Fear Not Part 17

Three fingers were spread in the air.

'The woman must have access to the f.u.c.king Internet somewhere. All she has to do is Google Synnve plus "doc.u.mentary", and she's bound to find out who I am.'

Tuva nodded, although the idea had never occurred to her.

They carried on walking in silence. Behind them the fireworks were increasing in intensity. As they pa.s.sed the entrance to Trollvann, Tuva started to wonder how much further she could go. She was gasping for breath, and all she really wanted to do was turn back rather than stagger on.

They had arrived. Soft light shone out from every window of the restaurant at the top of Grefsenkollen. The car park was full of vehicles which would presumably remain there well into the following day. As Tuva and Synnve moved closer, a large group of people in party clothes spilled out of the main entrance. Most stopped on the wide steps as they raised their gla.s.ses of champagne and exclaimed at the view. Three men had their arms full of rockets, and stumbled off around the corner to let them off in the car park.

'Here,' Tuva panted, moving over to the fence surrounding the terrace at the bottom of the steps. 'It's actually nicer here than back at my place.'

Out in the fjord the boats began to sound their sirens. Behind Tuva and Synnve the guests were shrieking with delight at the fireworks, at the party, at the new, empty year ahead of them. The entire sky was lit up, fireworks crackling and sparkling, whistling and squealing, howling and banging in front of them and overhead.

'Happy New Year,' Tuva said tentatively, slipping an arm around her.

Synnve didn't reply. She leaned against the fence and looked out over Oslo. 2009 was only a few seconds old, and if the emotions she was feeling were representative of the new year, the next twelve months were going to be appalling.

What she didn't know, of course, was that Marianne Kleive was exactly 8,100 metres from the spot where she was standing. If she had known, it is unlikely that it would have made her any happier.

For the first time in her life, Synnve Hessel cried her way into a new year.

Erik Lysgaard had promised Lukas that he wouldn't cry.

'Dad! Dad!'

Erik gave a start. At first he had refused to go home with his son. It was only when Lukas threatened to bring the whole family to Nubbebakken and organize some kind of party for the children that he had agreed to come. He had promised not to cry. He hadn't promised to talk.

The children had finally fallen asleep. Astrid, Lukas's wife, was standing in the doorway in her dressing gown. She gave her father-in-law a wan smile and raised a hand in a limp goodnight. The evening had been something of a trial.

Lukas, in blue and white striped pyjamas and with shabby slippers on his bare feet, crouched down next to his father's chair, but didn't touch him.

'Were you asleep?'

'I think I was. I must have nodded off while you were getting ready for bed.'

'It's time you went to bed as well, Dad. I've sorted out the guest room for you.'

'I'd rather sit here, Lukas.'

'That's not on, Dad. You need to go to bed.'

'Actually, I can make my own decisions. I'm perfectly fine sitting here.'

Lukas got up.

'You're behaving as if you're the only one who's grieving,' he said wearily. 'I don't recognize you, Dad. You're ... you're just completely self-centred. You don't even notice that I'm struggling, you don't notice that the kids are missing their grandma, you don't notice that-'

'Of course I do. I notice all of it. I just can't do anything about it.'

Lukas trudged around the room in the semi-darkness. Blew out a candle in the window. Picked up a teddy bear from the floor and placed it on the bookcase. Bit his nails. Outside everything was silent. From the bathroom he could hear Astrid flushing the toilet, then the faint creak as she closed the bedroom door behind her.

'Why didn't you lie?' he asked all of a sudden.

His father looked up.

'Lie?'

'Why didn't you just make up a story about why Mum was out walking? Why didn't you say she wanted some fresh air or something? That you'd had a row. Anything. Why did you tell the police it was nothing to do with them?'

'Because it's true. If I'd made something up it would have been a lie. I don't lie. It's important to me that I don't lie. You of all people should know that.'

'But clamming up completely is OK?'

Lukas threw his arms wide in a gesture of resignation.

'Daddy, why ... ?'

He stopped himself when his father looked him straight in the eye with something that resembled a smile in his expression.

'You haven't called me daddy since you were ten,' he said.

'I have to ask you about something.'

'You won't get an answer. You must have realized that by now. I'm not going to tell why your mother was out-'

'Not that,' Lukas said quickly. 'It's something else.'

His father said nothing, but at least he was maintaining eye contact.

'I've always had a kind of feeling,' Lukas began tentatively, 'that I was sharing Mum with someone else.'

'We shared your mother with Jesus.'

'That's not what I mean.'

He stood there at a loss for a moment, then sat down on the sofa. It was so deep that leaning forward was uncomfortable. At the same time, he was too tense to lean back against the cushions. In the end he got up again.

'Have I got a sister or brother somewhere?'

