See You Tomorrow

1. 666 (Pål)

His eyes, they feel as if there’s sand in them.

As if there’s a fine layer of tiny grains on the membrane. It’s been like that for weeks now. Nothing helps: not eye drops, not eye ointment, it won’t go away. The grains scrape against the membrane. If it keeps up, the particles will perforate the cornea and one day he’ll wake up unable to see the world.

Maybe it’s just as well.

Getting so sick of this.

It’s never going to work out, is it?

Pål wipes the mixer with the cloth, then folds it and hangs it over the tap. He leans on the worktop and fills his lungs with air, as though that would help. He hears the gush of the cistern from the first floor and he exhales, glances at the dog. The border collie is lying on a blanket next to the fireplace.

‘Eh, Zitha? Just as well, eh?’

The sound of the cistern subsides and it’s peaceful in the house. As peaceful as outside, where not even the lightest leaves on the trees stir beneath the yellow glow of the street lights. Not even the string hanging from the spruce tree moves; the string the girls used to hang milk cartons from, that they had cut holes in and stuck twigs through, so that the great tits could sit there and eat.

Dad? Can we have some raisins? Do birds eat raisins?

The milk carton’s gone, his wife’s gone, the girls are still here, and so is the string.

Pål squeezes his right eye shut and presses his forefinger against his eyelid in irritation. He turns on the radio. P4. Coldplay. A hit from a few years back. What’s it called again? Always so annoying when they don’t sing the title. Now in the morning I sleep alone. He switches off the radio. Everything is a reference to him, and he’s not able to take it in any more. He’s not able to watch TV, he’s not able to read the papers, he can sit with a book in his hand reading the same page sixteen times over without grasping what’s written.

All he can stand is silence, no matter how it might eat away at him.

Autumn came early this year, the first weeks in September were spattered with rain and chased by wind, but the days have suddenly brightened up. It’s as though summer wants to bid a final farewell. A glaring white sun sits low in the vast sky. From early morning it casts long shadows along the streets. It’s so strong it gives the impression it’s going to burn up the sky, and then itself.

Well, Zitha? You think Daddy’ll cope?

The dog has one paw curled up under her chest, the other alongside her lupine snout, idle and limp. Zitha takes on a slightly comical expression when she lies down flat on the blanket. Her ears are recumbent on her head, dainty and elegant.

She’s a reliable dog, a beautiful dog, and she has no idea about what’s going on with her master. Zitha just is. She sleeps. Plays. Runs. Eats. She stands in front of Pål with the same devotion, day in day out, tail wagging, bottom waggling, tongue hanging out.

He looks out of the windows facing the garden. It gets dark earlier now. The street lights are on by half past seven, it’s already dusk by then, and within half an hour it’s pitch black.

Summer began to ebb a month ago. People were still in T-shirts and shorts then. But soon it was over for the year. The leaves on the birch turned yellow, the rhododendron red, and deciduous trees began to fade. Women had to root out three-quarter length coats, the colours shifted to grey, brown and ochre and there were more and more hats to be seen. People started wearing shawls and scarves, they put away their trainers, and the kids were knocking about in fleece jackets and raingear.

Yeah, birds can eat raisins, they like them.

Is Mum coming back, Dad?

No, I don’t think she is.

Good while ago now.

The temperature dropped; the nights got colder. He saw the neighbour scraping ice off his car windscreen one morning; good thing he’s got a garage.

These unnaturally bright days are merely on loan. It’s summer’s last sigh and not something that will last. His body needs to adjust now, adapt to the new season, to the prolonged gloom that is on its way, to months of cold and darkness. The joints get stiff, the body gets heavy and sleep takes up more room.

Pål rubs his seasonally dry hands together and looks at Zitha. Her breathing is slow and heavy. Who knows if she’s dreaming, and who knows what she’s dreaming of behind that elegant brow of hers.

Getting incredibly sick of this.

‘Zitha!’

He smacks his lips and goes closer to the sleeping dog. She twitches, rises up on her front paws, yawns and stretches. Her tail starts whacking against the floor straight away, her tongue rolls out of her already salivating mouth.

‘Yeaah. Come on, Zitha. Yeaah.’

He walks towards the hall, Zitha scampering around his legs. He clears his throat, demonstrably. He says ‘Yeah, yeah!’ extra loudly as he takes the leash from the top drawer and sees the twinkle in her eyes.

This isn’t going to work. Is it?

The girls.

The dog’s tail is going like a wind-up toy, she scurries about happily in front of him. Pål rubs his eyes before bending over and feeling the blood tip in his head, as if his skull were a lab flask and everything was following gravity. He rubs Zitha under the chin, looks her in the eyes and meets the same boundless trust she’s always prepared to show.

Pål hears a door open upstairs. He puts on his coat, slips his feet into his shoes. He pats his inner pocket to see if the envelope is still there. It is.

They’re sharp, collies. Intelligent. When his wife left him and heard he was getting a dog, she said he should get a setter; go hunting like other men. Yeah, you would think that, said Pål. Setters, said Christine, her voice full of admiration, they run themselves into the ground given the chance. Collies, said Pål, they’re beautiful and they guard the house, that’s the kind of dog I want.

Just to run. To explode, to disappear.

That’s what he would like to do. That’s what he’s felt like doing of late. Run, explode, ready to disappear. In addition to numbness, anxiety, and shame; no one knows what I’m up to.

‘Shall I go with you, Dad?’

Footsteps on the carpet above.

The kids are the worst. It feels like Tiril and Malene are all that stand between him and what he is going to do. Malene is the worst. A daddy’s girl. She comes down the stairs, he knows her footsteps like he knows his own musty heart.

‘Hm? Shall I go with you?’

‘No, no.’ He can’t manage to meet her gaze. ‘Get on with your homework.’

‘I’ve finished.’

Pål sends her a puzzled smile. ‘I must be mixing you up with someone who doesn’t always do their homework. Where’s Tiril?’

‘At work, I guess.’

‘Yeah, of course.’

Malene frowns. She gets that strange grimace around her mouth, the one she has had since she was a baby, the one that makes her look like E.T. He’s almost on the verge of tears.

His daughter bends down to Zitha, strokes her snout affectionately, making her eyes narrow and slanted. She puts her face close to the dog’s, the dog licks her nose. ‘There, there, nice Zitha, nice Zitha, going for a walk with Dad.’

Pål studies her. The strong cheekbones that seem to force her face upwards. Her gymnast’s body, strong, supple and erect. Never any nonsense with Malene. Such a pity about that injury. It’ll heal soon enough. He smiles, and for a moment he forgets who he is and what it is he has done.

‘Can’t I come along?’

A daughter standing there asking to go with him. He hopes it will always be like that.

‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s late. You’ve got homework.’

‘Dad, I told you, I’ve finished it.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘But, it’d be nice if you were here when Tiril gets in.’

‘Aww.’ She pouts and pulls Zitha close: ‘Don’t you want to stay here with Malene, eh?’

The dog licks her across the face, the tongue pink, wet, the tail beating the floor.

Next to the hall mirror hangs the old photo of his wife. It has started to fade. The kids wanted it put up after she left. A photo of Mum for the sake of the kids. Funny that. One year you want to tear her eyes out and the next it’s like you miss her.

‘Someone rang, by the way.’

He’s startled out of his musings. ‘Hm?’

‘On the landline,’ says Malene. ‘Someone rang. They asked after you.’

‘Did they give a name?’ He tries to sound as nonchalant as possible.

‘No, but they said they’d call back.’

‘The rubbish,’ he hears Malene say, feeling the fog thicken in his head, wishing he could drop everything and collapse on to the floor. ‘Bin collection tomorrow.’

‘Oh, yeah, the rubbish,’ he says, perplexed. ‘What would I do without you?’

Malene stands up, and lets go of the dog. She shrugs. ‘That’d be the end of you, Dad.’

‘Heh heh. Where’s your sister, by the way?’

‘I told you, she’s at work.’

He rolls his eyes and grins at himself.

‘You’ve become such a scatterbrain.’ Malene lets Zitha jump up on her; she takes a paw in each hand and dances with the dog. She sends Pål a playful look: ‘Is it your age? Eh? Is my dad an old fogey now?’

‘No, no.’ He runs his hand over his eyes and laughs awkwardly. ‘Just a lot on my mind. Bit too much going on at work. It’ll be all right though. Your dad always comes through in the end, you know that.’

Malene peers at him, squinting so intently it makes her cheekbones even rounder: ‘Still sore?’

‘Yeah.’ He blinks. ‘Like there’s sand in them.’

‘What can it be?’

‘Dunno. But I’m sure it’ll go away.’

‘Have you been to the doctor?’

She’s got that grown-up look in her eyes. She looks like Christine when she’s like that.

‘No, not yet, but I will, of course.’ He forces a smile.

‘Yeah, well make sure you do, okay?’

Pål suddenly feels his teeth begin to chatter, feels his eyelids close and the oxygen drain from his head. He bends over. Pushes the dog aside, pulls Malene close to him. He swallows a lump in his throat.

He holds her tight, doesn’t say a word.

This is never going to work out, he thinks to himself.

‘Dad?’

