What would you do for the perfect life? Would you lie? Cheat? Or... kill?
Cecilia Wilborg has the perfect life. A handsome husband, two beautiful daughters and a large house in the picture-postcard town of Sandefjord.
But then Tobias enters her life. He is a small, friendless eight-year-old boy. But he threatens to bring Cecilia’s world crashing down.
Welcome Page
About The Boy at the Door
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part 3
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
I.
II.
Acknowledgements
About Alex Dahl
An Invitation from the Publisher
For Oscar and Anastasia, with love
Tuesday, I wake angry. I often do, if I’m honest, but today it’s worse than usual. Firstly, because I wake alone – Johan has gone off to London for the third time this month – and secondly, because it’s October and it will be completely dark until almost nine o’clock. I reluctantly get out of bed and stand awhile by the window looking out onto the harbor. It’s not yet seven, but across the bay, cars are moving in a slow line towards the motorway. The water in the harbor is dully reflecting the moonlight through a thin, eerie layer of ice. Downstairs, my daughters have already started fighting. I glance at my phone and it’s full of messages and missed calls, but I just can’t face dealing with them right now. With everything going on, I’ve hardly been in the office the last week, but I am going in today.
I take a few exaggeratedly deep breaths and keep my gaze on the moon, still high in the sky; mindfulness is the way forward, I’ve heard. I try to see Sandefjord the way it is in summer, when it really is a joy to stand at this window, looking out over the balmy, calm inner harbor full of leisure boats, and that bright, late-evening light. We get more sun than almost anywhere else in Norway, but I must say the winters are especially wet and drab. According to the weather report, we can expect another onslaught of torrential rain this afternoon, but for now, it’s cool and clear. I take another couple of deep breaths, mentally steeling myself for the day ahead. I guess everyone feels like the world is a dark place sometimes.
*
Tuesday is a crap day in my world. Especially now that Marialuz has decided to leave us halfway through her contract and I’m stuck with no au pair. It’s like you can’t win with those people. I don’t particularly enjoy having a stranger in the house but I most certainly don’t enjoy having to do all the work myself either. It just isn’t possible. Especially on Tuesdays, when the girls both have after-school activities in opposite parts of town. Nicoline dances ballet at five, and Hermine swims at six. Because Nicoline finishes as six thirty p.m. I then have to drive into town to collect her, and bring her back to the pool, where we sit on ugly plastic chairs watching small children bob around in the water until seven fifteen. Nicoline whines for the full half hour we’re there, unless I let her watch YouTube makeup tutorials on my phone and buy her candy, which I do. Obviously.
Tonight I’m in a particularly stressed-out, irritable mood, as things didn’t exactly go to plan at work. I bend over backwards for my clients, sometimes literally, and still they complain. Angela Salomonsen had the nerve to email me today, saying that the violet raw-silk cushions I commissioned handmade in Lyon look dove-gray in the particular light of her conservatory, and could I call her immediately so we could discuss this situation. These are the kinds of things I have to deal with as interior stylist in a wealthy town full of spoilt, bored wives. Sometimes I think it is a miracle that I work at all, considering I have two small children and my husband is always traveling and I have no au pair. It’s not really like I have to, but I quite like what I do, and being me is very expensive. Also, in my circles, it’s definitely looked upon as a bit lazy to stay at home. Unless you have a cupcake business from the kitchen counter and blog about it, which I don’t, as I hate cupcakes and blogs.
It’s raining hard outside, and as I watch volleys of rain slam against the floor-to-ceiling windows beyond the pool, it occurs to me that I don’t remember the last day it didn’t rain. I suppose October is like that in many places, but I think I’m one of those people who is particularly sensitive to dreary skies and wet wind – I am a Taurus, and I prefer my surroundings to be beautiful at all times.
A little boy catches my eye as the children line up at the one-meter diving board. I’m not sure why. He’s significantly smaller than the other children and his skin is a deep olive-brown and smooth. He’s bouncing up and down on his heels, rubbing his arms, but his face is completely void of the goofy expressions of the other children waiting their turn. He looks frightened. I look around at the other parents who are waiting in the steamy, overheated room for someone who might be the boy’s parents – I don’t remember seeing him here before. There’s chubby Sara’s fat mother who I always try not to have to talk to – I’ve heard from several people that she’s really needy and the last thing I need is some cling-on mummy friend. There’s Emrik’s father – a good-looking guy I went to school with back in the day who is now a police officer, and who I occasionally glance up at before quickly looking away. I can feel his eyes on me now but wait ten seconds longer than I want to before meeting his eyes. I give him a very faint smile and he immediately returns it, like a grateful puppy. I’m a good girl these days, though it doesn’t come easily to me; there was a time when I would have felt giddy with excitement at this little game, perhaps easing the top button of my blouse open, running my tongue slowly along the backs of my teeth. I scan the few remaining people for the little boy’s parents, now pointedly ignoring Emrik’s dad’s wanting gaze.
There are the grandparents of Hermine’s best friend from school, Amalie, sitting closely together and sharing biscuits from an old, faded, red cake tin. There is also a slim, ginger woman sitting close to the door, a heat flush creeping across her freckled white chest. She, too, is watching the boy intently, and I suppose she must be the mother, though it faintly surprises me that she must have had the child with someone pretty ethnic; the kid is so dark the father must be even darker, and she doesn’t immediately strike me as someone with such exotic tastes.
