Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  The sun is reaching its zenith in the deep blue sky and she pulls down the eye shield and drops her speed as the industrial fringes of Toulouse give way to the more densely populated suburbs. She leaves behind the maze of flyovers circling the city, driving down unremarkable tree-lined boulevards with rundown apartment blocks and modest street-corner restaurants, their owners setting plastic tables and chairs out on the sidewalk for the lunch trade. Soon, the river appears in silver glimpses between the houses, which by now are the characteristic rose-hued buildings of the city center. The languid, shining Garonne slithers beneath the Pont Neuf as Jacqueline crosses the bridge in slow-moving traffic. She parks on the square behind the magnificent Basilique Saint-Sernin and stops to take a picture. She’ll show it to the girls; it’s a fine example of both Gothic and Renaissance architecture. She smiles at the thought of Lulu-Rose and Josiane peering seriously at her picture, leaning the phone against the saltshaker on the kitchen table, attempting to copy the intricate structure in their notebooks. They are both so eager to learn, and so eager to please her.

  Jacqueline walks around the Place Saint-Sernin, considering a coffee in one of the sidewalk cafés, but decides against it – she feels restless and knows the caffeine would make it worse. She walks down the Rue du Taur towards Rue des Lois, where she’s found an internet café on Google, stopping to peer at a nice pair of shoes and an original handbag in the display windows of a couple of the many charming independent shops. Tall brick houses stand across from each other, sheltering the narrow pedestrian street from the midday sun, which doesn’t yet reach street level but makes the upper stories glow a golden pink.

  ‘La Ville Rose’… Once, Toulouse, the Pink City, was her favorite place. Pink used to be her favorite color, too. Her favorite wine was rosé with a lump of ice, and of all the flowers she favored the rose, with its tightly held petals, distinctive pure scent and undeniable beauty. She named her child Rose for those reasons. She mostly avoids Toulouse now; she can’t bear all the rose connotations, which are everywhere. Besides, she’s embraced the quiet life at Le Tachoué and wouldn’t risk taking the children to a big city. She’s in no doubt that it’s best for them to stay at home, where they know what to expect and who they are.

  The internet place is much nicer than any of the others she’s been to; it’s a laundromat with an attached café. The other patrons are cool students with oiled beards and hipster jeans, eating smashed avocado on sourdough while their socks and pants spin in the washers next door. Jacqueline smiles at a couple of tattooed girls sipping kombucha while she edges past them to a free computer in the corner by the wall. What must they think of her, this much older, slightly tired-looking woman, hanging out in a place like this? Perhaps they think she’s so old that she’s only just figured out the internet and is contemplating whether or not to acquire her own computer. She smiles at the thought and orders an almond turmeric latte. Her low spirits begin to lift – it feels good, in this moment, to sit among young people in a big city, ordering things they would never have heard of in the remote huddled stone villages of the Pyrénes Ariégeoises.

  It feels good, too, to have a moment’s uncomplicated anonymity. Nobody here is watching her or seems particularly interested in her, unlike the villagers of Rivèrenert and Encourtiech, who never pass up a chance to engage in conversation. Still, she wouldn’t change her life with the girls at Le Tachoué for the world. Coming home was the right thing to do, she knows that with every cell in her body. In fact, it was the realization of what Le Tachoué would enable her to pull off that made her decide to bring Lulu-Rose home in the first place. If she hadn’t had access to a remote mountain farm with no near neighbors, how would she ever have set about creating such a life for Lulu-Rose? She would have had to keep her hidden somewhere, and the child would have suffered as a result. She pictures a moldy cellar somewhere, the child growing pale and ill, stumbling around in a confined space – what a contrast to the wild freedom the girls enjoy at Le Tachoué.

  At Le Tachoué there is no phone signal, no landline and no internet. Their nearest neighbors, Monsieur Chabot and his three sons, who run an eco-farm four kilometers away as the crow flies, installed broadband last year and approached Jacqueline at the Carrefour in Saint-Girons to ask if she would like them to extend it around the crest of the hill to Le Tachoué. But the kindly old man got his answer from the horrified look on Jacqueline’s face.