They say you love your kids equally, and you do, but it’s different with Malene. He’s never quite understood Tiril, never quite connected, like she’s off somewhere else, in a whole different direction, moving too fast for him. Is it Thursday she’s going to sing?

‘Dad? What is it?’

He holds her tight. Swallows, sniffles, blinks. Then he lets go.

‘Is it Thursday Tiril is singing?’

‘You know it is.’

‘Yeah,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘what are you going to do with me, sentimental fool that I am, eh? Do you know what I was just thinking of? Iron Maiden in Drammenshallen, sure it was good, but Maiden in London, Malene, nothing beats that. Six, six, six, the number of the beast, sacrifice is going on tonight. Heh heh. Your old rocker dad, eh? Your daft dad has gone all soft. How’s your ankle? Soon, Malene, you’ll soon be back on the mat. Now, go and do your homework, and I’ll take Zitha for a walk.’

She looks at him askance. ‘I’ve done my homework…’

Pål tousles her hair. It feels soothing to the touch. What a girl. He’s so proud of having such a great daughter.

Imagine if he told her? Imagine he suddenly told her everything?

‘You know what?’ He strokes her cheek. ‘The two of you should hang up another milk carton for the birds. Autumn’s arrived, you know.’

2. DO YOU WANT ME? (Sandra)

Am I a storm? Am I electric?

She’ll be sixteen in a few months, her forehead is sweaty, under her hairline too. Her mouth is trembling and she knows she needs to hurry up — her knees wobble as she walks. Her heart is wild and emboldened; she feels weak, she feels strong.

One metre sixty-one, two burning eyes, three freckles on her nose, straight blonde fringe and glittering lip gloss.

The white bra, the one she bought without her mother’s knowledge, the one her mother would probably think was tawdry, would he like it?

Is she the one he just has to have? Is she irresistible?

Sandra doesn’t need any sleep, doesn’t need any rest, why sleep the seconds away? She’s never going to sleep again, she’s going to stay awake twenty-four hours a day, because she doesn’t have the time to waste a second of the life she’s living.

Terrorism, environmental disasters, financial crises. They might well exist out there, they might well be important, to Mum, to Dad, to the teachers, to grown-ups, but to her they don’t exist. The world has vanished. All she’s got is heat and dread, haste and apprehension. All she feels is this drizzle within, like a strange rain falling inside her, wonderful and dangerous. Because Sandra is going to meet the one she loves.

He must be there by now?

She clutches the silver cross resting in the hollow of her throat, wipes her damp forehead with her arm. It’s embarrassing, she’s inherited it from her father. He always has patches of sweat under his arms when he hangs up his jacket after work and says, ‘Ah, it’s good to be home’.

Maybe she should get herself a headscarf she could tie from the back of her neck round her forehead. Maybe he’d like that. He wouldn’t have left yet, would he?

Sandra drags the heavy industrial hoover as quickly as she can across the shop floor. She’s not checking the time on her mobile every minute, more like every five seconds and now it’s way too late, 20:50.

He’s going to be waiting for her by the substation in Gosen Woods. Just by Madlavoll primary school. Close to Gosen kindergarten. She’s attended both of them. He’ll be waiting for her. And he’s not lying now is he, because love, that doesn’t lie, does it?

Jesus, imagine if Mum had seen her?

He took her face in those warm hands, his pupils were aglow. She held her breath, felt his thumbs stroke her lips, then he kissed her and said what she wanted to hear: ‘I’ll be there at nine. See you tomorrow.’

Love doesn’t lie.

It’s nice outside now. After a few weeks of rain, the September sky is brightening up even though the temperature has dropped and everybody can feel what’s coming: there’s a nip in the air. Everything living will fade and die.

It’s all the same to Sandra. Come rain, come storm, come everything. War could break out, and that would be fine, as long as she gets to be with him, with him. The girl can hardly understand what she was doing before she met Daniel. All the days and nights spent with her friends, standing around the schoolyard, hanging about outside the shop, walking arm-in-arm, sniggering, and singing out loud in unison. It seems so insignificant, so stupid, so childish. They can go on about how preoccupied she’s become lately. Mira can say it as loud as she likes, Sandra’s let us down, Sandra’s losing it. And Mathilde, poor girl, looks like she lives in squalor, as Mum would say, she can say it too, Sandra’s changed. Makes no difference what they think, it’s air, it’s wind, it’s really less than nothing. All that matters is running towards the one you love and letting your heart melt into his.

A headscarf.

Yes.

That might be nice.

She doesn’t have much left to do now. Vacuum the very back of the shop, then she’s finished. Tiril is dragging her feet, she can do what she wants. Once Sandra has finished hoovering, she’s out of here. Then she’ll hang up her jogging pants and jumper and pull the skinny Met jeans well over her bum, because he’s told her he likes them: I think you’re well sexy in those jeans. She’ll put on more lip gloss, because he’s told her he likes that too: I love it when your lips gleam.

A thousand nervous times she’s stood in front of the mirror, trying to find that expression, the one she evidently has, because he said that too: Oh, you’re well cute when you do that. There’s something about her mouth, something about the way her nostrils flare. She’s asked him plenty of times, what do you mean? She’s smacked him on the arm, smiled at him, but all he said was: I can’t explain it, you’re just so bloody cute when you do it.

Am I? You really think so?

Yes, you are, Sandra, You’re well cute, fucking hell, you’re a flower, you are.

Sandra gets out her mobile again, no messages. 20:52. Hope he hasn’t forgotten the time, hope he hasn’t grown tired of her, stupid girl, only fifteen.

Ten o’clock, that’s what she told Mum and Dad. Her job will take her until ten, because she has to clean the whole shop on her own. There used to be two of them but not any more, and that means it takes a lot longer. But that’s a lie, because Tiril is here, and the lie hisses in her head, as if it floods up from her midriff towards her throat: one hour. She had managed to wangle one hour. With him.

Sandra’s forehead is sweaty. Yes, Mum, I’ll come straight home after work, no, Mum, I won’t dawdle, no, Dad, I’m not going to drift around at night. No one hung out at night midweek when we were young, things were different back then. Oh, really, so what? If there was one thing she couldn’t care less about, it’s how things were in the stupid seventies and the idiotic eighties, just like she couldn’t care less about the music Dad is always trying to get her to listen to, real music, as he calls it. The Police and Sting and all that stuff. People who could play and didn’t think real music was made with Pro Tools. Or Mum going on about Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Jesus, and all that talk of the cold war and the Berlin Wall — so what? So what? So what?

She’s alive now, don’t they get that?

She’s alive now and she’s lying through her teeth. It’s risky. Mum and Dad could easily find out. They could run into Tiril’s dad. They know who he is. They could run into Tiril. The lie is far from watertight. ‘Hi Tiril, nice to see you, shame you quit your cleaning job at the shop.’

Dozy Tiril, only fourteen and thinks she is something. She’s by the frozen foods with a cleaning spray. Tetchy brat. Sulky and grumpy, always has been. Her sister’s not quite as bad, a little quiet maybe, a little serious. The gymnastics talent, Malene, but she’s injured her ankle. They’re so different, those two. But they’re both odd, each in their own way. Everybody knows, knows they’re a bit weird. Maybe Mum’s right when she raises her eyebrows and says: After all, they haven’t grown up with a mum and a dad.

It’s so hot.

Sandra sticks out her bottom lip, blows up at her fringe.

It’s so unbelievably hot.

The lie is a risk she’s willing to take. If they find out they can say what they like, even though they’ll probably cut her pocket money and ground her, because what do they know about love? They sit watching box sets on Blu-ray, night after night of Mad Men and The Killing. Is that love? What do they know about a boy’s mouth against hers and his hands on her body, what do they know about the intensity in his eyes when he gazes at her in the darkness of the forest?

Sandra is lying, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s a child of Heaven. Her willingness to lie attests to the truth of what she’s doing. When that’s how it is, then it’s right, then it’s the heart that acts. If love wasn’t right, what would be right in this world?

Her hand goes to her throat, to her silver cross, the one she got from Aunt Astrid and Uncle Frank for her confirmation, the one with the diamond inset. She squeezes it hard, again.

She’s nervous about what’s going to happen.

You’re precious, Sandra. Remember that.

You won’t give yourself to just anybody. Will you, my love?

No, Mum.

She’s not just sweaty under her hairline, but on her neck, between her shoulder blades and on her palms. She represses thoughts of her mother and thinks instead about what it says in First Corinthians, about love enduring, believing, hoping for, tolerating all. And she thinks about what the Bible says, that when you were a child, you spoke as a child, thought as a child, and understood as a child, but when you became a man, you put away childish things. That’s the way she feels. Everything childish feels so stupid, feels so far away it is inconceivable that it could have been her.

Sandra vacuums as quickly as she can. Tiril glowers at her from under her headphones, with her thick black mascara, listening to Evanescence or My Chemical Romance. Sandra’s skin tingles. His hands, his eyes, his voice: Do you want me? Sexy?

She hurries, she is close to the bottle return machine and the entrance to the back room, but just before she finishes, she knocks down a display of honey next to the spices. The pyramid collapses, honey jars tumble to the floor and roll in all directions. Sandra’s pulse is up under her chin, she curses to herself and quickly falls to her knees to put them back.