There’s nobody else here; I imagine the other parents are out in the parking lot, preferring their own rain-battered cocoons and a newspaper to listening to kids’ screeching voices cutting through the clammy, hot air.
Finally, Hermine’s class finishes after two rather underwhelming attempts at diving, and she walks over to where Nicoline and I are sitting.
‘Did you see that?’ She beams, exposing the wide, fleshy gash in her mouth from six simultaneously missing teeth.
‘Fabulous,’ I say, standing up, gathering our things together and nudging Nicoline, who is watching a ten-year-old in America apply a thick layer of foundation before expertly contouring her elfin face. ‘Hurry up in the changing rooms. We’ll wait in the foyer.’
Hermine does not hurry up in the changing rooms, and Nicoline and I wait impatiently in the brick-clad foyer, staring out at columns of rain moving back and forth across the parking lot like dancers in a ballroom. I keep checking my watch and it’s already past 7.30 when Hermine appears, freshly blow-dried and with a lick of pink lip gloss in spite of the fact that she’s about to step into a torrent.
I can practically feel the thin, cool stem of the wine glass in my hand and am slightly hysterical at the thought of having to deal with the girls for much longer today. They begin to argue over something as we walk out the door, and over the sounds of their high-pitched squabbling and the crash of the rain, I don’t pick out the other sound until I’ve taken several steps outside. I briefly turn around, and there is the receptionist, an older, tired-looking woman with tight gray curls and a sweater that reads ‘Happy Halloween’. She’s shouting my name into the downpour, motioning for me to come back inside, and it’s so typical – one of the girls must have left something behind.
‘Cecilia, right?’ she asks as I step back inside, already drenched. I notice the little boy again, the one who’d caught my eye at the pool. He’s sitting on a bench, staring at the floor, his hair dripping onto the brown tiles.
‘Yes?’
‘I… I was wondering if you could possibly take this little boy home? Nobody has come for him.’
‘What do you mean, nobody’s come for him?’
The receptionist comes over to where I’m standing near the door and lowers her voice to a near-whisper, indicating the little boy on the bench.
‘Maybe there’s a misunderstanding… He knows where he lives. It’s over on Østerøya; I looked at the list, it doesn’t seem too far from where you are.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s really inconvenient,’ I say, glancing back out at the black, wet night, longingly now. ‘Isn’t there anyone else who can take him? There was a woman in there I thought was his mother.’
‘I’m afraid it can’t have been; they’ve all gone.’ Damn Hermine and her blow-dry.
‘Have you called the parents?’
‘Yes. The number he gave goes straight to voicemail.’
‘Can’t he take a bus or something?’ The receptionist gives me a slightly cold look and pointedly looks over my shoulder to the downpour outside.
Nicoline and Hermine stare with open mouths from me to the boy to the receptionist, and back to me. The idea of not actually being collected by anyone from their activities is clearly unfathomable to them, as it very well should be. What kind of parents would not turn up to pick up their child? Some people really should be prevented from reproducing in the first place.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Of course I’ll take him.’ I look at the boy, expecting him to get up and follow us to the car, but he remains sitting, staring at the floor.
‘I’ve never seen him here before,’ I say to the receptionist. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Tobias,’ she says. ‘He only started a few weeks ago. He’s eight, but as he’s quite little for his age and hasn’t swum much previously, we moved him in with the seven-year-olds.’
‘I see.’ I try not to think of the extra half hour this kid’s parents’ fuck-up is going to cost me and my plans for a very large glass of Chablis by the fire before Johan comes home. I walk over to where he’s sitting.
‘Come on,’ I say, but realize my voice sounds harsh. I kneel down next to him, and only then does he look up at me. He’s like a sparrow, with jittery, nervous eyes, but a soft, sweet face, framed by defined, dark brows. He’s tiny – it seems impossible that he can be a year older than my solid, tall Hermine. There’s something serious and un-childlike about him, and it throws me for a moment, but then I try to empathize – it must be a result of coming from a family that forgets to pick up an eight-year-old from the swimming pool on a bitingly cold, wet October evening. ‘Come,’ I say again, softer now. He doesn’t take my outstretched hand, but does stand up, gathering his things together.
In the car, the girls are completely silent for once, and the only sound is the repetitive, fast swoosh of the windscreen wipers. Nicoline sits up front with me, staring out at the twinkling lights of the harbor as we drive through town on our way to Østerøya. I glance in the mirror and see that Hermine is looking unselfconsciously at Tobias, whose wan little face is turned away from her, to the window. Hermine begins to draw shapes in the gathering steam on her own window; hearts with arrows through them, her initials – H.W. – little bunnies with smiling faces.
‘Mum?’ says Nicoline.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you drop us at our house before you take that boy home?’
Our home is only a two-minute detour, and it would be good for the girls to get a head start on the evening routine. ‘Sure. Daddy isn’t home yet, though. He’s landing at ten.’
‘Okay.’
