Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  *

  It is deep in the night when she gets out of bed and stands a while at the window. A waxing gibbous moon, still generous with light, hangs high above Drammen. Selma turns back from the window and sits down in the middle of the floor, the parquet cool against her bare thighs. Medusa watches her from the foot of the bed, her jade eyes narrowed and glinting in the moonlight. Selma closes her eyes. And there she is – her mother. Ingrid. It’s as though Selma’s fractured and elusive memories merge with the mother she knows mostly from photographs to produce a real, three-dimensional woman in her mind. In this moment, Selma can fully reconstruct her mother. She can move in and around the image of Ingrid, excavating long-forgotten moments, the sound of her voice, the touch of her slim hand on her own brow. She stays like this for a long time, feeling her mother become separated from the murk of less important memories, like a bone unearthed and gleaming.

  Selma watches herself being held close by her mother. Ingrid has long light brown hair. Had. It fell out, in clumps – Selma remembers the horror of it coming loose in her hand from her mother’s skull. But now, in this moment, Ingrid still has her long hair. She wears an expression of pure joy on her face, and her eyes are firmly shut. Selma’s expression is different: anguished and apprehensive, like she can sense the rot already eating her mother from the inside.

  As she sits there observing her young self with her mother, something shifts in Selma. She has a strong sense that she knows something but can’t quite grasp the knowledge. She glances around the room briefly – it’s still her quiet childhood bedroom, it’s still Drammen outside, and the cat is still motionless and suspicious on the bed. She closes her eyes again, half-expecting the vision of herself with her mother to be gone, to have slipped back into the opaque river of fractured memories that runs through all of us, but it remains crystal clear, except that now her own young face has been replaced by that of Lucia Blix. Lucia’s distinctive dark eyebrows are drawn together, her brown eyes are cast downwards, her full lips are puckered in a frown. She’s being held by a woman in the way a mother would embrace her own child, but the woman is not Elisa Blix. Selma uses all her energy to try to bring the woman’s face into focus, but she remains a blurred stranger.

  When Selma reopens her eyes, it’s as though all of the excess energy that usually courses through her has suddenly run dry. She stumbles unsteadily back to her bed and falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  33

  Marcus

  It’s strange, spending Christmas with other people. After all these years, he still can’t quite get used to it. He finds the inmates’ excitement about the festive season moving. Tollebu offers various craft workshops for prisoners to make cards and simple presents out of scrap pieces of wood and fabric, and these are always oversubscribed within hours of being advertised on the noticeboard in November.

  Before, in his other life, he used to spend Christmas alone in his apartment in Frogner. There was nothing sad about that; he used to enjoy the quiet, reflective days, and he’d put up a little tree by the fireplace, drink some fine whiskeys and sit looking out at the lights of Oslo through his panoramic windows. That had changed when he fell in love. He’d wanted to be with her over the holidays, cooking for her, making love for hours in the middle of the day, watching her breathtaking smile spread across her face when she opened her presents. He got it, then, why other people got so excited about Christmas. He’d wanted a baby with her, too – a little person to pass traditions on to, a new soul to guide.

  He stays a long while in his bed after waking up, staring at the unbroken white of the ceiling. He tries to imagine the kind of Christmas he might have been celebrating today if those things had happened for him. Would they still be happy together? Would they raise their glasses in a champagne toast, laughing as they watched their kid unwrap presents, soft hymns playing in the background, snow falling outside? There might have been more children by now, little boys and girls whose faces would be a wonderful blend of his features and hers. Instead, he is here, in Tollebu Prison, about to celebrate his sixth Christmas behind bars.

  He dresses quickly and goes to the chapel before breakfast. The chaplain looks up, surprised to see him there at this time, and it occurs to Marcus that the chapel might be closed in preparation for the various services happening later in the day.

  But the chaplain nods towards the empty pews and Marcus sits down near the front. ‘I was hoping we could talk about forgiveness,’ he says.