‘Hey, Tiril? Can you give me a hand?’

She’s losing time now. She’s losing seconds with him.

Do you want me, Sandra?

‘Tiril, give me a hand, will you.’

I’m precious.

I don’t give myself to just anyone.

I want you. Take me. Open me. Now. Tonight.

3. VIVA LA VIDA (Rudi)

‘Hey, Chessi? You there, baby?’

Rudi’s coffee-brown eyes move to glance in the rear-view mirror.

‘Hey, Chessibaby?’

No reply.

The old Volvo splutters out of the roundabout at Åsen, daylight streaming in the windscreen, and Rudi puts his foot on the pedal. If this is supposed to be a company, and this is a company car, then things are bad. When did they buy it again? Ninety-two. From an old farmer on Finnøy. The Volvo was in a field, under a tarpulin, sheep sniffing around at the edges. It only had 19,000 on the clock. That’s how old people are with cars, they treat them as carefully as they would money. Now it had done 270,654 and should have been on its way to Knoksen’s knackers yard.

But the Volvo is the same as all the other rubbish you lug around with you year in, year out; you grow so damned attached to it.

‘Hey, Chessi?’

Rudi takes another look in the rear-view mirror. She’s just sitting there. You’d be hard pressed to find a more pig-headed woman. One little row, Jesus, not even a row, and she won’t budge an inch.

His rasping voice reaches a higher pitch: ‘Hey, Chessi, are you there, or are you just sitting dreaming about rock ballads and my cock?’

She turns her head and looks out of the window.

That’s gratitude for you. A joke, and she looks out the window. Great idea bringing her along to work. It’s true what Jani says, that girl was born difficult. She shot out of her mum in December 1972, covered in spikes. She’s downright spiny. She’s always been pale and freckly, rough and sickly and as ugly as an uprooted tree, but she has beautiful big hair, chestnut colour, and hips like shelves, as well as an ass that can make your head spin. Living without her would be utterly impossible.

‘Chessi?’ Rudi tries to make his voice sound like cotton wool. ‘Honeybunch? Only jokin’, you know that. Eh? Will we check if there’re any concerts coming up? I think Europe are playing at Folken soon!’

He allows her time to compose herself. But no. Her cantankerous gaze is fixed on the air in front of her. Those wide-set eyes, which make her resemble some kind of subterranean animal, seem to move even further apart. What about some compassion? Yourboyfriendoftwentysevenyears, thebaronoflove, is sitting here and she knows he hasn’t slept all night, she knows he has had awful nightmares, but is there an ounce of compassion to be had? Is there the merest hint of a smile? The smallest, kindly word?

Cecilie continues staring out the window while she takes out a pack of cigarettes. Fantastic. Now she’s going to punish him. She knows all too well he can’t bear anyone smoking in the Volvo. And she knows he’s just quit. And she knows how hard it is to kick the habit. Fantastic.

Rudi makes a show of rolling down the window.

They’re up and down, these moods of hers. You haven’t got a hope in hell of keeping track of them. Yesterday? Yesterday it was super smooth. Movie night in Hillevåg, good old I Spit on Your Grave and Nightmare in a Damaged Brain. Lo-fi classic night, said Jani, and put out crisps and coke. Classic Night. Jani has a way with words. They watched movies, good times and blood and gore it was, even Chessi was in a pretty good mood, lying there in an old pair of jogging bottoms, cuddled up in the crook of his arm. And then, next day? In a rotten mood. Everything’s shitty, pissy and crappy. When he’s the one, not her, who’s had a rough night. He hugged her, but her body was as stiff as a board. He tried to make eye-contact, but her eyes were yellow and fiery. And eventually he lets her know, that she needs to get a fucking grip and be a bit nicer. That was when the storm broke.

But, you got to go to work. No matter how menstrual the weather.

Rudi leans towards the open window, breathes in and out. Chessi sits in the back seat puffing away as if it were the last cigarette she was ever going to have, won’t be able to make out her head soon for all the smoke.

He drives through Auglend and takes a left at the southern end of Mosvannet lake, putting the car in a low gear, to get a bit of traction on the uphill climb at Ullandhaugsbakken.

Nicest place on Earth, as Granny used to say. God rest the old bag of bones, as Granddad said when cancer got her. She lay in her sickbed like a crumpled leaf. It was hard seeing her like that. Hi Granny, are you in there? Ah, Rudi, my boy, there’s not much left of me, you’ll have a slice of cake, won’t you? Come to visit your grandmother and get a slice of cake? It was always good to visit Granny. Shoot over to Stokka. He could drive there at any time, pull the Volvo up in front of the house, toot the horn, while it still worked, get inside the house and she would totter into the room wearing that blue dress, radiant as a wrinkly sun. Swiss roll and caffeine-free instant coffee. Yeah, you can laugh, be my bloody guest, but it was one thousand per cent genuine. If there were more people like Granny in the world, you’d hear a lot less about arguments, or the internet or war, that’s for sure.

Afeckingworldoffeckinglove.

That’s old times for you. They can really take hold.

Sometimes it’s a pleasure. Other times it’s a pain and they refuse to let you sleep. And you can’t do anything but curl up into a ball and wait for it to end, and as for a hug from your girl, well, you can forget about that.

The Volvo hauls itself up the hill in low gear. Rudi feels the hairs on the back of his head crackle as they near the top, as he sees cows grazing in the fields, sees the Ullandhaug Tower stretching up into the sky, and as he gets to the summit: the world opens up to the fjord below. He feels his stomach plummet and his head soar.

Rudi´s brown eyes warm up and soften as he drives into his old stomping ground. He feels likes a fag, but if you’ve quit, then it’s all about standing firm. Stay clean, Lemmy. Metal, Motörhead and the old haunts forever.

This landscape, Granny.

You couldn’t describe it.

It’s true what they say at travel agents, you’ve got to experience it, you’ve got to see it with your own two eyes.

Rudi speeds up. He feels his head fizz and shuts his eyes for a few seconds, takes a deep breath, opens them again and goes for it: ‘Hey Chessi. You there?’ He tries to infuse his voice with as much lightness as possible. ‘Eh? You looking? Nicest place on earth, eh?’

‘Fucking shithole,’ says the voice from the back seat.

Rudi sighs. It’s the end of September. You’re at work. You’re on the road in the Volvo. After weeks of rain, along come a few days of glorious weather, as though a bonus summer had dropped by. You live in the richest country in the world. There’s food on the table, and money in the bank, maybe not piles of it, maybe a little less than Jani would like, but enough, and Granny is floating round your head like a crochet angel and life is actually pretty bloody good, and you decide to say something pleasant after a bad morning. Pleasant. Not asking much, is it? And that’s what you get. It’s enough to reduce your whole happy house to rubble.

‘Christ, you are a right bitch,’ says Rudi, pounding on the steering wheel with his fist.

‘Yeah, and when were you planning on treating me any different!’

He sees her shouting, smoke billowing from her mouth.

‘Well? What if I want a normal life, and not this bollocks, eh? Fuck’s sake, Rudi, you’re not a man, you’re a dishcloth.’

‘A dishcloth?!’ Rudi tries to keep his cool so he doesn’t explode. ‘A dishcloth? Whatthe … fu … a … fu … dish … what do you say that for?’

He glances in the rear-view mirror. Now she’s crying as well. Brilliant. Dishcloth? The tears run down one pallid cheek, trickle along her narrow nose, taking the make-up with them, it’s drama time again. Dramadramadrama. Weird how she only ever cries from one eye. Dishcloth? It’s exhausting, that’s what it is. They’ve been together for twenty-seven years now. They know one another. They’re like one person! It’s like Jani says: she’s so dramatic she should start a theatre.

It’s not your fault, Rudi. It’s congenital. She inherited it from Mum.

‘I don’t know,’ Cecilie says in a low voice. And sniffles. ‘I just made it up. Dishcloth.’ She looks up, meets his gaze for the first time in a long while. ‘I do love you though, Snatchpuss.’

The Volvo trundles by the Iron Age Farm. Cecilie sits pale and freckly with her big hair and shelf hips, and the make-up running down her left cheek spreads out like a river delta from her wet lashes. Her thin, slightly crooked lips, her Easter-yellow teeth and her small mussel ears.

Rudi feels his throat tighten, his stomach swell.

Shit, how he loves that girl.

And shit, how he loves this landscape.

Here’s to you, Granny. They were good, those Swiss rolls.

He feels a draught on his neck and rolls up the window. He turns on the radio. Pop music. He’s about to switch it off, he knows how anti-pop they are, but he can’t. He’s heard this song before. Violins. Du-du-du du-du-du du-du-du. Something about a king who used to rule the world. Coldplay? He pretends not to notice the song and hopes Chessi won’t notice him listening to it.

Rudi leans forward in the seat, juts out his chin and squints. Now let’s see, he thinks, and reduces speed. Down the hill towards the forest. That was what he said. Down towards the shop there. Yeah. Park someplace behind there.

Weird set-up, this. Feels a tiny bit risky.

Keep your wits about you, Jani said. I’m not sure about this.

Rudi turns his head and looks at her.

‘Hey, Chessi, come on, we’ll knock this on the head. What was it we were arguing about, what was it that stirred up this lousy atmosphere, eh?’

