Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  He rubbed the hairs on his cheek and kept on staring at the stone. ‘Has she ever mentioned it to you?’

  We shook our heads.

  ‘No? Then I think it’s best to not say anything.’

  I didn’t want to look at Josie, but we were standing very close together and I could feel her nodding. I nodded too. Then we came back home with Antoine.

  *

  Maman is running her fingertips across my eyebrows, then my bottom lip. It’s ticklish and I’m trying really hard not to sneeze because then she’ll know I’m awake.

  ‘I just wanted to bring you home, Rose.’

  I keep my eyes shut and leave my mouth a little bit open.

  ‘No,’ she whispers. No, no, no. I feel tears drop from Maman’s eye onto the side of my face and they slide into my ear and I want to scream and run away from Le Tachoué, from Maman, and from Josie and Boulette even, all the way down into the valley where the river runs and I would follow it down the steep slopes to where there are other houses, screaming all the way.

  70

  Jacqueline

  ‘I missed you,’ says Antoine, his eyes warm and lively in the flickering light from the flames in the hearth.

  Everything is okay again, in this moment. The girls are sleeping peacefully, Antoine is there, a large glass of red in his hand, the evening stretching out in front of them.

  ‘I missed you, too,’ she says. ‘What made you come back?’

  ‘I thought I saw your car this morning,’ he says. ‘I was out running in the fields with Safina, and I could have sworn I saw your car. I hoped it was yours, that you would turn down my street, that you’d come looking for me. But the car just kept driving. It made me realize that we can’t just sit around waiting for the other person to make the move, because they might not. So here I am.’

  Jacqueline doesn’t tell him that it was indeed her car he saw, when she passed through Salies-du-Salat on her way to Toulouse. She just nods. ‘I’m glad you came.’

  ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about how much I love talking to you. It’s always so easy but also exciting between us. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.’

  ‘Why would I mind?’ she says, giving him a big smile, picking an imaginary speck of dust from his sweater. ‘I feel the same way.’

  ‘I was also thinking about how little I actually know about you, even though we’ve spent quite a lot of time together.’

  Jacqueline feels the faint stirrings of alarm in her stomach. He seemed a little different earlier, when she arrived home in a panic about the girls – guarded, perhaps. Or maybe he was just nervous. She focuses on keeping her smile warm and steady, narrowing her eyes slightly – she wants him to think about sex rather than how little he actually knows about her.

  ‘Well, you can ask me anything you want,’ she says. ‘Anything at all,’ she adds suggestively, running her hand up the inside of Antoine’s thigh, feeling the warmth of his skin through his jeans.

  He doesn’t take up the sexual reference; instead, he meets her gaze unwaveringly, his expression serious. ‘Okay,’ he says, swallowing, making his Adam’s apple quiver on his throat. ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Uh, eleven years. Almost twelve.’

  ‘So you were married a while before you had Lulu-Rose and Josiane?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered. And did you want more kids?’

  ‘Well, we tried for quite some time to have kids in the first place, and it didn’t happen. In the end we had IVF, several rounds, which gave us the twins. I didn’t want to go through all that again, and we had the girls, so…’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Anything else you want to know?’ she says, making sure she comes across entirely relaxed and calm, as though it really is okay to ask her anything at all. She playfully nudges him with her fingertips, then leans in close for a kiss. He relaxes into it, opening his mouth to allow her probing tongue, and she moves closer still, twisting the longish hair at the back of his neck around her index finger. After a while he breaks away.

  ‘Do you keep in touch with your husband’s family?’ he says. ‘Since he died, I mean. And what about your family? Are they close to the girls?’

  Jacqueline feels a sharp stab of irritation but makes herself chuckle softly and take the wine glass from Antoine’s hand. She closes the gap between them and kisses him more insistently this time. She places his right hand inside her blouse, straight onto her naked breast, and uses her own hand to rub at the bulge in his trousers.