  34

  Lucia

  When I wake up, Maman is sitting by my bed, like every day.

  ‘Bonjour,’ she says. It means ‘Good day’. Every day she helps me remember my French and every day I do remember more and more words.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I say.

  ‘Bad night, huh?’ she says, and I remember how I screamed many times in the night. I wet the bed, too. I run my hand across the plastic sheet underneath my bottom. I remember standing by the side of the bed, shivering and naked, the floor very cold under my feet, while Maman changed the sheets. ‘My poor lamb,’ she said, and then she helped me into a clean nightdress and back into the bed. Maman never gets angry.

  ‘A bad night, but today will be a good day,’ she says. ‘It’s Christmas.’

  This doesn’t make me happy. It makes me very sad. Maman sees this. She puts her hand above my heart, where she has stitched my real name on the nightdress, like she’s done on Josie’s, like we are hard to tell apart and she can only know who is who by reading the names on our chests. We’re not, because we’re not that kind of twins. We’re the kind that look a bit alike but not the same.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, but I don’t want to come with her. I want to go home.

  ‘I want to go home,’ I whisper.

  Maman is good at pretending like this is okay to say, but it isn’t, and I can tell.

  *

  In the woods me and Josie choose a tree. It’s very tall and a little bit wonky on one side, like someone pulled off half the branches, but we don’t care and Maman cuts it down with an axe. We help her haul it onto the sled and then Josie and I sit close together holding the tree so it doesn’t fall off down the long hill to our house. Our house has a name. It’s called Ferme du Tachoué. It’s called that because at the bottom of the garden there’s a little river with the same name. I like this name. Ta-choué. Ta-chou-ay. Sometimes I say the word over and over in my mind until it feels very strange and it makes me feel calm. And I like the house. But I still want to go home. Many people have two homes. Maman says that it’s okay to miss the other home, but that this is my real home. I know that’s true now because I have seen all the pictures – the pictures of me and Josie when we were babies, and pictures of me when I was quite small, sitting on the steps outside feeding my goat Samba a carrot stick.

  Back in the house, Josie and I sit and draw for a while at the kitchen table. Maman has made a fire and soon we’ll have soup. Then, tonight, we will do the big party, says Maman. We are going to leave the farm and drive in a car, for the first time. It’s going to be fun, but I shouldn’t think for a single second to try anything funny because if I do then The Lady and The Man and The Little Boy will be killed, for sure, Maman said.

  We are going to the church where I was christened, and where Maman was christened, and her maman too. She’s my real grandmother, but she lives in Paris and doesn’t want to be a grandmother because she isn’t a nice person. We’re going to eat lobster before we go there and I can stay up all night if I want.

  ‘Lulu-Rose,’ says Maman, ‘would you like to make a beautiful drawing for The Lady and The Other Family?’

  I don’t know how to answer this. Maman has told me The Truth every day since I came here. At first I didn’t believe her at all and I screamed a lot. I still want to go home more than anything in the world, at least most of the time, but I know now that Maman only ever tells The Truth. Maybe it would be nice to make a drawing for The Other Family. I think about my bedroom at home, and all m
y things and my brother – no, The Little Boy – and the playground in between the houses where I used to play, and the way my m— The Lady used to sing to me before bedtime. If she was away on a plane, I listened to her recorded on Daddy’s phone. The song was called ‘Kjære Gud’, ‘Dear God’, and it was about God protecting all children. My m— The Lady used to sing it to me even though she doesn’t believe in any gods because when she was little herself she loved that song. I can’t remember all the words when I try and I wish I could have that recorded song now.

  ‘Hey,’ says Maman. ‘Hey.’ She sits down beside me and strokes my hair. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to,’ I say.

  She nods and gets up. She goes into the library, where there are thousands of books collected by Maman’s parents and grandparents. There is also an old black-wood-and-gold chest where she keeps the best paper, special-occasion paper. She comes back with a sheet of it. It’s thick and smooth, with a line of real gold around the sides.

