Karin Fossum - Don't Look Back

"Don't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't."

"Old people are such chickens," he said. "I'm the one she'll blame."

"OK," he said. "I'll look the other way."

Matteus hopped down, ran to get his snake, and then carefully stuffed it inside his mother's clog.

"You can keep reading now."

Sejer cringed at the thought of the awful rubber snake and how it would feel against her toes. '"It was a dark and stormy night. There were robbers in the mountains, and wolves as well.' Are you sure this isn't too scary?"

"Mama has read it to me lots of times." He bit into his apple and chewed contentedly.

"Don't take such big bites," Sejer said. "You might get it caught in your throat."

"Read, Grandpa!"

I must be getting old, he thought. Old and anxious.

'"It was a dark and stormy night,'" he began again, and just at that moment Ingrid came back, carrying three bottles of beer and a Coke. He stopped and gave her a long look. Matteus did too.

"Why are you staring at me like that? What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," they said in unison, bending over their book. She set the bottles on the table, opened them, and looked around for her shoes. Picked them up, turned them upside down, and knocked them together three times. Nothing happened. It's stuck in the toe, they thought gleefully. Then everything happened at once. Sejer's son-in-law Erik appeared in the doorway, Matteus jumped down from his lap and rushed across the room. Kollberg leaped up from under the table and wagged his tail so hard that the bottles fell to the floor, and Ingrid stuck her feet inside her shoes.

Sølvi stood in her room, taking things out of a box. For a moment she straightened up and peered outside. Directly across the street, Fritzner was standing at his window, watching her. He had a glass in his hand. Now he raised it, as if offering a toast.

Sølvi turned her back on him at once. True, she didn't mind men looking at her, but Fritzner was bald. Imagining life with a bald man was as unthinkable as imagining life with a man who was fat. They had no place in her dreams. That her stepfather was both bald and fat didn't trouble her. Other men could be bald, but not the one she went out with. She looked up again. He was gone. He was probably sitting in his boat again, the weirdo.

She heard the doorbell ringing and went out to open the door, wearing a light-blue trouser suit with a silver belt around her waist and ballet slippers on her feet.

"Oh!" she said. "It's you! I'm cleaning up Annie's room. Come on in. Mama and Papa will be home in a minute."

Sejer followed her through the living room to her own room, which was next to Annie's. It was quite a bit bigger, decorated in pastels. A photograph of her sister stood on her bedside table.

"I have inherited a few things from her," she said with an apologetic smile. "Some knick-knacks and clothes and things like that. And if I can persuade Papa, I want to knock down the wall to Annie's room so I'll have one big room."

"That will be very nice," Sejer said. But at the same time he felt a little ashamed at the emotions that crept over him. He had no right to judge anyone. They were struggling to go on with their lives and had every right to do it in their own way. No one could tell anyone else how to grieve. He gave himself this little reprimand and then looked around. He had never seen a room with so many knick-knacks.

"And I'm going to get my own TV," she said. "With an extra antenna so I can get TV-Norway." She bent down to a cardboard box on the floor and began pulling more things out of it. "It's mostly books. Annie didn't have any make-up or jewellery or anything like that. Plus a bunch of CDs and cassettes."

"Do you like to read?"

"Not really. But the bookshelves look nice when they're full."

He nodded in agreement.

"Has something happened?"

"Yes, actually. But we don't know yet what it means."

She took one more thing out of the box. It was wrapped in newspaper.

"So you know Magne Johnas, Sølvi?"

"Yes," she said. He thought she blushed, but she had such rosy cheeks, he couldn't be sure. "He's living in Oslo now. Works for Gym & Greier."

"Did you know that he and Annie once had something going?"

"Had something going?" She gave him a look of pure incomprehension.

"That they might have had a romance, or that Magne might have been in love with her, or might have tried something? Before your time?"

"Annie just laughed at him," she said, her tone almost plaintive. "Not that Halvor was anything to boast about. At least Magne looks like a guy should. I mean, he has muscles and everything."

She pulled away the newspaper wrapping, avoiding his eye.

"Do you think he might have been offended?" he asked carefully as something shiny appeared in the newspaper.

"He could have been. It wasn't enough for Annie to say no. She could be really snide sometimes, and she wasn't impressed by muscles. Everybody keeps on talking about how wonderful and nice she was, and I don't mean to say anything bad about my half-sister. She was often snide, but nobody dares talk about it. Because she's dead. I can't understand how Halvor could bear it. Annie was the one who decided on everything."

"Is that right?"

"But she was nice to me. She was always nice." For a moment she looked stricken at the memory of her sister and everything that had happened.

"How long have you and Magne been together?" he asked.

"Only a few weeks. We go to the movies and stuff like that." Her reply was a little too quick.

"He's younger than you, isn't he?"

"Four years," she said reluctantly. "But he's very mature for his age."

"I see."

She held something up to the light and squinted at it. A bronze bird sitting on a perch. A chubby little feathered creature with its head tilted.

"It's broken," she said uncertainly.

Sejer stared in astonishment. The sight of the bronze bird struck him like an arrow at his temple. It was the sort of thing that was placed on the gravestones of small children.

"I could roll up a lump of clay and make a stand for it," Sølvi said. "Or Papa might help me. It's really pretty."

A picture of a new Annie was slowly taking shape, a more complex Annie than the one Halvor and her parents had presented to him.

"What do you think it's for?" he said.

Sølvi shrugged. "No idea. Just some kind of decoration that's broken, I suppose."

"You've never seen it before?"

"No. I wasn't allowed in Annie's room when she wasn't home."

She put the bird on her desk, and bent down to the box again.

"Has it been a long time since you saw your father?" he asked as he continued to stare at the bird. His brain was working in high gear.

"My father?" She straightened up and looked at him in confusion. "You mean… my father who lives in Adamstuen?"

He nodded.

"He was at Annie's funeral."

"You must miss him, don't you?"

She didn't answer. It was as if he had touched on something that she rarely examined properly. Something unpleasant that she tried to forget, a trace of guilty conscience perhaps, about not visiting her father. Sejer felt a little too aggressive at that moment. He had to remember to be respectful, to approach people on their own terms.

"What do you call Eddie?" he asked.

"I call him Papa," she said.

"And your real father?"

"I call him Father," she said simply. "That's what I've always called him. It's what he wanted, he was always so old-fashioned."

Was. As if he no longer existed.

"I hear a car!" she said, sounding relieved.

Holland's green Toyota pulled up in front of the house. Sejer saw Ada Holland set one foot on the gravel and cast a glance at the window.

"That bird, Sølvi, could I have it?" he said quickly.