I'm Travelling Alone
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Authors: Samuel Bjork
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I’M TRAVELLING ALONE
Samuel Bjørk
Translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund
Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children are gone.
On 28 August 2006, a girl was born at the maternity unit of Ringerike Hospital in Hønefoss. The baby’s mother, a twenty-five-year-old nursery-school teacher called Katarina Olsen, was a haemophiliac and died during the birth. The midwife and some of the nurses who had been present later described the little girl as exceptionally beautiful. She was quiet and remarkably alert, with a gaze that caused everyone who worked in the ward to develop a very special bond with her. On her admission to the hospital, Katarina Olsen had registered the father as unknown. In the days that followed, the management of Ringerike Hospital, working in collaboration with Ringerike Social Services, tried to track down the child’s maternal grandmother, who lived in Bergen. Unaware that her daughter had been pregnant, she arrived at the hospital only to discover that the newborn baby had disappeared from the maternity ward. Ringerike Police immediately initiated a major hunt for the child, but without result. Two months later, a Swedish nurse called Joachim Wicklund was found dead in his studio flat in the centre of Hønefoss. He had hanged himself. A typed note was found on the floor below Wicklund’s body with the wording: ‘I’m sorry.’
The baby girl was never found.
Chapter 1
Walter Henriksen took a seat at the kitchen table and made a desperate attempt to force down a little of the breakfast his wife had prepared for him. Bacon and eggs. Herring, salami and freshly baked bread. A cup of tea brewed from herbs from their very own garden, the one she had always dreamed of having and which was the reason they had bought this house so far from the centre of Oslo, with Østmarka Forest as their nearest neighbour. Here, they could pursue healthy interests. Go for walks in the forest. Grow their own vegetables. Pick wild berries and mushrooms and, not least, offer their dog more freedom; it was a cocker spaniel Walter Henriksen could not stand the sight of, but he loved his wife, which explained why he had agreed to all of the above.
He swallowed a bit of bread with herring and fought a battle with his body, which wanted nothing more than to send the food straight up again. He took a large swig of orange juice and tried to muster a smile, even though his head was throbbing as if someone had clobbered him with a hammer. Last night’s office party had not gone according to plan; yet again, he had failed to stay off the booze.
The news droned along in the background while Walter tried to read his wife’s face. Her mood. If she had secretly been awake when he had collapsed into bed in the early hours – when that was, he did not know, but it had been late, far too late; he did remember taking off his clothes, had a vague memory of his wife being asleep:
Thank Christ!
he had thought before he had passed out on the too hard mattress she had insisted they bought because she had started having back problems.
Walter coughed lightly, wiped his mouth with the napkin and patted his stomach to show, falsely, that he had enjoyed the meal and was now full.
‘I thought I might take Lady for a walk,’ he said, with what he hoped resembled a smile.
‘Oh, all right, then.’ His wife nodded, somewhat surprised at his offer because, although they rarely discussed it, she was perfectly aware that he cared little for their three-year-old bitch. ‘Perhaps you could go a bit further than just walking her round the house this time?’
He searched for the subtly passive-aggressive tone she often adopted when she was displeased with him, the smile that was not a smile but rather the complete opposite, but he failed to find either; she seemed content, unaware that anything was amiss. Phew! He had got away with it again. And he promised himself that it was the last time. Healthy living for him from now on. No more office parties.
‘No, I was thinking of taking her up to Maridalen, perhaps follow the path down to Lake Dau.’
‘That sounds perfect.’ His wife smiled.
She stroked the dog’s head, kissed its forehead and scratched it behind the ear.
‘You and your daddy are going for walkies, and you’re going to have a lovely time, yes, you are, aren’t you, Lady, my lovely little doggy?’
The walk up to Maridalen followed the pattern it usually did on the rare occasion he took the dog out. Walter Henriksen had never liked dogs, he knew nothing about them; had it been up to him, the world could do without them. He sensed a growing irritation towards the stupid bitch that was straining on the leash, wanting him to walk more quickly. Or stop. Or go in any direction other than the one Walter wanted to go in.
At last he reached the path that took them down to Lake Dau, where he could finally let the dog off the leash. He squatted down on his haunches and attempted to pat the dog’s head, show it some kindness as he undid the leash.
‘There you go, you have yourself a bit of a run-around.’
