Light seeped in through the gap below the curtains. She lay there studying the pattern on the wallpaper. Small apple blossoms moving upwards, a film that rolled and rolled up towards the ceiling. And somewhere between them the image of Mailin again. Standing by her bed in the blue pyjamas.
Liss sits up.
What is it?
Mailin puts a finger to her mouth. Then she turns and locks the door.
Tell me what it is, Mailin.
Her sister stands in the dark, listening. Then she creeps into bed, puts an arm around Liss.
I’ll look after you, Liss. Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you.
She got up and went to the bathroom. Put her finger down her throat and emptied out the small amount that was in her stomach. Went back to bed. Wrapped the duvet around herself. The photo of Mailin at the bus stop. Must be Oslo. Looked to be quite recent. Who had taken it? She couldn’t ask Zako about it. He knew already that this was the weak spot he had been looking for. Did he realise just how weak it was? If she revealed that, she would lose control. If she gave in to fear, she would start to fear everything. She sat up suddenly, found the mobile in the bag that was hanging over the chair, slid down by the wall under the window, punched in the number. It rang three times before she got an answer.
– Liss? Mailin’s voice was full of sleep. – Has something happened?
Liss breathed deeply. – No, no… She glanced at the clock on the TV. It showed 6.20. – Sorry, I didn’t realise how early it was. I’ll call again later.
– Stop it, you’ve already woken me. Was going to get up early anyway. Looks like good skiing conditions out today.
Liss could imagine it. The ski trail emerging on to the marsh between the pine trees. The wind in the treetops. Otherwise still.
– Wish I could go with you.
Mailin yawned. – Coming home for Christmas after all?
– Don’t think so…
– Couldn’t you use a little break, Liss?
It was scary how often what Mailin said was exactly right.
– Break? That’s not exactly what I need.
She did need a break. But she had nowhere to go. At least not in Norway. That wasn’t home any more. Would never be again.
– Don’t try to change my mind, Mailin.
She heard a grunt in the background, a man. – Is he with you, your friend?
Mailin gave a quick laugh.
– Angling, are we? Trying to get me to admit there’s someone other than him here? A lover? A new man in my life?
– Is there?
– You know how boring I am. The man lying beside me is still called Viljam. Just as he has been these last two years…
– He’s been lying beside you for two years?
– Ha ha. Liss, you don’t call me at six thirty on a Saturday morning to make feeble jokes. Now please, tell me what’s the matter.
She’d lain awake half the night unable to shake off the thought that someone was threatening her sister. Something to do with Zako and that photo… Going to bed, exhausted and agitated, still wired like a high-tension cable, she had been certain something terrible had happened to Mailin. She’d wanted to ring immediately, but forced herself to wait.
– Just wanted to hear how things are. Hear your voice, she thought, but didn’t say. – That you’re okay.
– Any reason I shouldn’t be?
– Well, no… But maybe you’re taking on too much work. All those people you’re taking care of.
– Liss, there is something. Tell me what it is.
Before she could change her mind, Liss said:
– Why don’t I remember anything from when I was a child?
Mailin didn’t answer.
– Something crops up every now and then, she went on. – Pictures of some kind. Just now, for example, I saw you coming into my room. You lock the door and get into bed beside me and hold me. But I don’t know if that happened or if it’s something I imagined or dreamt.
– It did happen, said Mailin. – At home in Lørenskog.
– You never said anything about that, Liss exclaimed.
A few moments passed before Mailin answered.
– Maybe I was waiting till you asked. There’s no need to remember everything.
Liss felt nauseous. Had to go out and vomit again.
– Call you later, she managed to say before ending the call.
2
Saturday 6 December
LISS PADDED NAKED around the flat. Checked to see if the ivy on the windowsill needed water. Brewed herself another cup of espresso. Sat by the kitchen window and looked out. The Christmas decorations in Haarlemmerdijk were pine-bedecked bows with lights hanging beneath them. Like suckling nipples on a bitch’s belly, it struck her. A large six-pointed star hung across the middle of the street. Inside it was a heart with red light bulbs glowing.
She had the flat to herself. A girl in her class, someone she hardly knew, had said without a moment’s hesitation that she could stay with her till she found somewhere permanent. Now the girl had gone to Venlo to spend the weekend with her family. They had to be pretty well off if they could afford to pay for their daughter’s three-bedroomed flat in trendy Jordaan, a part of the old town where Huguenot refugees had once lived. Here the facades had been tastefully refurbished and there were no trams or heavy lorries thundering through at all hours of the day and night.
Liss took her coffee into the bathroom. Stood in front of the mirror. She didn’t need make-up. Her skin was soft and smooth, without blemishes. But it felt good to smear a mask on. If the whole of her naked body could be coated in thin film, something she could wrap around herself when she went out, pull off when she returned home, that would leave her skin untouched… If she could do the same thing with her eyes. Put something not just on the brows and the lashes but on the pupils themselves. Cover everything that could betray her. Buy contact lenses, though there was nothing wrong with her sight. In another colour, black or brown.
Two thin flutings from her mobile. Message from Mailin: Didn’t hear back from you. Something’s just happened that has to do with what you asked me about that morning.
Her sister had called the previous evening. Liss was in the middle of a photo shoot and said she would call back but didn’t. Regretted revealing to her sister that this memory had surfaced. Actually there was nothing wrong with her memory; on a daily and weekly basis she could remember things perfectly well. It was what lay far back that was gone. Other people, like Rikke, seemed to have a detailed overview of their entire lives, starting with the day they got their very first pair of shoes ever. Rikke could rewind; her memory was obviously a film that could be viewed over and over again. Liss’s didn’t work like that. She could remember a few things from the holiday cabin, but not from before she was ten or twelve. Every summer and winter they had lived in the forest cabin just outside Oslo for several weeks. Weekends and holidays. They drove to Bysetermosan and then hauled a fully loaded sledge along the path to Vangen and then on to Morr Water. Or went on skis from Losby. When they got to be old enough, she and Mailin used to go there on their own, without the grown-ups. Sometimes in the evenings. By the light of the moon over Geitsjø and Røiri Waters. Up through the dark forest with their rucksacks, laughing and reverent in the great silence.
She didn’t need to remember more than she did. Mailin perhaps thought that she mentioned that vague memory from the bedroom in Lørenskog because it bothered her. If so, she was wrong, and Liss decided to tell her next time she rang.