by Alex Dahl
‘Like… like what?’ I ask.
‘Like two birth certificates.’
I’m suddenly reminded of something I read in a newspaper many years ago, about how there’s an ancient Native American practice in which, in the event of a person accidentally causing a child’s death, that person then has to hand over his or her own child to the bereaved family.
‘I’m wondering whether this woman might have even more complex reasons for wanting to take Lucia,’ he continues, and I nod, but I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and rise as he speaks. ‘Avenging marital infidelity by kidnapping a child seems very extreme.’
‘Well, she’s clearly crazy. You said it – that she might have a, uh, compromised sense of reality.’
‘She may have been under the impression that Lucia could be her husband’s biological child.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘No, I don’t think it’s likely she would have assumed that. Also, for the record, she’s not.’
‘Are you absolutely certain that’s not possible? You said yourself that you were in an ongoing relationship with Nicolai Olve at the time of his death.’
‘I already had Lucia when I met Nicolai.’
Kjeller and Stenersen exchange a glance.
I’ve thought this out thoroughly, but I need to get all the facts entirely right. I swallow and make sure my eyes don’t waver when I look at Gaute Svendsen. He nods thoughtfully.
‘We would like to firmly establish Lucia’s paternity, given these highly unusual circumstances. So, with your permission, we’ll be seeking to run those tests today.’
Fine with me. I nod.
‘We’ll break for a while now,’ says Haakon Kjeller. ‘I’d like to reconvene later this afternoon, to go over some more details with you, so if you could stay at the police station until then, please. We’ll be asking your husband to attend as well.’
78
Selma
When she finishes speaking, there’s a long pause on the other end.
‘Selma, I don’t know,’ says Olav finally. ‘This all sounds utterly crazy.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I mean, are you sure?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
‘You couldn’t make this stuff up. To think that they’ve been playing a total charade with the police, and the media, it’s just—’
‘I think it’s more complicated than that.’
‘Why would she keep this secret though?’
‘I don’t know. There must be more to it.’
‘How soon can you be here?’
‘I’m on my way in now. The train just passed Stange.’
‘If you’re right, this is going to be the biggest story, possibly ever—’
‘I’m right, Olav. Trust me.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
Selma pictures him spinning slowly around on his orange office chair, chewing absentmindedly at the white wire from his headphones. He’ll be digesting everything she said, fighting disbelief.
‘Hold on a sec,’ he says, lapsing into silence.
Selma stares impatiently out the window, at the grey fields sliding past.
‘I just had a message from my guy at Kripos.’
‘And?’
‘The police are about to announce an unscheduled press conference at six. The rumor on the street is that they’ve uncovered the identity of the woman who took Lucia Blix.’
Selma becomes aware of the train slowing down and approaching a station. Her mind is crowded with a mass of conflicting thoughts, making her wince, stopping her words from coming.
She removes her phone from her ear to see whether any new messages have come in. Elisa Blix still hasn’t answered. Is she finally going to tell the truth?
79
Jacqueline
It’s early evening and the girls are sitting side by side in silence at the kitchen table, not playing with Kimmi or Boulette, just watching Jacqueline stirring the pots. It makes her angry that they’re not chattering away like they usually do; instead, they just sit there, grave and silent. For eighteen months now, Jacqueline has made this home the center of the universe for the girls, for herself, for their many beloved pets. She has made sure she is always there for Josiane and Lulu-Rose, no matter what. She is mother, teacher, friend, everything. She couldn’t have done any more; she is perfect. The perfect mother. She had believed that it was possible to create a perfect life if you just tried hard enough – she’d had to believe that. For several days, the girls have been sullen and unresponsive, and she can’t help but feel angry with them.
Jacqueline has a headache. She feels trapped. She wants to be like she imagines her own mother: alone and anonymous in Paris, sipping coffee at a different pavement café every morning, reading in bed until late into the night, moving like a shadow on the periphery of other people’s lives. Jacqueline wishes she could just call her and tell her everything.
‘Do you want to come with me to Saint-Girons?’ she asks the girls. She feels the need to leave the farm and be among other people. To stand on a street corner and feel people moving past her without particularly noticing her presence. To browse the aisles at Carrefour, weighing one brand of soup up against another, like any random customer.
The girls both shake their heads. Again, they make her irrationally angry. Don’t they understand that this is all for them? Will they ever be able to grasp the extent of Jacqueline’s sacrifice? She hastily spoons the aubergine and lamb stew into bowls and places them on the table in front of the girls.
‘Well, I’m going to Carrefour,’ she says.
She drives faster than usual; the sky is deepening into a drab slate-grey and she wants to be back before it’s totally dark. Antoine is supposed to come at nine, and she imagines the evening ahead, once the girls are in bed. The wine, the laughter, the easy conversation, the sex. Can life stay like this – a peaceful life in a treasured place with a kind, attractive man like Antoine by her side? The thought no longer fills Jacqueline with excitement but with vicious dread. On the approach to Saint-Girons, she pulls over in a layby. She sits for a moment, her head in her hands, trying to make sense of her confusing emotions and spinning head. She stares at the blue-and-red flashing lights of Carrefour in the distance; they remind her of the ambulance lights sweeping across the bodies of her family.