‘Don’t remember,’ says the low voice from the back seat.

‘There you have it. It’s gone. Vanished! Hey, baby, it’s you and me and your ass! You know I’ll kill anyone who comes near you. You know you can count on it, count on Rudi whipping out his monster cock and flogging them to death? If anyone other than Rudi screws you, yeah, so much as fucking looks at you, then I’ll break every bone in their body? Oh yeah. Rudi’s a real man! Like Granny used to say: I can trust you, Rudi.’

‘Oh Jesus…’ comes the voice from the back seat. ‘Here we go again…’

‘Eh?’ says Rudi and acts as if he didn’t hear what she said.

‘Nothing.’

He glances in the mirror. The tears have dried. She sticks the small, pink tip of her tongue out between her thin lips and moistens them.

‘Exactly,’ he says, fired up at the sight of her, and takes a deep breath: ‘Nothing and kein Problem, Mädchen. Now we’re going to go to work, and there’s no telling what we might run into in this forest, but Pål is this guy’s name and he’s got ein problem.’ Rudi frowns suddenly, as if he’s just thought of something. ‘Pål, you don’t know anyone called Pål, do you?’

‘Pål, eh, no, don’t think so.’

‘What’s going on, Pål shmål,’ laughs Rudi, repressing the thought. ‘There’s only one way out of here: piece by piece! like Slayer say. What’s gonna happen, Pålly Bålly? No one knows, baby! Like Foo Fighters say.’

‘Queens of the Stone Age.’

‘Eh?’

‘Queens of the Stone Age. No One Knows.’

‘Jesus. Are you gonna nitpick about that now? Who’s the dishcloth here?’

Rudi suppresses his irritation and says no more. They draw closer to the woods and the radio is playing Coldplay. It’s pop music. And he hates pop music. But those violins and that melody, they get into your brain, and the lyrics, they force their way through your body, and everything reminds you of that troll sitting in the back seat: He’s got to have it.

Because he loves it. And he’s a man of love.

‘Rudi, can you turn off that homo music? It makes me want to puke.’

Rudi pretends not to hear what she said, and raising his voice, making it sound like an engine straining at full pelt, says: ‘Yeah, yeah, dishcloth or not, there’s one thing Rudi knows for sure, and that’s that tonight, Chessi, tonight I’m going to screw you seven ways to fuckin’ Sunday.’

4. THEY’RE SO BLOODY GORGEOUS (Daniel William)

A little girl, really.

Fifteen years of age. Her mum works at the church, her dad’s a lawyer and she oozes naivety. She’ll be sixteen in January. If she’s telling the truth, that is. She might be adding a few months on to her age. Girls lie all the time, especially about things like that. That’s the thing about them. The way they view the truth, it’s not the same way we do. The truth is always changing with girls. Runs from their mouths like dribble from old people.

But they’re so bloody gorgeous.

So, so bloody gorgeous.

It would be a lot easier living with a man, as his last foster father used to say, before he added: ‘Not that I’m a fucking homo.’

Homos. That’s just sick. It’s one thing to like boys, but not to like girls, that’s even worse.

They’re so bloody gorgeous.

When there are girls in the room, the rest of the world disappears. It just fucking explodes. There’s nothing else in the room other than them. And it’s a good feeling, like sniffing glue. Helicopter. Daniel has felt it a thousand times, and he wants to feel it again, because that’s the point of this life: if it’s good, get more of it.

More, more, more.

If you want to strip this scrap heap of a life down to its essence, then it’s girls you’re talking about. Daniel can sit behind the drum kit and play, he’s a good drummer, a dynamic player, he’s as tight as a sphincter, but in his head, while the sticks are hitting the skins, it’s girls he’s thinking about. They tumble around in his head while he plays. Big ones and small ones; fat ones and thin ones, all kinds of girls. Tits, twats, asses, thighs, lipstick, tights, stockings, blouses, bras, dresses, kerchiefs, make-up, those straps between stockings and panties and everything that goes with a girl. It’s been like that ever since he was a little boy. Ever since he was in kindergarten on the other side of the city. There were just as many girls going round in his head when he was playing then as when he was bigger, on the football pitch, practising penalty after penalty, and as there are now when he’s banging on the drums.

And what is wrong with that?

Sometimes he gets the feeling people think there’s something wrong with it, about life being about girls. But Daniel doesn’t care about that. What he wants to do is get his own flat, whenever Child bloody Welfare will let him, work out a couple of times a week, get drunk at the weekends, play in a good band, get some gigs, release some records and get some stuff out on iTunes, YouTube and Spotify, maybe play a few festivals, maybe make a living playing music like Kvelertak, Purified in Blood and Kaizers Orchestra. Dejan’s brother — crazy all that stuff Dejan and his family went through in Serbia — Dejan’s brother knows a guy who knows one of the guitarists in Purified. Daniel and Dejan saw them at the Rått og Råde festival, seriously kickass: The sky is falling, death is calling, to the grave. It’s not just people in Rogaland who like them, people from Oslo like them too. He just needs to keep at it. If it doesn’t work out he’ll have to get a job, and he’s no wuss, even though his grades aren’t great, pass candidate in every subject except PE. He’s never shied away from work. If someone tells him to do something, he’ll grit his teeth until his jaw aches and do the job, no matter how bloody dirty it is.

Then he’ll spend the rest of his time, and money, on girls.

That’s what he feels is meaningful, as his foster mother and child protection officer say. And if anyone believes that’s the wrong way to live your life, then they can just go on believing it. If they feel it’s wrong that he thinks girls are so fucking sexy, soft and gorgeous, and he wants to buy them stuff, like houses and make-up and whatever they want, then they can go on feeling it’s wrong.

Daniel’s rock-hard fuckplan is to find a girl who’s not a handful. She has to have her head screwed on and she can’t have a face on her in the morning like she’s sucking a lemon, and she can’t spend three hours deciding what kind of jeans to buy. She has to think the jeans he wants her to wear are the best. He’ll be the one looking at her after all. That’s the kind of girl he wants for himself. A girl who likes the fact he thinks she’s well gorgeous and well sexy, a girl who doesn’t look at other boys and isn’t running around flirting.

Who knows, maybe he’s already found that girl.

Because she is sexy, Sandra.

And she doesn’t look at other boys. And she doesn’t moan.

The test will be how often she wants to do it with him.

It’ll be a shambles if he’s together with a woman who only wants to do it a little while he wants to do it a lot. On average once a day, he reckons. So he can’t be with someone who only wants it every four days. And there’s one other thing that’s just as important, and that’s that she doesn’t poke and pry. He’s had enough of that already, from Child Welfare, foster parents, social workers and psychologists, so he doesn’t want to be with a girl who pokes and pesters. Respect to Sandra, because she’s twigged that. When something comes up in conversation that he can’t face talking about, she looks at him with those well gorgeous eyes that make Daniel think of some kind of exotic bird, her lips glisten and it’s just like there’s light in those three freckles on her nose, and that little mousy mouth of hers drives him nuts, the pursed lips with the slightly protruding teeth, and she gets it, gets that there’s certain things you don’t want to get into. She’s understood what all those childcare losers haven’t: if you talk and talk and talk about things, pull them out of the ground like rabbits, then everything goes to shit.

Daniel glances up at the football pitch by the school. He takes his mobile from his leather jacket. 20:52. She’s usually on time.

It’s shite digging up things best left buried thousands of miles underground.

But the fact that they named him William.

What the fuck were they thinking? Were they at the hospital watching him pop out of his mother and did they think, ah, we’ll have to call him William. Daniel William. What kind of gay name was that?

Daniel spits.

You get the life you’re given, it’s your job to live it.

It’s shite with things that are best left buried thousands of miles underground.

Sometimes he thinks about it. About killing. Just going out and killing somebody. Making a person disappear just because he can. What a release it must be. Clench your fists until they’re as hard as wrecking balls, pummel a face until you can’t tell it’s a face.

Maybe tonight’s the night.

Screw.

Screw.

Screw.

5. AMY LEE (Tiril)

‘Tiril, please, can you help me here?’

She sees the honey jars roll across the lino, hears them rattling like the peel of sick bells, sees the sweaty, Christian girl crawling on all fours, and she turns up the volume on the iPhone, wipes the ice cream freezer with the cloth and looks the other way.

Thea is going to sit at the piano and Tiril will stand in front. I’m so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears. Thea will be dressed in white: white top, white dress, white tights and white shoes. Whereas she’ll be in black: black top, black dress, black tights and black shoes. And if you have to leave I wish that you would just leave, ’cause your presence still lingers here, and it won’t leave me alone. They’re going to blow the roof off the gym hall. These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real, there’s just too much that time cannot erase. Tiril feels it on her arms, the hairs standing on end, same as when she heard the song for the first time on YouTube: When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears.

On Thursday. The International Culture Workshop. Kinda daft, but, whatever.

‘Tiril! Can you please come and help me here?’

She ignores Christian Girl’s desperate pleas and crouches down. Evanescence fills her head as she gives the large surfaces of the freezer a thorough wipe.

