Free A Blessed Child by Linn Ullmann Page A

it was always wrong, see? It was totally wrong, and Tomas would look away and say, Forget I ever asked you. Forget it!

    When Erika found Tomas’s note (he had put it on the kitchen table under a hand-painted blue teapot, as if afraid it might blow away), she went down to the storage area in the cellar to check that he hadn’t hidden away there or hung himself. How long ago now? Four months? Four months, three weeks, and two days. The cellar window was open; it was just getting light outside. Afterward she had found herself thinking he must have escaped through the window, like the Indian in
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Outside the cellar window it was snowing or raining and she stood there, staring. Not a wet, snowy mass but gray, virtually transparent flakes, light enough to be indifferent to gravity, like particles of dust, though wetter and colder. There was a scattering of dry brown leaves on the window ledge and the linoleum floor; they must have blown in and he hadn’t bothered to collect them or vacuum. Erika lay down on the red sofa that had been moved down to the cellar when she refused to have it in the living room; she hadn’t expected Tomas to move down with it. The sofa smelled of him and of other things, too. But mostly of him.

Chapter 24
    The first time Erika saw her was in the summer of
1977
. She was lying draped on the rock farthest out to sea, with long brown legs extending from her polka-dot bikini briefs.
    Erika knew at once that she was the one called Marion.
    She stopped and looked. She dropped the Russian tobacco packet she had found on the beach and stood quite still.
    Ragnar grabbed her arm and said, “Come on, come on, Erika! Don’t gawk at her. She’s a moron. Come on!”
    He picked up the Russian packet, which was still pretty much intact and bore the name PRIMA .
    “Come on,” said Ragnar. “Come on, Erika.”
    It was Marion who said that the perfect boob was the shape of a champagne glass. Her father, Niclas Bodström, had said so. But Niclas Bodström hadn’t used the word
boob;
he’d said
breast.
Niclas Bodström had a summer place on the west side of Hammarsö and wasn’t just anybody. Erika didn’t really know what he did or even what he looked like, but she knew he wasn’t just anybody.
    To illustrate what Niclas Bodström meant by this statement, Marion produced a crystal champagne glass from her shocking-pink beach bag. Not a champagne flute that you might confuse with a white wine glass, but a wide, rounded champagne saucer.
     
    Erika would be lying on the rock along with Emily and Frida. She had been invited. It was Marion’s rock. None of the girls would lie down on the rock without having been invited by Marion. Laura was too young; she wasn’t allowed to lie on the rock. The first summer Erika got to know Marion, she wasn’t allowed to lie on the rock, either.
     
    “What was your name again?”
    Marion stood face-to-face with Erika outside the shop. As usual, she had Emily and Frida with her; Eva was there as well.
    “She’s that Norwegian girl,” said Emily.
    “The one whose little sister always tags along,” said Frida.
    “And much worse than that! She’s the one who hangs out with Psycho Boy,” said Marion.
     
    The champagne glass wasn’t clean; there was a huge lipstick mark clinging to the glass like a leech.
    “My mum’s lips,” said Marion, pointing to the lipstick mark.
    She got up and stood on the rock, letting the wind catch her long black hair. Erika could see she was posing; Erika could see that in fact she seemed a little bit ridiculous, standing there on the rock, pretending she was being photographed for
Vogue
or something. But so what? Just because Ragnar kept filling her head with shit about Marion. How vain she was. How stupid she was. What a slut she was. She was pretty fabulous, too. The most gorgeous girl Erika had ever seen. No wonder Ragnar talked shit.
    Erika looked out across the sky and the sea.
    “Absolutely