The last time she held Rose in her arms, she was screaming her name, shaking her, staring into the tiny child’s wide-open, unseeing eyes. On the ground next to her was Nicolai, clearly already gone – his eyes were glassy, and dark blood had spread out on the snow around his head. Also on the ground was Josiane, face down, whimpering. Did Jacqueline pick her up? She must have. She must have carried her babies, stumbling on the ice, screaming, towards the sweep of blue lights from the ambulances rushing up the hillside towards them. She must have carried them like she had when they were newborns, one on each arm, close to her body.
She doesn’t remember any of it, except Rose’s face and the halo of blood around Nicolai. She remembers the bright lights of the car that hit them and how they were briefly switched off – it was dark, completely dark, as she scrambled across the ground towards her husband and daughters. Then the lights came on again and the car tore off, disappearing around the next bend, heading away from Lillehammer. She heard wailing – her own, Josiane’s, and also the uncontrollable, anguished sobs of the person who’d emerged from the car and run into the forest before it drove away. Jacqueline can still hear those sounds in her mind. But nobody has ever believed her. Not the police, and not the doctors or the nurses at the psychiatric hospital.
She wipes at her tears and turns the key in the ignition, but her foot feels leaden on the brake, like she simply can’t drive the car. She switches the engine off again and allows herself to give in to the despair. She rubs at the soft space between her breasts – it’s hurting – and tries to take deep breaths, though the air won’t go deep enough. She leans her head against the window, staring absentmindedly at th
e blue-and-red lights from Carrefour, blurred through her tears, giving herself time to regain her composure. Then she’ll just go home. She takes out her phone and switches on cellular data. She usually keeps it off – it’s meant for emergencies only, and she knows how easily she could be traced by it, should someone grow suspicious of her.
She opens the browser and goes to Dagsposten, expecting to see the usual underwhelming newsfeed from one of the safest countries in the world: man attacked by kitten, metros delayed in Oslo due to signal failure, married politician apologizes for sending intimate pictures to seventeen-year-old boy. They calm her, sometimes, these snippets from life in Norway.
She does a double-take when she sees the headline:
BLIX CASE: Emergency Press Conference, LIVE Now
She clicks on the link and watches a live-streamed video of a uniformed police officer speaking. His name is Tim Bruun, according to the name at the bottom of the screen, and he is the head of the missing persons department at Kripos.
‘We can confirm a major breakthrough in the Lucia Blix abduction case. We have a female suspect, who is closely affiliated with the Blix couple, currently under investigation by Norwegian police, assisted by Scotland Yard. We remain hopeful that Lucia Blix will be recovered alive. We ask that the general public, in Norway and across Europe, remain vigilant and observant. Please do not hesitate to contact the police if you have any information or suspicions about the whereabouts of Lucia Blix.’
Jacqueline closes the tab and opens a new one. She goes to Aftenposten.no and here too the Blix case dominates the headlines. ‘Deranged Woman Hunted by Interpol’, reads one. ‘Women Who Kill Children – a Character Study’, reads another.
She messages Antoine, saying she feels unwell and unfortunately needs to cancel. Turning the car around and heading back in the direction she’d come, Jacqueline feels strangely calm. It must be a rush of adrenaline keeping her alert and focused. Could someone have tipped off the police? But who? Or perhaps they’re still looking for someone else. She needs to work out where to go from here. She thinks of Mikko again, how it wasn’t that difficult to get rid of him when she realized how dangerous he was. She feels a cool shiver of guilt. But she only did what she had to. And she will do what she has to again.
*
When she gets back to Le Tachoué, Antoine’s car is in the driveway. He’s more than an hour early. She messaged him to cancel – did he not get her text? She feels a rush of irritation. How can she make him go away? She can’t go ahead with their evening together now, not after what she’s just discovered. ‘A female suspect’, the detective said. ‘A Deranged Woman’, read the Daily Mail headline.
The front door opens and Antoine emerges, smiling, but his eyes look distant. At his feet, Boulette and Safina are hopping around joyfully.
‘Let me help you with the bags,’ he says.
‘What bags?’
‘The girls said you’d gone to Carrefour?’
‘Oh. Yes. Yes, I was going there, but when I got to the valley, I started to feel bad. Yes. I have a really bad headache. I messaged you – didn’t you get my text?’
‘Come here,’ he says, and pulls her into his arms, kissing the top of her head.
It feels good, to be held by Antoine, but it’s too late now, it’s all too late. ‘I think it might be best if you went home. I’m feeling quite under the weather and I just want to put the kids to bed and get an early night.’
‘I’ll help you,’ he says.
‘No, Antoine, really, it’s okay. Why don’t we make some plans for this weekend instead?’ She says it knowing that this weekend she will no longer be here.
‘No, I want to help you,’ he says, and she senses a strange determination in his voice.
He takes her hand and leads her into the house, which feels vast and cold. At the top of the stairs stand the girls, looking down into the atrium stairwell. She smiles at them, but they don’t smile back, though Josie raises her hand in a wave. Then they turn around and disappear down the hallway, most likely into the tent in Josiane’s room, where they spend so much of their time talking and drawing.