  She gets lonely sometimes at Le Tachoué, when the girls are in bed and the storms howl and chase frozen rain down the mountainsides, or in the summers, when the evenings are warm and violet, throbbing with life. She feels entirely alone with her thoughts then. In such moments, it would be nice to be able to do some mindless surfing, watch Netflix, get the news in real time instead of caught in snatches several days later, engage in some flirtatious chats, perhaps. Still, she doesn’t want the girls to grow up with the pressures of social media or the potentially terrible influences on the internet. More than that, she doesn’t want to be traceable in any way.

  At the beginning, it was hard to live mostly cut off from the web, because in the years leading up to Lulu-Rose coming home, Jacqueline used the internet as much as, if not more than, most people. It was on the internet that she found the information she needed. How would she have been able to establish contact with Fredrik Blix had it not been for an attractive Facebook profile picture and a friend request? But now she’s become used to her long, slow evenings spent catching up on reading; her grandparents’ library is well stocked and Jacqueline has become an avid reader for the first time in her life. It keeps her mind off the things that still haven’t been fixed, that can never be fixed, and puts her suffering in context, setting it against what humans have endured throughout the ages, immortalized in fiction. It makes her feel connected to humanity, to the world, and to her own grief, which she thinks of as vast, dark rooms inside her, never to be opened, like the room at the far end of the first floor at Le Tachoué that overlooks the meadows at the back of the house and the forest beyond.

  She types ‘Fredrik Blix’ into Google. Even though it’s been five years now, the images of Fredrik still unsettle and repulse Jacqueline. She underestimated him; she thought he’d be easier to win over. She made some big mistakes there – she used her own photos on the profile and had numerous video chats with him. She was lucky he didn’t try and track her down or get the police involved – she’d be known to them then, her picture would be on file, and she’d never have got away with bringing Lulu-Rose to Le Tachoué. The whole mess of the Fredrik affair still bothers her sometimes, but back then she was still reeling and out of control. Had she approached him later, when she was emotionally and mentally in a better place to make a sound plan, it might have been a different story. Still, it worked out for the best.

  She studies a recent photo of Fredrik, taken by a press photographer outside the house he shares with Elisa and their son. He is holding a hand up, seemingly to illustrate a point, or perhaps to stop the photographer from taking the picture. If her first plan had actually worked, he might have been her husband by now.

  Jacqueline scours the various Norwegian newspapers for updates on the Blix case, but there is nothing new, only more farfetched speculation as to where Lucia’s body might be buried. Good, she thinks, finishing the turmeric latte and gazing out the tall windows at the beautiful golden light so particular to Toulouse. She does something she mostly manages to resist: she googles ‘Elisa Blix’. And then she is faced with her – the woman she hates more than anything in the world. They never subside, the waves of hatred Jacqueline feels when she looks at Elisa Blix. She scans the first row of pictures, which range from smiley private photos sourced from Instagram and Facebook, to a self-confident professional headshot of Elisa in her Nordic Wings uniform, to more recent press photos. In the latter, Elisa’s effortless good-looks have become ravaged and tortured, her hair matted, her eyes circled by puffy purple patches. She deserves all that pain and despair, Jacqueline th
inks. And more.

  Jacqueline gets up slowly; her stomach feels weak and hollow after looking at the photographs of Elisa, and her expression must betray this onslaught of emotion – the girls she passed on the way in stare at her, mouths unselfconsciously open, coffee cups suspended in mid-air. She walks out of the café and back to the car, oblivious to the warming sun, which has now reached the pedestrian street, bathing it in a beautiful light. She thinks about Elisa, unable to let go of the images of her face, particularly the most recent photographs. Jacqueline has won, like she knew she would.

