The Dinosaur Feather

fill of navel gazing and bought The Apple. Iknow it might sound absurd, but suddenly I just knew that I wanted to do something with apples and furniture. It was fun,’ she said, sounding genuinely happy. ‘Building up the shop from scratch. I was thirty-eight and I was finally having fun. One of my customers, Stella, asked me if I fancied coming to the Red Mask. I knew of their parties, obviously, I had been active on the fetish scene for years, and many of the fetishists belong to both scenes, but until then the goth scene had never really appealed to me. I had joined the fetish scene purely for sex and, quite honestly, I couldn’t see the point of goth culture. But when Stella invited me, I gave it a go. Stella organises goth and fetish events and she often pops into the shop,’ she interposed and continued, ‘The goth scene changed my life. Here you’re accepted, respected and valued right away and it carries on like that, if you live and let live. Openness and tolerance towards anything outside the norm. I took to it like a fish to water. The third time I attended, I met Johannes. And do you know something?’
    Søren shook his head.
    ‘It was like meeting myself. Only as a ten years younger man. To begin with, I wasn’t sure if he was worth the effort. His lack of self-esteem. It reminded me of everything I had worked so hard to leave behind . . .’
    Søren was mesmerised by her.
    ‘But then I realised how complex he actually was. Of course, he was affected by the humiliation he had suffered as a child and, in some respects, his self-worth was like a sieve.’ She looked pensively into space. ‘However, the interesting thing about Johannes was that he had decided to break the pattern, so in some areas he was strong and determined. He hadmade up his mind not to go through life like a whipped cur, even though he had been treated like one most of his childhood. That’s why I fell in love with him. He offered me a challenge outside the bedroom, but at the same time, he could handle that I dominated him sexually. It was a very harmonious relationship.
    ‘We had been together for six months and were blissfully happy,’ she continued. ‘Then I started talking about having children. I was shocked when I realised that he didn’t want any, but we remained friends. I have always known that I wanted children. We were both very sad, but the split was inevitable.’ Susanne fell silent.
    ‘Do you have any idea what was happening within the family at that point?’ Henrik asked. Søren and Susanne turned to Henrik in unison, as though they had simultaneously remembered his presence.
    ‘You mean Johannes’s family?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I think we had only been together for around five weeks when Johannes fell out with Jørgen and consequently Janna. Johannes tried to reach out to his mother several times, but Jørgen always got in the way. It upset him, obviously. He never found the strength to stand up to his stepfather and, as an adult, his survival strategy had been to ignore Jørgen’s shit. We talked about his options. Johannes hoped Jørgen’s death might create an opening. Shortly after the funeral, he visited his mother and learned that Jørgen had disinherited him. Johannes didn’t care, but it knocked the stuffing out of him when Janna insisted he was only there for the money. That night, he closed the door to his childhood home forever. Johannes told me everything when he came home . . .’ for a moment she looked hesitantly at Søren. ‘I never met them myself, but . . .’
    ‘And yet you sound so certain when you describe them,’ Henrik objected. Søren shuffled his feet, annoyed at the interruption.
    ‘I trusted Johannes. You could do that. At some level, he was damaged by his childhood,’ she grimaced, ‘but he was a very fine human being. He made a real effort with people, and he would never have invented the scene with his mother. No one could have made up that story, and certainly not Johannes. He was far too . . . introspective.’ She looked firmly at Henrik and turned to Søren again.
    ‘I would like to pursue my question,’ Henrik insisted. Susanne looked at him as though it was highly inappropriate for him to intervene and Søren couldn’t help enjoying himself.
    ‘What if you were wrong? What if Mr and Mrs Kampe were well-meaning, decent people, and Johannes was the one who had gone off the rails?’
    ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Susanne stated. ‘I would know. And so would