Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Katrine shook her head. ‘You’re coming home.’

‘I’m not going home.’

‘Not your home.’

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

THERE WAS ONE hour left until midnight, Olsen’s was packed with fully grown adults, and from the speakers Gerry Rafferty and his saxophone were blowing the ponytails of the people standing closest to them.

‘The sounds of the eighties,’ Liz cried.

‘I think this is from the seventies,’ Ulla said.

‘Yeah, but it didn’t reach Manglerud until the eighties.’

They laughed. Ulla saw Liz shake her head towards a man who looked questioningly at her as he passed their table.

‘This is actually the second time I’ve been here in a week,’ Ulla said.

‘Oh? Was it this much fun last time?’

Ulla shook her head. ‘Nothing’s as much fun as going out with you. Time passes, but you haven’t changed.’

‘No,’ Liz said, tilting her head and studying her friend. ‘But you have.’

‘Really? Have I lost myself?’

‘No, and that’s actually quite annoying. But you don’t smile any more.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘You smile, but you don’t smile . Not like Ulla from Manglerud.’

Ulla tilted her head. ‘We moved.’

‘Yes, you got a husband and children and villa. But that’s a poor exchange for the smile , Ulla. What happened?’

‘Yes, what happened?’ She smiled at Liz and drank. Then looked around. The average age was roughly the same as them, but she couldn’t see any familiar faces. Manglerud had grown, people had moved in, moved on. Some had died, some had just disappeared. And some were sitting at home. Dead and disappeared.

‘Would it be mean of me to guess?’ Liz wondered.

‘Guess away.’

Rafferty had finished his verse and Liz had to shout to drown out the saxophone blasting out again. ‘Mikael Bellman from Manglerud. He took your smile.’

‘That is actually pretty mean, Liz.’

‘Yes, but it’s true, isn’t it?’

Ulla raised her glass of wine again. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Is he being unfaithful?’

‘Liz!’

‘It’s hardly a secret …’

‘What isn’t a secret?’

‘That Mikael likes the ladies. Come on, Ulla, you’re not that naive.’

Ulla sighed. ‘Maybe not. But what am I supposed to do?’

‘The same as me,’ Liz said, taking the bottle of white wine from the ice bucket and topping up both their glasses. ‘Give them a taste of their own medicine. Cheers!’

Ulla could feel that she ought to switch to water. ‘I tried, but I just couldn’t do it.’

‘Try again!’

‘What good would it do?’

‘You only work that out after you’ve done it. Nothing fixes a shaky sex life at home like a really bad one-night stand.’

Ulla laughed. ‘It’s not the sex, Liz.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s … I’m … jealous.’

‘Ulla Swart jealous? It’s not possible to be that beautiful and jealous.’

‘Well, I am,’ Ulla protested. ‘And it hurts. A lot. I want payback.’

‘Of course you want payback, sister! Shaft him where it hurts … I mean …’ Wine sprayed as they burst out laughing.

‘Liz, you’re drunk!’

‘I’m drunk and happy, Mrs Police Chief’s Wife. Whereas you’re drunk and unhappy. Call him!’

‘Call Mikael? Now?’

‘Not Mikael, you idiot! Ring the lucky guy who’s going to get some pussy tonight.’

‘What? No, Liz!’

‘Yes, do it! Call him now!’ Liz pointed at the phone booth by the wall. ‘Call him from in there, then he’ll be able to hear! Actually, calling from in there would be very appropriate.’

‘Appropriate?’ Ulla laughed, and looked at her watch. She was going to have to go home soon. ‘Why?’

‘Why? Bloody hell, Ulla! Because that was where Mikael fucked Stine Michaelsen that time, wasn’t it?!’

‘What is it?’ Harry asked. The room was spinning around him.

‘Camomile tea,’ Katrine said.

‘The music,’ Harry said, feeling the woollen sweater he had been lent scratch his skin. His own clothes were hanging up to dry in the bathroom, and despite the door being closed he could still smell the cloying stench of strong spirits. So his senses were working, even if the room was spinning.

‘Beach House. Haven’t you heard them before?’

‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘That’s the problem. Things are starting to slip away from me.’ He could feel the coarse weave of the bedspread beneath him, which covered the whole of the low, almost two-metre-wide bed that was the only item of furniture in the room apart from a desk and chair, and a good old-fashioned stereo cabinet with a single candle on top of it. Harry presumed both the sweater and stereo belonged to Bjørn Holm. The music sounded like it was floating round the room. Harry had felt this way a few times before: when he had been on the brink of alcohol poisoning and was on his way back to the surface again, passing through all the same stages on the way up that he had been through on the way down.

‘I suppose that’s just the way it is,’ Katrine said. ‘We start off having everything, and then lose it, piece by piece. Strength. Youth. Future. People we like …’

Harry tried to remember what it was Bjørn had wanted him to say to Katrine, but it slipped away. Rakel. Oleg. And just as he felt tears welling up, they were suppressed by rage. Of course we lose them, everyone we try to hold on to, the fates disdain us, make us small, pathetic. When we cry for people we’ve lost, it’s not out of sympathy, because of course we know that they’re free from pain at last. But still we cry. We cry because we’re alone again. We cry out of self-pity.

‘Where are you, Harry?’

He felt her hand on his forehead. A sudden gust of wind made the window rattle. Outside in the street came the sound of something hitting the ground. The storm. It was on its way now.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

The room was spinning. He could sense the warmth not only from her hand, but from the whole of her as they lay there just half a metre apart.

‘I want to die first,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to lose them. They can lose me instead. Let them see how it feels for once.’

Her laughter was so gentle. ‘Now you’re stealing my lines, Harry.’

‘Am I?’

‘When I was in hospital …’

‘Yes?’ Harry closed his eyes when her hand slipped to the back of his neck, squeezed gently and sent little jolts up into his brain.

‘They kept changing the diagnosis. Manic depressive, borderline, bipolar. But there was one word that was in all the reports. Suicidal.’

‘Hm.’

‘But it passes.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘And then it comes back. Doesn’t it?’

She laughed again. ‘Nothing’s forever, life is by definition temporary and always changing. It’s horrible, but that’s also what makes it bearable.’

‘This too shall pass.’

‘Let’s hope so. You know what, Harry? We’re the same, you and I. We’re made for loneliness. We’re drawn to loneliness.’

‘By getting rid of the people we love, you mean?’

‘Is that what we do?’

‘I don’t know. I just know that when I’m walking on the wafer-thin ice of happiness, I’m terrified, so terrified that I wish it was over, that I was already in the water.’

‘And that’s why we run from those we love,’ Katrine said. ‘Alcohol. Work. Casual sex.’

Something we can be useful for, Harry thought. While they bleed to death.

‘We can’t save them,’ she said, in answer to his thoughts. ‘And they can’t save us. Only we can save ourselves.’