Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

Freyr nodded. ‘Do you think that any of these children are still living in Ísafjörður, or nearby? I’m particularly interested in speaking to Lárus Helgason.’ He decided not to mention that of those whose picture had been subjected to the vandal’s wrath, Helgason was the only one still alive. He probably had information up his sleeve that he hadn’t previously shared.

The old man pondered this for a moment. ‘As far as I know, he moved away from Ísafjörður long ago. He went south as a young man to study auto engineering and never returned. But I could well be remembering incorrectly.’

‘I’ll probably find him in the phone book.’ Freyr smiled at the man. ‘Do you remember Halla at all? She was in this class, but she lived all her adult life in Flateyri.’

Again the old man had to think for a moment before answering. ‘Sure, sure. A chubby little dark-haired girl. Quite a rascal, as I recall.’ He looked at Freyr. ‘Her father was a drunk. Treated her mother and the kids badly. The girl coped incredibly well, given the circumstances. She was sharp, though you wouldn’t say clever, exactly. Fortunately, none of his offspring inherited the sins of the father. Each of them was more good-tempered than the last.’

‘That’s a blessing.’ From what the old man was saying, Halla’s father might well have suffered from an untreated psychiatric disorder. In those situations it wasn’t unusual for people to turn to the bottle. If this were the case, there was an increased likelihood that Halla had struggled with psychological difficulties, despite her managing to hide the symptoms from her family members. ‘There have been some pretty bad alcoholics round here over the years. But it’s growing less and less common, I think. People are more aware of the dangers of alcohol than they were in those days.’ The old man picked up the photo again. ‘The father of this little chap here had a great deal of trouble with alcohol. Loathsome man.’

Freyr looked at the photo and saw that the man’s crooked finger pointed at the ragged boy standing just outside the group, at the end of the middle row. ‘Did he turn out okay, the poor kid?’

‘Bernódus? No, I can’t say he did. A terrible business.’

Freyr’s mouth suddenly went so dry that he was tempted to drink the glass of water that undoubtedly held the old man’s dentures at night. ‘Did you say Bernódus?’

‘Yes, that was his name, poor thing. He wasn’t in the class when I took over, so I never taught him, but I remember his name well. You don’t easily forget someone who ends up like that.’

‘Did he turn out to be a drunk, too?’ The old man put down the photo and Freyr took it. The boy’s eyes stared back at him from the poor copy; it looked as if the photocopier had taken particular care with his face. Bernódus .

‘No, no. It didn’t ever get that far. He disappeared.’ The old man coughed again. ‘Without a trace.’

The storm had subsided but had left the house damp, making the cold unbearable. It had proved impossible for Líf to force herself into a fourth jumper, though she had struggled for some time to make it fit over the other three. She was restless and complained bitterly that she couldn’t stand the itching from the wiry threads that managed to poke through from her woolly socks to her cotton ones. Of the two evils she still felt it better to scratch than to freeze to death, so she settled for the itchiness and simply scratched herself more often with an old knitting needle that Garðar had found between two loose floorboards. Katrín found it difficult to witness Líf’s nervous agitation, as she herself shivered and shook on her kitchen stool; she couldn’t work out whether it was from the cold or the shock she’d suffered the night before. She was bruised all over from the fall, but considering how much worse it could have been, she wasn’t complaining.

It was impossible for her to recall how she’d fallen; which part of her body was hammered by which step and when it was that she’d hit her head so hard that she lost consciousness. Most likely it had occurred immediately after she lost her balance, judging by how little she remembered of the fall and Garðar’s description of how she’d tumbled down like a rag doll. According to him, what had saved her was how flexible her body had been as she tumbled. After Katrín regained consciousness she lay at the bottom of the stairs and stared bewildered at the worried faces of Garðar and Líf. But before she opened her eyes, what they were saying had managed to slip through the fog in her head, which cleared quickly, and she thought their words were probably the reason why she’d taken the accident so well. Líf had thought that she was dead, and in her peculiar state of mind Katrín had thought so too, and felt sadness at her own demise wash over her. When Garðar said that he had found a pulse, an incredible sense of relief washed over Katrín and nothing else mattered any longer, neither pain nor the headache from which she was still suffering, although she’d more or less managed to get used to it.

‘Are you sure you’re not feeling ill?’ Garðar looked at Katrín and she could read in his expression how bad she must look. ‘If you have concussion, we have to do something about it.’ He didn’t elaborate any further, and Katrín doubted he had any idea how they should treat her if this was indeed the case. They’d agreed to call the skipper and ask him to come and get them, and in fact there was nothing else they could do for her until help arrived.

‘No. That’s probably the one thing I’m not suffering from at the moment.’ Katrín’s voice was hoarse; she hadn’t said much since she’d woken up. She’d fallen asleep in the middle of speaking; the shock had overcome her after Garðar and Líf had helped her upstairs and into her sleeping bag. They hadn’t understood anything of what she was saying, since the words had tumbled from her lips either in a torrent or one by one between sobs. This had tested Garðar and Líf’s patience, as well as their interpretive abilities, but they tried as best they could to comfort her. Eventually sleep provided her with the solace that she so desired; one minute she was awake and whimpering about wanting to go home, and the next she was floating in a dreamland where she and Garðar were newlyweds once more and incredibly happy. Although she couldn’t recall the dream in detail, she remembered that when she woke she’d expected a dejected little person to be standing over her, staring at her from beneath its cap, its face hidden in darkness. She dared not open her eyes, but when she finally did, no such thing met her gaze; the only thing she saw was the room’s shabby, dirty ceiling.

Katrín rubbed her forehead. ‘Do you have a mirror, Líf?’ Curiosity plagued her, although she actually had no desire to see how she looked. But when she was handed the little cosmetic mirror, she swallowed twice before holding it up to her face. Fortunately, her appearance turned out to be better than she’d hoped: a scrape on one cheek and a bit of a bruise beneath one eye. She tilted the mirror upwards and held a finger to a large red mark extending outwards from beneath her hairline.

‘None of it’s permanent.’ Líf stood over Katrín and smiled, her expression melancholy. ‘You’ll look lovely again.’ She turned to Garðar. ‘That is, if the boy doesn’t manage to kill you.’

Garðar tried to conceal how annoyed he’d grown at Líf talking like this; ever since they’d woken up she had carried on a continual monologue of her concerns about recent developments, despite the fact that they’d already decided to abandon the place. She was convinced that the boy had been behind the accident, based on Katrín’s description of how quickly and unexpectedly the door had slammed into her. Garðar, on the other hand, tried to maintain that it had been caused by a draught, even though all the windows had been closed.