Free Cold Hearts by Gunnar Staalesen Page B

memory?’
    ‘Yes. In the chapel. At Møllendal.’
    ‘But afterwards. Nothing private?’
    ‘No.’ She sucked the smoke down deep and coughed it up again, a thin, fragile sound.
    ‘And that was three to four years ago, wasn’t it?’
    ‘1993.’
    ‘Does that mean … have I understood you correctly … you haven’t seen your children since 1993?’
    She shrugged.
    ‘You’re not sure.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘And you haven’t got a telephone, I’ve been told.’
    ‘I cope fine without. No one rings me anyway.’
    ‘No, if you haven’t got a phone, then … but that could of course be … Alright. How do you make time pass then?’
    ‘Well, I sit here thinking.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Well, everything and nothing.’
    In a strange way, it was as if she wasn’t reacting to why I was asking her all these questions. I just asked, and she just answered. That was how it was, today.
    All of a sudden, I felt deeply depressed, as though Else Monsen’s stagnant life and meaningless existence had infected me as well. I let out a heavy sigh, and said: ‘So you know nothing about what your children are doing? What professions they have chosen?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘Have you any idea why two of them didn’t turn up for their father’s funeral?’
    ‘Couldn’t be bothered, I suppose. I don’t even know if they were told. We didn’t have a death notice until … afterwards.’
    ‘But Siv went, didn’t she. She must have spoken to the others about it?’
    ‘Yes, perhaps.’
    ‘OK. I don’t know if I …’ I got up from the chair and looked around. A side door led into another room that must have been her bedroom. We had passed the kitchen door in the hall. ‘Are these the only rooms?’
    ‘Yes, and the loft.’
    ‘The loft?’
    ‘Yes, we had a room for the children up there when they were small.’
    ‘I see. Is it used now?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘May I have a look?’
    She looked at me in the same passive, subservient way she had done the whole time. Then she nodded. ‘I can show you.’
    I followed her through the hall and up the stairs. We came into a drying loft beneath a slanting roof. The light angled down from two windows. In a recess there was an old-fashioned mangle. In a corner there were some suitcases. At the opposite end there was a wall with two doors, as if to two storerooms. One was padlocked. The other was ajar. Beside the half-open door was a large wardrobe.
    Else Monsen went straight there, opened the door wide and stepped aside so that I could see in.
    It was a cramped children’s bedroom, with two bunk beds along one wall, a single bed along the other. There was a dormer window that looked out onto Falsens vei, and on the sill some old, faded girls’ magazines. A green dresser, and on a chair some forgotten clothes they had outgrown. On the floor there was a pile of comics, as far as I could judge from the 80s. The room left me with the impression that this was a hastily vacated childhood, a period of life no one had bothered to tidy up after.
    ‘So they grew up here?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Not much room.’
    ‘That was all we had.’
    ‘But where did they do their homework?’
    ‘They didn’t have so much … homework.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No.’ After a pause she added: ‘But when they did, they sat in the kitchen. Or else they did it at school.’
    Again I felt the depression taking a firm grip around myheart. Once again it was as if I were being inexorably transported back to my time at social services and the frequent dispiriting home visits I had made in those days.
    I turned away. ‘That door …’
    ‘No, that’s Torvaldsen’s storeroom.
Fru
Torvaldsen helped them with their homework now and then. She was a teacher at their school.’
    ‘Fridalen School?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, well, well … then I won’t disturb you any further.’
    ‘You’re not disturbing me.’
    ‘No, I …’
    In fact I did understand. It had been a long time since anyone had disturbed Else Monsen.