Читать книгу The Stonecutter - Camilla Lackberg - Страница 14

It wasn’t the first time Agnes had sneaked out of the house. It was so easy. She just opened the window, climbed out on the roof and down the tree, whose thick crown was right next to the house. It was a piece of cake. But after careful consideration she’d decided not to wear a dress, which could make tree-climbing difficult. Instead she chose a pair of trousers with narrow legs that hugged her thighs.

She felt as if driven by an enormous wave, which she neither wanted to, nor could resist. It was both frightening and pleasant to feel such strong feelings for someone, and she realized that the fleeting infatuations she had previously taken seriously had been nothing but child’s play. What she felt now were the emotions of a grown woman, and they were more powerful than she could ever have imagined. During the many hours she’d spent pondering since that morning, she had occasionally been clear-sighted enough to understand that a longing for forbidden fruit was largely responsible for the heat in her breast. Nevertheless, the feeling was real, and she was not in the habit of denying herself anything. She was not about to start now, even though she had no precise plan. Only an awareness of what she wanted, and she wanted it now. Consequences were not something she ever took into consideration, and after all, things had always tended to work out for her, so why wouldn’t they now?

She did not even entertain the notion that Anders might not want her. To this day she had never met a man who was indifferent to her. Men were like apples on a tree, and she only needed to reach out her hand to pick them, though she was inclined to admit that this apple might present a slightly greater risk than most. She had kissed married men without her father’s knowledge, and in some instances had even gone farther than that, but they were all safer than the man she was about to meet. At least they belonged to the same class as she did. Even though it might have initially caused a scandal if her relations with any of them had come out, such affairs would have been regarded with a certain indulgence. But a man from the working class. A stonecutter. No one even dared think such a thought. It simply would never occur to them.

But she was tired of men from her own class. Spineless, pale, with limp handshakes and shrill voices. None of them was a man in the same way as the man she was about to meet. She shivered when she remembered the feeling of his callused hand against hers.

It hadn’t been easy to find out where he lived. Not without arousing suspicion. But a glance at the wage slips during an unguarded moment had provided his address, and then she had been able to work out which room was his by peering in the windows.

The first pebble produced no response, and she waited a moment, afraid of waking the old landlady. But no one moved inside the house. She paused to preen in the ethereal moonlight. She had chosen simple, dark clothing so as not to emphasize the difference in their social standing. For that reason she had also plaited her hair and wound it atop her head in one of the simple hairdos that were common among the working-class women. Pleased with the result, she picked up another pebble from the gravel walkway and tossed it against the window. Now she saw a shadow moving inside, and her heart skipped a beat. The euphoria of the chase pumped adrenaline into her body, and Agnes felt her cheeks flush. When he opened the window, puzzled, she sneaked behind the lilac bush that partly covered the window and took a deep breath. The hunt was on.