  ‘You said they wouldn’t look for me,’ I say. ‘Or miss me.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ she says. ‘They could never love you the way a real family does, Lulu-Rose. The way I do. But you miss them. And that’s okay. So if you think it would be nice to send them a pretty drawing, then we’ll do that. Just don’t expect anything back from them, okay?’

  I nod and begin to draw.

  35

  Jacqueline

  She ushers the two little girls towards the wide-open Gothic doors with their distinctive pointed arches. The rumble of the river, forceful after a week of heavy rain, all but drowns out the voices of the congregation gathered on the steps waiting to enter. People smile at them, moving back to allow the young children to pass. Jacqueline recognizes some of them and wonders whether they might recognize her too. Inside the church, the sound of the river is like distant thunder, but there is otherwise a reverent, hushed silence. Hundreds of lighted candles bathe the vaulted space in an eerie, soft glow. She steers the girls towards an empty pew near the back.

  An old woman walking up the aisle glances at Jacqueline and the girls, then does a double-take and bends down to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘Joyeux Noël,’ she says.

  Jacqueline vaguely remembers her as one of her mother’s old friends. Madame Bouchard, her name is. She recalls playing with her sons as a child, at a large farm overlooking a lush, empty valley, not unlike Le Tachoué. ‘Joyeux Noël,’ she replies.

  ‘How beautiful your daughters are. What is your name, petite fille?’ Madame Bouchard hovers in front of Josie, whose little face shimmers in the glow from the candles on the intricate carved wooden mezzanine above them.

  ‘Josiane.’

  ‘Et toi?’ Madame Bouchard turns her gaze on Lucia. ‘Comment tu t’appelles?’

  Jacqueline remains completely still, suspended in the long moment, her hand resting on Lulu-Rose’s knee. She gives it the smallest squeeze. How could she have risked everything, for this? And so soon. It’s too soon, far too soon. She can’t know for sure that the child won’t suddenly stand up and start screaming, the entire congregation turning towards them, intrigued.

  Realization might dawn if the child begins to speak in a foreign language. Someone might put two and two together and recognize her from a picture glimpsed in an online news article and then forgotten. Still, Jacqueline feels cautiously optimistic, and a little festive, for the first time in many years. The constant worry that she might be unmasked is starting to ease. She finds herself enjoying this new life in small bursts untainted by fear. She keeps a keen eye on the investigation, and nothing at all has come up to suggest a link between herself and the missing child. But why would it? Besides, the woman who took that poor child was found dead in the ground. She closes her eyes at the thought of that woman’s last moments of life.

  She glances around. The people present who know of her also know that she married a foreigner and had twins and that she only occasionally returns to this remote, very quiet corner of France where she grew up. They’d seen them with their own eyes on several occasions, though it was a while ago now, the beautiful little girls with pretty smock dresses and long chestnut hair. People here – honest, simple village people – would be able to vouch for Jacqueline and her family, no doubt about that. Some might have heard that she’s now a widow – poor woman, so young. They might have spoken of the tragedy, waiting in line at the butcher’s or the newsagents’, shaking their heads sadly. No wonder she wanted to come home, poor woman.

  ‘Je m’appelle Lulu-Rose,’ says the child, her voice entirely clear and unwavering.

  The old lady touches each girl gently on the forehead and says ‘Magnifique!’ before joining her own family, who are waiting for her further up the aisle.

  Jacqueline is flooded with relief and a love for her girls so pure that it could take her breath away. The church bells ring out midnight and as Lulu-Rose and Josie look around in wonder with tired eyes, Jacqueline remembers the sheer magic she’d felt, coming here with her own parents as a child, for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. It’s why she’s brought the girls tonight, even though it’s risky.

