‘Stian!’ she shrieks.
The men drag Stian along the porch and lay him on his back. Lina is already out of the car and running towards the house. Through the open door, I hear a child wailing.
‘No!’ screams Lina, but a man pulls her back. They struggle to their knees on the lawn. One man pulls Stian’s arm straight and positions it carefully against the top step. Bodies converge, blocking them from view. Then something shiny flashes through the air and a sickening crack rings out. A bellow. More commotion, a crunching sound, and after there is more noise than I can deal with.
Hans drives me home, drunk. The car swerves all over the road. On the way he makes jokes. Talks about the food at the diner, and his favourite burger chain, Tom’s, which the bigger, international chains are trying to drive out of business. There is blood on his shirt and on his face. I try not to look. When I get home I grab Bobble and crawl into the bathroom. At first she lets me hug her, but when I start crying she scratches herself free. I lie down in the shower stall and hide my face. Through layers of numbness, I can hear her hissing. Tiny and useless, in the corner behind the toilet.
#
September 20th, 2005.
Hans and his ‘associates’ have gone on holiday. Lina and I had looked forward to the lift in atmosphere this absence would bring. But things have not turned out the way we thought. Each day, a man comes to the shop. He doesn’t say anything. We don’t know him. But he’s clearly one of Hans’s spies. All day he sits watching us, and we are too scared to make him leave. Before Stian’s arms were broken, we might not have cared so much. But now we know what’s at stake. Since that night, Lina and I have our conversations on paper.
It’s the end of the day. Lina and I watch the man in the corner. He is short, with receding blond hair, thick-framed glasses and a Gore-Tex jacket. We call him the Duck, because of the way he purses his lips.
‘Better count the money up,’ says Lina, in English. Her eyes burn into me.
‘All right,’ I say.
The Duck gets up and approaches the desk. Lina counts out the money. The Duck watches. He looks at the final figure. Then he watches her put it in the safe. When she has finished, he leaves.
Lina and I look at each other. We look at the door. She grabs an envelope from the waste-paper basket and scrawls,
I cannot take much more of this.
She smiles at me, with tears in her eyes. I take the pen off her and write,
The Duck is better than Hans …
She takes the pen back and writes,
You are lucky. You have no children.
I’ve got family
.
Far away. They would never find them
.
Maybe that’s why they went to England!
Ha! ha! :-S
But your family’s Lithuanian. You could go back there
.
No. He has my passport
.
I flip the envelope and write,
Would Hans really hurt your daughter?
I don’t know. Maybe
.
‘What the f—’ I say out loud. But she widens her eyes to shut me up. Then she glances over her shoulder, and writes,
It is okay. She is safe so long as I stay
.
Has he said that?
Yes
.
I stare at Lina.
Tell the police!
I write.
No. It is higher than that
.
For a second I feel dizzy, and have to sit down.
Lina turns the envelope inside out and writes,
You will be all right. They do not know you so well. Aušra, the girl before you, Hans gave her to Kolbeinn. Business deal. But you are not same as her
.
What do you mean, gave? What does Kolbeinn do?
Sex work stuff. Illegal girls, no passports. He has business in Oslo
.
I stare at Lina. She makes a face and scribbles,
You have hidden passport. You can still run
.
I’m too scared
.
Can Magnus help?
I called but he was in bad mood. Said had own stuff to sort out
.
You still more lucky than me. Hans not in love with you
.
Lina raises her eyebrows wearily. Suddenly I feel ashamed for ever believing her situation was easier than mine.
Maybe that’s why they haven’t hurt you
.
Hurting Stian is same thing. Same to me
.
‘How
is
Stian?’ I ask, before remembering not to speak out loud.
It could have been worse
.
My eyes glaze over. Several seconds later Lina nudges me, and shows me her reply.
I saw him last night. He will be okay
.
This is insane!
Welcome to hell
.
Let’s just win the lottery. Then we can hire bodyguards!
We laugh out loud. Then Lina takes the pen back and writes,
Only way we will get out
.
