She stopped by the bed.

She undid the dress, three buttons at the back, rolled it down over her hips and let it fall to the floor.

Her bra and panties were black lace, just as he wanted and he had brought them personally, making her promise to use them only for him. Only him.

The moment he lay down on top of her, she no longer had a body.

That was what she did. It was what she always did.

She thought of home, about the past and all the things she missed and had missed every single day since she came here.

She was not there, she had absented herself. Here she was just a face with no body. She had no neck, no breasts, no crotch, no legs.

So when he was rough, when he forced himself into her from behind, when her anus was bleeding, it wasn’t happening to her. She was elsewhere, having left only her head there, singing Lydia Grajauskas to a tune she had learnt long ago.

It was raining as he drove into the empty car park.

It was the kind of summer when people held their breath when they woke up and crept over to the bedroom window, hoping that today, today the sun would be beating against the slats of the venetian blinds. It was the kind of summer when instead the rain played freely outside. Every morning weary eyes would give up hope as they scanned the greyness, while the mind registered the tapping on the window pane.

Ewert Grens sighed. He parked the car, turned the engine off, but stayed in the driver’s seat until it was impossible to see out and the raindrops were a steady flow that obscured everything. He couldn’t be bothered to move. He didn’t want to. Unease crawled all over him; reluctance tugged at whatever there was to catch. Another week had passed and he had almost forgotten about her.