Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  She lets herself into her apartment, gives Medusa a couple of long, firm strokes, then pulls out her Mac.

  ‘Elisa Blix,’ she types in, not for the first time.

  55

  Elisa

  All of yesterday, I felt as though I was about to throw up. And all night, I’ve tossed and turned, one crazy thought after another chasing around my tired mind. There is no reason for that girl to make me nervous. She can send vaguely threatening messages all she wants – the fact remains, she knows nothing, and that is what I need to remember. Nothing at all. She’s a strange girl, Fredrik was right about that much. Attractive, but in such an unpolished and goofy way, it is as though she has never looked in a mirror. She has beautiful, long light brown hair which she gathers in a low ponytail beneath her ear to one side of her head. Her face is entirely bare, but fresh with youth. I wonder if Fredrik found her attractive.

  Passing on my thoughts in aid of the investigation, she said. Why would her thoughts matter at all to the investigators? She’s all talk and no substance. She needs to go and use her hunches on other people’s affairs.

  But… what if she really is right and someone has watched us for years, biding their time, readying themselves to take the most precious gift we’ve ever had away from us. Who would it be? My mind returns to Karoline Meister, the weirdo who tried to steal my husband on Facebook. Could she have had something to do with it? The police dismissed the idea that the mysterious micro-cheat woman from the internet could have anything at all to do with the case, just like they insisted that ‘Line’ was actually Silwia Truja.

  Karo-Line. What if Karoline was really Line – someone whose sole purpose was to punish Fredrik or me? Or what if Karoline really was just a random loony on the internet, and Line was someone else entirely, who stole Lucia for another purpose. Revenge? Again, why? It always comes back to why. There are things in my past that would have inspired hatred. Wild hatred, even. But they are sealed off entirely, buried so deep I have managed, over the years, to trust that they will remain buried forever.

  56

  Jacqueline

  In the morning when she wakes, Antoine is still there, sitting at the foot of the bed, watching her. His torso is bare and he has wrapped a white towel around his waist. His shoulder-length hair is wet and slicked back, little beads of water gathering at the tips before dropping onto his chest. Jacqueline smiles sleepily and turns towards him, letting the thin sheet slip off her body. Antoine doesn’t return her smile but runs a finger lightly across her ankle bone. She knows this look; he is searching for words. Antoine is a man of few words, but when he does speak, his words are measured, and she knows he cares about ensuring they come out the way he intended.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asks, trying to gage from the bright light coming in through the slats in the shutters.

  ‘Nearly eight.’

  ‘You’ve usually left by now,’ she says. ‘It’s nice that you’re still here.’

  ‘I thought perhaps we should talk.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, and though she sensed he would say something to that effect, she is gripped by anxiety and premonition.

  ‘Last night, Jacqueline – do you feel able to talk to me about what happened?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When we were in bed. And you suddenly… seemed very distressed. I was worried that I’d hurt you.’

  They come back to her, the dreadful, insistent memories of the night before. The frightening coldness in her gaze when she met her own eyes in the mirror.

  ‘Look, Antoine, I think you need to leave. I’m sorry… I need some space.’

  She turns to the wall, fixing her eyes on the uneven surface of the stonework. Antoine shifts behind her, then she feels his hand pressing gently against her shoulder blades. She shifts away from his touch, willing him to leave, and after a long while he does.

  The memories do not.

  Mikko’s face that night was shadowed with exhaustion. No wonder. She could only imagine what his life must have been like on the run for the past eighteen months as one of the most wanted men in Europe.

  ‘Here,’ she’d said, placing another glass of wine in front of him, once the girls were in bed.

  ‘Oh no,’ Mikko said. ‘I’ll need to be off again tonight.’

  ‘Tonight? But… but you’ve only just arrived. It’s so stormy out there.’

  ‘Yes, well, I can always stop for a bit in a layby if I need to.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, her mind racing. She’d hoped to get him to fall asleep first.

  ‘We need to go through the payment. Better now than later.’

