The Boy at the Door Read online

  Coco gave me many pills and then she spent a long time trying to make the burn better. It hurt, but less than when the mother in the house did it, probably because Coco’s a nurse. At one point, the mother left the room for a while, and Coco leaned in very close to my face and said, Tobias, tell me the truth, did you do this yourself? I nodded. Are you sure? she asked. I nodded again. Why? she asked. Because I was sad. She asked, Why were you sad? and I opened my mouth to answer but just then the mother came back into the room, carrying a tray with three cups of the smelly red tea she wants me to drink. Roy bush, she calls it. She must have realized that Coco had asked me something when she wasn’t in the room, because she acted strange afterwards.

  Since then, Coco comes after lunch every day. The mother in the house calls her Cornelia, not Coco, and the girls call her Auntie Coco, because she’s in the family. The mother has not left me alone with Coco again since that first day and I don’t like that someone is always with me. I’m used to at least some time by myself and now I can’t have it, so I wish I hadn’t done it. I tried to tell the mother that I was sorry and that I wouldn’t do it again and that it was okay for me to be alone a bit like usual, at least in my room, but she just looked away.

  Today is a Tuesday and it’s the mother who is here with me. If I hadn’t burned myself, I could have gone to the pool with Hermine this afternoon. Maybe in two weeks, said the mother when I asked when I could go back. I am getting better, though. I think Coco’s pills were what helped me. You’re going to have an ugly triangle scar forever, said Hermine yesterday. Shut up, said Nicoline. Scars are cool. Then Hermine shoved Nicoline. They fight a lot, and sometimes they fight about me. Like which one I like best, or which one’s room I want to play in. I think I like Nicoline best, because she comes over to me in school and asks, Are you okay? sometimes. Hermine pretends like she doesn’t know me in school and one time, a boy asked if I was her brother and she told him to shut the hell up and hit his arm then she had to go and sit in the head teacher’s office for the rest of break time. Hermine is prettier, though. She has tight blonde curls that she brushes away from her face, and green eyes with very long black eyelashes. Her skin is quite brown but that’s not how she really is, it’s because the family went to Phuket in Thailand just before I came. The girls have pictures of nice beaches and palm trees on their phones.

  The mother is typing on her computer. She likes to be on Facebook. Nicoline is on Facebook, too, and she showed me once how you can find the people you know and like their pictures and things like that. Once, before I burned myself and I was allowed to be alone in a room, I looked at the mother’s Facebook because it was open on her computer and she had gone to the shop. It had many pictures of her and the father on the beach and in places other than Sandefjord. It also had some pictures of Hermine and Nicoline, sitting together closely on a giant blow-up banana in the sea. While I was looking at the pictures a little box popped up in the right-hand corner. It was a message from someone called Simon F. It said:

  You were so hot at the gym. Sure you don’t want to grab coffee? I’m hoping you’ll say yes eventually.

  I went back up and saw that Simon F. had sent many other messages and that the mother in this house had answered and said:

  You can look but you can’t touch – I’m a respectable woman with a husband and two children.

  I wish she had said three children because I live here now, too.

  The next day, while we were all having breakfast, the mother in this house said to the father: I’m off to the gym this afternoon. Can you take the girls to tennis? He nodded and helped Hermine pour milk on her Cheerios. Luelle stood next to the table, just waiting in case anyone dropped something. For a moment I wanted to do something weird, just to make something happen. They’re very odd, but at the same time, I think it must be how normal families are.

  I look up now and find that the mother in this house is staring at me. Do you want to come for a walk with me? she asks, and it seems like a strange thing for her to ask, because I’ve never seen her go for a walk before. Outside, it is quite a nice day. Coco won’t come for a while yet, so maybe the mother wants to walk around the neighborhood or something. I nod. I haven’t been outside since the day I burnt myself. She closes the computer and walks around the kitchen, turning off all the lights. I watch her, like I often do, because she is quite weird.