‘I won’t be more than twenty minutes, so you can get changed into your pajamas and brush your teeth.’ I turn into our long driveway and glance at the boy again as our house comes into view. It’s quite an impressive sight with its shiny black roof, numerous softly lit windows, a triple garage, swimming pool just discernible through the hedges, panoramic sea views and welcoming red door. I wonder whether the boy has ever been to a home like this before, but his neutral expression betrays nothing. Back on the road, I try to make some conversation with him.
‘So, which school do you go to?’
Silence.
‘Tobias?’
Silence.
‘Are you in… umm, second grade? Third?’
Silence. I give up.
I pull up at the address the receptionist wrote down on the back of a Sandefjord Svømmeklubb business card: Østerøysvingen 8, but there doesn’t seem to be anything here. I glance back at Tobias, but he sits immobile, as though he’s never been here before.
‘Tobias? Is this where you live?’ He nods slightly, and finally, through the dark and the rain, I make out the outline of a structure set back from the road atop a rocky crag. ‘Okay, bye, then,’ I say, but the boy doesn’t move.
‘Umm, would you like me to walk you to the door?’ Slowly the boy raises his eyes to meet mine and there’s something in the way that he looks at me that makes me anxious. He nods. I look away, back up at what looks like a small, huddled wooden house, cursing this turn of events. I could be at home now, my feet up on the new InDesign footstool, a glass of crispy wine in my hand, flicking through Scandinavian Homes, my cashmere Missoni throw across my knees, listening to the snap of flames and the howl of the wind. Instead I’m here in the crashing rain with a mute, strange child, trying to find his parents. I run from the car up a steep gravel path to the door of the little house, the boy trailing behind me, seemingly oblivious to the onslaught of icy water. I knock on the flimsy door with peeling blue paint, but as I do, it opens a crack, as though it was never properly closed. I’m not sure whether the booming sound rising above the hammering rain is coming from my heart or from something inside the house.
‘Hello?’ I say loudly with fake confidence, pushing the door open all the way. The door opens straight into a living room, but the house is clearly unlived in – there is no furniture except the bare wooden bones of a sofa in the middle of the room. There are mounds of dust everywhere, cobwebs descending from dark, moist corners, and mouse droppings scattered about. I turn around fast, to the boy standing in the doorway, no longer in doubt that the booming sound is indeed coming from my heart.
‘Tobias,’ I say, taking hold of his bony shoulders with both of my hands. ‘Is this your house?’ He nods.
‘Where are your parents?’ No reaction.
‘Tobias, look at me! You have to explain to me what’s going on here! Do you live in this house? It doesn’t look like anyone lives here.’ He still does not answer but I follow his eyes up a narrow staircase. I run up the stairs and my steps reverberate in the hollow, empty space. I shudder to think of him just standing there downstairs, in the dark, by himself. For a brief moment I am grateful for my own two girls. For all their shortcomings and the constant annoyance of listening to their never-ending squabbles, they are nowhere near as weird as this kid.
At the top of the stairs is a white, clean-looking IKEA lamp, unplugged, but seemingly recently placed amid the thick dust. I plug it in and look around in the pool of light. There are two rooms upstairs, one on either side of the stairwell, and a small water basin. In one of the rooms is a dirty mattress, propped up against the wall, and in the corner stands a bin liner overflowing with clothes. In the other room a smaller mattress is placed against the window and a postcard hangs from a nail – Krakow. I turn it over but nothing is written on it.
Downstairs, Tobias is where I left him, standing motionless in the doorway, not letting his eyes wander around the room. I kneel down in front of him, determined to find a way to communicate with him.
‘Tobias, you need to tell me what’s going on, right now. Do you live in this house?’ He nods.
‘Where are your parents, Tobias?’ No response.
‘Look, I’m going to have to call the police.’
‘No!’ he shouts, and I’m surprised by how forceful his voice is – I would have imagined it to be a fragile mewl, judging by the rest of the kid.
‘I have to, Tobias. Obviously I can’t leave you here in this. . . this empty house. Where are your parents, sweetie?’ I reach into my pocket for my iPhone, only to realize Nicoline still has it.
‘Look, we’re going to go back to my house and make a few calls. You don’t need to worry, Tobias. You’re a child, and you haven’t done anything wrong. There has probably just been some kind of misunderstanding. Okay?’ He shakes his head curtly and his indifferent expression of earlier is replaced by a scowl. I stand back up and reach for his hand, which is cold and wet. ‘Come on, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to help you.’ He looks me square in the eye and nods slightly, eyes distant and sad.
At home, I park outside the garage because most likely I’m going to have to spend the rest of the evening driving this forlorn little boy around when the police find out where his parents actually are, because they sure as hell aren’t at home in their squat. I switch off the ignition, look quickly in the rearview mirror, and freeze, my hand on the door handle. Tobias is crying silently, big droplets rolling from his eyes and hovering a moment on his chin before dropping off onto his already-soaked jeans.
‘Hey…’ I say. ‘Hey… Come on inside. I’ll fix you a hot chocolate and you can watch a movie with my girls until we figure something out, okay?’ I think he shakes his head but his sobs are so violent that I can’t be sure he isn’t just shaking all over.
