the towel that's lying on the floor. Janne's body is limp and for a moment she is worried she came too late. Evi looks at her face. Janne's eyes are closed and her lips are slightly parted. She puts two fingers on Janne's pulse.

  Thank God. There is a pulse. Though the blood is pumping slowly through the veins, she can definitely feel a pulse.

  She is struck by a thought: oxygen deficiency. She has nearly drowned. 'What am I supposed to do?'

  She tries mouth to mouth CPR, even though she doesn't exactly know how to do it. Lift up the chin, pinch the nose and blow. Something like that. Once, twice, three times.

  Nothing is happening. Janne's body remains limp. Evi gets her mobile out of her bag and dials the numbers with a trembling finger. Nine nine nine.

  ‘Ambulance, fire service or police?’ asks the operator on the other end of the line.

  ‘An ambulance ASAP!’

  ‘I am putting you through.’

  Evi clenches the mobile between her left ear and her shoulder and pulls Janne’s head closer to herself. ‘You are not getting away with this, Janne! You hear me? Stay with me for goodness sake!’

  7.

  I examine the filthy plughole in the shower tray. There is some hair stuck to it but there is no cover or plug with which I could close it. I press both my feet firmly on it and turn the taps on.

  The shower tray is filling with water and I shuffle my feet slightly so that they are fully blocking the outlet. This should do it. As the water level in the tray reaches the optimum height, I spread my feet apart and start staring at the swirling water. For a moment I am afraid that it won’t work, but then I am starting to feel my knees going weak and my head reeling. My heart is beating as if I was running a marathon. The process is taking its course. My body collapsing is the last thing I am aware of before I disappear through the plughole. I know that my body stays behind, but it feels like I have morphed into liquid and am flowing through the sewers back to the present.

  But this time something is different to all the other times. The flowing movement stops. I can’t go any further, can’t go back up. I am being held back by something or someone. Panic fills my shapeless body. It retracts itself into the drain pipe like a snail retreating into its shell from danger.

  When I next come to consciousness, I find myself squatting in the shower tray. At first I think that I might have gone back to the flat above the book shop. But then I observe that this shower tray is even more dirty and is full of cracks. The screen is gone as well. Instead there is a shower curtain that must have had white edging when new, but that’s now acquired a dirty yellowish brown hue and is sticking against the inside of the shower tray. I stand up, panting. I lean against the old, crumbling tiles and turn the tap off. A tap that has turned white from all the accumulated lime scale.

  The sort of shower tray that you might come across in a cheap holiday cottage somewhere abroad. Somewhere I would not go willingly. Definitely not with bare feet.

  I push the dripping shower curtain aside. An old-fashioned washing machine, a top loader. I recognise the appliance. I bought it as a bargain at a thrift-shop once. One of those machines which nearly walk away when they are spinning.

  I wring my hair out and heave a big sigh. I am back in my student accommodation. My first independent home. Well, semi-independent. I shared the flat with another student. She was allowed to use my washing machine if she also bought washing powder once in a while.

  I get the towel from the top of the washing machine and dry myself hastily before I squeeze myself along the appliance and find myself standing naked on the cold tiles of the kitchen. I sigh deeply as I take in the sight of the piles of dirty pots and plates on the work surface. No dishwasher, how did I ever cope?

  It takes some time before I begin to understand what must have happened. For some reason I couldn’t enter my own bathroom in the present. It felt like something or someone had blocked me... Instead of going back to the present I was sent straight back to the past.

  Once again into a bathroom representing a point in time from my past. The bathroom of my student years. I am shivering and start looking for my clothes. There is nothing on the washing machine and nothing in the kitchen. I walk across the cheap tiles of the hallway. I look right, into the shared sitting room. It's furnished with one sofa, one table, one TV stand and a TV. That’s about it.

  I am making my way upstairs, taking big leaps up the staircase. My bedroom is on the first floor, I could find it with my eyes shut. When I open the door and put the light on, my face breaks out in a smile. A two person mattress on worn-out blue carpet, with a blanket and a heap of clothes strewn all over it. Against the wall is a cabinet with my text books spilling out of it. A desk - also from the thrift-shop - is pushed into a corner. Some books are lying on top of it for an exam period that seems to be approaching.