Thea’s amazing on the piano, she’s been playing for years and her parents reckon she could go far. Beethoven and Brahms and all kinds of stuff just flies from her fingers, and she only needs to hear a song and she can play it. It’s mad. Her fingers just run across the keys. It’s not that easy either, ‘My Immortal’. Maybe it’s not that hard, like technically, but getting the feeling right, only Thea can do that. And Amy Lee.

And Tiril Fagerland.

They’ve tried getting hold of a black piano, or a grand, but the school doesn’t have anything like that, only an electronic one. But nobody will have a bad word to say about the stage show. They’re going to cover the windows in the gym hall with black sheets, drape a black felt cloth over the piano, and Tiril found a five-branched candelabra in Oxfam. The candlesticks in it will shine bright.

You used to captivate me by your resonating light, now I’m bound by the life you left behind.

After the second verse, Tiril’s going to let a black, see-through shawl fall down over her face. She’ll stand upright, motionless, her gaze fixed on the floor, her body rigid, like a statue, her fingers splayed like a leaf. Then she’ll raise her head, slowly, slowly, as she sings the most powerful lines in the song:

I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone.

But though you’re still with me I’ve been alone all along.

The plan is for it to be dark when she sings those lines, and then on the final chorus the lights will come up, preferably ones with green and red filters. That’s when she needs to give it her all. She needs to sing like Amy Lee, needs to think that she is Amy Lee, that she’s the one who grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Tiril is going to go there someday. She’s going to see the place Evanescence are from. She’s going to walk the streets, breathe the air. What would be really amazing would be to see them live in their hometown, like Dad did with Maiden. Dad says he had metal on the brain when he was young, Maiden mainly, and even though he doesn’t listen to metal any more he’ll never forget that time he saw them in London. He’s talked about it loads, about what a fantastic feeling it is, seeing your favourite band in the city they come from. And she’ll be the one to do it, not Malene. Tiril will be the one who’ll fly to the US, she’s the one who’ll visit Little Rock, Arkansas.

If there had been eight letters in Evanescence, she would have written it in felt pen on her fingers. But it doesn’t fit. Neither does My Immortal, or Little Rock. Tiril has come up with something else. Something more her style. Eight letters, two hands, two words. The atmosphere in the gym hall is going to be electric, she’s going to raise her hands and hold them like a shield in front of her face: LOVE HATE. These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real, there’s just too much that time cannot erase.

Burn in hell, Mum.

Tiril gets to her feet. Slinging the washcloth over her shoulder, she presses pause on the iPhone and looks over at Sandra. She’s crouched down gathering honey jars, her stupid fingers working away in panic. Tiril takes a few steps towards her.

‘Did you say something, by the way?’

Sandra glowers at her while she stacks the last of the jars. She shakes her head.

‘I don’t get you, Tiril,’ she says. ‘What exactly have I done to you?’

Tiril stops and leans against the spices.

‘It’s late,’ she says.

‘Eh?’ Sandra says, blushing.

‘You can just go. YOLO.’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ says Sandra. She places the last jar on top of the display stand. ‘See you later.’

Sandra takes the vacuum cleaner and walks in the direction of the back door. Tiril nods.

Do you think I haven’t copped on?

I know where you’re off to, shiza.

I know what you’re up to, biatch.

I don’t like you anyway, not you, your necklace, your BO, your lawyer daddy, your Jesus freak mother or your lies. You think you’re so perfect, but you’re a Canada Goose minge, a Jimmy Choo ho, a Chanel poontang, a preppy tart, and sorry, but I’ve news for you: Someday you’re going to walk out on the guy you marry, you’re going to leave the people around you, you’re going to betray your own family, and you’re never going to go to Little Rock, Arkansas, because you’ve no style of your own, slut.

6. YOU CAN HAVE ME (Sandra)

Sandra is clammy, her neck feels damp, her back is sweaty and her forehead is moist. She needs to get herself that headscarf, Hennes & Mauritz? She knows that H&M sell stuff that falls apart after the first wash. There are a lot of things her mother’s wrong about but she’s right about that: If you want quality, you have to pay for it. Hennes and Mauritz is not the kind of shop that’s renowned for its quality, Sandra.

If she wants to?

He has peered at her with those deep-set eyes of his, they’re so far back in his head that sometimes she feels she’s going to fall into them. He’s put his arms around her and pressed up against her, she’s felt how strong and hard he is. When he asks — Do you want me, Sandra — he glows. He glows with savage hunger, and right at that moment she thinks that even though she doesn’t know if she wants what he’s talking about, she wants it just the same. Because he wants to, because he’s so hungry.

She knows what she’s going to say next time he asks.

Yes, I want you.

Take me, Daniel.

His name is singing in her head from the time she wakes up until she goes to sleep and far into her dreams: Daniel William Moi. He can’t bear being named William. It’s poncy, he says, as if I’m supposed to be English or something, I can’t bloody stand poncy things. But Sandra just wants to take his name in her hands and caress it, cradle it like a bird, stroke its soft feathers with her fingers, put her lips to its head and kiss it. No fucking way I’m letting you use that name, he’s told her. Daniel swears quite a lot, she doesn’t really like it when people swear, but when he does it she thinks it sounds like a song.

I don’t use that name, Sandra, and you’re not to use it either, nobody knows I’m called that, just you, and God help you if you tell anyone.

Just her. Just Sandra Vikadal.

I want to know more about you than everybody else.

I want that part of you that nobody else has.

I want to be closer to you than anybody else.

She used to see people in love and think it was gross, she thought boys were annoying, always rowdy and acting stupid, if they weren’t called Johnny Depp and weren’t hanging on her wall, that is. Now she doesn’t recognise the girl she was, because nothing has been as real as this. It’s awfully difficult to know if she’s doing the right thing. Does she say the things he likes to hear? Does he think it’s a turn-off when she sweats like she does? Does he cringe listening to her speak, does he think that tooth of hers is ugly, or her voice sounds stupid? Sometimes when she talks it can sound sort of hollow and lumpy, as though she had a potato in her throat, does he find that disgusting? And what about her age? He says it doesn’t matter that she’s only fifteen, but sometimes she thinks he’s lying, well, not lying of course, people in love don’t lie, but still, is he only saying it to cover up how gross he actually thinks it is?

The hardest thing of all is to know if she’s good-looking enough.

No matter how many times he tells her she’s sexy in those jeans, the pair she lays out flat and takes care not too wash too often, she still doesn’t know if it’s just something he’s saying. If there’re a thousand other girls who are just as pretty, whose bums are just as nice. And no matter how often his mouth breaks into that bright smile of his when he sees that expression on her face, the one he thinks is so incredibly cute, she still can’t be sure if he’s not just putting it on. Even though she trusts him. Of course she does. Because that’s love. But still she’s nervous, still she takes a long time getting ready.

Her boobs, do they look nice enough?

He stares at them intently, but who knows what he’s actually thinking?

She’s let him touch them lots of times. It’s mad how long he can just stand there, teeth clenched, with that lovely jawline of his, fondling them. Yesterday, she let him kiss them. She took off her bra, in the middle of the woods, her fingers were trembling and she could hardly believe it herself, the fact she was actually doing it, as she slipped her hands under her top, unhooked her bra and wriggled it out of her sleeve and stood there, practically naked behind the substation while darkness fell around them. Lord, imagine if someone had come? Imagine someone had seen her standing there, when Daniel opened his bright mouth and said Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, they’re so fucking beautiful.

When he said that, she wasn’t able to feel anything.

All she was able to do was show herself to him. Because she knew that’s what he wanted, it made it her own choice. Show herself and let him touch her breasts, let him kiss them. Then she felt a jolt of happiness through her, but all she could think was: Are they nice enough? Are my boobs as soft and as firm as he wants, are they big enough for him, are they the shape he likes? She doesn’t have very small boobs but they’re not very big either; compared to the other girls in the class she’s probably a little bit bigger than average, but what does that actually mean, and what does Daniel want? Because boys like boobs, she learnt that long ago, and a nice bum, they like that too. But legs? It’s not so easy being a girl, not everyone can manage not giving a toss, like Tiril does, not everyone is able to put on a pair of headphones, some goth make-up and rail against the world. It’s hard being a girl, because girls are supposed to look so nice all the time, and that doesn’t seem fair. Sandra has short legs, her knees are a little knobbly maybe, sometimes she thinks they look like malformed wheels, and Daniel has never mentioned her legs. He’s never even looked at them. Her thighs, which are a little thick compared to her body, he’s touched those, but not with the same hunger as when he puts his hands on her bum or her breasts. But her legs? Nothing. Doesn’t he like them?

My mouth, then? Do you like my mouth, Daniel?

It is small, slightly puckered, my two front teeth do stick out a little and I know they make me look like a rodent. Do you like that? Your little rat-girl?

That’s all she wants. To look good enough for Daniel William Moi. For the rest of her life, she thinks, glancing at Tiril before taking the vacuum cleaner and going into the backroom. She’s unbelievable, that girl. She saw the stack of honey going all over the floor. She heard her asking for help. But she couldn’t care less. What’s more, she enjoyed it. What is with her? If Sandra told the manager how little work Tiril does, she’d be fired. But Sandra’s not a snitch.

20:54

Sandra brings her hand to the crucifix round her neck and squeezes it.

She opens the closet and stows the vacuum cleaner as quickly as she can. Then pulls off her work clothes.