  ‘Mikko, really, I must insist. Please stay. Just one night.’ She wasn’t going to let him leave again, no matter what. At first, it hadn’t occurred to her, that it could come to this. If only he hadn’t returned to Le Tachoué, she wouldn’t have been in this position.

  She consciously parted her lips a little and narrowed her eyes in the way she knew worked every time with men like Mikko. She took him in: his smooth, glinting head, his meaty, tattooed hands, his surprisingly long black eyelashes. He smiled at her, and it was a genuine smile; if she hadn’t known what kind of man he was, she might have thought he was quite nice.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, his eyes sliding slowly down her body.

  She buried her pronounced left canine into her bottom lip and smiled back. Would the sleeping girls hear anything from upstairs?

  He passed out even sooner than she’d thought he would, tongue dropping out of a soft mouth, eyes receding back in his skull, big arms flung out on the sofa. He hadn’t managed to stay awake long enough to lay a single finger on her, thanks to the drops of sedative.

  She stood a while watching him sleep. For a moment, she wondered again if this was necessary – could she just let him go and trust that he’d return to his life of crime without a fuss? From what she’d gathered, Mikko was not a dangerous man compared to many – he seemed to be the brawn rather than the brains, and she imagined his criminal record would be full of break-ins and minor drug offenses rather than violence or murder. He’d done everything she wanted, without asking too many questions. He seemed like a simple man. The kind of man who, if you feed him and fuck him, would remain mellow for the most part. But Jacqueline had too much to lose now. Everything, in fact.

  She thought again of the girls sleeping upstairs, of their innocence, their wonderful new lives just beginning in this most gentle and beautiful of places. She had to protect them – at any cost.

  She took a couple of steps towards the sofa, positioned herself across the unconscious man and looked at his face one last time. Then she pressed a pillow hard against his mouth and nose. He twitched, but only a little. Still, it took a long while.

  57

  Selma

  It’s early evening already and Selma’s searches still haven’t brought up anything much. ‘We have little choice but to go on strike, considering the current roster system,’ reads an old quote in Sandefjords Blad from senior cabin manager Elisa Blix. Selma googles Elisa’s junior school, which was mentioned on her Facebook page, and after scrolling through page after page of its gallery archives, she finds a picture of Elisa with two other girls, holding hockey sticks and grinning widely in front of the newly opened ice rink in Lillehammer. The photo is dated 1993, so it would likely have been built before the 1994 Olympics. Selma does the math – that would make Elisa nine years old in the photo, more or less the same age as Lucia now. Underneath the photo it says: ‘Ida Helén Hansen, Maja Sørensen and Elisa Samuelsen are extremely excited about the opening of Lillehammer Storhall this weekend.’ Elisa Samuelsen – her maiden name.

  Selma enters the name into Google and sifts through the results. She tries ‘Elisa Samuelsen Lillehammer’ and there are several hits. One is from a horse-riding club, listing the trophy winners of summer 1995. Elisa Samuelsen is mentioned in three categories. ‘Horses’ writes Selma in the Word document she’s opened to take notes. An
other hit is from Jehovas Vitner Lillehammer – the local church of Jehovah. ‘The Samuelsen Family Collected 7,400 Kroner in the Annual Door-to-Door Action Against Poverty in the Ukraine’, reads the headline, accompanied by a photograph of the Samuelsen family. It shows a stern-looking mother with close-cropped curls and something reminiscent of Elisa in her alert, intense expression, and a tall, wiry man. There are also two little girls, the oldest of whom is vaguely recognizable as Elisa, and a much younger boy, perched on the mother’s hip.

  ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ writes Selma, and underlines it. She spends a while reading about their practices and history in Norway. Google tells her that there are 167 active Jehovah’s Witness congregations in Norway, with over eleven thousand so-called ‘street preachers’, congregation members who go from door to door preaching their beliefs. What would Elisa’s early life have been like?

