Free The House by the Fjord by Rosalind Laker

and Alexander intervened.
    â€˜I’ll take Anna for drive. I don’t want her to think of the forest as being wholly ruined by what she saw.’ Then he added to her, ‘It will heal itself with new trees and bushes, ferns and flowers, but there will be a memorial to those that lost their lives there. They will never be forgotten.’
    They drove quite a long way and she saw aspects of the forest that she had never seen before. There were the bare slopes where local people would ski in winter, and nearby there was a ski-jump, and farther on a lake that would become a skating rink for children when temperatures dropped. They saw several elk, which regarded them from a distance with long mournful faces, their antlers widely magnificent.
    â€˜It is beautiful around here, Alex,’ she said, for they were now on first name terms.
    He had stopped the car and they had got out to sit on a fallen tree trunk, drinking coffee in mugs from a vacuum flask that he had produced.
    â€˜Wait till you see where your father-in-law lives in the town of Molde,’ he said, ‘because there it is possible to look out across the fjord and see eighty-seven mountain peaks. You’ll never want to leave.’
    â€˜Johan told me about them. He was skiing up in those mountains when he saw Molde being bombed.’
    â€˜The Nazis knew that the King and the Crown Prince and the government would have reached there on their flight from Oslo. It’s why German bombers tried to destroy every defenceless little town along the route. Wooden houses soon blaze like torches.’
    She shook her head at the tragedy of it, wondering if Alex would now tell her why he was in England during the war and which service he was in, but it did not happen and she was reluctant to question him. Then they returned to the car.
    She had recovered from her initial shock and was glad that the beautiful forest had not been lost to her through the horrific deeds that had been carried out in one heart-torn part of it. With time, when all sign of the camp had been removed, the forest would heal again, as Alex had said, and it would be as if nothing had ever violated its quiet peace and beauty, but the men that had died there would always be remembered by those who had loved them, as well as those who had respected them.
    â€˜Are you still coming to Molde at Christmas?’ Alex asked her before they parted outside the Dahls’ house.
    â€˜Yes,’ she answered without hesitation.
    â€˜Then I’ll look forward to seeing you.’ He gave her a wave as he drove off, and she felt extremely grateful for the help he had given her as she went into the house. Although he had said that business had brought him to Oslo again, she thought it significant that he had gone out of his way to visit her. It seemed as if her father-in-law was keeping a close check on her, and yet on reflection she realized that Alex had mentioned Steffan Vartdal only in a passing reference and neither had he asked her if she had read the document that he had left for her to study. Perhaps he had come of his own free will just to see her. It was an interesting thought.

Four
    Before winter set in, workmen and trucks appeared further up the lane from where Anna was living and she realized that the concentration camp was being dismantled. Bonfires flickered through the trees and the trucks carried away loads to be destroyed elsewhere. It had been announced that a memorial was to be erected there and she thought that very soon the beautiful forest would heal its terrible scars.
    Every day the weather was getting colder. One morning the forest was covered in hoar frost and sparkled as if every tree had been decked dazzlingly for Christmas. Soon afterwards the snow came and Anna awoke that day to a new vista and the sound of her elderly landlord clearing the steps of snow. She ran to the window and there she stood gazing across at the gigantic cones of snow that now covered