  ‘Listen, Antoine, you can ask me anything you want, and we can talk about absolutely everything together. My life is an open book. But first… first you need to make love to me.’ She smiles at him again, watching him melt, before pulling him all the way down on top of her and closing her legs around his back.

  When she wakes in the night, she untangles herself from his embrace. His skin feels hot and sticky. She stands a while watching him sleep, wishing he would rouse some emotion other than weariness in her, but he doesn’t – not anymore.

  71

  Marcus

  ‘You seem preoccupied,’ says Niels, Tollebu’s therapist-in-residence.

  Twice a week Marcus sits in this chair, speaking about whatever pops into his head. It’s little surprise to him that most of these sessions are dominated by long silences. He’s good at silence. ‘Not really,’ he says.

  Niels watches him closely but doesn’t push further. He just waits for Marcus to speak again. Marcus doesn’t feel like he has anything he wants to talk about today, but he also doesn’t want Niels to think he’s refusing to speak simply to be contrary.

  ‘I guess I haven’t been sleeping very well.’

  ‘Do you have any thoughts about why that could be?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I saw in your log that you had a visitor yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ He doesn’t want to think about it either: how age and sorrow have sharpened her, like a diamond whose beauty is intensified by its edges.

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know.’

  Marcus likes Niels and has over the years had many enjoyable conversations with him, and with the prison chaplain, especially on philosophical rather than personal matters. Today he doesn’t want his thoughts and feelings prodded by a professional. He feels like a wild animal whose every contact with other humans will inevitably result in wounds; he has an overwhelming need to withdraw for self-protection.

  ‘Our time’s up, I’m afraid,’ says Niels, glancing at the clock.

  Marcus walks quickly back down the corridor, past the recreation room and the canteen to his room in the left-hand wing. He rounds the corner to see a guide approaching him from the opposite direction.

  ‘Hey there, Marcus,’ the young man says, raising his hand in a fist pump, as though they are buddies.

  Marcus swallows back his irritation, touches his fist against the guide’s and attempts a smile.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you. You’ve got another pretty lady waiting for you in the visitors’ lounge. Two in a week, not bad, eh?’

  72

  Selma

  Her first impression of Marcus Meling is that he is preoccupied and tired. He’s a good-looking man, someone who, in a different setting, might be considered very handsome indeed, and with a certain easy charm. Separated from the trimmings Selma knows he would have had access to in his previous life – money, power, tailored suits – the effect is more subdued, but his natural charisma shines through. He is tall and broad-shouldered, with sandy blonde hair and dark green eyes flecked with hazel. He has a strong nose and a healthy complexion with olive undertones, unusual in Norwegian men.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand why you wanted to speak with me,’ he says as he settles into a lime-green armchair in the meeting room they were shown into.

  ‘I came across your case, and as a freelance journalist I’m always on the search for interesting stories
that merit media attention.’

  ‘Okay… Well, shoot.’

  ‘I’m currently working on an article about remorse. I’m talking to people who carry a heavy burden of guilt, and the focus of my piece will be how to live with something like that.’ It’s not a piece she’s planned as yet, but as she speaks, Selma realizes she might well be interested in writing it.

  ‘Right.’ Marcus looks stricken, and for a moment Selma worries he’ll stand up and walk back out of the room.

  ‘Would it be okay to ask you a few questions along those lines?’

  ‘I… I haven’t really spoken about what happened before. To the media, I mean.’

  ‘You might find it cathartic, especially now that you’ve appealed for an early release. It’s a chance to say something in your own words.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, his eyes darkening, his mouth set in a tight line. ‘I don’t think it’s fair that I should say anything, considering. I don’t want anyone who was affected by what happened to randomly come across my version of events. You can imagine how it would look – me asking for forgiveness and sympathy in a national newspaper.’

  ‘What are your thoughts on forgiveness?’

  Marcus shifts in his chair and looks seriously at Selma, considering the question. He must spend his life running over that same subject.

  ‘I suppose I think of everything in life as weight placed on scales. It’s our job to make sure more weight is placed on the good end of the scales. So if you’ve done something terrible, then it’s your responsibility to somehow restore the balance by adding good to the world. If that makes sense.’

