Fear Not Part 1

Fear Not.

ANNE HOLT.

To Ann-Marie, for fifteen wonderful years of love and collaboration.

PART I.

Christmas 2008.

The Invisible Child.

It was the twentieth night of December.

One of those Sat.u.r.day nights that promise more than they can deliver had imperceptibly slipped into the last Sunday of Advent. People were still moving from bar to bar and from pub to pub as they cursed the heavy snow that had moved in across Oslo without warning just a few hours earlier. The temperature had then crept up to three degrees above zero, and all that remained of the festive atmosphere was grey slush on top of the mounds of snow, and lakes of dirty water as it melted.

A child was standing motionless in the middle of Stortingsgate.

She was barefoot.

'When the nights grow long,' she sang quietly, 'and the cold sets in ...'

Her nightdress was pale lemon with embroidered ladybirds on the yoke. The legs beneath the nightdress were as thin as chopsticks, and her feet seemed to be planted in the slush. The skinny, half-naked child was so out of place in the image of the city at night that no one had noticed her yet. The Christmas party season was approaching its climax, and everybody was preoccupied with their own affairs. A half-naked, singing child on one of the city streets in the middle of the night became completely invisible, just like in one of the books the little girl had at home, where exciting animals from Africa were cunningly hidden in drawings of Norwegian landscapes, concealed among bark and foliage, almost impossible to spot because they didn't belong there.

'... then the little mummy mouse says ...'

Everyone was out to have a good time, and a few actually were enjoying themselves. Outside Langgaard's jewellers a woman was leaning against the security grille over the window as she stared at her own vomit. Undigested, deep red raspberry jam oozed among the remains of spare ribs and fried beef, slush and sand. A gang of young lads whooped at her and sang dirty songs from the other side of the street, their voices off-key. They were dragging a wasted mate with them past the National Theatre, ignoring the fact that he had lost a shoe. Outside every bar smokers stood huddled against the cold. A salty wind from the fjord blew along the streets, blending with the smell of tobacco smoke, alcohol and cheap perfume; the smell of a Norwegian city night just before Christmas.

But n.o.body noticed the girl singing so quietly on the street, right in the middle of two shining silver tramlines.

'And the mummy mouse ... and the mummy mouse ... and the mummy mouse ...'

She couldn't get any further.

The Number 19 tram set off from the stop further up towards the Palace. Like a sleigh as heavy as lead, full of people who didn't really know where they were going, it accelerated slowly down the gentle slope towards the Hotel Continental. Some people hardly even knew where they had been. They were asleep. Others were rambling about going on somewhere, having a few more drinks, chatting up a few more girls before it was too late. Others simply stared blankly out into the thick warmth that settled on the windows like a damp, grey veil.

A man by the entrance to the Theatre Cafe looked up from the expensive shoes he had chosen for the evening in the hope that the snow wouldn't come just yet. His feet were soaked, and the marks left by the road salt would be difficult to get rid of when his shoes had finally dried out.

He was the first to see the child.

His mouth opened to shout a warning. Before he had chance to take a breath, he was pushed hard in the back, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

'Kristiane! Kristiane!'

A woman in national costume stumbled in her full skirt. Instinctively she grabbed at the man with the ruined Enzo Poli shoes. He hadn't properly regained his balance, and both of them fell over.

'Kristiane,' the woman sobbed, trying to get up.

The warning bell on the tram was clanging frantically.

The driver, who was coming to the end of an exhausting double shift, had finally spotted the girl. There was a screech of metal on metal as he slammed the brakes on as hard as he could on the wet, icy rails.

'... and the little mummy mouse says to all her babies,' sang Kristiane.

The tram was only six metres away from her and travelling at the same speed when the mother finally managed to get to her feet. She hurled herself into the road with her skirt half ripped off, stumbled but managed to stay upright, and screamed again: 'Kristiane!'

Afterwards someone would say that the man who appeared from nowhere resembled Batman. In which case it was due to his wide coat. He was, in fact, both short and slightly overweight, and bald into the bargain. Since everyone's eyes were on the child and the despairing mother, no one really saw how the man darted in front of the screeching tram with surprising agility. Without slowing down he scooped up the child with one arm. He had just cleared the line when the tram slid over the almost invisible footprints left by the child and stopped. A torn-off sc.r.a.p of the dark coat flapped gently in the breeze, caught on the tram's front b.u.mper.

