Cabin Fever Read online

  CABIN

  FEVER

  Also by Alex Dahl

  The Boy at the Door

  The Heart Keeper

  Playdate

  CABIN

  FEVER

  Alex Dahl

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Alex Dahl, 2021

  The moral right of Alex Dahl to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781789544039

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781789544046

  ISBN (E): 9781789544060

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  To Fevziye, my favorite Leo, in memory

  Contents

  Also by Alex Dahl

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  PART I: SUPERNOVA

  1. Kristina, October

  2. Kristina

  3. Kristina

  4. Leah, two weeks before

  5. Kristina

  6. Kristina

  7. Leah, two weeks before

  8. Kristina

  9. Kristina

  10. Leah, two weeks before

  11. Kristina, three days later

  12. Kristina

  13. Leah, two weeks before

  14. Kristina

  15. Leah, two weeks before

  16. Kristina

  17. Kristina

  18. Elisabeth, June

  19. Kristina

  20. Leah, two weeks before

  21. Kristina

  22. Elisabeth, June

  23. Kristina

  24. Leah, two weeks before

  25. Kristina, November 1st

  26. Kristina

  27. Kristina

  28. Leah, one week before

  29. Kristina

  30. Supernova

  31. Kristina

  32. Supernova

  33. Kristina

  34. Supernova

  35. Kristina

  36. Supernova

  37. Kristina

  38. Supernova

  39. Kristina

  40. Leah, days before

  41. Kristina

  42. Leah, days before

  43. Kristina

  44. Kristina

  PART II: EXPOSURE THERAPY

  45. Leah, days before

  46. Kristina

  47. Kristina

  48. Kristina

  49. Supernova

  50. Elisabeth, June

  51. Kristina

  52. Supernova

  53. Kristina

  54. Elisabeth, July

  55. Supernova

  56. Kristina

  57. Elisabeth, July

  58. Supernova

  59. Kristina

  60. Kristina

  PART III: POINT-BLANK

  61. Kristina

  62. Kristina

  63. Kristina

  64. Elisabeth, August

  65. Kristina

  66. Elisabeth, August

  67. Supernova

  68. Kristina

  69. Kristina

  70. Kristina

  71. Supernova

  72. Kristina

  73. Leah, two days before

  74. Kristina

  75. Elisabeth, August

  76. Kristina

  Epilogue: Anton, hours earlier

  Five months later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  ‘Only the wounded healer can truly heal.’

  – Irvin D. Yalom

  Prologue

  You’re in the woods. You’re alone. You’ve never known aloneness like this before, but now that you do, it will remain beside you like an unshakable shadow for the rest of your life. So much will be lost in the far recesses of your mind; no life can ever be retained in all of its moments, but you will remember this – the bitter, sickly taste of blood in your mouth, the thousand shades of green enveloping you, the taste, and color, of death. The deafening rumble of your heart echoing through your blood. The sharp-edged leaves knifing your arms and face as you crash through the foliage. Your fear – this vast and uncontrollable fear, as black and deep as a Norwegian forest lake. It will surge through you forever, prompted by big and small triggers entirely unrelated to these moments, and you’ll learn to live with it; you’ll have to. Sometimes it will roar at you, other times it will whisper. Every breath you take will bear its faint aftertaste. Every forest you walk through will merge with this one. Every sharp sound will take you back here in a split second. And every part of you will be reshaped, contorted into new configurations: like a city rebuilt from ruins.

  To save you, your mind will invent escape routes. Your brilliant mind will take your broken heart away from these moments in the only way it knows how – by running.

  You run, faster than you’ve ever run before, and even now, you know you’ll be running like this for the rest of your life. You’ll run because you don’t know that the only way you could ever be free is to stop.

  Part I

  SUPERNOVA

  1

  Kristina, October

  She’s my two o’clock on Fridays, the second last before the weekend. Perhaps this makes me naturally more relaxed and good-humored, but Leah Iverson has always been a client I look forward to seeing. She’s reflective and interesting, with a natural ability to tap into my deepest empathy, and genuinely invested in the therapeutic process. In other words, she isn’t hard work. That’s not to say we haven’t done hard work together, at times very hard work. Leah first came to see me almost three years ago, in the aftermath of the publication of her first book, Nobody. The book was loosely based on her marriage in the popular Scandinavian trend of autofiction inspired by Karl-Ove Knausgaard, and it was translated into over twenty languages, and so she found herself an unlikely literary celebrity.