I look at her. She raises her eyebrows. But our smiles have gone. I can’t think of anything else to write.
‘Let’s get this floor clean!’ announces Lina, loudly. Then she takes the envelope, carries it through the back room and flushes it down the toilet.
#
January 20th, 2006.
I’m on the track that curves round the edge of the big field. Above me, stars gleam like bullets. It is dark, this last stretch, because the street lights stop at the main road. They don’t clear the snow off the track, either. Maybe they think it’s not worth it. This is the end of the line. The unworthy bit. Or maybe it’s because I’m the only one who ever walks it on foot. Hans, like everyone else in this area, has an SUV. A big, sleek American fucker that would be perfect for picking up his own shopping. But no. Why do that when he can send me?
My hands are burned raw from the overloaded Rimi bags. Progress is slow, because the snow in the middle is thigh-deep and the thinner parts are slicked with a perfectly smooth slab of ice. During the last hour, I’ve fallen more times than I can count. Suddenly I understand why old ladies are scared of walking on ice. Each step I take I’m braced for another fall, and the tension has turned into a permanent backache.
In the summer this walk was all right. I could gaze across the field and pretend I was on my holidays. The little wooden farmhouse looked enchanting. The contrasting gables and the vintage stabbur. Now the darkness is so complete I can’t see any of it. I still describe it nicely to my mother, though. She loves to hear about that.
‘Tell Magnus I say hello!’ she said during our Christmas phone call, and I told her that I would. She still thinks I’m living the dream, up north. The truth would break her heart. I’m not even sure what the truth
is
, to be honest, or how I’d explain it to another person. Humiliation has been a big factor in keeping this clusterfuck under wraps. God knows my mother’s had enough worry to last a lifetime, and I don’t want to add to that. To keep her happy, I reeled off a description of Lina’s Christmas dinner, despite the stumbling block that Lithuanian Christmas food is different to Norwegian. Not that my mum noticed. Her voice was so smiley I could almost see her face over the phone. She didn’t mention my dad and I didn’t ask about him. She sounded content, though, which surprised me, as always. It had always stunned me that she never left him.
I
certainly got out as soon as I could.
My feet start sliding around, so I pick my way to the verge and grab the fence. Here, I remove a mitten and try to rub some life back into my hand. But the shopping bag I’d laid down makes a squeaky sound and slides away. I reach out for it and lose my balance. The ice rushes from my feet and I slam down, hard, onto my left hip. For a second the pain takes my breath away. Through the dark, I hear the Rimi bag still slithering downhill. It’s too dark to see if anything has rolled out of the bag. Fuck. Hans will be furious if anything’s missing. I clamber downhill on my hands and knees, fling myself forwards and intercept it. My mittens are full of snow. I slide to a stop.
This is insane. This is officially insane. Where did my self-respect go? The old me would have been horrified by this subservience. But at least I’m not the only one in this situation. I’ve seen how Lina shrinks from Hans when he enters a room. Maybe that’s why the fight has gone out of me. I’m coming to wonder if it’s normal for men to treat women this way and if
I’m
the strange one for expecting anything different. Is Magnus’s treatment of me normal too? He’s reduced me to the level of a performing dog.
Yes sir, no sir, I’ll smile nicely and wiggle my arse for you, sir. Yes, go fuck those other girls till I come up to your standards
. Christ, even his lullaby has attached itself to me. That nasty little symbol of everything he’s reduced me to. How I hate it. Yet in moments of fear, I still find myself singing it. It will probably follow me to the grave.
Close by, something shuffles through the undergrowth. I freeze. Was that on
this
side of the fence? It sounded big. Big enough to attack me. I try to remember if any dangerous animals live in this country and for some reason my mind settles on badgers. Aren’t they meant to be aggressive? Fuck … Håkon said there are
wolverines
in Norway … Do they attack people? I don’t know what wolverines looks like, but I’m sure they’ve got lots of teeth.
Stop it. Stop pissing about
.
My knees feel like they’ve been slashed open. Clutching the shopping bag, I use the fence to drag myself uphill. In less than a minute, I reach the second, escaped bag. Okay. I drag myself upright and negotiate two slippery footholds.