  She does many things which I haven’t seen people do before. She takes away the hair on her eyebrows and then she draws it back with a pencil. She buttons the top button on her dress and then unbuttons it and then she says to the father in the house that she needs him to help her button her dress. She doesn’t cut her nails even if it means she can’t type on her phone. She hides the pouch of ready soup from the shop at the bottom of the bin and then she dips the head of the electric blender in the soup and leaves it dirty on the counter. She also sweeps up the crumbs on the table as soon as people start to eat, with a tiny dustpan and a brush, which Luelle, who isn’t allowed to eat with us, has to empty. The first day I was here, Nicoline said, My mother hates crumbs, and the mother nodded. They’re like little rocks against the skin of your elbows, aren’t they?

  We drive for quite a long time, and I don’t know where we are going. I don’t ask, because I think it’s best to not say everything you want to say all the time. After a long while, the mother parks the car in an empty parking lot by a long beach. For a moment, I feel afraid. What if she leaves me here and drives away? Anni always said she’d leave me somewhere far away if I didn’t listen. We get out and she smiles at me. I smile back but I feel a little strange.

  On the beach, we pick up pebbles and little cracked shells. The waves are big because it’s winter, and the light is pink even though it’s only lunchtime. I’m wearing a blue woolen hat and mittens the old lady made for me. Around my neck is a scratchy scarf she also made, and I untie it, letting freezing air rush from the sea down my neck, but then the mother notices and ties it tight again. If Baby was here, she’d run like a crazy dog in and out of the waves, and she’d drag sticks along the beach for me to throw. If Moffa was here, he’d put me on his shoulders so I could be like a giant, and he’d pass me stones to throw into the waves. I pick up a rock and fling it to the sea, but my chest hurts with the movement and I’m not strong enough to reach the water. I write my name in the sand with a stick and watch the mother jump from foot to foot to stay warm as she stares out at the sea. Then I walk over to her, and say what I’ve wanted to say since the day I burnt myself with the iron, or before even, since the moment I saw the picture.

  I know who you are.

  13

  I’m desperate now, that much is pretty obvious. It’s like everything I’ve created, everything I considered solid and sustainable, has actually been constructed upon air bubbles that may pop at any time, one after another. Every day, I’m having to take tranquilizers just to function. The last few days, I’ve also had to take Adderall to stay focused, though it makes me jittery and even more nervous than usual. It’s four o’clock in the morning and I haven’t slept at all, just tossed back and forth in bed endlessly, staring at Johan’s face in the dull glow from the streetlights. Again, I feel struck dumb by fear at the thought of Johan finding out what kind of situation I’ve placed us all in.

  Tomorrow, we will pile all the kids into the car and drive to our mountain cabin in Hemsedal to open it up for the season. It’s a long drive, but we’ll give them each an iPad and hope for the best. I won’t mind the road; I’m hoping it will distract me from the repercussions of what I’m about to do. It’s been two weeks and Tobias has more or less healed, thankfully, but what he did and said has cast a dark shadow over his stay here, which I’d been beginning to hope could be manageable. I’d thought I would get away with what I told him at the squat house after he ran away, but now it has, of course, become clear that he’s placed me in a very precarious position; I don’t have much choice. I know who you are, he said, but what does that even mean? I nee
d to know what he knows but I don’t know how to get it out of him without potentially giving him information he doesn’t have. He may be eight, but he can take me down, and I won’t let him. At the same time, I’ve become fond of this boy, and the thought of losing him now hits me right in the heart. Tobias somehow reaches me deeper than anyone else.

  I detangle myself from Johan, whose breathing is soft and slow, and go downstairs. Outside, the icy drizzle that seems to define this winter is falling, chased into dancing flurries by a brisk wind. I stand at the bay window in the living room, sipping from a mug of warm whiskey with honey and a dash of tea, when a curious idea forms in my mind. I go downstairs to the ground floor. Next to Luelle’s bedsit is my walk-in closet – my wardrobe room, rather. On a high shelf, wedged in between boxes of summer clothes, is a little basket containing soft blue yarn that I bought a few years ago on a whim to knit a hat for Hermine. The hat never materialized and I’m not exactly the kind of mother who knits, though I like people to think I do – but seriously, why bother when I can discreetly buy homemade things online? I sit down on the bare floor, buzzing with determination. It won’t take me more than an hour – it’s a simple little thing I’m making, just a small gesture, a Band-Aid for a gunshot wound, perhaps, but still. I want him to have something of me. It’s therapeutic, watching the knitting needles move around and through, over and over, and it is with some satisfaction I hold the little object up to the light when I’ve finished. A little blue bear for Tobias, no larger than the palm of a child’s hand, with stitched black crosses for eyes. I return the yarn and knitting needles before going back upstairs to make another rosehip and booze concoction. I take a few deep breaths, and drink the tea quickly. It’s just after five a.m.