  Selma nods. ‘And how do you attempt to restore that balance?’ she asks, softly, sensing he’ll shut down and bolt if she oversteps in her approach.

  ‘By repenting. By giving something back. When I went on trial, I sold my apartment in Oslo and donated the proceeds to the air ambulance. I also sold most of the shares in my company and donated the money to a charity supporting children with life-altering traffic injuries. Stuff like that. In the greater picture, it isn’t much, I know, but I want to do what I can. I’d like to make a real difference in the lives of children, or at least one child, someday.’

  ‘I wish you luck,’ Selma says gently. She empathizes with the man – as far as careless drunken child killers go, he seems a highly unlikely candidate. ‘If you do decide you’d like to talk some more, feel free to drop me a line. You could be off the record, or anonymous, if you prefer.’

  She hands him one of her newly printed fancy business cards, then stands up. She’s already slipped her arms back into her jacket sleeves when he speaks again.

  ‘It was all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, none of it would have happened. One episode of real madness in all my life and then… this. The repercussions… It’s the repercussions I think about the most. Forgiveness is almost beside the point. It’s like I dropped a meteor into a shallow lake, obliterating everything around its shores. Wave after wave of tragedy, all caused by me. You know, the widow – the bereaved mother – came to see me here. She may well have been expecting me to ask for her forgiveness, but I didn’t because I knew it wouldn’t be possible.’

  Tears are falling from Marcus’s eyes now, but he makes no attempt to wipe them away. Selma holds his gaze, willing him to keep talking. He doesn’t, so she sits back down, slipping her leather jacket back off her shoulders.

  ‘Why were you out there on Birkebeinervegen that night, Marcus?’

  He cradles his head in his hands, his shoulders quivering with silent sobs.

  Selma feels a strong urge to get up and place her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I was going to kill myself,’ he whispers, after a long while. ‘I was every cliché you could imagine back then. Before. I had everything. Every thing. But every single thing in the world adds up to a big fat fucking nothing if you don’t have anything else. I’d turned thirty a few years earlier and it was tough coming to terms with not having any of the elements I’d thought I would have in my life by then. A wife and kids. Friends. It was my own fault for not having pursued them. I only cared about money and success. I was always on a plane – I must have been one of SAS’s biggest clients. I didn’t even know how to use my own washing machine, even though technically I’d lived in my apartment for eight years. I had no idea what it might feel like to come home to someone you loved. And then I met someone who brought all that into my life. It hit me like a freight train. When it ended, I wasn’t able to be rational about it.’

  ‘Why did it end?’

  Marcus shudders and looks up at Selma with a blank stare as though he’d completely forgotten she was there. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I think we’d better round off there. You won’t write about any of this, will you?’

  ‘Not without your permission, no.’

  He nods, his face spent and vulnerable, like a young boy’s.

  She stands up again, but Marcus doesn’t move.

  ‘Did you work on the Lucia Blix case, by the way?’ he asks, tilting Selma’s business card to catch the overhead light. ‘I think I recognize your name.’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘What do you think happened to her?’

  ‘It’s anybody’s guess at this point. I don’t think she’s dead, though. Never have. But it’s such a strange and complex case – it’s never made any sense.’

  ‘I think you’re right about her not being dead,’ says Marcus.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any sense to kill her.’

  ‘Surely that depends on why she was taken. Presumably it might make sense to kill her if she was taken for sexual abuse or child trafficking.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s why she was taken,’ says Marcus.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just a feeling I have.’

  ‘You seem interested in this case.’

  ‘Isn’t everyone?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘It’s an extremely high-profile case. Not many like it in Norway. I guess most people would like to see it solved and the child returned to her mother.’

  There is something strange about how Marcus refers to Lucia’s ‘mother’ and not ‘her mother and father’ or ‘her family’.

  ‘Do you know her?’ A long shot, but in Selma’s experience those are the ones that bring the greatest rewards. Caught off guard, people tend to spill the beans.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lucia Blix’s mother. Elisa. I’m sure you’re aware she’s from here. It’s a small town.’