  At first, she had taken it in her stride, reveling in the unexpected career change from journalist to published author. She traveled the world and spoke of her inspiring healing journey from emotional and physical abuse at various events. But as time went by, Leah began to struggle with the life changes this had brought, and her elevation to ‘famous-author’ status. Her book remained at number one, and was optioned for a TV-series adaptation. The gossip press preyed on her, speculating over which parts of the book were true, and which parts were fictionalized. Leah made enough money to buy a nice apartment in an upmarket part of town, and a cabin in the mountains of Telemark, too. In spite of all this success, Leah was a nervous, fragile shell of a woman back then, someone who winced when our eyes met or if I asked her a question she didn’t know how to answer. Her sentences would begin with, ‘I’m sorry,’ or, ‘I know this is stupid,’ or, ‘This is so ridiculous, but...’. She didn’t trust herself back then, but she came to trust me, and eventually, herself.

  As we began to build our therapeutic relationship, a wide array of underlying problems emerged, squirming
in the room between us like worms coiling out of the earth. Leah cut herself, and had been doing it since her early teens. She once pulled up the sleeves of her jumper to reveal row upon row of neat incisions, some fresh and pink, many old and white. She had a highly complicated relationship with food, alternating between binging and starving herself, sometimes for weeks on end and until she’d black out. She suffered from debilitating panic attacks and terrifying compulsive thoughts, sometimes suicidal. She was always quick to reassure me that her suicidal thoughts were without intent, and I would point out that they were just thoughts. At the beginning, Leah spent many sessions just staring emptily into the space between us, and I would let her be, without any prompts at all. Occasionally she’d look up, her startled hazel eyes meeting mine before scanning the room, as though she momentarily had no idea where she was.

  Over time, I watched as Leah grew stronger. In the therapy room she made great progress, too. It’s always incredible when a client comes to therapy at the right time, with the right therapist, and that is what I believe happened for us. Layers of conditioning and trauma and deeply buried pain and untruths peel away, revealing a vulnerable but very strong person underneath – it’s powerful to watch and become part of. Though she has significantly battled with writing a follow-up to Nobody over the past year, she hasn’t regressed to the chaotic, destructive state of when she first came to therapy. She’s a very grateful client, one who often makes a point of saying that it’s all because of me that things are getting better, but I like to say that I only hold the mirror – she’s the one that looks in it.

  I boil the water for our tea and rearrange the tea bags fanning out in the dish on the low table. I make sure there are two of each flavor and that they are laid out by color. It’s interesting how some clients will choose a different tea each time, whereas some will always have the same one. Leah doesn’t always choose one at all, arriving with a takeaway coffee from Kaffebrenneriet across the road. Other times, she chooses a green tea with lemon.

  It’s five past two, and still no Leah. Unusual – she is extremely punctual, and I actually can’t recall a time when she wasn’t sitting in the waiting room when I opened the door at two on the dot. I check again, though I would have heard the door open, and the room is still empty. Outside, heavy rain is falling, and slick orange leaves stick to the windowpanes. October always makes me feel both withdrawn and a little wistful, though I’ve never known why. Perhaps it has to do with the beauty of the decay, how intoxicating it is to observe all the death around us.

  This year is worse than ever, so much has changed, so much loss.

  All I want for this weekend is to shut myself away in the house with Eirik, lying across from him on the sofas, reading and sipping a rich, dark Malbec, occasionally looking up to meet his eyes and smiling. This weekend is going to be far removed from that gentle domestic dream, and I feel tired in advance just at the thought of it. Tonight I will be supporting my husband at a gala dinner at the prime minister’s residence. I feel a nervous ache in my stomach at the thought, but then, who wouldn’t? Then, tomorrow, we are visiting my sister and her young family in Drøbak for the rest of the weekend, which is lovely but hardly a relaxing time.

  Ten past two, and still no Leah. I bring out my phone to call her – something unexpected must have happened – but just then, I hear the door to the waiting room open. I take a deep breath and entirely clear my mind so that Leah has my full, uncluttered attention for the forty minutes that are left of the session.

  But it isn’t Leah, not the Leah I’ve seen every Friday for over nearly three years. This is someone else entirely, a ghost of the woman I know. She’s trembling all over and soaked wet. Her right eye is a medley of violet and red and inky blue, swelled shut.

  ‘Jesus, Leah,’ I begin, but fall silent at the look in her eyes.

  ‘Can we just begin,’ she whispers.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, and usher her into the room. My heart is pounding hard and my palms are slick with nervous sweat, as if I’m the client, not the therapist. I’ve lit a discreet votive candle on the windowsill like I always do, and there are fresh flowers on the table, autumnal amber roses, and I make a point of taking each of them in briefly to center myself. Leah settles into the chair opposite me and fidgets strangely with her jacket sleeves, as though she can’t control herself and is at the mercy of a motor running inside her that she can’t shut down. Her fingers loop through and around a little hole she’s made on the sleeve, making it bigger and bigger. As it recedes, her sweater underneath becomes visible and I see that it is speckled with blood.

  ‘What’s happened, Leah?’ I ask softly, in spite of my usual habit of letting the client begin the session at their own point of urgency.