  I knock very lightly on Tobias’s door. I was half expecting him to be awake, sitting on the floor and drawing, like he sometimes is in the night, but he’s fast asleep, his chest rising and falling rapidly, as though he’s distressed. What might this boy dream about? I lay a gentle hand on his shoulder and sit down on the edge of his bed. He immediately tenses up but doesn’t turn around.

  ‘Tobias,’ I whisper. He’s awake now, I can tell from his deliberate stillness. ‘I have something for you.’ He turns around slowly, mindful of his burn. I press the tiny bear into his hand. A cry of surprise escapes from Tobias. He holds it up to see better in the faint light streaming in from the corridor. His face is flushed with wonder, but his eyes look tired and confused.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ I whisper.

  ‘How... ? How did you... ?’ I hold a finger to my lips and Tobias seems to resign himself to this strange moment. He reaches his arms up to me and I draw him close, breathing in his sweet, sleepy scent, smoothing down his thick hair, kissing the top of his head. How am I going to manage to do what I have to do? I ease him back onto his pillow and sit awhile, stroking his hair, watching as he drifts back off to sleep, his little mouth dropping open, exposing the soft pink lining inside. I steel myself, breathing slowly and deeply. I will do this just like I managed all those years ago – because I have to.

  I had a plan, a perfectly decent plan, and fucking Anni went and royally fucked it up, and I can’t see that I’m left with any other options when it comes to Tobias’s future.

  I go back downstairs to the lower level, open Johan’s study and sit down at his old computer, the one Nicoline and Hermine use for Minecraft and YouTube tutorials, and wait as it chugs noisily to life. I activate ‘incognito’ mode, then go to Vike.no. I create a new account, [email protected] – I’m pretty sure nobody would try to log in to that even if they somehow were to come across it. It’s almost six a.m. by the time I’ve done this – I’m taking much longer to complete these simple tasks than I normally would, but then, I’m exhausted this morning and can’t help procrastinating. I’m so tired and the whiskey and the Adderall make me feel like I’m moving through water. I can’t believe what I’m about to do, or the events I may be setting in motion. How do you even go about finding someone you’ve spent almost a decade pretending doesn’t exist? And what could come of it? But, let’s face it, I’m desperate. Truly desperate.

  I must have passed out or fallen asleep, because I wake slumped over the closed laptop. I listen for a while, but the house is still silent, and outside the sky is pitch black. The events of this morning rush through my mind, but they are disjointed and murky, and I can’t immediately recall everything – the less sexy consequences of mixing spirits with Diazepam and Adderall. Did I really do what I think I did? I open the computer and log in to my new Vike account. In the sent folder I find what I’m looking for – an email sent at 6.11, with the subject ‘Punta del Este March 2008, Scandibelle’. My heart begins to thud hard, and a bitter taste of bile shoots up into the back of my throat. I can never take this back. Never.

  He wasn’t hard to find, not when I finally let myself look. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like, back in the day, trying to find someone in a different country, someone you’ve only met once, who you know nothing about – or almost nothing. A first name, a remembered smile, a couple of bits of exchanged information – it’s enough, these days, to track someone down. LinkedIn came up dry, like I thought it would. Facebook, too. Instagram, on the other hand . . . There he was, easily found with the hashtag #DJSoulo. His account linked to a website, and on the website I found the email address.