  ‘It was my first time here when the accident happened.’

  ‘No previous ties to Lillehammer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why were you here? Why were you driving around that particular area in this particular town when you were planning to take your life? Why here, Marcus?’

  He is wringing his hands now and his eyes are brimming with fresh tears. He stands up fast, knocking one of his big knees against the low walnut coffee table between them.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he says and lets himself out of the meeting room.

  *

  On the train back to Oslo, Selma’s thoughts bounce back and forth. She feels profoundly affected by the meeting with Marcus Meling. She had expected an arrogant, uncaring person, an unsavory character with whom it would be impossible to empathize, not a humble, broken man intent on doing good.

  She stares out the window at the grey blur of Lillehammer’s outskirts rushing by. Down there, Elisa lived her early life. Marcus went there to die. Kari Samuelsen goes about her daily life there, pretending she has two children, not three. And down there is also a woman whose world was devastated by Marcus Meling’s decision to drink and drive that night. Who is she and what is her life like now? If Selma decides to pursue Marcus’s story, she would be interested in speaking to the widow. It would make for a powerful article, she imagines: interviews with the victim and perpetrator side by side, speaking of forgiveness,
guilt and repentance.

  Snatches of the conversation with Marcus return to her.

  The widow came to see me, he said. He didn’t ask her for forgiveness. Did he say what they’d talked about? I was every cliché… I was always on a plane… Then I met someone who brought all that into my life.

  Selma opens her browser on her phone as a strange unrest begins to grow in her chest, making a bigger and bigger space for itself. She goes to iNovo.no, the website for the company Marcus founded. She’s been to the site before, trying to get a sense of what kind of services the company provided, and she remembers seeing a section about conferences. She clicks on it and a picture gallery opens of various international conferences attended by iNovo in the years between 2004, when the company was founded, and 2012, when Marcus was jailed. He was always on a plane. I must have been one of SAS’s biggest clients. Miami, Amsterdam, Berlin, Palma de Mallorca, Malaga, Reykjavik, Bordeaux, Geneva, Helsinki, all of them just in the last quarter of 2010. She clicks on 2011, and in January alone there are pictures of Marcus presenting at conferences in Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm and Bucharest. There’s a pattern here, and for a brief moment a tangled web becomes impossibly clear, like the tight knots of a spine under the X-ray.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ whispers Selma. She opens the Instagram app and types in @elisablix. How many times has she scrolled through Elisa’s account before? Too many to count, and she knows most of the nine hundred posts by heart, especially the many, many of her children. There are others too, selfies of Elisa, shots out of airplane windows, and various pictures of places Elisa has gone for work. She scrolls back, all the way down to the beginning of Elisa’s feed, to when Lyder hadn’t yet been born and Lucia was a gorgeous chubby toddler. Elisa traveled then, too, posting frequently.

  In January 2011 Elisa Blix posted seven times on Instagram. Selma’s hand begins to shake as she opens the first post, a selfie with the tip of the Eiffel Tower positioned behind her to resemble a goofy hat. The next picture was taken the day after, by someone else, and shows Elisa at the top of an aircraft’s steps, in her SAS uniform, smiling widely, her signature scarlet lipstick a bright contrast to the bleak sky and white plane behind her. There’s a picture of Lucia in the bath, her face haloed by soap bubbles. ‘#lulubaby #norwegianmamma #loveofmylife’ read the hashtags. There’s a picture of Elisa’s bare legs, taken from above, stretched out on what looks like a hotel bed, and captioned ‘#bucharestbabe #businessandpleasure #radissonblu’. There’s a picture of a lavish sushi display, with no caption or location identifier. The next is a deliberately blurry selfie of Elisa laughing on what looks like a bridge, a frozen river vaguely visible behind her. ‘My favorite town,’ reads the caption, followed by: ‘#amsterdam #ohmyheart #planelife #crew #luckyme #somegirlshaveallthefun’.