  ‘I…’ The words seem to catch in her throat.

  ‘Someone has hurt you. Do you think you can tell me about what happened?’ I watch as tears drop from her eyes onto her hands, still working away at unraveling the jacket sleeve. ‘Leah?’

  No answer.

  ‘Have you gone to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  I nod, and let the ‘no’ hang for a while on the tense air between us. ‘It’s not like they’d do anything much,’ she continues in a whisper.

  ‘Maybe it would be good to speak with them anyway,’ I say, but she shakes her head curtly. ‘Leah, did Anton do this to you?’ The abusive and vindictive ex-husband seems like a natural assumption.

  Blank stare.

  ‘There is something I have to tell you,’ Leah says, her eyes returning to the busy performance of her hands tearing at the jacket sleeve. I remain silent, fully concentrated, ready to receive her words and to help her hold the intense emotions she must be feeling. For a long while, she doesn’t speak. She closes her uninjured left eye and I can’t help but stare at her now that I know she can’t see me. I allow the intense empathy I feel for Leah to wash over me. I hope she can feel that, in these moments, I am all hers, and that I stand beside her witnessing her distress and her pain.

  ‘You know I told you about my cabin? The one I bought in the mountains? Or, the forest really. With mountains nearby.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to go there. I just want to go there and collect myself; it’s the only place I’ve really felt at peace. Ever. You know how we’ve spoken so much about my need for newness all the time? And the need to escape. It’s been like an itch, always. As a child, I always wanted to be someone else. It’s the same now. I just want to be away. Away. Faster, better, more. Away. I live my life wanting to be somewhere other than where I am. Except for at the cabin. It’s like that place is me, but me as a physical place, does that make sense?’ I nod. ‘It’s like it’s not only mine, but me.’

  ‘That sounds like a very good place to be.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She doesn’t embellish. I glance at the time, only twenty minutes left.

  ‘You mentioned earlier that there was something you needed to tell me.’

  Leah nods. She avoids my gaze, lets her one seeing eye travel around the room until it comes to rest on the flowers. Then she closes it and tears rush from beneath her thick dark lashes, dropping off her chin and onto her wrung, red hands. I wait.

  ‘I…’ she begins, her voice scratchy and raw, like she’s been screaming at the top of her lungs. I feel deeply unsettled in her presence, she is so unlike herself, even the way she was at the very beginning. She stands up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her face twisted and grotesque.

  ‘We have some time left,’ I say, but she’s already crossing the room and reaching for the door.

  ‘I…’ she begins again. ‘It’s too late,’ she whispers.

  ‘What’s too late? Leah, talk to me. Tell me what’s on your mind.’

  ‘No, it’s too late.’

  ‘Why is it too late?’

  ‘Can… Can you come to my cabin?’

  I sigh, we’ve had these kinds of conversations before. ‘Leah, you know that the therapy room is
our meeting place.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I can’t come to your cabin. You know this.’

  Leah wrenches the door open and turns to look at me. ‘I need you to…’ she starts, her eyes shining with fresh tears, then she lowers her voice to barely a whisper. ‘This is about the truth.’

  ‘Stay a little longer, Leah, please. I have some extra time this afternoon. It’s okay. Talk to me.’

  She shakes her head forcefully and fumbles around in her jacket pocket with her right hand. She hands me a crumpled envelope with something solid inside.

  ‘Please come.’

  ‘Leah—’

  ‘I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…’

  ‘Wait, sorry for what? Leah, wait.’

  But Leah is already running down the stairs, her footsteps echoing up the stairwell. I rush to the window and watch as she bursts onto the street and crosses the road to the royal palace park, where she becomes blurred and distorted in the crashing rain.

  2

  Kristina

  As soon as I get home, I go to the kitchen and pour myself a large glass of Californian red. I walk through each of our large rooms steeped in autumnal darkness even though it is only four o’clock, and enter my walk-in wardrobe, placing the wineglass on a shelf. My reflection is mirrored back at me from several angles, sliver after sliver of Kristina. I look tired and pale. I take a big glug of the wine and run my fingertips across a long row of little black dresses, which are perfectly hung and grouped by fabric. Silk, then chiffon, then satin, cotton, jersey, merino wool, cashmere. Tonight will be formal and I need something special. It’s the Conservative Party’s annual autumn gala, held at the prime minister’s private residence. My husband is second in command of the party and many eyes will be on us this evening. I move toward the jewel-colored dresses, teal maybe, or a deep emerald; those colors tend to offset my dark hair. I select a beautiful ocean-blue silk Bottega Veneta dress and step out of my work clothes. I look at myself for a moment in the full-length mirror and take another big sip of the pinot noir. Woman, thirties, thin and a little drawn-looking, drinking wine in her underwear in a closet – that’s me.