‘Please,’ he whispers finally. ‘Please can I stay here tonight? Just tonight? They’ll come back tomorrow. I promise. I promise! Just tonight! Please don’t call the police!’
‘But, Tobias, where are they? Who are they? Your parents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They’re coming back tomorrow.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They said.’ At this, I let out a sharp little sigh. Judging by the state of their living quarters, I wouldn’t take Tobias’s parents’ word on anything.
‘Please,’ he says again, and there’s something so raw and urgent in his eyes that I wait a moment before I speak. I have to say no. This kid can’t just stay here. It must be illegal to just take some kid in overnight without at least alerting the authorities. I could call now, and they’d come straight here; serious-looking men and women with briefcases sitting around my living room all night questioning this mostly mute boy. There would be phone calls, crying, pleading, the astonished expression on Johan’s face when he gets home from the airport less than two hours from now. Or… or I could put him up in the guest room, just for tonight, and drop him at his school first thing tomorrow morning and that would be that. Then the school could deal with him if the parents don’t return.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Of course you can stay here tonight. But just one night.’ He nods and smiles a tight little smile at me as we walk the last few steps to the front door. Next to it hangs a wooden heart, made and painted by Nicoline, which reads: ‘Welcome to the Wilborg family!’ Tobias pauses next to it for several long moments and there is something in his focused, serious expression that unsettles me. There is something else, too; something about his smile – it looks familiar, like I have seen him somewhere before. This is a small town. I could have seen him anywhere, at any time. It isn’t so strange. But there was something about his smile… something familiar.
‘Welcome,’ I say, holding the door open for him, smiling stiffly, and he nods, stepping into the hallway.
*
Sometimes, if I wake in the quietest hour of the night, when the house seems to gently buzz with all that sweet normality, I pad across the hallway and stand awhile in one of the girls’ rooms. I stand still, listening to the rise and fall of soft, slow breath. In spite of the hell they put me through sometimes, and in spite of the fact that, really, I’m just another working mother trying to hold it all together at an astronomical cost, I am so very grateful for them. That somebody as perfect and wonderful as those two should have chosen Johan and me as parents is astonishing.
Hermine is contrary, sharp-mouthed and utterly beautiful. She is witty and independent, and has mastered sarcasm since she was tiny. Nicoline takes after Johan – she is truly kind, both in actions and in thoughts, and I don’t say that lightly, because nobody else in this family is as completely and uncomplicatedly kind as those two. Nicoline just wants us all to get along all the time, and easily senses when something is even slightly awry. One day, she’ll make an incredible mother. The kind who lives for the glee on dirty, sugar-crusted little faces. The kind of mother I’m just not.
I love my girls, wildly, but often my intentions surpass my practical ability. I want to be the kind of parent who reads to them for hours after spending the afternoon baking glittery pink, gluten-free unicorn oat biscuits. I want to be the mother whose facial expression is calm and harmonious even when they shout ‘Mommy’ for the seventh time – in that minute. ‘Mommy, mommy, mommy!’ ‘Yes,’ I want to smile, ‘here I am.’ A one-woman comfort station, a one-stop shop for food, fun and endless reassurance. But I’m not that mother, most of the time. I’m the mother who fantasizes about a piscine de champagne on Mala Beach, the one who wants to smash stuff when they fight and shout, the one whose maternal patience just isn’t all that.
But I do adore them. And especially in those silent, dark hours, when their faces are vulnerable and bare by the light of the moon, their breath uncontrolled and peaceful, their little hands clasped to their chins beneath unguarded faces, lingering at the very end of childhood.
Tonight everything is different. For several hours, I lie in bed, unable to sleep, just focusing on syncing my breath to Johan’s soft, regular rhythm. A part of me wants to go and stand in one of the girls’ rooms, to make sure that they really are there, that they are safe. I want to walk quietly around the house, making sure everything is okay, that everything is how it should be, but I don’t, because everything is strange and different, and I know I’ll burst into tears if I move even an inch.
Here in Sandefjord we have everything. Or, rather, we don’t – and that is my point exactly. We don’t have any of the undesirable components that make life so unpalatable in many other places: pollution, poverty, property crises, excessive crime, immigration issues – I could go on and on. This is not the kind of place where little boys turn up out of the blue, with empty eyes, no parents and nothing but a plastic bag containing a pair of Batman swimming trunks and a frayed baby-blue towel. Sandefjord isn’t that kind of place. Wasn’t.
Sandefjord is the kind of place people want to live. Postcard-pretty, snug and sheltered at the top of its fjord, Sandefjord is the kind of place less attractive places bad-mouth. Can’t blame them, of course – it’s not everybody’s privilege to be able to live somewhere like this. Here, everybody has a nice home that they own, a new car in the garage, a well-paid job, numerous foreign holidays a year and a mountain cabin, too. Everyone I know, at least.
The call came at lunchtime. I’d only just begun to relax after the events of the last twenty-four hours and though I’d only been at the office for an hour, I decided to take an early lunch break so I could get my eyelash extensions done – Johan likes them. Walking from my office in Kilen, past the fish shop and the boats pulled up for winter, and the steel-gray water of the inner harbor, it occurred to me that the whole town resembled how I felt; cold and drained from all the rain. I checked my phone a couple of times as I walked along; I’m not sure why, really. And then, when I lay atop the table and the young girl was working painstakingly on my new, feathered lashes, I heard my phone vibrate from where it lay in my bag. Again and again. It couldn’t be work – nothing I do is urgent enough to merit repeated missed calls. The eyelash girl stopped for a moment and asked if I wanted to pick up. ‘Nope,’ I said, trying to fight off waves of annoyance. Did I, on some level, know then what I know now?