The dog stared at him with dumb eyes and stuck out its tongue. Walter lit a cigarette and briefly felt something almost resembling love towards the little bitch. After all, it wasn’t the dog’s fault. The dog was all right. His headache was starting to lift; the fresh air was doing him good. He was going to like the dog from now on. Nice doggy. And, strolling around the forest – well, life could be worse. They were almost friends, him and the dog, and would you just look how well-behaved she was now: good doggy. She was no longer on the leash and yet she walked nicely by his side.
And it was at that very moment that the cocker spaniel decided to take off, abandon the path and run wild through the forest. Damn!
‘Lady!’
Walter Henriksen stayed on the path and spent some time calling the dog, but to no avail. Then, muttering curses under his breath, he threw down his cigarette and started scrambling up the hill in the direction where he had last seen it. A few hundred metres up, he stopped in his tracks. The dog was lying very calmly in a small clearing. And that was when he saw the little girl hanging from the tree. Dangling above the ground. With a satchel on her back. And a note around her neck:
I
’M TRAVELLING ALONE.
Walter Henriksen fell to his knees and automatically did something he had wanted to do since the moment he first woke up.
He threw up all over himself, then burst into tears.
Chapter 2
The screeching seagulls woke Mia Krüger up.
By now, she really should have grown used to them – after all, it was four months since she had bought this house near the mouth of the fjord – but Oslo refused to release its hold on her. Back in her flat in Vogtsgate there had always been noise, from buses, trams, police sirens, ambulances and none of it had ever disturbed her – if anything, it had calmed her down – but she was unable to ignore this cacophony of seagulls. Perhaps it was because everything else around here was so quiet.
She reached out for the alarm clock on the bedside table, but could not read the time. The hands appeared to be missing, lost in a fog somewhere: a quarter past two or twenty-five minutes to nothing. The pills she had taken last night were still working. Calming, sedating, sensorily depriving,
do not take with alcohol
– yeah, right. After all, she was going to be dead in twelve days, she had ticked off the days on the calendar in the kitchen: twelve blank squares left.
Twelve days. The eighteenth of April.
She sat up in bed, pulled on her Icelandic sweater and shuffled downstairs to the living room.
A colleague had prescribed her the pills. A mandatory ‘friend’, someone whose job it was to help her forget, process events, move on. A police psychologist – or was he a psychiatrist? She guessed he had to be so he could issue prescriptions. Whatever, she had access to anything she wanted. Even in this far-flung corner of the world and even though it required considerable effort. She had to get dressed. Start the outboard motor on the boat. Freeze for the fifteen minutes it took her to sail to Hitra, the main island. Start the car. Stay on the road for forty minutes until she reached Fillan, the nearest town around here – not that it was much of a town – but inside Hjorten Shopping Arcade was where the chemist could be found, and then she could pay a visit to the off-licence in the same location. The prescriptions would be ready and waiting for her; they had been telephoned through from Oslo. Nitrazepam, Diazepam, Lamictal, Citalopram. Some from the psychiatrist, along with some from her GP. They were all so helpful, so kind –
Now, don’t take too many, please be careful
– but Mia Krüger had absolutely no intention of being careful. She had not moved out here to get better. She had come here to seek oblivion.
Twelve days left. The eighteenth of April.
Mia Krüger took a bottle of Farris mineral water from the fridge, got dressed and walked down to the sea. She sat on a rock, pulled her jacket more tightly around her and got ready to take the first of today’s pills. She shoved a hand into her trouser pocket. A spectrum of colours. Her head still felt groggy and she could not remember which ones she was supposed to be taking today, but it didn’t matter. She washed them down with a swig from the bottle and dangled her feet over the water. She stared at her boots. It made no sense; it was as if they were not her feet but someone else’s, and they seemed far, far away. She shifted her gaze to the sea instead. That made no sense either, but she made herself stick with it and looked across the sea, towards the distant horizon, at the small island out there, a place whose name she did not know.
She had chosen this location at random. Hitra. A small island in Trøndelag, off the west-central coast of Norway. It could have been anywhere, so long as she was left alone. She had let the estate agent decide.
Sell my flat and find me something else.
He had looked at her and cocked his head as if she were a lunatic or simple-minded, but he wanted his commission so what did he care? The friendly, white smile that had said, Yes, of course he could, did she want a quick sale? Did she have something specific in mind? Professional courtesy, but she had seen his true nature. She felt nauseous just thinking about it. Fake, revolting eyes. She had always been able to see straight through anyone she came near. On that occasion, it had been an estate agent, a slippery eel in a suit and tie, and she had not liked what she saw.