The city let out a sigh of relief.

No cars could be heard; screams and laughter died away. The bell on the tram stopped clanging. The tram driver sat motionless, his hands on his head and his eyes staring. Even the little girl's mother stood there frozen to the spot a metre or so away from her, her party outfit ruined, her arms dangling helplessly by her sides.

'... if n.o.body gets caught in the trap,' Kristiane continued to warble, without looking at the man carrying her.

Someone tentatively began to applaud. Others joined in. The applause grew, and it was as if the woman in national costume suddenly woke up.

'Sweetheart!' she screamed. She dashed up to her daughter, grabbed her and clutched her to her breast. 'You must never do anything like that again! You must promise me that you'll never, ever do anything like that again!'

Johanne Vik raised one arm without thinking and without slackening her grip on her child. The man's expression didn't change as her hand struck his cheek. Without paying any attention to the livid red marks left by her fingers, he gave a wry smile, inclined his head in a slow, deep, old-fashioned bow, then turned away and disappeared.

'... but steady as you go, soon everyone will be celebrating Christmas,' the child sang.

'Is it all right? Is everything OK?'

More and more people were pouring out of the Hotel Continental, all talking at the same time. Everyone realized that something had happened, but only a few knew what it was. Some were talking about someone being run over, others about an attempt to kidnap little Kristiane, the bride's sister's unusual child.

'Oh, sweetheart,' her mother wept. 'You mustn't do this kind of thing!'

'The lady was dead,' said Kristiane. 'I'm cold.'

'Of course you are!'

The mother set off towards the hotel, taking small, tentative steps to avoid slipping. The bride was standing in the doorway. Her strapless bodice was strewn with shimmering white sequins. Heavy silk fell in luxurious folds over her slender hips and down to her feet, where a pair of beaded shoes were still equally white and shimmering. The main focus of the evening was, as she should be, beautiful and perfectly made up, with her hair just as elegantly swept up as it had been when the reception started several hours earlier. The glow on the skin of her bare shoulders suggested she had been on her honeymoon in advance. She didn't even look cold.

'Are you OK?' she smiled, caressing her niece's cheek as her sister walked past.

'Auntie,' said Kristiane. 'Auntie Bride! You look so beautiful!'

'Which is more than you can say about your mother,' muttered the bride.

Only Kristiane heard her. Johanne didn't even glance at her sister. She hurried inside, into the warmth. She wanted to get to her room, crawl under the covers with her daughter, perhaps a bath, a hot bath. Her child was freezing cold and must be thawed out as soon as possible. She staggered across the floor, struggling to breathe. Even though Kristiane, who was almost fourteen, hardly weighed more than a ten-year-old, her mother was almost collapsing beneath her weight. In addition, her skirt was hanging down so much that she stood on it with every other step. Her hair, which she had wound around her head in a braid, had fallen down. The style had been Adam's suggestion, and she had been sufficiently stressed in the hours before the wedding to take his advice. Just a few minutes into the celebrations she had felt like Brunnhilde in a production from the interwar years.

A well-built man came running down the stairs.

'What's happened? What ... is she OK? Are you OK?'

Adam Stubo tried to stop his wife. She hissed at him through gritted teeth: 'Stupid idea! We're ten minutes from home by taxi. Ten minutes!'

'What's a stupid idea? What are we ... ? Let me carry her, Johanne. You're dress is torn and it would be ...'

'It's not a dress! It's a national costume! It's called a kirtle! And it was your idea! This ghastly hairstyle and this hotel and bringing Kristiane with us. She could have died!'

She was overcome by tears, and slowly let go of her daughter. The man with the strong arms gently took the child, and together they walked up the stairs. Neither of them said anything. Kristiane carried on singing in her thin, pure voice: 'Hey hop fallerallera, when Christmas comes let every child rejoice!'

'She's asleep, Johanne. The doctor said she was fine. There's no point in going home now. It's ...'