‘Cecilia Wilborg?’ said a smooth, female voice when I picked up on the sixth attempt, walking back out of the salon into the bleak day.
‘Yes?’
‘Hi. This is Vera Jensrud calling from Østerøyparken School. I’m glad I’ve got hold of you. Finding your number wasn’t exactly easy. Presumably you know why I’m calling?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t. I’m… uh, actually in the middle of something here,’ I lied, picking at my cuticles. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Is it correct that you dropped off a little boy here at the school this morning?’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘May I ask what your relationship to the child is, Mrs Wilborg?’
‘None. None whatsoever. Now, I’m afraid I’ll have to…’
Vera Jensrud interrupted me. ‘But Tobias lives with you and your family, is that correct?’
I burst out laughing, an exaggerated, outraged squawk. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Look. This boy does not attend this school.’
‘So which school does he attend?’
‘We don’t know. He refuses to say. You can only imagine how upsetting this is for everyone, most of all, of course, this little child. Now, we need to immediately establish who he is and where he belongs, and the only thing we have been able to get out of him is that he lives with you.’
I glanced briefly up at my office building, trying to stop myself from screaming. ‘He most certainly doesn’t live with me! I don’t know this child!’
‘But you dropped him off here this morning?’
‘Well, yes, but I met him for the first time last night.’
‘Right.’ Vera Jensrud sounded uncertain, as though she didn’t quite know whether to believe the half-mute eight-year-old or me. ‘Wait. You say you met him last night? But he stayed at your house?’
I hesitated. Fear seeped into me, ugly and cool, like poison through the pores of my skin. The wind ripped at my jacket and I ran the short distance back to the office. ‘Yes. Look, it was a very strange situation. He told me he attends your school, so I figured it would just be best to drop him off there.’
‘Presumably you spoke with his parents last night before taking him back to your house? That’s why I’m calling, really, to see whether you’d be aware of some way of getting in touch with them.’
‘I… uh... The lady at the pool tried calling them several times and they didn’t pick up the phone.’
‘What about when you tried, later, from home?’
‘I… I didn’t. Tobias asked me explicitly not to.’
‘Mrs Wilborg, this is a boy no more than eight years old. Did it not occur to you to call the parents before taking in a small child overnight?’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go now…’ I stuttered, and hung up the phone. It began ringing again before the screen had even gone dark, and when I realized I was being watched by the guys in the office across from mine, I picked up. I pushed my chest out but turned my face away from them so they wouldn’t notice my intense annoyance.
‘What? I’ve said I can’t help you!’
‘Mrs Wilborg, this is Police Inspector Thor Ellefsen. I’m sitting here with Vera Jensrud, the social environment teacher at Østerøyparken School, as well as a representative from social services. We really need you to come down here as soon as you can so that we can discuss this situation.’
‘Look,’ I said as pleasantly as I could manage, though by then a full panic had set in and I could feel my mind receding into a blank, numb state. ‘Of course I wish to help you, and I feel desperately sorry for this poor child. I just don’t think I’m able to add anything at all to your. . . your investigation.’
‘He says he lives with you.’
‘Well, he doesn’t.’
‘This really is the strangest situation I have encountered. Will you be able to be here in fifteen minutes, do you think? We think you should bring your husband as well.’
‘Johan? Oh. Oh no. That’s really not necessary.’
‘In cases like this, we prefer both partners being present. We’d appreciate any help you and your husband can give us. We’re quite happy to call him to explain, if you’d rather?’
‘No. No, I’ll call.’ Irritation gave way to the most profound rage. After we’d hung up, I stared out at the slightly churning sea, at the rows of pretty little houses along its shore, at the white-gray, low-hanging sky, at the swathes of ochre, downtrodden leaves in the park across the road.
I’ve loved this town my whole life, but in those moments I hated it and wanted to barge through it like a giant, smashing and burning everything in my way until only charred splinters remained. And now, driving slowly and distractedly back to the school where I dropped Tobias this morning, I feel no less unhinged. I can see Johan’s car a few cars ahead of mine and imagine him, serious and pensive behind the wheel, glancing around for me, anxious at having been summoned by the police. He’ll be worrying about the child, wringing his hands and stressing about how the situation will affect me. Before he spots me, and for the last few minutes before I get there, I have to run through the rest of the events of last night and this morning to make sure I get the wording exactly right.
By the time Johan got home from the airport, I had managed to re-establish a semblance of normality at home. The girls had meekly gone straight to bed, jolted by the presence of the boy; a sense of strangeness lingered on the air in the house. I put Tobias into Marialuz’s old room in the cellar apartment, and momentarily felt bad for leaving him two whole floors away from us, and especially on such an unsettled night. I had to do what felt right for my own family, didn’t I?
