As it happened, Mailin’s two psychologist colleagues were sitting a couple of rows in front of Roar, over by the wall. He’d noticed them on the way into the church, hand in hand. Initially Torunn Gabrielsen had lied in order to give her partner an alibi for the evening of 11 December. Facing accusations of an extensive benefits fraud, Pål Øvreby had finally changed his story, though the prostitute he claimed to have spent several hours with had still not been traced. He had given them a first name, a hotel room in Skipper Street and, for some unknown reason, the girl’s age. She was apparently at least seventeen.
The coffin was raised and carried down the central aisle. At the front was Viljam, with Mailin’s stepfather on the other side. Behind them three young men, almost certainly relatives, held the other handles. They had still not heard from the biological father, despite making extensive efforts to get in touch with him.
Roar recognised the last of the pallbearers as Mailin’s supervisor, because Tormod Dahlstrøm was one of those media psychiatrists who had an opinion on everything from marital breakdowns to the catastrophe in Darfur. Behind the coffin Liss and her mother walked side by side, Liss almost a head taller. She was looking at the floor in front of her. Then others gradually joined the procession. Elderly people, children, adults. Roar recognised a couple of faces from Lillestrøm and, well back in the escort, a very promising top-flight footballer. It struck him that Mailin Bjerke was the type who brought all kinds of people together, and though he had never met her, he could feel the grief in the church streaming through him.
Outside, the sun was making tiny fractures in the cloud cover. The coffin was placed in the back of the hearse. Several hundred people were gathered in silence around it. Closest was the stepfather, standing with his arms around Mailin’s mother, Liss a metre away from them with Viljam. In a tree nearby, a bird that Roar identified as a great tit began to sing. It was pretending spring had already come.
As the hearse started to move away, the mother pulled herself free and ran after it. Roar heard her shout something that must have been her daughter’s name. She caught up with the hearse and it stopped. She tried to open the rear door. The stepfather and a couple of others arrived and took her by the arm, but she held on tight to the handle. Her shouted cry had turned into a long-drawn-out wordless scream. It reminded Roar of Emily, waking up alone in the dark.
They stood there with their arms round Ragnhild Bjerke for a long time before she released her hold on the car, and it continued on its slow journey out through the gates and down the old main road.
I’M STILL SITTING in the room you just left. The dust has settled back-down on the living-room floor, but outside the wind is rising. All the things I would have told you if you hadn’t run out of here. But you had no reason to stay. Maybe you were afraid of me too, of what I might do to you. You owe me nothing. But I must finish writing this, not because I need to confess, but because this story needs to be told.
After I stopped Jo that evening he was about to walk out into the waves, I took him away from the beach with me. His parents were drunk all the time and completely irresponsible. He had no one to care for him. I took him back to my apartment. He was freezing and I made him take a shower. Aren’t you going to shower too? he asked. He was twelve years old, Liss, and I know he bore no responsibility for what happened.
Afterwards I got him to tell his story. There had been an incident with this girl, the one called Ylva, and something to do with a cat. He was mad about this Ylva, and furious because she’d gone off with another boy. I spoke to him about it for a long time. I promised to help him. Sooner or later, Ylva would be his, I had to swear it. When he left my apartment later that night, I felt certain that he wouldn’t make another attempt to drown himself. And that became a turning point for me. That he should survive. Not just that particular holiday trip, but afterwards too. So I had to see him again, I knew it that morning when I saw him boarding the bus for the return flight to Oslo…
Naturally that wasn’t the only reason. I wandered through this waste land, still felt parched. It was thirst that drove me to see him again. It was forbidden. But it saved me. A few drops of water are all I need, I said to myself, and Jo needed it as much. He was happy when we were together. But he never forgot what I had said to him about the girl he met in Crete. He was always reminding me of my promise, that I would show him how to get her, teach him what he needed to know. Ylva was the princess and Jo the prince who would steal her heart away. Even though he was about fourteen years old by now, the game went on. In the same way as the pact was a game. It’s the kind of thing you can say to a child: rather die than tell someone else the secrets we share. We sealed this secret and holy pact with blood from small cuts made on the palms of our hands. And his childish enthusiasm made me feel once again a touch of forgotten joy; it was these drops that reminded me there is water out there somewhere in that waste land through which I wandered.
Did I fail to understand how damaged he was? Not even when he told me how he could turn into someone else, a person who stood in a dark cellar hitting out wildly with a sledgehammer. Did I not understand that these games with which we amused ourselves were, for him, something very much more than games? That they became the stories around which his life revolved, that they kept everything in motion? Did I not even understand years later, when I saw the reports of a young woman found dead outside Bergen? Did I not react when I saw her name?
PART IV
1
Friday 16 January
VILJAM GOT BACK at about two. Liss sat in the living room looking out the window, the notebook in her lap. She heard him tidying up in the fridge, squashing empty plastic bags in under the sink. Then his footsteps across the floor and down the stairs.
– I’m making a stew. Are you eating here today?
She shrugged. – The footballer has asked me out.
– Isn’t it about time you started using his name? Viljam asked with a little smile, it caused her to look for the sort of feeling Mailin must have felt when she saw him smile like that. Something intense, joy or sadness.
He put a piece of paper on the table beside her. – Maybe he’ll just give up if you carry on pretending you don’t give a shit about him.
She picked up the paper, a notification that a parcel had arrived for her from Amsterdam. Don’t go and collect it, she heard herself think. Since the funeral, she had almost managed to keep what had happened that night in Bloemstraat out of her thoughts. But it didn’t take more than a package in the post for it all to come back to her. She had thrown away the letter from Zako’s father, though she could still remember word for word some of the things written in it. You’ve got to tidy things up, Liss. That’s what Mailin would have said. Tidy up and move on. Had Mailin been there, she could have told her where to move on to.
– Is it the post office up on Carl Berners Place? she asked.
– Correct. I can pick it up for you if you like. Have to get some exercise before I go off to work.
He stood leaning against the banisters, maybe expecting her to say something more.
– Viljam, I’ve been sleeping here almost every night since Christmas. It wasn’t the plan.
He straightened up, looked at her. – It helps having you here. Would have been even more awful without you.
She almost gave in to an urge to get up and hug him. Get as close to Mailin as she could.