Jacqueline turns to face Antoine, swallowing hard, thinking of ways to get rid of him, but there is something about the way he looks at her which sends a chill through the pit of her stomach.
80
Selma
She watches the press conference on her phone, her hand shaking with rage and disbelief. Her whole life, Selma’s been told she’s too black and white, that she isn’t able to see the nuances or shades of grey, but as far as she’s concerned, there is nothing grey about lying to the police and the entire world. Selma feels as though she’s attempting to solve a puzzle that’s growing clearer and clearer with each piece found and placed in context, but she still can’t make out what the final picture is meant to be. Could it be that she’s got it all wrong and that Elisa is speaking the truth now?
Back in her Oslo apartment, she opens her Mac and finds a photograph of Elisa Blix back when she was all groomed and pretty. Back when she had everything. You’re lying, Selma thinks, but why? You want them all to believe that this was some kind of twisted four-way affair. She scrutinizes Elisa’s carefree smile and those dark, unreadable eyes. There you are, on TV, crying about Nicolai Olve Thibault, speaking so convincingly of an epic love story tragically lost, fishing for sympathy, even now. But you never even met him, did you, Elisa?
She returns to the folder into which she’s pasted pictures of Elisa and Fredrik Blix, Lyder and Lucia, Marcus Meling, Mikko Eilaanen, Feodor Batz, Heiki Vilkainen, Jacqueline and Nicolai Olve Thibault. She studies each face in turn. And then, finally, she sees it, the missing piece, as clear as day. Again, all Selma will have to do now is wait.
81
Lucia
I wake in the night and Antoine is in my bedroom. He is sitting by the side of my bed and nudging my arm gently. I sit up and I feel afraid. It reminds me of when the man took me to the house with the attic room in Arden and I woke in the night and the man who looked like Ronald McDonald was in my room laughing at me while I slept.
‘Lulu-Rose,’ he whispers. ‘Wake up, sweetie.’
I open my eyes so he knows I’m awake, and my mouth, too, so he knows I can scream. But he puts his finger on his lips and I don’t scream because I don’t think he’s going to hurt me.
‘Can you sit up a little bit more?’ he asks, and I sit up all the way in the bed, leaning back against the pillow.
‘I’m going to take a picture of you, okay?’
‘Why?’
He’s about to say something, but then he suddenly looks behind him, at the open door and the dark corridor. He presses his finger to his lips again and then he takes his phone out and takes a picture of me. The flash makes my eyes hurt and I rub at them.
‘I need to ask you something,’ he whispers, and from the way he speaks I think it’s an important question.
He fumbles with his phone and in the light from the screen his eyes look scared. I don’t know why he’s afraid, and I want to ask, but I’m afraid, too, now. He turns the screen over and what he shows me makes me want to scream, but I don’t. It’s a picture of me when I lived with The Other People. I remember the day it was taken. It was at the school I went to then, Korsvik School, and I was wearing a purple velvet dress with pink flowers and my hair was yellow. I look small but happy. I was laughing at the man taking the pictures because he made a lot of funny faces.
‘Is this you?’ says Antoine.
I can’t speak. He shows me another picture, this time of me and Lyder and Mamma and Pappa at Christmas. Me and Lyder are sitting on the floor in front of the Christmas tree holding big presents and smiling. I didn’t know The Truth back then. I start to cry because I’d forgotten The Lady’s, no, Mamma’s face a little bit, and when I look at it now I remember so many things. She has a mole on the side of her forehead, and I’d forgotten about that. She used to draw little shapes in the palm of my hand when I was really l
ittle. Her teeth are really round and quite small and my new teeth that have come out not long ago are like hers.
‘Is this you?’ Antoine asks again. I nod and try not to cry with sounds, but he pulls me close and hugs me, whispering, ‘Mon Dieu,’ and then ‘Putain,’ which is actually a very bad word.
‘Tell me your real name,’ he says, holding me at arm’s length and staring at my face.
‘Lucia Blix,’ I whisper, but just then Maman comes rushing into the room.
82
Elisa
Sitting here, it’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience. Every part of me is on the highest alert and it feels as though my nervous system has been rewired on the outside of my body. A chair scraped back sounds like tires squealing. The tap-tap of the police receptionist’s keyboard sounds like automatic gunfire. My phone ringing sounds like a child screaming for help. I pick it up off the table in front of me, but it’s Fredrik, so I put it back, face down.
I’ve been made to sit out here in the waiting area for hours, ever since the end of the press conference. Fredrik still hasn’t arrived, but I couldn’t care less where he is. Gaute Svendsen came past earlier, asking if I wanted a couple of slices of pepperoni pizza from the staff canteen, but I just stared at him and he looked away before skulking off back down the corridor.
My phone rings again and I jump painfully. Probably Fredrik again, but I turn it over and see that it’s Selma Eriksen.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Elisa, how are you doing?’
‘Okay, I guess. Considering the circumstances. They’re trying to locate Jacqueline now.’
‘I can’t imagine how such a massive breakthrough must feel. I’m crossing everything for Lucia, and for you.’