I heard the door downstairs shut softly, followed by the familiar thud of Johan’s footsteps. When he appeared at the top of the stairs, I turned from where I was sitting on the chaise longue by the floor-to-ceiling windows and gave him my most dazzling smile. I’d lit candles in countless little metallic jars, and a shy fire was flickering in the fireplace. On the table stood an open bottle of Johan’s favorite red, a Côte de Beaune-Villages. I poured him a glass and watched him settle exhaustedly into the sofa, rubbing his eyes. I positioned myself close to him and gave him my best adoring-wife expression.
The thing about men, I find, is to treat them with a carefully honed combination of casual aloofness, sharp reproach and unadulterated adoration. It throws them, keeps them on their feet – you can’t be nice all the time. Big mistake.
‘Baby,’ I whispered, ‘you look exhausted. Let’s get you to bed in a minute…’ I narrowed my eyes slightly and laid a hand at the top of his thigh. ‘I’ve missed you. . .’ Johan smiled, his handsome face bright and grateful for this warm welcome home. I’m not always that pleasant – to put it mildly – when he’s jetted off somewhere for four days, leaving me alone with the kids.
‘I have to tell you something,’ I continued. ‘A friend of Hermine’s from the swimming club is staying the night, okay? He’s downstairs, in Marialuz’s bed.’
‘On a school night?’
‘Yes... Well, I think there was some sort of family issue, so I figured it would be okay.’
Johan nodded thoughtfully. ‘But why didn’t you put him upstairs in one of the guest rooms on our floor?’
‘Hermine and Nicoline were terrible this evening, fighting and shouting at each other. I thought it would be best if he had his privacy.’ I forced a little laugh. ‘It’s not like he’s not under the same roof. Besides, he looks very tired. He’s a tiny little thing.’
‘What kind of family issue did you say the kid had, honey?’ Johan gazed into the ruby dregs at the bottom of his wine glass, frowning.
‘Oh, I’m not really sure. I didn’t want to get too involved, to be honest. Here,’ I took the wine glass from his hand and pretend-pulled him to his feet. I stood on my tiptoes and tilted my face up for a kiss. Johan still looked preoccupied, but leant in and kissed me chastely on the lips. I pulled him in closer and slipped my tongue into his mouth, pressing my body against his. He pulled back after a while and looked at me, dazed but happy.
‘Baby...’ he whispered.
‘Shhh,’ I said, and together we half ran up the stairs in the soft darkness. As I walked ahead of him down the hall towards our bedroom, I glanced briefly out of the skylight, and saw the face of a strange and unsettling full moon appear from behind a dense cloud, blurred by rushing rain. Suddenly my mind darted to that place I never allow it to go; to another cold, dark night, the darkest of all my life.
I could practically hear the sound of flames snapping, the wind wailing outside, my own short breath interspersed with an occasional high-pitched, involuntary howl as the pain crashed over me again. I still can’t believe that I survived... I am not someone who is easily thrown, but in that moment, struggling to reciprocate Johan’s eager kisses, I felt a surge of panic, and had to swallow back tears. The fear did not subside, and as Johan climbed on top of me, I had to reach over and switch on the bedside lamp so that I could see that it really was him.
Afterwards, when his breath had settled into a slow, steady purr, I lay a long while on my back, trying to keep hot tears from scattering down the sides of my face. They were no longer for bad, old memories, or for myself, but for a tiny boy.
*
Johan is waiting for me in the parking lot and I clumsily park across two bays next to his Tesla. He is smiling, but his eyes are serious.
‘This is about that little boy, they said.’
‘Yeah, apparently’ I say, walking up the gravel path towards the merry yellow school building.
‘I’m not sure you mentioned last night what kind of family problems he’d had.’
‘Come on, Johan, they’re waiting for us. I told you, I don’t know. I just wanted to help him last night and assumed the school would be able to sort out whatever the issue is today.’
‘So... so why are we here?’
‘It would appear he doesn’t actually go to this school.’
‘But... but he said he goes here. Where does he actually go, then?’
‘Well, that seems to be what everybody wants to know.’ Just then, a man and a woman appear in the doorway of a smaller building next to the main school building, waving for us to come that way.
‘Let me do the talking, okay, babe?’ I say in a low voice and smile reassuringly at my husband.
Inside, we are introduced to Police Inspector Thor Ellefsen, social environment teacher Vera Jensrud, and a representative of social services, Laila Engebretsen. The latter looks vaguely familiar, and it takes me a while to realize why; she used to be called Laila Hansen, and we went to primary school together. Back then she was a timid, chubby girl with messy pigtails and hand-me-down clothes, and she’s not really that different now. Scruffy is the word that comes to mind. I must admit that she’s gone from awkwardly tall and ‘big-boned’ to what I suppose some people might call statuesque, but she most definitely retains that gangly, clownish presence I remember from childhood. I’m surprised that she’s got married and changed her name and wonder what kind of man would be drawn to someone as void of sexiness as this chunky missy.
She smiles at us, a genuine smile, before her features settle into a sad seriousness. She nods towards a little window, through which we see another room where Tobias sits on the floor, watching a cartoon among piles of merry IKEA cushions shaped as animal heads. He is looking evenly at the screen, though he must be aware of the window, of people peering at him worriedly. A knot appears in the pit of my stomach, like a hand twisting at my intestines. I turn away and face Vera, Laila and Thor, trying to mirror the social worker’s expression of concern and empathy.