  Selma is easily distractible, and while this can sometimes be an issue, more often it leads to her learning a great deal about various subjects, people and places – surprisingly useful for a journalist. She googles the horse-riding center, poring over the images of horses carrying people in a long line up a mountain path, a narrow, dark valley with a meandering silvery river far beneath them. She moves on with ‘Samuelsen Lillehammer’ and several more hits appear. She opens one that reads ‘Georg Samuelsen succeeds his father Iver at Lillehammer shoe factory’, and the accompanying photo is definitely of the same man as the man in the Jehovah’s Witness article about charity. Selma goes to 1881.no, the address directory, but there are no results for Georg Samuelsen Lillehammer. She vaguely notices her stomach growling and realizes she hasn’t eaten all day. It’s seven thirty already, but she can’t face the effort of getting up, opening the almost empty refrigerator, thinking about what she can eat and then preparing it, so she returns to the screen and ignores her hunger pangs.

  She sorts the hits on Georg Samuelsen into ‘most recent’ instead of ‘most relevant’. The top result is an obituary in Aftenposten from 2012: Elisa’s father is dead. Selma clicks on it and spends several frustrating moments logging in to the Aftenposten portal in order to gain full access to the online paper. When she finally opens the obituary, she is struck by confusion.

  Georg Samuelsen, born 11 December 1951, died peacefully at home in Lillehammer surrounded by his wife and children on 17 March 2012 after a long period of illness. He is safe in the arms of Jehovah and shall be fondly remembered on Earth.

  Kari Samuelsen, wife

  Thorvald Samuelsen, son

  Elin Samuelsen, daughter

  Nathalie, Emma and Lucas, grandchildren

  Selma’s heart begins to beat faster in her chest, though she must have misunderstood. Perhaps Georg and Kari were an aunt and uncle and not her parents – why else would Elisa not be included in the obituary? She returns to the first article and scans the photo caption, and there it is, clear as day: ‘Georg and Kari Samuelsen, who raised a substantial amount of money for charity, alongside their children Elisa (11), Elin (8) and Thorvald (3).’ What does this mean? What could it mean, besides Elisa Blix being estranged from her family? Selma returns to 1881 and types in ‘Kari Samuelsen Lillehammer’. Only one hit, registered to Hellebergstien 62, Lillehammer. Selma writes the address down in the Word document, alongside ‘estranged??’.

  After a long while, Selma gets up and stretches her legs. The hunger has faded and though it’s late, she feels wide awake and alert, like she might have some kind of revelation if she manages to stay focused. Medusa drops off the windowsill and comes over to where Selma stands looking out at the night, weaving her soft, supple body around Selma’s ankles in a number eight pattern.

  ‘You weird little furball,’ says Selma and picks the cat up. She realizes the apartment is completely dark – it is now past ten and Selma has been sitting on her bed with the laptop for hours, trying to construct an image of Elisa Blix in her mind. A small-town girl, Elisa grew up the oldest child in a seemingly devout Christian family and went on to become a flight attendant living in a different part of Norway. Interesting, though not that unusual. And yet, Selma has a vague feeling that there is something more to Elisa. Like an itch, it plays on her mind as she walks around the apartment, turning on the lights, still holding Medusa under her arm. Presuming she really is estranged from her family, there must be a reason for this. A daughter isn’t left out of her father’s obituary without reason. Georg Samuelsen died in 2012, and in the seven years that have passed since, it’s possible that Elisa has reconnected with her family, but, either way, Selma wants to know.

  She prepares a mug of Rett i Koppen instant tomato soup, thinking intently as she stirs the granules through the boiling water. What if Elisa did something in her youth that led to her family disowning her and this ultimately has something to do with Lucia’s abduction? But what could the seemingly wholesome, sporty and attractive Elisa Blix have done to merit such punishments? Lost in swirling thoughts, Selma takes a big glug of the steaming soup, burning the inside of her mouth. She slams the mug down and soup splashes onto the white surface of the IKEA table.

  ‘Fuck,’ she hisses, running her sore tongue against the back of her teeth. She gets a wet cloth and is about to wipe up the spilled soup when she realizes that it resembles bloodstains. Bloodstains, spilled blood, blood money, blood vengeance… She leaves the spilled soup and returns to the bed and opens up her laptop. For several moments, she pores over the familiar images of Elisa Blix. Selma once stared at these photos asking herself Why you? and Who are you?, but now the question buzzing through her mind is What have you done?

