The pancake started to burn.
‘…And we’ll have to talk about Carl,’ she went on, quickly taking the pan off the cooker.
‘But he’s not here,’ I said, hoping that Dad and Carl would turn up soon.
‘No, I know,’ she said. ‘But do you know where he is?’
That was the night I heard them talk in the living room while I listened behind the door. All three of them spoke, even Mum, and at some point Dad started shouting. I’ve never heard him shout like that before. The next morning his hair had started to turn white.
Christmas was only two days away, and very strange days they were.
No one really said anything. I think they were thinking. And so was I. About her wanting to take me with her to the mainland, about me going to school over there and meeting other children, and something about the authorities and a doctor who ought to visit and a container that she had ordered.
I clearly remember her saying that the place needed a thorough mucking-out. And I could understand why Dad got really upset about that, because he was always very careful to get all the muck away from the animals and out into the field where it could do some good.
Even so I found her a present. It was a small box that had a wonderful smell of tobacco. It was for keeping small things in, I thought. In the end I kept it for myself. I had found a book about butterflies for Mum, and for Dad I had collected a whole tin of resin. I also found a really beautiful red-and-yellow lump of resin, which was going to be his special present because it had a beetle inside it. If he kept it long enough, it might turn to amber, just like the lump with the ant he would usually keep in his pocket or put in a small hollow in the carpenter’s bench where he kept the hourglass. I hadn’t learned to count to a million years yet, but I did understand that it was a very long time.
Before my granny arrived I never wondered why we celebrated Christmas. I guess I thought we did it because it was nice. Mum and Dad never explained why, and I never asked. By talking to my granny I discovered that there was a connection between the man called Jesus and the Christmas tree and my star of bicycle spokes and our geese and the fishmonger’s garden gnomes. What exactly it is, I still don’t get.
Nor did I know what a container was before it arrived. This happened just after New Year. A very big lorry drove up with it on its bed. It rattled and shuddered as it came up the gravel road, and I raced round from the pump behind the barn to see what was going on. The container was set down right behind the workshop. It was a large, rectangular enclosed box of dark blue metal. Its sides came together at the top, and on one long side there were three double hatches.
‘Ordered by someone called Else Horder,’ I heard the man say to Dad. I don’t think he realized that we had killed my granny. Then the lorry drove off without the container and the driver waved to me. It was the last time for a very long time that any outsiders saw me.
Dear Liv
I don’t know if it was right for us to report you dead. But we were so scared, so scared of losing you. What we did to your granny was terrible. But what she intended to do to us was even more terrible.
We had no choice.
I’m choosing to believe that we had no choice.
The Killing
Deep down, Jens Horder might have known that his mother only wanted what was best for them; that her proposal was an expression of concern and love. He might even have realized that she had cause to be concerned. Nevertheless, he was incapable of interpreting Else’s suggestion as anything other than a threat, a red-hot premonition of yet another unbearable catastrophe.
Maria cried when they lay together in bed that night. He hadn’t seen her weep so pitifully since the accident. Since the last time his mother had been with them.
‘You have to send her away,’ she had sobbed. Inside her, a new life was growing. Yet another life. The other one was sleeping the sleep of the innocent in her little bedroom down the passage. With her dagger on her stomach. Alone.
It was at that moment that something snapped inside Jens: the last thread that connected him to his mother, the remains of an umbilical cord.
He clasped Maria’s hand. ‘Yes, I’ll send her away,’ he whispered as he stared up into the darkness. ‘Far away. There’s nothing else for it.’
She was the one person they could manage without.
‘I’ll do it before Christmas.’
His wife heard the words he whispered. She understood exactly what he meant. And she knew that she should protest. But she couldn’t.
Jens got up from the bed, leaned over Maria and kissed her forehead before he got up and got dressed. Then he disappeared.
Soon afterwards, she could hear him working in his workshop.
Else Horder also heard him from the white room where she, contrary to her usual habit, had yet to fall asleep.
She concluded that Jens must be finishing some last-minute Christmas presents, but even so it was odd for him to be working in the middle of the night. Then again, there was very little her younger son could do these days that would shock her. He and his little family seemed to live in a world of their own, where everything was chaos. Else knew about isolation better than anyone, including how it could mess with your head, but this… this was serious.
She couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. Not for all of it, of course, but still. And though it broke her heart, she no longer had any doubts that she had to save Liv from the fate she was being dragged into. The girl didn’t appear to have been seen by a doctor for years, because her parents ‘didn’t like doctors and that kind of thing’, and Else suspected that the girl had never played with, or possibly even spoken to, another child. It was true that Maria was academically inclined, but she was unlikely to be able to home-school a child, as she claimed she wanted to. Liv had to be desperate to get out and meet other people – people who weren’t busy eating themselves to death or turning their home into a junkyard. There was nothing normal in the poor girl’s life.
And then there were the night-time excursions, which worried Else, not to mention the business with Carl. Truth be told, the whole thing might end up a matter for the police, a tragic case. If that happened, she could only hope that they didn’t start asking questions about the accident and reopen old wounds. That was the last thing anyone needed.
Something had to give, and Else had set the process in motion by ordering and paying for a skip, which would arrive just after New Year. Jens hadn’t suspected that anything was amiss. He had just dropped her off at the post office one day and picked her up a little later, as they had arranged. With some help from the post-office lady, Else had found a skip company, called it from the post-office telephone and sent them a cheque immediately. It was pricey, but necessary, Else thought. She knew that the cheque wouldn’t bounce because her ever-helpful cousin had insisted on making a contribution towards unforeseen expenses. Else was sure that Karen would understand about the skip, if only she could get in touch with her. Else was starting to worry. Karen wasn’t answering her phone. She hoped nothing bad had happened to her.
As for ordering the skip behind Jens’s back, Else didn’t feel entirely comfortable about that; she was aware this would be seen as serious meddling. But once the skip arrived surely it would represent an opportunity, she thought, to start clearing up and to bring a breath of fresh air into the house. Perhaps it was the only way she could help her son out of his chaos.