  Tobias will never know the circumstances of his early life, but as he’s lived in my house for almost two months now, and this situation is taking an incredible toll on me, I have come to the conclusion that I am left with little choice but to come forward with what I know. He knows that I knew Anni, and while he promised he’ll never divulge the reason to anybody, he’s eight and likely to let slip to someone like Laila Engebretsen. This situation has escalated completely out of control, and the only choice I have is to divert attention away from myself, and the secrets I’ve had to keep to save my marriage and my family. A contributing factor is also that, in the time Tobias has stayed here, I have grown fond of the boy, and while I’m under no illusions about what I could offer him, I would like to give him a chance at a life better than being shuffled around different foster families. I am the only person alive who holds the key to this, because, once, I knew his father.

  *

  The cabin was a wedding gift to us from Johan’s parents, and over the years we have extended it several times, so it is now one of the bigger cabins in this area. Obviously, it has also been impeccably styled, with charcoal slate floors, walnut walls, huge open fireplaces and pared-down, antique French chandeliers. During the winter, we generally spend at least every other weekend up here, and under more normal circumstances, it’s the most relaxing place I know. Though I’m not much of a morning person, I like to sit wrapped in blankets on the terrace at dawn, watching the sun stain the rounded mountains pink. I breathe easier up here in the thin mountain air, but not this time. I walk from room to room as if in a daze while the children play outside in the snow and Johan goes off on his twenty-kilometer cross-country sprints. Every hour or so, I walk out of the cabin and down to the main road, holding my iPhone above my head until it finally picks up a weak signal. I check the yogamumsandefjord account over and over, but there is no reply. My work emails I ignore entirely. It’s like I’m itching from within. No response as of today. Two days have passed since I sent the email and it’s highly unlikely that it has not been read. I should never have sent it; I must have been struck by a moment’s madness. But what was I to do? It isn’t human to be stuck in this kind of situation. When I get home, I am going to delete [email protected] and pretend that this whole thing never happened.

  ‘Mommy,’ screams Hermine, cutting into my thoughts, making me look up from where I’m making a coffee in the kitchen. It’s a bright, beautiful day and I squint as I step outside. ‘Mommy, you have to see this,’ she shouts. The kids are tobogganing off the garage roof – that’s how much snow has fallen here in the
mountains in the last couple of weeks – the lowest part of the sloped roof is now level with the ground. They’re red-faced and shrieking with laughter, and I watch them for a while. Tobias looks like any other boy, carefree and happy, not like a troubled child who would burn himself with an iron. His burn has finally healed, and the plan is for him to return to school on Monday. Watching him, my heart picks up its pace as it often does; there is something about his smile that just clutches so very hard at my heart.

  Nicoline throws a little snowball at Tobias and he laughs, running away up the side of the roof, ducking. He hides behind the chimney, his little hands working hard at packing a suitable snowball to send back down at Nicoline, who’s jumping from foot to foot, laughing and chanting, ‘Tobias can’t get me.’ But then something strange happens. At first, I confuse the bolt of fear in Tobias’s eyes with him being blinded by the sharp winter sun or something; he’s come out from behind the chimney and is holding a large snowball between his hands, as if about to fling it down towards where Nicoline stands, but it is as though he has suddenly been struck dumb. The happy smile of just moments ago has faded to a strange, anguished expression and his face is ashen.

  ‘Tobias?’ I say, taking a couple of steps towards him, but it is as though he can’t hear me. Has his burn suddenly caught on something, causing him pain? Nicoline and Hermine, too, have fallen still and stand staring up at the boy on the roof. I clamber up the steep incline of the snow-packed roof and touch upon his shoulder, and only then does he respond. He turns slowly towards me, and then drops his gaze to the big snowball still held in his hands.

  ‘No,’ he screams, suddenly – his voice echoing down the valley. He drops the snowball, then stomps on it until nothing but trampled snow remains. Then he rushes past me, hops off the roof and runs up the track behind the cabin to where the dense fir forest begins. He disappears between the trees so fast that the girls and I barely manage to react, and by the time we reach the forest, he’s nowhere to be seen. We spend over an hour walking slowly about, screaming Tobias’s name, listening out for any sound, but it is as though he has been sucked up into thin air. How long could he survive out here? It’s minus eight, and darkness is only a couple of hours away. Nicoline and Hermine begin to cry, and I realize I must take them back to the cabin where they’ll have to wait for Johan while I continue the search. I help them out of their soaking wet snowsuits and put a cartoon on before heading back out.