  58

  Elisa

  My head feels so leaden, I can’t separate my thoughts or make any sense of anything. Maybe this is what it’s like when you start losing cognitive functions and you have to make do with the grainy bits that remain. My mind is a labyrinth and every time I think I’m getting somewhere, I slam into a wall. Even more than my mind, it’s my heart that aches. To work out why Lucia’s gone, I have to examine the past. I need to figure out if it’s vengeance, not karma, that’s landed us here. I have to go back, all the way back, even if it hurts like hell. Even if it feels impossible. I have to do it for Lucia.

  My heart is beating so hard, it feels like Fredrik might hear it.

  ‘I’m going for a drive,’ I say.

  ‘But it’s past midnight!’

  ‘I need to think.’

  ‘Honey, what’s going on?’

  ‘I said I need to think, Fredrik. You heard what the journalist said. I’m trying to literally turn my past history inside out…’

  ‘We’ve talked about this. What she suggested is crazy. We know for a fact that it’s the network that took Lucia—’

  ‘But why, Fredrik? I have to know why!’ I’m shouting, and my words hang in the air between us. He rubs the bridge of his nose. I turn around and leave the room, slamming the door behind me.

  I get in the car and drive aimlessly around the neighborhood for a while, looking out at houses much like my own through a heavy wash of rain. Inside, people who have everything are sleeping peacefully, like I once did. I let the car roll down the hill to the closed pizza restaurant and the supermarket next to it and sit a while in the parking lot, my tears falling as fast as the rain, trying to clear my thoughts. I know now for sure that I will do anything, anything at all, to get my child back.

  I start the car again and head onto the empty road to the Vesterøya peninsula. I pass the international school by the water, where I used to dream of sending Lucia. She’d grow up into a confident, multilingual, sporty girl with lots of friends, or so I thought. Now I dream of her being alive; that’s my only ambition for her. I pass Asnes but refuse a glance up at the big house on the rocky promontory, the last place I saw my daughter, doing cartwheels, laughing until she ran out of breath.

  I drive on until the road comes to an end at the nature trail. I switch off the engine and sit a while looking at the rain-lashed sea through a web of tree bran
ches. In my mind, he is there, clear as day, like I knew he would be if only I’d let myself go to him. I replay the moments that are seared into my heart, the ones I shut away in a little box, never to be brought out into the light. I bring them out now. The way he cradled my face in his hands, his thumbs digging into the grooves underneath my jaw. The way his eyes implored me. ‘Forever,’ he said. ‘Forever.’ Could he have lied to me? No, it’s not possible. And yet, anything at all is possible.

  My thoughts keep returning to the past, brushing across painful memories like a hand moving fast through a flame. The two events are entirely separate; there is nothing at all to connect them. Nothing. The only way that what happened to Lucia could in any way be connected to what happened in Lillehammer is if my love has betrayed me.

  Just the thought of it makes my insides harden. A chill chases up my spine. I need to know. I start the car’s engine and the fog lights slice into the darkness surrounding me.

  59

  Lucia

  ‘Bonjour,’ says Maman, holding my hand gently between both her hands.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I say, and smile. She is holding Boulette on her lap and Boulette sticks her tongue out, trying to make it stretch far enough to lick my face.

  ‘Are you ready?’ asks Maman. I nod and get up and we go into Josie’s room.

  ‘Bonjour,’ says Maman. It’s still dark in the mornings when we get up at six, so we light the candles to go downstairs.

  ‘Today is a very special day,’ says Maman, placing the bread rolls on our plates while I fill our glasses with apple juice. ‘It’s Daddy’s birthday.’

  ‘In heaven,’ says Josie.

  ‘Yes.’ And her eyes fill with tears like they always do when she thinks about Daddy. ‘Let’s take a moment to think about Daddy, okay?’