Free The Considerate Killer by Agnete Friis, Lene Kaaberbøl Page B

well-coiffed look that gave the game away. That and the fact that Hanne Borg had applied a bit more makeup than usual. Camouflage. Don’t show weakness!
    â€œYou’ve got children, Nina,” said her mother at last.
    Nina just barely stopped the sarcastic I know that that was on her lips.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” she asked.
    â€œI think you know.”
    â€œNo. Not really.”
    â€œIda and Anton are coming tomorrow.”
    â€œHalf-term break.” Oh God, she actually had managed to forget. She was a bad mother. “With a bit of luck I’ll be able to go home tomorrow,” she said quickly, “or at the latest, the day after. Can you manage for that long?”
    â€œThat’s not the issue.”
    â€œWhat do you mean then? I’m sorry if I’m a bit slow, but that can happen when someone cracks your skull.” Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid comment, she knew it as soon as she’d said it.
    â€œNina. Do you want your sixteen-year-old daughter to ask herself why she never meant enough to her mother for you to stop all of that? And Anton. Anton is only nine. Do you really want to create an abyss in his life to match your own?”
    â€œMom!” The outburst was everything she had hoped it wouldn’t be—hurt, accusing, shaky, and on the verge of tears.
    â€œI’m sorry, sweetheart. But sooner or later you have to realize that it can’t go on.”
    â€œIt wasn’t me . . . I didn’t do a damn thing to deserve—”
    â€œNo. Not directly. Not this time. But Nina, it’s no more than . . . what is it, five months? . . . since the last time you ran out on them.”
    â€œI didn’t run!”
    It wasn’t fair. No way was that fair. She had tried . The entire vacation had been an attempt to see if they could make it work again, she and Morten and the kids. Morten had a conference in Manila—the Sixth Annual Offshore Oil and Gas Conference in the polished and globalized SMX Convention Center, very exciting. They’d had a week’s beach vacation at a resort before the conference began, and the second week they stayed with one of Morten’s business connections in a gilded, middle-class ghetto about twenty-five kilometers from the polluted congestion of the city proper, with a pool and palm trees and a housekeeper—sweet, motherly Estelle, who had fallen for Anton’s blond charm within seconds.
    â€œWhat would you call it then? Morten said you were gone from dawn to dusk for four days straight.”
    â€œThree. It was only three! Mom, there was an accident. A terrible one. There were so many dead and wounded, and they had no idea . . . They needed qualified people. Did you expect me to sit and twiddle my thumbs by the pool while people were dying around me?”
    â€œNina-girl, you can’t save the entire—”
    â€œ Don’t call me that!” Nice. Now she had shot out of her chair and stood with two fists floating somewhere near chin level, like a boxer with his dukes up. Her head was pounding, and she forced herself to lower her hands and breathe more calmly.
    Her mother had not twitched an eyelid. She merely sat there sipping the patients-only coffee, wearing her wig and chemo camouflage, and considered Nina with a relentless and unshakable Mom-gaze.
    â€œNina. You have two children who are afraid of losing you, and you need to deal with that, whether you want to or not.”
    She had no defense. She couldn’t deny it. But she really had tried. She had turned down several offers for overseas work; she had even quit her job at the refugee center. She no longer used her free time to help illegal immigrants who didn’t dare approach the normal healthcare system. There was a clinic now where they could receive help anonymously, she had told herself sternly. She had started therapy. What more did they want? Yes, from a narrow Danish nuclear family point of view, it had