The expression which suddenly came over his father's face frightened him. Erik's eyes darkened. His mouth grew strained, surrounded by coa.r.s.e, deep lines. His eyebrows contracted. His hands, which had been resting on his knee, clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

'I hadn't expected that from you,' he said, his voice unrecognizable.

'But I ... Did you and Mum, or just Mum ... ? I mean ... you've always been together, and this business with Jesus in the forest-'

'Hold your tongue!'

His father stood up. This time he didn't raise his hand; he simply stood there, his eyes flashing and his lower lip trembling almost imperceptibly.

'Ask yourself,' he said, his tone icy. 'Ask yourself if Eva Karin your mother, my wife has a child she refuses to acknowledge.'

'I'm asking you, Dad! And I'm not necessarily saying that she didn't want to acknowledge ...'

His father started to walk away. 'I'm going to bed,' he said, but turned abruptly when he reached the door. 'And I am never, ever going to answer that kind of question. Ask yourself, Lukas. Ask yourself!'

Lukas was left alone in the room.

'I'm asking you,' he whispered. 'I'm asking you, Dad.'

If his father had just said yes. Couldn't you just have said yes and made my life infinitely easier?

It was impossible to go to bed. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He had asked a question and expected an answer. Hoped for an answer. Everything would fall into place if his father had just confirmed that there was a child out there. An older child, older than Lukas, an explanation for everything.

But his father had refused.

Is it because you don't want to lie, Dad?

Lukas lay down on the sofa without taking off his slippers. He pulled a woollen blanket over him, right up to his chin, the way his mother used to tuck him in when he was little. He lay there without sleeping until the morning came, a pitch-black start to the new year.

PART II.

January 2009.

Persecuted.

'I don't know if I'm doing the right thing in telling you this. We haven't actually found any signs of a break-in, and the Head doesn't want to involve the police. It's just that I-'

'Could you just ... ?' Johanne began, and cleared her throat. 'Could you just go through all that again?'

She tried to find a position where she could sit still.

'Well ...'

Live Smith, Director of Studies, ran her fingers through her thick grey hair. She had seemed pensive when she met Johanne in the corridor and asked her to come into the office. Now it was as if she regretted her action, and would prefer to forget the whole thing.

'Because we're a special school,' she said hesitantly, 'we hold a considerable amount of detailed information about every child. As you know, our pupils have widely differing forms of functional disability, and in order to maximize the education we are able to offer each individual child, we-'

'I know what this school is and what it's able to offer,' Johanne said. 'My daughter is a pupil here.'

Her voice sounded unfamiliar. Hard and expressionless. She coughed and had to pick up the gla.s.s of water, even though her hands were shaking.

'Is everything all right?'

Live Smith was looking at the water trickling down Johanne's sweater.

'Just a bit of a dry throat. I think I might be catching a cold. Can we get on?'

She forced a smile and made a circular motion with her hand. Live Smith adjusted her jacket, tucked her hair behind her ears and sounded offended when she spoke.

'You were the one who wanted me to start from the beginning.'

'Sorry. Could you possibly-?'

'OK. The short version is that when I came in last Friday to get things ready for the new term, I had the feeling that someone had been here.'

Her hand swept around the room. It was a s.p.a.cious office with filing cabinets along one wall and a door leading into a smaller room. The other walls were covered in children's drawings in IKEA frames. The curtains were bright red with yellow spots and fluttered gently in the warm air from the radiator under the window.

'I just had a funny feeling. There was a different ... smell in here, perhaps. No, that's wrong. It was more like a different atmosphere, somehow.'

She seemed embarra.s.sed, and smiled before quickly adding: 'You know.'

Johanne knew.

'Not that I believe in the supernatural,' said Live Smith with a disarming smile. 'But I'm sure you recognize the feeling that-'

'There's nothing supernatural about it,' Johanne broke in. 'On the contrary, it's one of our most finely tuned capabilities. The subconscious notices things that we can't quite manage to bring to the surface. Something might have been moved. As you say, an almost imperceptible smell might linger. The more we have lived, the more capable our acc.u.mulated experience is of telling us more than we are able to define on a first impression. Some people are better than others at understanding what they feel.'

She finally managed to get some water down.

'Sometimes they refer to themselves as clairvoyant,' she added.

The sarcasm made her pulse slow down.

'And then there was the file,' said Live Smith.

Once again that smile behind every sentence, as if she were trying to make herself insignificant. Not really worth bothering about. Not to be taken all that seriously. Under normal circ.u.mstances, Johanne would have found this feminine display unbelievably irritating, but right now it took all of her strength to keep her voice steady.

'Kristiane's file,' she nodded.

'Yes, it's ...'

Live Smith stopped herself in the middle of a breath as if she were searching for the least dangerous word. Disappeared? Lost? Stolen?

'Perhaps it's just been mislaid,' she said eventually.

Her expression said something completely different.