  Back at the beginning, when she was still at the psychiatric hospital, Jacqueline had considered killing the little girl. It would have been the obvious thing to do – poetic in its simplicity. Still, Jacqueline could not reconcile herself to the brutal reality of actually doing it or getting someone to do it for her. It wasn’t the punishment that worried her; it was the fact that the child was entirely innocent. She hadn’t thought herself capable of murder – though she knows different now. Instead, she decided that the best way to get Elisa was by taking Fredrik from her, the way Elisa had taken Nicolai. When that didn’t work out, she became increasingly unhinged. Looking back at herself during that time, newly released from the psychiatric institution, stunned from months of hallucinations and heavy medication, desperately yearning for Nicolai and the girls, rejected by Fredrik, Jacqueline feels deep sympathy for herself. She was well within her rights to do what she did.

  She could have left it with the sordid attempt at an affair, all those late nights taking her clothes off in front of Fredrik on video calls. She was furious with him for not having the balls to move their relationship forward and into real life after everything she’d put herself through. It felt unbearable that Elisa still had everything while she had nothing. It sent her mad. She knows that now. Dangerously mad. But then on one of the many occasions when she followed Fredrik and his family, a much better plan came to her. A plan that would change everything and restore some balance.

  It was a drab evening in late fall and Fredrik and Elisa had taken their children to see Frozen at Hjertnes Cinema in Sandefjord. Jacqueline followed at a safe distance, and while the Blixes were at the movies, she sat across from the main entrance, in the library’s window seats, drinking whiskey and honey out of a thermos. The thing that surprised her about following them was how easy it was. It simply didn’t occur to them – as it doesn’t to most people – that they might be being trailed, because why would they be? Eventually the family emerged on a strong current of parents and chattering children, many of them around her own girls’ age. Lyder was perched on his father’s shoulders and Elisa looked sullen and a little distant, which made Jacqueline hate her even more. There she stood, in the center of her perfect family, seeming like she’d rather be somewhere else. They started heading for the car park, but then Lucia briefly turned back to look at something, pulling at her mother’s hand. Elisa wasn’t paying attention, she was talking animatedly to Fredrik, but Jacqueline followed Lucia’s gaze to a stray red balloon rising through the freezing grey air. The little girl stared at it, transfixed, and Jacqueline stared at the little girl, because, in that moment, something in her shifted. There was something painfully familiar about the slope of Lucia’s chin and the low, dark eyebrows. You’d be easy to love, she thought to herself.

  That night, in bed in her anonymous hotel room near Sandefjord train station, Jacqueline’s conviction grew and grew until she could think of nothing else. This would allow her to punish both Fredrik and Elisa in the worst possible way, and without harming the child. In fact it would be an act of kindness, saving Lucia from growing up with parents like that. It was easy to justify after that.

  *

  She drives home slowly from Toulouse, mind awash with thoughts of those early days following her disastrous attempt on Fredrik. She was still insane, then, she knows that now. But who wouldn’t have been driven to madness, or death even? She glances at the clock – almost 2 p.m., so she still has plenty of time before the girls finish school at four thirty. She feels herself relaxing as she reaches the outskirts of Saint-Girons, and the steep hills that are also visible from Le Tachoué come into sight in the distance. It was coming home to this place that saved her. That, and getting her girls back.

  The girls… She suddenly realizes that it’s Wednesday and the girls finish at 1 p.m. and will have been waiting at the bus drop-off at the bottom of the slopes of Lucasso since 1.45 p.m. She will be much too late to pick them up. She pictures them, waiting, perplexed, at the remote bus stop, peering at the empty road, fear rising in their throats. She is always there for them – how could she have let this happen? She swears under her breath and drives fast around the periphery of Saint-Girons before dropping south onto the D33 towards Rivèrenert.

  When she eventually reaches the bus drop, it’s empty. She stops for a moment, as though the girls might suddenly materialize, her heart hammering. They must have started to walk. Up ahead, the road becomes steep and twisty – they won’t have got far. She glances up into the densely forested ravines. They wouldn’t have dared take the shortcut through the steep woods, would they?