‘Cecilia, Johan,’ says Laila, ‘thank you both so much for coming, and especially at such short notice.’ I raise an eyebrow and purse my lips in agreement – short notice, indeed, but then I remember that the impression we are going for here is helpfulness and concern.
‘Oh, but of course,’ I say. ‘We are very concerned about Tobias.’
‘Yes,’ says Vera Jensrud.
‘This is, quite frankly, a highly unusual situation,’ adds Thor Ellefsen. ‘I’ve been a Sandefjord policeman for thirty-two years, and I can honestly say nothing like this has ever happened before. We are at a bit of a loss, and hope you can help us piece together some crucial information.’ Johan and I both nod. Sitting down on a low, green sofa, I lose sight of Tobias through the window, but he is vividly here, in my mind, as though my brain has memorized every last characteristic of this little stranger; the smooth olive-brown skin; the floppy black hair; the grown-up, expressionless eyes; the sharp, too-big teeth that seem to only just have come through; the thin, small hands held close to his sides in fists.
‘Could you please talk us through the events of last night that led to Tobias spending the night at your family home?’ continues Ellefsen.
I nod, clear my throat and begin to speak. I tell them about how I first noticed Tobias at the pool, how he’d seemed afraid. I tell them about the receptionist saying nobody had turned up for him, and that the number she had for his parents went straight to voicemail. How she’d asked me to please drop the boy at the address on Østerøya. I pause, nervous because of how they are all looking at me.
‘What was the address?’
‘Østerøysvingen 8.’
Laila Engebretsen nods. ‘“That is the same address he gave us,’ she says softly. ‘The poor boy. He’s traumatized. Doesn’t trust adults. It took me two hours to get him to breathe a single word.’
‘The trouble is,’ says Inspector Ellefsen, ‘the house at Østerøysvingen 8 has been empty since 2010 when the owner, an old lady, died. Her son, who inherited it, lives in Kristiansund and never comes here.’
‘But... I went inside. With the boy. And, uh, it seemed to me that someone had used it recently. There were mattresses upstairs, a new lamp...’
‘It has come to our attention that the building may have been used as a squat on a couple of occasions. We’ve stopped by there two or three times and always found it empty. There were some Latvians here last winter, doing odd jobs, who were unaccounted for, housing-wise. Also, as you may know, we’ve had some Eastern European beggars here in Sandefjord the last few years. Romanians. We wondered whether they might sleep in that house occasionally.’
‘But what about Tobias?’ asks Johan, his face red and splotchy. He gets like that with indignation, and I can only imagine the thoughts churning through his mind at the moment – he’s so kindhearted and sensitive, my Johan. ‘Who is going to take care of Tobias?’ I press my leg discreetly but firmly against Johan’s. He needs to understand that I’m the one who does the talking here.
‘He must be the squatters’ son?’ I ask.
‘We’re looking into that, but we have not had any reports over the years of any of the transient Eastern European groups having children with them. Also, his Norwegian is flawless.’
‘He looks like a gypsy,’ I say.
‘A gypsy?’ asks Laila, her docile eyes suddenly sharp on me.
‘Well, yes. You mentioned there have been issues with Romanians coming here to beg. It seems quite likely to me that he could be one of them.’ Laila writes something on her notepad. I can see it, from where I’m sitting: Romanian?
‘Okay, back to last night. What did you do when you realized there was nobody at Østerøysvingen 8?’ Inspector Ellefsen holds my gaze a long while and I feel irrationally nervous; after all, I haven’t done anything wrong.
‘I... I was going to call someone.’
‘Who were you going to call?’
‘I guess I was going to call the lady at the swimming pool. If I couldn’t get hold of her, I would have tried the police or social services.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘Well, I would have, but I realized the phone was at home, with my eldest daughter. She’d been playing Minecraft on it in the car.’
‘Okay. So what did you do next?’
‘Well, if I’m honest, it was quite a frightening thing that happened. The house... it was so empty and cold. It was freezing and stormy outside, I was exhausted after a long day, my Tuesdays are terrible. And the boy, Tobias, I mean, well – I felt so desperately sorry for him. He didn’t look surprised at the abandoned house. He looked empty, broken, dejected. We got back in the car and drove to my house. I thought I’d get him a hot chocolate and a snack. I was planning on making a few calls...’
‘But you didn’t.’
I swallow hard and try to recover my harmless-and-concerned expression, but my mind is receding back to that irrational, black panic, and I want to stand up and crash through the door, running to the car, leaving these polite faces and sharp eyes and constant questions behind. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And why was that, Cecilia?’ Laila asked kindly.
‘Like I said, I was tired. Confused. When we got to the house, Tobias asked if he could stay the night. Begged, in fact. I said I’d have to make a few calls, figure this out, but he became so distressed and upset that I just didn’t know what to do. I suppose I couldn’t see the harm in letting him stay just the one night. He told me he goes to this school, and so I felt reassured that you would be able to help him if there really was a more serious family situation.’
