Tinna stood up on her swing to get a better view. She held on tight, dizzy from standing up so quickly. When she closed her eyes the unpleasant feeling passed, as always. She reminded herself that it was a good sign to get dizzy, it was almost equal to passing out and that meant the body was burning fat. When Tinna opened her eyes again the men with the stretcher had gone into the house and there was no movement to be seen outside it. The ambulance was parked right in front of the house, blocking her view of the door. She stretched herself as high as she could, trying to see if the door was open, but with no luck. Should she go home or wait for the ladyto be carried out? She was in no rush to go home; no one was there, her mother worked until five and didn’t get any break even though it was a staff day at Tinna’s school. There was nothing waiting for her at home.
She bent her knees and swung standing up, without particularly intending to do so. It was good to feel the air playing through her hair and she sped up a bit, only to slow down immediately when she remembered that the air was not her friend. Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to settle the swing. As soon as it stopped she felt immediately better, and wondered what she should say to the lady, how she could put into words that she knew who she was for real. Tinna smiled to herself. The lady would be surprised and was sure to be happy, too. It was still stuck in her memory how sad I he lady had been when her father had reacted so terribly to what she was trying to tell him. Her dad was a real idiot. A grumpy, drunken idiot who didn’t understand Tinna, any more than her mother did. She was a lot worse, talking constantly about food, food, food and how Tinna had to eat, and sometimes she even cried. So Tinna always preferred to go to her father’s every other weekend because he didn’t expect anything from her. He told her she ought to eat but then didn’t pay any more attention to whether she did or not, unlike her mother. That was fine by her. Her dad was so uninterested in Tinna that he hadn’t even caught on that she’d heard everything that had passed between him and the lady the night she came to visit. Tinna had let herself in without her father or the visitor being aware of it, and the anger in her dad’s voice made her even keener not to draw attention to herself. She knew how to make herself inconspicuous, especially since that was her goaclass="underline" in the end, she would become invisible. If she had already reached that goal she would have been able to step between them and watch the lines on their faces and their body language as they argued. ‘But she wasn’t quite that good yet, so she settled for sneaking to the sitting-room door and listening in on their conversation. When they finished she went out again and pretended to be arriving just as the lady was leaving the house. Her father was unusually sulky when he let her in, but she acted as if nothing were wrong and in the end he returned to normal, not caring about anything but the game on television.
The lady had no more idea than her father that Tinna had listened in; perhaps she had no idea at all that she even existed. Unlike Tinna’s father, however, she would be happy to discover that Tinna had heard what had passed between them and would no doubt want to get to know her better. Tinna had got her name and telephone number from a note that she’d left behind on the table for Tinna’s father, so that he could contact her later. That had turned out to be a work of patience since her dad had torn the paper to pieces and thrown them on the floor, so Tinna had to piece together the tatters just to be able to read what was written there. Once she had the woman’s name and telephone number it was easy to find her address. Tinna had sometimes come here just to watch the house without particularly knowing why or what she was hoping to find. The evening before, things had finally been different, and Tinna had watched with great interest. In fact little had actually happened, but maybe all would be explained later. She thought about the note that had blown away on the wind and got stuck in the shrubbery. Tinna had taken it and hidden it at home. It mattered. She knew that for sure – just not why or how. But it would come to light someday.
She sat back down in the swing and hooked her delicate elbows around the brown chains. The smell of iron on her palms reminded her of last summer, when she had tried to swing right over the bar, certain that by doing so she would burn a thousand calories. She still had an ugly scar on her right foot after the attempt failed miserably. The air then hadn’t made her fatter, but thinner. It made it all so difficult the rules kept changing, and Tinna had to be constantly on the look-out if she didn’t want to become fat, fatter, fattest.
She pricked up her ears as the sound of men’s voices came from across the street. She stood up again in the swing to see if the woman would be carried into the ambulance, but was careful in case she got dizzy and fell off. She didn’t want to miss this. First a policeman appeared, walked ahead of the paramedics and opened the door to the ambulance. They followed with the stretcher, and the girl stiffened. She squinted and shook herself. Maybe there was an explanation for this?
Maybe the woman was ill and they didn’t want her to get cold? She jumped from the swing and ran over to the pavement. The policeman who stood there holding open the back door of the ambulance noticed her and waved her away. ‘There’s nothing to see here. Go home,’ he called.
Tinna didn’t answer. In general she was afraid of male authority figures, whether they were doctors, headmasters, bus drivers, or others who wanted to boss her around in some way. Now, however, she felt as if the policeman was not actually there, had nothing to do with her. It was almost as if he were a 3D image on a screen, less real than the paramedics she was staring at. Tinna stood open-mouthed, her eyes glued to the white blanket covering the woman on the stretcher. She didn’t move. The woman didn’t have a cold. She was dead, and with her Tinna’s hope of another, better life in which she was beautiful and adored. The woman could make people beautiful. She had said so. Tinna turned on her heel and ran away, without thinking where she was going. If she ran fast enough she could maybe go faster than her thoughts, and get rid of the uncomfortable idea that her father might have done the woman some harm. It would not have been the first time. Or else it had been the visitor who had snuck out of the house, the one whose note it was. Tinna pushed everything from her mind except for the thought that she was now burning calories. Burn, burn, burn.
‘Dead, you say,’ repeated Gudni, frowning thoughtfully. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His interlocutor was on the phone, so he didn’t need to hold his expressions in check, although he had been taught at the start of his career to remain as poker-faced as possible, and never to give any indication of his thoughts. For Gudni this had never proven to be especially difficult, but sometimes it was still good to be able to sit alone and allow disappointment, or more rarely, happiness, to find its natural outlet. ‘How did she die?’
‘The autopsy hasn’t been done but it looks as if she committed suicide,’ replied Stefán. It wasn’t possible to tell from his voice whether he thought this tiresome or tragic, or indeed whether it affected him at all. Perhaps such things were bread and butter for the police in Reykjavik. ‘We’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose. I just heard and thought I should let you know. I obviously didn’t go to the scene myself, so I don’t know anything more at the moment. I’m leaving tomorrow and then hopefully I’ll get some more news.’
‘Where was she found?’ Gudni asked. He would not have considered Alda likely to resort to such desperate measures, but then again he had only known her as a child and a teenager. She had had everything going for her then, both beauty and intelligence. Naturally, though, things could have changed, and perhaps her life had taken a turn for the worse. He hoped this was not the case, but if it turned out to be so, he sincerely hoped that her fate was not tied to events in the Islands long past.