  I close the door behind me and drop the towel on the floor. I examine my body in the vertical mirror stuck to the inside of my door.

  Wow! I look even better than in the days when I lived above the bookshop! Slim, with full breasts and a healthy mop of hair. Hair down to my shoulders. A flat tummy. A narrow band of perfectly trimmed pubic hair. Smooth and toned legs without cellulite. Didn’t I look great as a student! And wasn’t I so needlessly critical about my looks! I take a couple of steps towards the mirror. My breath leaves a patch of condensation on the cold surface before I give my reflection a kiss.

  ‘Janne, weren't you a hot chick,’ I whisper to myself.

  And then you go and stress about that stupid Marcel. Or even Eric. Girl, you could get any man. Whilst I am staring at the mirror, I see a tear spilling out of my left eye and rolling down my cheek. I feel hollow inside.

  Damn! Weren't these the happiest days of my life?

  I feel like all I need is to have a good chat with someone who is really close to me. Like Evi. But these are the nineties. It will take years before I meet Evi at work. But if I could choose again, it’s very unlikely that I would make the same career choices.

  I turn around at glance around the room. The wardrobes at the head-end of the mattress where I sleep. The silly little reading lights from Ikea. The small fish tank with two gold fish. My gaze falls upon the digital radio alarm clock. 18:17.

  Evi must have arrived at my house ages ago. She has a key. She has probably gone inside. I feel my stomach clenching when I imagine Evi walking through my flat, calling out my name. In all probability, she will open the bathroom door. And what will she find?

  I don’t dare to think about it. My body, my forty-one-year-old body, doubled up in the bath tub. And what will Evi think when she sees me? What is she going to do?

  I turn around again. A white face is looking back at me from the mirror. With dark shadows under the eyes. My eyes are moving when I tell them to, but still it feels like it’s a stranger looking back at me.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I mouth. I pull the door open and fly downstairs taking three or four steps at a time. I run through the hallway and across the cold floor tiles of the kitchen and rummage among the cutlery and bits of pasta in the sink, looking for the black rubber plug. With a quick pull I yank it off its chain. I worm myself past the open door and the washing machine into the shower and insert the plug into the outlet. I open the tap again. This time I don’t even bother turning the warm tap on. I watch as the cold water licks my feet; I am so lost in my thoughts that I can’t even feel it.

  I know only that I have to go back. To return before it becomes impossible.

  8.

  Sitting on the toilet lid, Evi is taking in the scene that’s unfolding. Two paramedics, dressed in green and bright yellow are carry
ing Janne out of the bathroom on a stretcher.

  The second paramedic turns around to Evi. ‘Are you going to drive behind us?’

  Evi nods. The tears are pricking her eyes. She was looking forward to a good old-fashioned girls’ night out with Janne, but now look at this.

  Looks like your friend has lapsed into a coma, they said. Her body’s primary functions seem to be working, but she is not conscious. Further examinations at the hospital will be necessary to find out what exactly is going on.

  Evi stands up slowly, as the paramedics and the stretcher disappear down the entrance hall. She picks up her bag from the floor and switches off the light.

  ‘Evi...’ she hears coming from an angle behind her. ‘Help me...’ She feels the hair standing up on the back of her neck. She turns around towards the bath tub and stares into the plughole, whilst holding her breath. It was faint, but it sounded definitely like a voice. A voice from the depths. She shakes her head and hurries out of the flat, trying to catch up with the paramedics.

  9.

  I open one eye, but I already know that I have failed. The obstacle was there again and prevented me returning to my present-day bathroom. I even heard the voice of Evi, I think. I called her name, to no avail. I got sucked down the outlet again and spat out in another dimension of time.

  I open both eyes and recognise immediately where I am. Even further back in the past. In the first bathroom I can remember. I feel incredibly light. I am standing in a shower tray that's far too big, behind a shower screen that folds like a harmonica. An old-fashioned soap rack on the wall. An outdated sink with a round mirror above it and a brown threadbare bathmat on the floor. The bathroom from my childhood.

  I look at my own feet in the water. The feet of a little girl. Small and smooth. I am seven years old again and I am taking a shower before bedtime. I can hear my mum’s voice coming into the bathroom from the kitchen. She is talking to my father. Or, better put: she is shouting at my father. They are arguing.