She felt a wave of nausea and pressed a fist against her mouth. At the hospital, there was nothing gruesome about somebody who had just passed away; it was simply sad. But the bodies of deceased patients were treated with respect, while in the world of murder and manslaughter, things were very different. Until recently, she had only known about that world from TV shows and books, violent fictions that scarcely affected her. That scene in Breaking Bad, for example, where the corpse gets dissolved in acid and has to be more or less mopped up afterward—she had found it ingenious and fascinating rather than horrifying or repugnant. Only now did she realize that even the best fiction was nothing like the raw, dirty reality.

Helen rubbed her upper arms. The temperature seemed to have dropped—as if the piercing cold from the freezer had gradually seeped through the rest of the house.

When she turned around, she saw a police car pulling up by the front door.

9

9

“Thanks for the lesson. It was really great.” Naomi leaned toward him and, before he knew what was happening, planted a kiss on his cheek. It was slightly moist, dangerously close to his mouth, and a little too long to be just friendly.

“I’m looking forward to Saturday.” His voice sounded a bit hoarse. He held her gaze.

“Me too.” Her hand moved hesitantly toward the door handle.

“That Sara, how do you know her, anyway?”

“From tennis camp last summer.” Naomi shifted her hand from the door handle to the zipper on her tight-fitting cardigan. She played with it as she told Ralf about the bottles of expensive liquor that Sara had brought with her from home. That supply of alcohol had made her endlessly popular.

Ralf did his best to listen attentively. He glanced at Naomi’s lips—soft and strong at the same time—and her tongue, which occasionally came into view between her teeth whenever she pronounced a word beginning with th. With all his might, he tried not to stare too much at her breasts. Occasionally, he looked away, feigning indifference, and breathed in her scent. When he was with Naomi, he almost forgot about Mikey and the disaster that awaited them both. He had long since stopped thinking about his mother and her tiresome “get my son back on track” projects.

“Sara is the reason I know Brian.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Brian and Sara were together at one point. Only very briefly, though.”

“Weird.” Sara was stunningly beautiful, but with her cool, calculating attitude, she didn’t seem like Brian’s type at all. He tended to go for more obedient girls. Uncritical ones, ideally. Brian’s ego was easily wounded. “He never mentioned her to me.”

“No, she made him swear not to tell anyone about it. She lost her virginity to him, at the start of summer vacation.” Naomi looked at him with alarm. “Shit, you won’t tell anybody else, will you?”