There’s never anybody in the woods at night. Round the back of the old school, behind the substation. The only sound they’ve ever heard is a dog barking. If her friends knew what she was up to they’d shake their heads in disbelief. Jesus, they’d say; going into the woods to meet a seventeen-year-old boy, you do realise what he’s after? If they knew who she was with, they’d be shocked. They’d be jealous, they’d hardly believe her. Sandra, you really need to think about this, Daniel Moi, he’s not right in the head, everyone knows that. He’s in the sixth form, he rides a moped, he plays in a heavy metal band, he’s hot, but he’s not right in the head, he’s from a foster home, people say he’s had some seriously screwed-up things happen in his life, he’s dangerous, Sandra, you do know that?

If her Mum found out what was happening, she’d freak out. If she heard it was the boy from the foster home, the one who lives with the single mother and her deaf daughter in the flats, she’d break down in tears and start picturing hash, heroin and the end of the world. But no one knows Daniel. They’ve no clue what that bright mouth of his can say, what those long-fingered hands of his can do or what’s stirring in those hungry eyes. They don’t realise that he needs her, don’t realise that he has an emptiness inside, but Sandra does, and when he says he doesn’t want to tell her what happened to him, she understands that. She understands what he’s gone through because she can see into his soul, and she’s not going to nag him about it, she’s promised herself that. She’ll never ask what happened, she doesn’t listen to rumours, about him having boxed, having beaten up some guy, the thing about his real parents, and that there was something really messed up there. She doesn’t listen to gossip, because she is Sandra Vikadal and he is Daniel William Moi.

They can laugh at her, they can trample all over her. They can do what they want.

But they better remember, for all eternity, that they’ve trampled on love itself.

Because Love, thinks Sandra, love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, and love, she thinks, taking out her mobile once more, love endures all things.

20:58

You can have me, Daniel William Moi, no matter what it is you’re after.

7. LOVE (Rudi)

It’s quiet in the car now.

Just the hum of the engine and the sound of the wheels on the tarmac.

Rudi has never liked silence. The feeling of people just waiting to drop a bombshell. Sitting there mulling over some pickle or another they can’t face talking about. Speech is silver, Granny said, but silence is golden. Well, Gran, my respect for you is as infinite as the love of the Lord, but that’s where we differ.

Rudi has been told loud and clear. On more than one occasion, to put it mildly. That there can be a bit too much gabbing.

Okay!

All right!

But there can be a bit too much bloody silence as well.

Rudi sees the reflection of his face in the rear-view mirror. Behind that, he sees Chessi resting her head against the back seat and closing her eyes. No, love. Who would’ve believed it that time he called into Jani’s house and set eyes on his freckly little sister, lying in her bedroom, getting her brains fucked out beneath posters of horses and dogs? No, those days are long gone, that was Jani’s psycho plan. Renting out your sister like she was a movie. You’d have to be right twisted to be at that.

Here you go. Help yourself. This is my sister. Cunt retail.

‘Eh? Chessi? You there?’

Good thing she met me, thinks Rudi, replacing the silence with his own thoughts. No telling where she would have wound up if her best customer hadn’t caught sight of the person behind the pussy. And, Jesus, the amount of times he’s wanted to beat the shit out of those mongrels who got the chance to fuck her before he came on the scene. If he ran into them today he’d skin them alive, bit by bit. It’s twenty-seven years since he saw those bulging eyes for the first time. Twenty-seven years since he deserted the Tjensvoll Gang; thanks for the apprenticeship, handy to know you should gaffa-tape a table leg to get a good grip. Handy to know which slim jim to boost a Beamer with. Handy to know how it feels to kick a man in the back of the head! Old memories; salut Tommy Pogo, salut Frax and Stix and Hex, salut Rikke Clit and Baps and J-J-Janne D-D-Dobro, salut Fresi and Christer Imfuckinoff, salut Janka Bat. Rudi needs to be getting on in life. My folks are moving to Hillevåg. Heh heh. Right into the arms of Jani. There’s always someone who wants to live outside the law and there’s no better leader than Jan Inge Haraldsen, is there now?

Twenty-seven years of love.

‘Hmm? Chessi? Baby? Are you there? Ready to do a bit of work?’

No reply.

Give her some time. Ha. Renting out his sister like she was a video. Hard to stomach for a family man like Rudi. But how long are you going to store up old shit? Now everything has calmed down nicely, it’s not something they talk about all the time, no more than Rudi can stand anyone bringing up his parents, not to mention that rabid brother of his out in Sandnes, and that psychotic witch he’s married to.

They’ve put it behind them. In the name of love. Chessi and him have stood strong, and what with the unbelievable number of divorces going on all around, society is just about ready to go under: is it any wonder they vote for the Christian Democrats? Listen here, Mr Socialist Homo: walk around in your slippers. Play your protest songs. Listen to The Smiths and The Tits and The Pits. Somebody has to show people what’s right and what’s wrong in this world, and one thing’s for sure, love, that can’t be explained, but it’s always right, which is pretty much the gist of what it says in The Good Book which Rudi always keeps in the bedside drawer.

She was only thirteen the first time he saw her, and some people may well think that’s sick, but Rudi doesn’t give a flying fuck what they think. Because the truth is: from the day he saw that chestnut hair, that freckly body and those cracked lips, Rudi knew Cecilie Haraldsen would be his. And that — oh yes — that’s just like it was with Granny and Granddad. They stuck together. Weathered all the storms. That’s just how it was, and that’s just how it is with Chessi and me, he thinks and feels a swelling in his chest, the way he always does when something moves him. And the feeling can be just as intense whether you’re listening to some good metal or have brought in a nice bit of cash on a warehouse job because you’ve got a leader who did the groundwork, got hold of a key card and checked times and routines, or like when, for the fifty thousandth time, you get an eyeful of what a bloody good woman you actually have.

Itsthetwoofusbaby.

Tong’s getting out on Friday. Be good that. About time.

Hey Tong, you sick Korean!

Rudi orders himself to give Cecilie more time and meets his own face in the rear-view mirror. No, he thinks, if there’s something I bloody well am not, it’s good-looking. It’s that long line of dishcloths. Dad’s side. Dishcloth genes. Looked like pin cushions, the lot of them. A minefield, all over his skin, wrinkled and scarred. And what about a little colour? A little pigment? Oh no, we’ll make you pale and anæmic. But we’ll make your lips big! Not just a bit big, but biiiiig. And your teeth? Rudi bares his teeth in the mirror. Jesus. They look like nails. They’re crooked, all of them, as though they aren’t doing anything in his mouth other than fighting. His hair, on the other hand, that’s okay. He hasn’t started going grey, and as for hair loss, none of that. Colour is a tad dull maybe, this mousy blond tone, hairdo’s a bit crap, sort of half long with no style, but it’s hair all the same. But good looks, they do not run in the family. Even Granny, that angel, was pig ugly.

A smile spreads across Rudi’s face and he can’t manage to keep his mouth shut any longer:

‘Chessi? You know… fuck, you know… right? That Rudi damn well loves you like crazy? That if you left me I’d kill everyone and everything around me? You know that, right? That you’re mine? That I’m yours?’

But no.

‘Hmm? Baby? A kind word for a kind man?’

Not a fucking peep.

‘Hmm? I yours? You mine?’

8. DEVIL’S TREASURES (Daniel William)

Fifteen. Yeah, so what?

20:54

Daniel pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Takes one out.

In the old days girls had kids when they were fifteen. They were a damn sight more grown up back then. Boys were able to do everything when they were fifteen. No fuss made about how old the girls could be. Now it’s all a big to-do. Everything’s supposed to be so meaningful the whole time, everything has to be so open and curious and ecological, and he doesn’t know what his foster mother and the ones from Child Services are on about. He’s been at enough meetings; open get-togethers, my ass — more like they’ve just made up a load of stuff because they’re after getting some ideas in their heads.

For Daniel it’s simple.

He pulls his leather jacket tighter around him and lights up the cigarette.

All he wants is to be with girls and get it on with them and for them to get it on with him. Sandra is fifteen and she’s fit as fuck. She has a glow around her. He’s been with other girls but he’s never gone all the way. He’s got his hands on tits, licked tits and snogged so much he was almost bored of it — up until he started snogging with Sandra. It was as though his whole mouth became electric, as if something happened, physically, to his tongue, making him just want more.

He’s mucked about a lot with tits, he’s stuck his fingers into plenty of girls, stuck them in and rubbed. He likes it and all, but sometimes he feels he’s lying there rubbing away like you’d scrape at some candle wax stuck to a table. He’s kissed a girl between the legs, in a bedroom at a party, but that was a disaster. She was shitfaced, and even though he wasn’t that drunk it was no good, she smelt rank, tasted rank too. It’ll get better with time. He’s going to be a world-beater. Requires practice. A steady relationship. Figure out where to find the right spots, do it the right way.

Daniel balances the cigarette between his lips while he tosses the moped helmet from one hand to the other. Stupid bloody Child Welfare. What’s missing from your life, Daniel? Wha? Missing? Eh, a moped? A moped? We can talk about that, Daniel, if you show yourself deserving of the trust placed in you. Three months later: Ha fucking ha. 20,000 kroner on eBay. Suzuki AC50 from 1978. A sweet second-hand moped at Child Services’ expense. Newly overhauled engine, new tyres, wiring, wheel bearings, battery, rebored barrel and a new piston. The red paintwork was just a little worn, but he fixed that himself.