When I reach my building I cringe to find the motion-triggered porch light on. Has Hans been out here, looking for me? Is he angry I took so long? As I place my foot on the first step, a clatter makes my heart jump. Then four deer scramble round the veranda and hurdle the balcony, into the trees. Thank God. Only deer. The trees crack and crash as the deer go, marking their escape route. Downhill to the field, near the place where I buried my passport. My eyes fill with tears as the sounds grow fainter, and suddenly I realise I want nothing more than to run away with them. My legs shiver. The porch light blinks off.
As I enter the vestibule, my door is unusually quiet. It’s so warm in here. My face aches as the heat wakes it up, but it’s a good ache. The ache means I am safe again. It means I made it.
I don’t want to see Hans. Just the thought of him gives me the creeps. Couldn’t I just leave his shopping
here
? He’s bound to come downstairs eventually, and find it outside his door. If I leave a note, and put the frozen stuff outside …
Fuck it. I don’t care any more. That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll tell him I tried knocking.
I leave the shopping bags where they are and unlock the door to my apartment. There’s a pen by my bed. The sooner this is done with the better.
‘Bob?’ I whisper.
She’s usually running round my ankles by now.
‘Bobble?’
Closing the door behind me, I flick on the light. The room looks normal. Just the same as when I left. Confused, I walk around the apartment. As usual, the bathroom door is closed. I look under the bed. Bobble is not there. I look
in
the bed. She is not there. I look in the wardrobe. I look in the bathroom. Not there.
‘Bob?’
Where the fuck …
I check the windows, but they’re closed. I check everywhere for a second time. And a third time. And a fourth. I start to run faster. I even look in the microwave. Nothing. Maybe she’s sick. Don’t cats crawl away and hide when they know they’re going to die? I hover round Bob’s feeding bowl and scan it for clues. She might have swallowed a pebble or a bit of plastic. Or maybe she finally had a reaction to the chamomile. Since Hans had that rant about the noise she makes, I’ve been putting it in her food. But there’s no sign of anything unusual.
Heart thudding, I rush outside. The porch light clicks on as I tumble down the steps. I look left. I look right. I look at the trees. I look back at the hallway. Nothing. Around me, the undergrowth is black. I wade from the path and stand waist-deep in snow, looking up at the house. But the first-floor lights are off. On the steps, the only footprints are my own. Hans hasn’t been here since the last snowfall.
‘Bob?!’ I shriek. ‘Bobble!’
I climb back up and check the veranda for paw prints, but the deer left such disarray in their wake that it’s hard to tell. In the end, all I can do is go inside. I take the kitchen knife from under my pillow and sit on the floor for a long time. When Hans’s car roars onto the driveway, I lock myself in the bathroom.
I wake to find Mrs Laird there. Confused, I look at the wall clock. It says ten past four. The room is dim.
‘What do you … want?’ I ask. It irritates me that I can’t get this out in one breath.
‘How are you, dearie?’
‘What do you … want?’
‘You have a visitor.’
I stiffen. Maybe Rhona’s back. But wouldn’t she just come right in?
‘Who?’
‘Normally we wouldn’t allow this sort of thing. But in this case we thought it might be good for you.’
Mrs Laird smiles. Her wrinkles deepen, lit up by the weakening daylight.
‘Good for me, how?’
‘It’s someone you’ve met before, love. It’s … Well, it’s Coral …’
‘What? Caroline?’
‘No. Coral. Remember your wee friend Coral? With the swing?’
My mouth drops open.
‘So,’ says Mrs Laird, ‘shall I send her in?’
‘How do you know … it’s her?’ I gasp.
‘Why don’t you talk to her for yourself?’ says Mrs Laird.
My stomach does a little jump, as I realise how terrified I am of speaking to an outsider. A real adult from the real world. I feel my cheeks flush. How much have they told Coral? What must she think of me?
‘I don’t—’
‘Come on. She’s a very nice lady. I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.’