The man glanced over at the silent TV screen, where the hotel was still welcoming Mr & Mrs Stubo.

'Quarter past three. It's almost half past three in the morning, Johanne.'

'I want to go home.'

'But ...'

'We should never have agreed to this. Kristiane's too young ...'

'She's almost fourteen,' said Adam, rubbing his face. 'It's hardly irresponsible to let a fourteen-year-old come to her aunt's wedding. It was actually incredibly generous of your sister to pay for a suite and a babysitter.'

'Some babysitter!' She spat out the words in a mist of saliva.

'Albertine fell asleep,' Adam said wearily. 'She lay down on the sofa when Kristiane finally went to sleep. What else was she supposed to do? That was why she was here, Johanne. Kristiane knows Albertine well. We can't expect her to do any more than she was asked to do. She brought Kristiane up here after dessert. This was an accident, a sheer accident. You have to accept that.'

'An accident? Is it an accident when a child like ... like Kristiane manages to get out through a locked door without anyone noticing? When the babysitter who, incidentally, Kristiane knows so well that she still refers to her as 'the lady' is sleeping so heavily that Kristiane thought she was dead? When the child starts wandering around a hotel full of people? People who were drunk! And then wanders out into the street in the middle of the night without proper clothes and without any shoes and without ...'

She put her hands to her face, sobbing. Adam got up from his chair and sat down heavily beside her on the bed.

'Can't we go to bed?' he said quietly. 'Things will seem so much better in the morning. I mean, it all worked out fine after all. Let's be grateful for that. Let's get some sleep.'

She didn't respond. Her hunched back trembled every time she breathed.

'Mummy?'

Johanne quickly wiped her face and turned to her daughter with a big smile.

'Yes, sweetheart?'

'Sometimes I'm completely invisible.'

From the corridor came the sound of giggling and laughter. Someone was shouting 'cheers!' and a male voice wanted to know where the ice machine was.

Johanne lay down cautiously on the bed. She slowly caressed the girl's thin, fair hair, and put her mouth close to Kristiane's ear.

'Not to me, Kristiane. You are never invisible to me.'

'Oh yes I am,' said Kristiane with a little laugh. 'To you, too. I am the invisible child.'

And before her mother had time to protest as the town-hall clock proclaimed that yet another half-hour had pa.s.sed on this twentieth day of December Kristiane fell into a deep sleep.

A Room with a View.

As the town-hall clock struck half past three, he decided that enough was enough.

He stood by the window, looking out at what there was to see.

Which wasn't a great deal.

Ten hours earlier heavy snow had fallen on Oslo, making the city clean and light. In the empty silence of his office he had immersed himself so deeply in his work that he hadn't noticed the change in the weather. The city lay dark and formless below him. Although it wasn't raining, the air was so damp that water was trickling down the window panes. Akershus Fortress was discernible only as a vague shadow on the other side of the harbour. The grey, indolent crests of the waves were the only indication that the black expanse between Rdhuskaia and Nesodden, all the way out to Hurumlandet, was actually made up of fjord and sea.

But the lights were beautiful, street lamps and lanterns transformed into shimmering little stars through the wet gla.s.s.

Everything lay ready on his desk.

The Christmas presents.

A Caribbean cruise for his brother and sister and their families. On one of the company's own ships, admittedly, but it was still a generous gift.

A piece of jewellery for his mother, who would turn sixty-nine on Christmas Eve; she never tired of diamonds.

A remote-controlled helicopter and a new s...o...b..ard for his son.

Nothing for Rolf, as they always agreed and invariably regretted.

And 20,000 kroner to charitable causes.

That was everything.

The personal gifts were quickly dealt with. It had taken less than half an hour with his regular jeweller in Amsterdam in November, a walk around a mall in Boston the same week, plus twenty minutes on the computer this evening to produce an attractive gift card for his brother and sister's families. There were plenty of tempting pictures of Martinique and Aruba on the shipping company's home pages. He was pleased with the result, and he managed to make it personal by lining up the entire family along the railing on board MS Princess Ingrid Alexandra at sunset.

It was the charitable donations that had taken time.