Thomas Enger - Scarred

Then he walks back inside the cabin and sits down at the table where Trine’s laptop is open. He bumps into a table leg, and as he does so he causes the screen to wake up. A detailed city map appears. Blue, yellow, white and beige colours dotted across the page. A slightly thicker line runs through the streets along some water. He is about to read the street names when a shadow flits across the window. His gaze darts to the door frame where his sister is staring at him with frightened eyes.

‘Henning? What the hell are you doing here?’

Trine is wearing muddy walking boots and a green, white and red anorak. A baseball cap covers her hair.

All he can do is stare at her. She has their mother’s features around her mouth and her eyes; nothing about her has changed except that she has aged a little. She is Trine, his sister. To whom he hasn’t spoken for God knows how many years.

‘Hi,’ he says at last.

Two men, whom Henning presumes to be Trine’s bodyguards, appear either side of her. He can see that they are about to rush inside, but Trine stops them with a gesture and mutters – with her face turned away from him – that it’s only her brother.

Then she turns to him again. And he doesn’t know how to interpret the look in her eyes. Whether it’s anger, fear or something else. But there is definitely something. Hostility, possibly.

‘Have you come here to gloat?’ she asks.

‘Gloat? No. I’m here to—’

Henning stops and thinks about it.

‘I came because I was worried about you.’

Trine starts to laugh.

‘A lot of people are worried about you, Trine. No one has been able to contact you for thirty-six hours.’

‘So you decided to come here? To find out if this was where I was hiding?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s just like you,’ she mutters to herself. Henning is about to ask her what she means by that remark, but Trine interrupts him.

‘So what’s the deal now? Were you hoping to interview me?’

‘The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.’

‘So why—’

Trine swallows the rest of the sentence. Henning looks at her for a long time before he says: ‘I’ve come to see if I can help you.’

‘I don’t need your help,’ she pouts.

Henning continues to look at her, at her fingers which fidget, at fingernails which haven’t been left alone for one minute. If he knows anything about her at all, she has been biting them right down to the quick. When she was little she used to get told off about it all the time.

She still refuses to look at him. If he hadn’t known better, he would almost have believed that she was scared of him.

‘I didn’t see your car in the car park,’ he says. It’s both a question and a statement.

‘No, you don’t think I’m that stupid, do you? I parked elsewhere. And I didn’t come in my own car, either.’

Trine turns her head slightly and, for a brief moment, Henning makes eye contact with her, enough to see his mother in them. The same anger. The same contempt. As if she finds it loathsome even to be in the same room as him.

‘Neither did I. But then again I don’t have a car of my own,’ he says, trying to laugh. Trine is not even close to being mollified.

‘Have you been out for a walk?’

Trine glances at her watch, then she shifts her gaze towards the sea.

‘Did you find the blue dots?’

Henning smiles at the memory, how they used to compete to be the first to spot the blue dots placed along the coastal path for guidance. At that time they cared little about nature, the point of the game was winning. And Trine always wanted to win. Always.

‘How far did you walk?’ he asks. Trine turns to him again.

‘To Stavern,’ she says in a low voice.

‘Stavern?’ Henning exclaims. ‘You walked all the way there? And back again?’

She nods, but only just.

‘That must be miles.’

Trine automatically checks her watch.

‘12.21 kilometres,’ she says. ‘Each way.’

‘So you’ve walked—’

Her impatience gets the better of her and she sighs.

‘What do you want, Henning?’

He looks at her. Some of her hair, wet and dark, has come loose under her baseball cap. The wind takes hold of it and blows it in front of her eyes.

‘Please can we just talk, Trine?’

‘No.’

The reply is firm.

‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

Henning searches her eyes for an explanation, but finds only hostility. Again, she looks out at the sea before she steps inside the cabin. And that’s when she notices that her laptop is on.

‘Have you been snooping on my computer?’

‘No, I—’

Trine marches up to the table and slams shut the laptop.

‘Get out,’ she demands.

Henning is about to protest, but he sees that it will serve no purpose.

‘Get out,’ she orders him again.

Henning gets up and holds up his palms. He starts to walk, but stops and turns around; he looks at her windswept, ruddy cheeks. He tries to think of something to say, but the right words refuse to come.

‘Please, just let the world know that you’re still alive,’ he says. ‘People are worried about you.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘No, I mean it, Trine.’

Trine laughs again.

‘Yes, I guess you all feel really bad now.’

Henning still can’t think of anything to say.

‘You’ve seen for yourself that I’m alive,’ she says, pointing to the door. ‘Now you can go home.’

‘But—’

‘Please, Henning. Just go.’

Suddenly he can see the hurt in her eyes; it’s only for a second or two, but it’s long enough for him to notice. Trine walks back to the doorway and stands facing the sea with her back to him. Henning watches her for a few seconds before he does as she asks. He walks around the cabin and past his father’s overgrown gulley. Once he gets to the top of the mound he stops and turns around again. He looks across the roof of the cabin and out at the sea, now just as black as the approaching night. He hears seagulls screech, sees a ship in the distance, tiny against the endless background. And he thinks that the big, open sea contains as many questions as answers.

Trine watches Henning disappear up the mound. She waits. Listens out until everything is quiet again. Then she waits even longer until she is absolutely sure that he has gone.

Henning.

She knew that he had returned to work, of course. She has even read some of his articles, the most recent one only last week, about Tore Pulli and how he was killed. She always gets a lump in her throat when she reads his stories and sees the small byline picture of him with the scars. But this time she can’t just click a button to make it go away.

Now that she has seen him again, in person, she is unable to block out the images that pop up in her head even though she is awake and should be able to suppress them. It’s the middle of the night and she is woken up by noises coming from nearby. A low sound repeating like a rhythm. Something squeaks. Mild scraping from a chair. Followed by more squeaking.

Trine gets out of bed and goes to the door; she sees a soft light spill out from Henning’s room. The noises grow louder and she hears breathing that quickens. She tiptoes closer to Henning’s room. And the sight that meets her when she peeks inside—

Trine closes her eyes.

She could never look at her father or Henning afterwards. She had hoped that it might get easier in time, but it was just as difficult today as it always was.

Trine tries to shake off the images and the memories. Now she regrets that she didn’t ask Henning to keep his mouth shut about having found her and get him to promise not to reveal the location where she has been hiding for the last thirty-six hours. But something tells her that Henning won’t say anything. He understands.