The ladies like a dude with a bike.

Compared to his mates he’s lagging behind when it comes to women. He’s the only one in the band who hasn’t gone all the way. Dejan has so many women on the go it’s nuts, probably because he’s a Serb, looks dangerous and has scars across his back and his face. Should see Dejan rolling dice, he looks seriously Mafioso.

Still though, it’s strange, because Daniel is popular. He’s good-looking, he knows that. But it’s just never quite worked out; does he scare the women away?

Daniel takes a drag of the cigarette and leans his head back against the corner of the substation wall while he fiddles with the strap on the helmet. He’s getting closer to it with Sandra. Maybe because he’s able to behave in a different way with her than with other girls. Maybe he’s learnt a little from living with Veronika? It’s different when you live with them, you pick up on things, see what girls like and what they don’t like. She’s okay, Veronika. Bit weird, maybe. All right, so she’s deaf, so what? He knows exactly what he’d do to anyone who said a bad word about her, they can just go ahead and try it, if they want their eyes cut out of their heads.

A lot of things have been different with Sandra. He feels he can be more of a man. He can tell her stuff like how sexy she looks in those jeans, and she lights up and beams like a funfair. Same with that facial expression she gets. When her dimples show and the wings of her nose expand and her mouth kind of begins to twitch. Jesus, she’s cute when she does that.

Girls.

That’s what life’s all about.

Bollocks to all that other shit and bollocks to the past, that’s for sure.

Play the drums. Work out. Drink beer. But above all, girls.

20:56. She’ll be here soon.

It was mental yesterday.

It was as though a glowing light came rolling over the gravel. She came running across the football pitch, her forehead sweaty, small, sexy, shy and sure of herself all at the same time, scared someone might see her. So they went into the woods and got up to a bit of the usual stuff. Hugging and kissing, he put his hand on her ass, both inside and outside her jeans, felt her thighs, placed his hand on her crotch, but only through the jeans, and he pressed himself against her, he always does that, because he gets such a hard-on he doesn’t know what to do with it. And then he said the things that make her light up, how sexy she is in those jeans, how cute she looks when she makes that face and that he likes how her lips glitter. And he felt her tits, obviously. You can’t be with girls without getting the tit, that’d just be weird. He pulled down her top a little, so he could kiss her nipples. And then.

It was fucking mental.

She stopped and looked at him. When they were tonguing, or maybe when he was trying to work his hand further down her ass. No, it was when he was feeling her tits. They’re amazing, he doesn’t like big tits, they’re too much, big jugs screw up the whole mood, and he doesn’t know what to do with really small ones, even though they’re sexy in a dirty sort of way. But Sandra’s tits, they’re amazing. They just sit there looking dead good. So there he was, busying himself with her tits, and then, out of nowhere, she stops and almost pushes him away. She practically had tears in her eyes, they were moist and glistening anyway, and he didn’t understand a thing, shit, is she crying? But then, all of a sudden, she puts her hands behind her back, while Daniel just stands there thinking okay, okay, what’s going on, keep cool, and then: Holy fuck.

She starts taking off her bra. In the middle of the woods.

She has her hands round her back and she unhooks the bra, and then, quick as a flash, performs some sleight of hand where she jiggles the strap and pulls the bra out her sleeve, so that her tits are actually just dangling there behind that grey cotton top, and Daniel just breathes, gulps and says Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, and he has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do, but he doesn’t need to do anything, because this is happening by itself, this well fit girl is standing in front of him taking off her top. Is he in heaven? Are there angels in the air? He’s got such a hard-on he thinks he’s going to croak, but he just remains standing there, because he needs to take this in, needs to take a photograph and glue it to his brain, if there’s one scene from life that he wants to remember every pissy little worthless day, then it’s this: Sandra taking off her top in the woods.

Then she stands there.

Just her and her tits.

Some girls. They can look like buttercups. But then. Then they get warmed up. Then something else emerges. Then the floodgates open. They can be some randy little hornbags, so they can.

Oh sweetfuckingjesus, so nice. Almost make you believe in God. It’s precisely those kinds of things, like what he experienced there, that happiness is made off. Of course it is.

But a steady relationship?

Daniel’s fingers are cold. He feels the urge to scratch them against the rough surface of the substation wall.

Watch yourself, Daniel.

That kind of thing brings about ashes and devil’s treasure. Eventually the ground opens up beneath your happiness, and fangs start snapping at you from below.

He puts the chaos out of his mind and flicks the cigarette into the gathering darkness.

20:58.

9. MY SNATCHPUSS 4 EVER (Cecilie)

‘Hey, baby? You not going to say anything? Eh? Come on, screw napping, darling, youandme? Youandmeandyourbody? Europe, eh?’

The Volvo is approaching Gosen Forest, and the darkness around them is deepening. Rudi’s voice fills the car and it’s so intense it reeks like a compact stench. Cecilie catches her breath. She rests her neck against the back of the seat, puts her hand in her pocket, takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights up a new one. Europe? She loves Europe, but this isn’t about Europe.

His eyes. She sees them in the rear-view mirror. His pupils are zipping round like rubber balls.

Cecilie closes her eyes, inhales the smoke and feels her body relax. I could have had a life, she thinks, I could have had something that was mine, but I don’t.

‘Eh? Ride on the joycock? Metal up your ass?’

Sometimes she’s so tired of that rasping voice, of him going on, that she feels like throwing up just being in the same room. But she loves him as well. In a screwed-up way. It’s been like that for as long as she can remember. She loves his blabbermouth, loves his stupid lips that look constantly swollen, and she loves his flapping hands, but she doesn’t understand why any more.

Cecilie doesn’t have the energy to reply. She misses Dad. That Houston doofus, why did he have to leave? He ruined everything and she’s furious with him, but still misses him. You hear me, Dad? You just left, and here I am with Jani and Rudi. What if I want a life as well? Did anybody think of that?

Kids? A house? Some normal stuff?

‘Hey? You know, as far as I’m concerned it isn’t Rihanna or Michelle Williams that’s the hottest chick of 2012! It’s you!’

That’s what life served her up: sitting at Jani’s watching horror movies. Living in the same house for the fortieth year in a row. With a basement smelling of rot, paint peeling off the walls and mouldy old carpets. That’s what she’s been dished up: being the girlfriend of a guy, two metres tall, with ADHD and bomb-crater skin, who drives around in a stupid Volvo, does break-ins on speed, talks the face off people and has an insane relationship with his family. That’s her life: not to have a life of her own.

Cecilie swallows phlegm and exhales.

‘Hey, baby, remember the first time? Eh? Twenty-seven years ago, and it’s still as good! Eh, why so quiet, Missy Cissy! Heh heh! Do you get it? Cissy?’

Poor Jan Inge. 120 kilos now. That’s way too much. Poor, fat boy. He is keeping the house and the business together, but he has little, frightened pinhead eyes, and he is my brother, she thinks. He’s never been quite right in the head. People don’t know him. They think he’s an asthmatic loon with a twisted childhood, and they hear rumours about all the things Videoboy has done, and then they think he’s a psycho who just sits there watching horror movies.

But that’s not the whole truth.

They don’t know what a big heart he has.

It’s big enough to beat for the whole world.

‘By all means, Chessi. It’s up to you! As long as you can suck cock, I won’t complain about the lack of words coming out of your mouth. Heh heh, you can say what you want, but we can hold our own, youandmeagainsttheshit! Just take a look around, and I mean right outside the window here, you’ve got the internet and divorces all day and all night.’

Cecilie looks at Rudi’s bobbing head, his hands tapping on the wheel. She knows every inch of that scarred body. Now and then she thinks Rudi is a country and she’s a settler there. Sometimes it’s a pleasant thought, sometimes it’s terrifying.

To think it’s possible to loathe a man like I loathe him, and love a man as much as I love him. It doesn’t make sense.

Months and years have gone by without anything happening. Days have come, days have gone, and she’ll be forty in December. She can’t remember the last time she felt something was happening. But now something is. Something is going on inside of her, and something is going on out there: Tong is getting out on Friday. Cecilie is the one picking him up outside the gates of Åna. Half past eight. Tong. Not the way it was supposed to turn out now, was it?

‘Ooh arr, like the farmer said, looks barren ’ere. You’ll have to make your own fun.’

She pushes the image of Tong aside and runs her hand under her eye. It feels wet, she sits up, looks at her face in the rear-view mirror to the right of Rudi’s head. That vole face of mine. What am I crying for? Look at my make-up. She takes another drag of the cigarette.

Her skin is going to look like ash soon. She is going to be ash soon. She smokes too much. One day she’s just going to lie there. What’s that? A pile of ash. What was it though, before it turned to ash? Dunno, no one remembers.

‘Baby? Have I ever told you that if the sun went down, and I mean burned out and died, then I wouldn’t give a damn, as long as I’ve got you to light up the house? Eh?’

Cecilie sniffles. He is my snatchpuss, she thinks, no matter how things are. It’s Rudi and me. It really is. He is snatchpuss 4 ever.

