‘I’ve lost my son too,’ she said. ‘He drowned himself. Or at least we think he did, but it’s not certain. There’s something very strange going on which we don’t understand. It happened just a few weeks ago. He was on a trip with some friends, and when they woke up in the morning he was gone. That’s what they said. The police came to my house yesterday,’ she said. ‘They told me something new and I got really scared.’
She grew more animated because Yoo Van Chau did not look as if she was about to stop her.
‘He went to the same party, in December. Out at Skjæret, near Åkerøy. He was there with Kim.’
Total silence followed. Yoo made a move towards Ingerid and placed a hand on her arm. Her eyes were huge and shining.
‘Now they’re both dead,’ Ingerid said. ‘Do you understand what happened at that party?’
‘Please come in,’ Yoo said. She stepped aside; the hallway was narrow. The moment they entered the living room Ingerid spotted the photograph on the chest of drawers. For a while she studied the young Vietnamese man.
‘You’ve lost a handsome boy,’ she said.
Yoo placed a hand on her heart. She would keep all the beautiful words spoken about Kim in there and carry them with her.
‘Jon was very fair,’ Ingerid said. ‘But he was also slender, and he was the smallest. Of the three of them,’ she explained. ‘You know, Axel and Reilly. Have you met Axel and Reilly? His friends?’
‘No,’ Yoo said. ‘I haven’t met them. But they were the ones who gave Kim a lift home. They drove him as far as the letterboxes. That’s what they told the police. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know anything any more.’ Suddenly a thought occurred to her. ‘Was your son in that car?’
‘Yes,’ Ingerid said. ‘He was in the car.’ She felt utterly desolate. Now that they had arrived at the unpleasant part, the incident she was still unclear about, her strength deserted her. ‘Please may I sit down?’
Yoo gestured towards the sofa. She slipped into an armchair with an elegance which reminded Ingerid of a swan gliding on water.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ Ingerid said. ‘I don’t know what Jon was mixed up in, and I can barely look you in the eye, but I have to. It pains me to think that Jon might have done something illegal. He was a decent lad. He knew the difference between right and wrong, I’m absolutely convinced of that, but there were several of them in the car that night, and they had been drinking. Jon died in the middle of September,’ she said. ‘He was found at the bottom of the lake they call Dead Water.’
‘Dead Water?’ Yoo said.
‘Your son was found in a lake too,’ Ingerid said. ‘It all means something. I believe that now.’
She was starting to become distressed and had to compose herself.
‘Jon left behind a diary,’ she said. ‘He writes page after page about how guilty he feels. That he doesn’t deserve to live. I think it has to do with Kim. That’s why I wanted to meet you. We have to find out what happened that night.’
Yoo listened quietly. She had a serenity which made Ingerid relax her shoulders.
‘Jon was in hospital,’ she explained. ‘He had had a nervous breakdown. But he never mentioned that he was planning to kill himself, and I still find it hard to believe. When someone commits suicide, strong forces are involved. But did they really come from inside him? Or was it something external that killed him? This is what troubles me.’
‘Kim got into a car,’ Yoo said, ‘because he wanted to go to a party. There were two girls in it. I wonder who they were and what they were thinking when they saw him standing by the side of the road. I was sitting in this chair as they drove off. I should have taken better care of him.’
‘You can’t babysit a seventeen-year-old,’ Ingerid said. ‘They’re off on their own. They get mixed up in things. Surely that’s not our fault?’
‘That’s not our fault,’ Yoo agreed.
They looked each other in the eye.
‘But I’m still convinced that someone out there is guilty of something, and I want that guilt apportioned,’ Ingerid said.
‘What are we going to do?’ Yoo whispered.
Ingerid gave her a triumphant look. ‘Jon’s friends, Axel and Reilly. They’re hiding something. In Jon’s diary it’s clear that something happened, something got out of control. Do you follow? Something is going on behind our backs.’
Yoo leaned forward in her armchair, listening.
‘What scares me the most,’ Ingerid said, ‘is that the police won’t be able to arrest them. Because it gets harder after such a long period of time and because they haven’t found any evidence, you know, as Kim was in the water for so long. But I can’t bear doing nothing, I have to do something. We can’t beat them up, but we can scare the living daylights out of them.’
Yoo Van Chau was thrilled to have found someone who felt the same way.
‘I’m thinking of inventing a lie,’ Ingerid said. ‘Give them a taste of their own medicine. I want to give them a wake-up call.’
‘A wake-up call?’
‘An anonymous letter,’ Ingerid said, ‘which will make them think that someone is on to them. That’s what they’re scared of, isn’t it, that someone suspects them? You do and I do, and I want them to know that.’
Yoo clenched her fists in her lap; her cheeks were flushed. ‘We’ll write a letter,’ she said, ‘but you need to write it. I make so many mistakes. Speaking Norwegian is no problem but writing it is difficult. I’ll get some paper.’
Yoo leapt up from her chair and went over to the chest of drawers where Kim’s photograph stood. Suddenly she waved her fist in the air. ‘We’ll get them,’ she said.
She opened one of the drawers and rummaged around. Then she returned with pen and paper. Ingerid took them.
‘It must be short,’ she said, ‘and to the point. It must be menacing.’
Yoo felt vengeance fill her heart, and it was true what they said: revenge was sweet. Ingerid started scribbling. She crossed her scrawl out and wrote something else. Yoo looked like a child expecting an exciting present. She perched on the edge of her armchair and craned her neck. Ingerid crossed her words out again, frowned and tore off the sheet. Eventually she frowned with determination and wrote without hesitation. Then she pushed the pad across the coffee table.
WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
WE ARE WATCHING YOU.
‘Where do we send it?’ Yoo asked.
‘To Reilly,’ Ingerid said. ‘Reilly is weaker.’
Afterwards Yoo retrieved an atlas from the bookcase.
She pointed as she explained to Ingerid, ‘Look, that’s China, Laos and Cambodia. Here’s the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. And this’, she said, ‘is Vietnam.’
The small country was reproduced in purple. North-west of Hanoi lay the town of Yen Bai. She drew a long line with the tip of her finger up to Norway.
‘We had to leave it all behind,’ she said, ‘when my husband got sick and died, and we were all alone.’
Then Ingerid pointed to Italy, which was reproduced in pink. She placed her finger on Naples.
‘Jon’s father lives here,’ she explained. ‘He left when Jon was a little boy. One day he just packed his bags and vanished. Then there was only Jon and me.’
Yoo put the atlas away.
‘Our sons are dead,’ Ingerid said, ‘but we’re not. I want to go outside in the wind. Do you have some stale bread so we can feed the ducks? Put on a warm coat.’
Yoo quickly went to the kitchen to fetch some bread. When they got outside they were hit by an icy blast.
‘As if grief weren’t bad enough,’ Ingerid said, ‘the gods have sent us a storm.’
They clung to each other as they walked. No one else had ventured out in the cold weather. It took them half an hour to walk to the pond. They found a bench by the water’s edge and Yoo took the bag of bread from her handbag. The ducks heard the rustling and zoomed in on them like small ships in a dense feather-clad fan formation. Their orange feet paddled energetically in the water.