Ane Riel - Resin

Roald could never prove if the break-ins started when he moved in or if they were a continuation of thefts which had occurred in Oluf’s time.

When he questioned his aunt delicately on the telephone she replied that Oluf had never mentioned anything about break-ins, but he had wondered at the rapid depletion of the stock room at times. She sounded somewhat anxious at the question, and Roald quickly dismissed it as insignificant and distracted her with an update about the undertaker’s gout.

Roald, however, continued to ponder it. And one day he discovered how the thief had got in. Only it didn’t make things any less bizarre.

Dear Liv

When I was a child in the bookshop I had an invisible friend called John Steinbeck. When my parents were too busy to take care of me or I felt sad at school, he would keep me company.

All the time I was at school I was only sent outside the classroom once, and that was because John Steinbeck suddenly poked out his head between my English teacher’s legs, while she was asking me questions about Of Mice and Men, which you must read. I couldn’t help laughing and, once I had started, I couldn’t stop. My English teacher got hysterical because I kept staring at her legs. As I lie here, the memory can still make me laugh.

From that day onwards my classmates made even more fun of me, but I think it frustrated them that they never discovered my secret.

I’ve never told a soul about my invisible friend, but I have a hunch that I can tell you.

Carl was always with me when I went out at night. It was good to have someone to talk to once Dad could no longer come with me. He had to stay at home and look after the house and the things and Mum, he said, so now it was my turn to take care of the other business. I didn’t tell him that I brought Carl along. After all, I was supposed to be doing it on my own.

Carl was everything I wasn’t. Or didn’t want to be. Like scared. Scared of people who didn’t live on the Head, scared of not being able to find enough things for Dad and not enough food for Mum, scared of making a noise, scared of being caught, scared of going out when it was daylight, and scared of everything that was hiding in the dark. And scared to admit that he was scared. He would only ever tell me.

But he could also get sad.

And angry.

He could get really cross with Mum, say, because she ate so much and moved so little and grew so big that we wondered whether the floor was strong enough to hold her. After all, there was so much stuff upstairs in the bedroom – and Mum in addition to it all. Sometime after my granny’s death, Dad started sleeping in the white room to give Mum more space in the double bed, seeing as she spent all her time there.

I don’t really understand how she grew so fat. Yes, she ate a lot, but not that much, and it wasn’t cakes and things like that all the time. Sometimes it could just be a loaf of white bread that I’d brought back. And veal chops from the pub. And cheese and ham and potatoes and carrots and frozen peas that melted on the way home.

No, it was as if the food grew once it was inside her. And yet she asked for more. That, in particular, drove Carl crazy. But he would also get sad because our mum really was the sweetest mum we could imagine, and once she had been the most beautiful woman in the whole world, or at least on the island. Now all that was about to disappear inside her behind pillows of fat, and her eyes no longer shone like they did in Dad’s drawing. I think that her beauty and her glow were trapped along with all the words somewhere in her stomach where they were waiting to be set free. But you can’t cut open your own mum’s stomach, can you?

Carl and I would talk about it. Why you couldn’t just make a hole and cut away everything that wasn’t necessary, so that she would be freed of everything that weighed her down and become her old self again. But we weren’t sure that you could cut into someone who was alive without her being no longer alive afterwards. The very last thing we wanted was that she would stop being alive. And we didn’t want to hurt her either.

I very nearly persuaded Carl to ask Dad about it one day, but he didn’t dare. And I don’t think Dad would have listened anyway; he never listened to Carl.

And if I’m being totally honest, I knew that Dad couldn’t see him. Only I could.

Carl was, I could feel, a bit annoyed that they hadn’t taken better care of him when he was little. And though I could see him and hear him and play with him most of the time, it was a bit like he was missing. If nothing else, it would have been nice if he could have helped me carry things, because my bag could be very heavy when we walked back home at night.

The pub was our favourite place. Carl and I often didn’t get any further than the pub because it pretty much had everything we needed. Dad did warn me not to go there too often. I wouldn’t want to get caught, would I?

He used to go there lots in the past, but it got too difficult for him when they began locking the back door. But there was always a basement window left a little bit open at night, and it overlooked the back. It was too small for Dad, but I could just about squeeze through it. In time I got very good at easing the hook off the hasp and opening the window enough to wiggle through, feet first, getting a foothold on the radiator and jumping from there on to the floor without making a sound. The window led to a small corridor and from that you could get into the stock room or go up some steps to the kitchen.

I always brought my smallest torch, but I was very careful about using it, especially in the kitchen, where one of the windows could be seen from the road. It was better to wait for my eyes to get used to the darkness, to try to be like the owl. My eyes had grown so used to darkness that in time I saw best at night.

I would take all sorts of things from the stock room. Mainly tins and toilet paper, but sometimes also food from the big freezer. If there were any sweets, I’d always take some because Mum loved sweets. As I mostly picked bags with small pieces, liquorice pastels and gummy bears, say, I didn’t think that they could be making her fat. I also tried very hard to bring back biscuits because there was something very special about eating biscuits in bed with Mum. We would always break and shake them before we ate them. ‘So the calories can fall out,’ she would say. That made us laugh.

But, to be honest, I never really understood what she meant. I never saw any calories fall on to the duvet, the books or the other things. Nevertheless, I would always snap and shake my biscuits. I still do. They taste much better that way.

Every time I would remember to peek inside the fridge in the pub kitchen and I’d often find foil trays with food that was already cooked. Sometimes I’d take them out and hold them for a long time, breathing in the smell of the food. At times I might taste a bit as I stood there, even put a few trays in my bag. But I had to be very careful and never leave the fridge door open for a long time, Dad said. There was a light inside it, and someone might see it through the window. There were no curtains.

The thought of light and noises that might give me away terrified me. Darkness and silence were my friends.

I never took too much at any one time. That was the whole point of the game. Otherwise I might get caught, and that was the worst outcome imaginable. Not only because it would put an end to the game, but also because I didn’t know what they might do if they caught me. The strangers.

To begin with, I thought the game was just for fun, but in time I realized that we played it in order to survive. And that the consequences of being caught were unbearable. In time I realized that this game was deadly serious.