The Inspector and Silence

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The girl in bed number twelve woke up early.

A summer morning. The gentle light of dawn sneaked in through the inadequate curtains. Started thawing out the night, a bit at a time. Levering up the darkness out of corners, prying into the other girls’ innocent dreams. Their contented sniffling. She lay there for a while, listening to them. Trying to identify them. Kathrine was lying on her back as usual, snoring gently through her open mouth. Belle was hissing like a snake. To her right, Marieke was puffing away; one arm was dangling down by the side of the bed, and her mop of red hair was spread like a fan over her pillow. A drop of saliva trembled in the corner of her mouth – perhaps she should creep over to her and use a corner of the sheet to wipe it away? But she desisted.

She would have liked to tell Marieke what she was going to do. Marieke if nobody else. Say something; leave a message, anything. But she still hadn’t made up her mind the previous evening. She’d been humming and hawing. It wasn’t an easy decision to take. She’d lain there, brooding over it; tossing and turning and making the iron-framed bed groan and creak until well into the night – both Marieke and Ruth had wondered if she was ill, and Belle had begged her several times to stop making such a row.

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