  The service starts and Jacqueline closes her eyes, letting herself be carried along on the hum of voices singing the old, familiar hymns, and draws the warm, spiced air deep into her lungs. It was the right thing to do, to come here with her girls. Home.

  *

  In the car home, Josie falls asleep almost immediately, slumping sideways into the middle seat. Lucia, precious, sweet, incredible Lucia, now Lulu-Rose, stares out the window as Saint-Girons peters out into the drab retail area at its southern fringes. They pass the Carrefour hypermarket, its empty parking lot glinting with rainwater that has hardened into a film of ice, then a police station, a car dealership and a cemetery. Jacqueline catches Lulu-Rose’s eye in the mirror and smiles at her, but the little girl immediately looks away, into the dark night.

  Because of the ice, Jacqueline has to drive slowly, and for a long while they just sit in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts. The last time Lulu-Rose rode in a car, she was still Lucia Blix, brought from Sandefjord to an isolated rural corner of Ariège in the French Pyrenees by Mikko Eilaanen. Now she is Lulu-Rose Olve Thibault, daughter of Jacqueline, twin sister of Josiane, a sleepy eight-year-old heading home. Her loving mother steers the car through the silent night – up, up, into the foothills of the Pyrenees, off the main road, onto first one dirt track, then another, and then a third, carefully navigating the hairpin bends as the foothills steepen into mountainsides, until finally she pulls up in front of their huge ancient Ariègeoise farmhouse.

  Both of the girls are asleep now. Jacqueline carries Josie into the house first, pushing the unlocked door open, breathing in the smell of home, taking the stairs slowly as the child shifts in her arms. She goes back for Lulu-Rose and buries her face in her silky hair as she carries her carefully up to bed. She stands for a moment at the foot of the bed, watching the little girl settling deeper into sleep, mouth slipping open, eyes shuttling back and forth beneath thick dark lashes. She hadn’t entirely expected to feel this intense love for the girl. She’d thought it would take more time, perhaps months, or years, even, for the little girl to fuse into her family and fill the gaping hole. As it turned out, she was an almost instant fit. From the moment Jacqueline laid eyes on Lucia Blix in the messy cloakroom at Korsvik School, the second time she’d ever seen her, she knew, right down to her bones, that her instinct had been right.

  There you are. And you’re mine.

  36

  Selma

  A couple of days after Christmas, Selma messaged Olav asking him to call her about the Blix case as she’d had some new thoughts. He texted back the following day saying, ‘Unless you know where the kid is, it’ll have to wait until the new year.’ The message was accompanied by a close-up photo of a huge beer with the slopes of Kitzbühel visible in the background. So Selma has had to wait until today, a clear and very cold January morning, to
tell him about the vague intuition of hers that has now hardened into total conviction.

  ‘Close the door,’ Olav says when she knocks lightly on the glass wall of his office cubicle. And that’s when she knows. His next words are as strange and blurry as if he were speaking underwater. He is sorry, so sorry. Digitalization, reduced reach. No reflection on ability.

  ‘I’ve tried to find a way around this,’ he says at last, still not quite able to meet Selma’s eye. She stares at him, her whole body tense; she is incandescent with rage. ‘But, as you know, our policy is last in, first out.’

  She feels herself nodding and forces herself to stop; she wouldn’t want Olav to think for a single second that there is anything right about this.

  ‘You know that I am meant to do this,’ she says, her voice clear and loud. ‘To be a journalist.’ She has always prided herself on her extreme self-control, especially in pressurized situations. Whenever adrenaline rushes through her, she instantly becomes calm and clear-headed.

  ‘Nobody knows that better than me. You’re good, so very good already, and still so young. You’re remarkable, and you know it. And here’s the thing. This… this could be the making of you.’

  Selma laughs incredulously; she is not going to stand here and be told by Olav Hammel that being let go from the only job she has ever wanted, a job she is damned good at, is anything other than a big fucking mistake.