‘I would have thought you’d come inside the school with Tobias this morning, just to make sure everything really was okay’ Vera Jensrud spoke slowly, watching me as though she were about to frame some criminal rather than ask a concerned mother some routine questions. Bitch.
‘Well, I would have, but he asked me not to, actually,’ I say. ‘He said, “Thank you, but I’ll be fine from here.” That’s what he said.’ Actually, he had asked me to walk him in, and I’d said I was in a rush, and leant across him to open the back door, filling the car with crisp air. Then I’d stared out the window until I’d heard him move, and then closed the door with a very soft thud. My face feels hot. My feet are itching. I glance quickly at Johan and find him looking at me, an expression of sympathy on his face, but mixed with something else – shock.
‘But he’s seven,’ says Vera Jensrud, writing something down on a notepad. I want to smack her in her plain, wrinkled face.
‘Eight,’ I say.
A long silence follows. I feel Johan’s eyes still on me. Laila Engebretsen rustles the papers in her notebook, most likely to break the tension. ‘In any case, we’re glad you’re here now.’
‘So... so, what happens to the poor child now?’ I ask.
Laila Engebretsen exchanges a quick glance with Inspector Ellefsen. ‘Well, we are obviously doing absolutely everything we can to determine the boy’s origins and to locate his family. In the short term, he will stay in a safe family setting here in Sandefjord.’
I nod. ‘And in the longer term?’
‘Well, we certainly hope we can solve this and give Tobias the best possible chance at a stable family life.’
‘So, you’ve found him somewhere for the short term?’ Johan asks, his face tight with worry.
‘Due to the international migrant situation, where Norway has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of children arriving unaccompanied, our short-term foster families are unfortunately completely exhausted in this region. In this phase of a traumatizing situation like this, it is of the utmost importance to limit the changes a child is exposed to as much as possible. We’d like to ask whether you’d consider the possibility of taking Tobias in for a short while, maybe a few weeks. He seems to have taken to you. And, of course, we know you will be able to provide him with a secure family environment while we sort this out.’
Laila Engebretsen looks at me expectantly, as if she’s asking me a perfectly reasonable favor like watering her plants or picking up her mail while she’s off to Tenerife. I am, for once, actually speechless. I shake my head hard, but as I do, I realize that Johan is nodding. Up and down his head goes and I want to reach across and punch him, the utter goon; his lip is wobbling and his eyes are even glinting with tears.
‘Of course we’ll have him,’ he says, and then, ‘thank you. Thank you.’
Krysz always says that if a person sees me then they will shoot me or at the very least shove me into a small hole in the ground where I’d have to sit staring at mud walls, eating stale bread and drinking slimy water. Nobody ever saw me because I know every stone and every tree near the houses I have lived in. When Anni and Krysz go away all day, or sometimes many days, I am outside in the woods where people rarely go anyway, but if they did, I would know where to hide. I’m not allowed to stay inside the house, in case police come. It has happened, that I’ve seen people and hid. Once, I was picking little red fruits from a bush when a man came running very fast on the path a few meters below where I stood. He was very red in the face and spluttering. He had headphones in his ears for his music and he wore a bright yellow vest and shiny, tight black shorts. He didn’t look dangerous and I didn’t think he would have shot me even if he had seen me. He didn’t because I stood very still against the trunk of the tree, stroking it gently the way I like to do. Sometimes I feel a murmur in return against my fingertips. Krysz says it isn’t true and it isn’t possible but it is.
A few days ago Anni and Krysz were very angry with each other. They shouted. Krysz put his things into an old brown bag and the things that didn’t fit he put into some plastic bags. Anni shouted while he did this, the fat smoke hanging from the side of her mouth, unlit. When he was finished he said, Goodbye, Anni. He’s done this before; they both have, so I wasn’t very afraid. I was only afraid of the shouting, because it often comes before smashing or worse. Instead of more shouting, Anni was quiet. She stared at the bags and at Krysz, who had sat down on the bare floor in the bedroom. She stared at me, hovering in the stairwell outside, and I tried to flatten myself up against the wall the way I do against tree trunks when I’m outside, but it’s much easier in the woods, and I wasn’t able to stop her looking at me in a cold, angry way. I’m leaving, he said. You’re leaving, said Anni, laughing, but not nice laughing. Yeah, said Krysz. What about the boy? said Anni. What about the fucking boy? Anni said: You can take him with you. Krysz said: Fuck, no. Anni said: Well, then he goes back to where he came from. Krysz said: What the fuck does that even mean? Anni didn’t say anything else, but walked over to where I still stood in the stairwell and for a moment I thought she might spit at me the way she sometimes does when she’s angry, but she just looked at me, up close. Her lips were pulled back, she was sneering like a wolf, revealing her brown half-teeth and the black gashes in between them. Come, she said.
*
Once when I was smaller, I asked Anni if I could call her Mother. She said no. Then she laughed, showing me her half-teeth and the long red gums over them. Why would you want to call me that? I’m not your mother, she said, and I did ask her then, again, who is, but she just shrugged and turned away. I guess my mother must have died, so Anni and Krysz couldn’t bring me to her like they were supposed to after Moffa died. It’s the only reason I can think of but I still don’t know why they bothered keeping me until now.
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