  She takes each turn of the road carefully, mindful not to rip around them in case Josie and Lulu-Rose are just around the bend. She fights away thoughts of them having been struck by a car and lying immobile and broken on the tarmac, black blood seeping into the concrete. Further and further she drives, up into the hills, and she is almost at the track to Le Tachoué now, but there’s still no sign of the girls. It’s impossible – they wouldn’t have got this far after being dropped off at 1.45, even if they ran. Maybe the bus was late, maybe they’re just being dropped off now and she’s going in the wrong direction… Get it together, she tells herself, taking deep breaths and exiting the main road onto their private dirt road.

  Even though she has a four-wheel drive, the car struggles with the mud on the final steep track up to Le Tachoué. As she passes through the gate at the top of the track, the side of the main house comes into view in its lush hollow. There’s a small white car parked in front of the farmhouse and the heavy oak double-door is wide open. Her heart lurches and she stamps down hard on the gas pedal, tearing down the narrow driveway.

  As she screeches to a standstill, Antoine steps out of the front door, followed by Josiane, Lulu-Rose and Boulette. Jacqueline stares at them, blinking away the anxious tears blurring her eyes, then crouches down to pull the girls into a close hug. She is still holding them when she glances up at Antoine, meaning to send him a look of gratitude for having clearly turned up at exactly the right time; he must have spotted them walking along the road and picked them up. His expression is strange – tender and troubled at the same time. But he’s here. He came back.

  69

  Lucia

  I wake because someone sits down on my bed. It’s Maman. She used to come into my room often in the night, crying quietly and just looking at me but I pretended to sleep. She stopped doing it when Antoine started to stay with us in the night. I pretend to be asleep now, too, turning over and opening my eyes just a tiny bit so I can make out Maman’s shape.

  ‘Rose,’ she whispers. ‘Rose.’

  I could let her know that I’m awake, but I feel afraid and I’m not sure why. It’s weird, Maman whispering the name on the stone we found and not ‘Lulu-Rose’, like she normally does. But Antoine told us not to say anything about that, so I just lie still, pretending to be asleep.

  We ran as fast as we could away from the clearing after we found the dead-person grave this afternoon. We ran until we tasted blood. We ran so fast, we tore our clothes. We came through the woods into the bottom of the garden and rushed up to the house and then around the front to the main door.

  ‘Look!’ panted Josie. She couldn’t talk properly because of running. A little white car was coming down the driveway.

  ‘It’s Antoine,’ I said, my voice weird too.

  ‘Hi, ladies,’ said Antoine. He must have n
oticed that our faces were scared because he said, ‘Hey, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Josie and I looked at each other.

  ‘Maman didn’t come to get us,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Okay. That’s strange. Let me call her.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and stared at it. Then he frowned and waved it around – phones don’t work at Le Tachoué, Maman said.

  ‘Something bad happened,’ said Josiane. ‘We found something bad in the woods.’

  ‘What do you mean, “bad”?’ he asked, his kind face worried. He sat down so he was our height and took one of my hands and one of Josie’s.

  ‘Josie…’ I said, trying to warn her. I didn’t think we should tell Antoine what we’d seen. I didn’t know why, but I knew it was a secret.

  Josie didn’t listen. ‘Come on, we’ll show you,’ she said, and she pulled Antoine by the hand, so Boulette and I followed them back down into the garden. ‘Ow,’ says Josie, stopping to show Antoine her bruised, bloody knee. Blood still seeping through the sock bandage.

  ‘Jeez, how did you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘I fell,’ she said. Antoine bent down and picked Josiane up and put her on his shoulders.

  We kept walking into the woods. We didn’t speak, not until we reached the clearing.

  ‘There,’ said Josie, pointing at the stone with the name on it.

  Antoine lowers her to the ground and stands a long moment staring at the stone. Then he said, ‘I don’t think you should tell your mother about this.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Josie.

  ‘Because it might make her really sad,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know she doesn’t know about it?’ I said.