Coldplay. She saw him. He was sitting there getting into Coldplay.

I hate Coldplay, she thinks.

I want a life, I want a real house, I want a proper man, one who doesn’t talk a blue streak and keep spinning like a wheel, I want to hear heavy ballads round the clock, I want my days to feel golden.

Cecilie sighs. ‘Rudi boy,’ she says, ‘we’re almost there. You need to get to work.’

I don’t know anyone but me who cries from just one eye.

10. HE WALKS INTO THE PITCH DARKNESS (Pål)

Zitha tugs at the leash once they’re outside the house. He can feel how primed the dog is, and he lets her strain forward with her snout to the ground. She needs to be driven by her instincts, needs to live and breathe by them.

The day has been unusually warm, but now night has come and the autumn cold is here again. It’s in the air all around him, crackling almost delicately; in a couple of months it will have transformed into winter.

Pål walks over to the rubbish bins. His feet feel heavy, his head feels fried. Is it the green one today? Black? Brown? He looks down the street at the rows of brown bins lined up on either side outside each house, like podgy soldiers. He wheels the bin out in front of the hedge and starts walking down the road with Zitha hurrying ahead of him.

He’s been at this so long he’s not afraid any more. The most surprising thing is how proficient you become. Living with all the lies isn’t difficult. Neither is living with all the covering-up. It’s the wide-open world that’s difficult to live in.

He comes to Norvald Frafjords Gate and sees the blocks of flats rise up into the sky. The sight of the high-rises has had a hold on him ever since he was little. All the people inhabiting them, all the people living their secret lives, all the people trying to get on. When he was a child and passed them on his way to school — to think it’s over thirty years since he did that for the first time — he imagined that everyone living there would one day be pressed out, like meat from a mincer, their eyes, their ears, mouths and hands.

Yeah. That’s how it is.

The wide-open world, where nothing is hidden, hard to live in it.

What is with my eyes?

Imagine. These eyes will be forty in a little under a month.

Pål checks his mobile. Soon be nine o’clock. He feels Zitha tug at the leash.

The gap between who he is and what people see has grown so big. It’s a strange feeling. Everyone can see him but no one has a clue who they’re looking at. They see that guy who’s always lived here. Some of the elderly people in the area probably remember him from when he was a kid. They probably recall a normal enough boy, quiet type. The carpenter’s son. Yeah, they’d say. Pål Fagerland? He grew up here, nice kid. People his own age might remember the woman living here a few years back. The wife, they’d say, Christine, left him and the kids. Career woman, they’d say. Statoil, made good money, she was a real go-getter. Must have got tired of him. He was a bit humdrum for her, they’d say, strange the pair of them got together in the first place. But what is it they say — opposites attract? She was the one with the money. But imagine leaving the kids, eh? What kind of woman does that? Yeah, times have changed. Mind you, she was generous enough, went to Bergen but let him hang on to the house and that. Poor guy. Works for the local authority, doesn’t he? Caseworker or something.

Yeah.

That’s probably what they’d say.

Poor guy.

And what is it they see?

A man of average height, dressed in regular clothes. Greying at the temples, round cheeks, childlike skin, hardly any beard and a bashful look in his eyes. His wife was forever saying it, Pål, can you try looking at people when you’re talking to them, it makes them uneasy when your eyes are flitting all over the place.

Pål isn’t the one who pipes up a lot at parents’ meetings. He isn’t the one who talks loudest in work. He isn’t the one who comes out with fresh ideas. He’s never been called intense, never been called conspicuous and never been called dangerous. But he has been called kind, been called good and been called reliable. That was what his wife used to say, I need you, Pål, you bring balance to my life. Right. Well, suddenly one day you didn’t need that any more, did you, Christine?

Pål has always thought that he sees the world as it is.

Seems like that was a bit too boring for her though, doesn’t it?

Eh, Christine? Everything you said you needed, everything you said I represented, all that you needed in your life in order for it to make sense. A husband who arrived home at the same time every day, who kept the household in order and took care of all the day-to-day stuff. You started looking in another direction. And then you just left.

Pål, I can’t do this any more.

You’ve been so, so very kind.

You’ve been so, so very dependable.

But I have to go.

You’re just going to leave me here?

You’ll manage, Pål.

You’re just going to leave the girls?

They’ll understand someday, Pål.

Have you lost your bloody mind?

You’re strong, Pål, remember that.

Pål scratches Zitha behind the ears. Strong? His eyes are dry, like there’s a white light against them. Malene is right: he needs to see the doctor. Strong? He’s never felt strong. We’ve just lived, Pål thinks, from one day to the next, we’ve tried to do as well as we could. Often, when he hears people discussing their lives, it seems like they’re talking about a series of choices they’ve made. It doesn’t feel like that to Pål. It feels, for the most part, as though life were a river and he’s been a boat. The girls have gotten bigger. Malene has had her gymnastics. She’s practically grown up in that hall — palm guards, chalk, glittering leotards, ice packs and perseverance. Tiril has been a tornado, ferocious intensity, with a restlessness to match. They’ve travelled backwards and forwards to Bergen a couple of times a month and come home with expensive clothes and make-up: love from Mum. Malene has gone along with being driven to the airport, gone along with being picked up again, and Tiril has hated it from day one. Everything to do with her mother is just fuel to an ever raging fire within her.

He knew Christine could be cynical, but that she could actually go ahead and leave the kids, that was cold. Withdraw from their childhood and stake everything on Statoil and that guy from Bergen. Albeit that was Pål’s only consolation: he was left with the kids. The girls had kept things afloat. The drive to gymnastics. The sight of Malene doing backflips, the shouts of the trainer in the hall: Good, Malene! Come on, now straighten up! You need to jump sooner. Wrists straight. Such a shame about that injury; she landed badly on her ankle in the spring, never screamed like that before. She hasn’t trained properly since.

Tiril?

Trying to catch her eye, get beyond that wild gaze, never succeeding.

The girls are all he’s got. He can’t take them over the brink with him. He has to do something, otherwise he may as well put a bullet through his head. Whether or not what he’s about to do is a good idea, he doesn’t know. But it’s the only idea he’s got.

Pål halts at the bus stop on Folkeviseveien. He reaches for his inside pocket. ‘There, there, Zitha,’ he whispers as he takes out the envelope, ‘Daddy’s just going to get rid of this.’ He feels the relief as the envelope lands in the bus shelter bin. Together with all the others. It feels like it’s taking all the mould along with it, as if his problems were actually over, and he smacks his lips at Zitha, walks out from under the shelter, back up the hill and doesn’t cross over until he’s reached the back of the high-rises.

They walk along the footpath, the fields enlarging the landscape around them. Zitha is frisky and happy.

‘There, Zitha, there. Go on!’

He walks her every day. Usually up to the fields and forests of Sørmarka, to Hinnaberget, sometimes down to the sea at Møllebukta, but mostly they go to Limahaugen by the Iron Age Farm. Get outdoors, feel like the blood is flowing from Zitha’s body over to his. He sees how she tenses up when she picks up the scent of something, sees how her body spurts across the ground. ‘Yeah, yeah, Zitha. Go on!’ What he likes most is standing on top of Limahaugen, close to the old cairn, and looking down at Hafrsfjord. The three islands, Prestøy, Somsøy and Kobbholmen, lying there like three brothers. He and a mate used to go out there when they were small, to Sømsøy, except they called it Bunny Island on account of all the rabbits running around. Long time ago now.

This is what he likes best. Him, with the dog by his side. If anyone was ever going to paint a portrait of him, then this is what would fill the canvas.

But no one, he thinks, has any idea what I’m up to.

Getting close to nine o’clock.

This isn’t going to work out, is it?

Below him lies the forest.

He has the blocks of flats to his right, Limahaugen to his left, and on the horizon the telecom tower at Ullandhaug. Once past the flats, the primary school comes into view. Madlavoll. The one he went to so many years ago. The gym, football pitch, the school building. Brand new in the eighties, seems old now, run-down and out of date. Happens to everything. Everything that was modern, forced to become so faded. Pål looks over at the schoolyard. That’s where they played football, where the girls jumped rope, they were there, all of them. Jørgen, Lise, Thomas, Jarle, Bülent, Susanne, Anna and Prince. Prince. What a character. That’s all we called him, Prince. He was a damn good breakdancer. Him and Inge. They were the first ones in school to do handstands, had to beat the women off with a stick. Then the girls of course, Hilde, Marianne, ah, she was gorgeous. Funny about the girls you never get. They can haunt you for the rest of your life. And Anne Mette, she became an actor, she did, and then there was Odd … Odd Jonas, no … Odd Roger, the guy with the forehead covered in zits, big guy. Yeah, Odd Roger. Something screwed-up there. Wasn’t right in the head. Just filled up with hate … and Pesi … He died, didn’t he? Yeah, junkie. Popped his clogs.

Strange thinking about the old gang.

Feels painful. And it feels good.

And Hasse — imagine, they were so close in secondary school, for a while they were together day and night, and now? They’re embarrassed when they meet. Hasse has become a bit of a minor celebrity, works for the Minister of Culture in Oslo. What would he have said if he knew what Pål was doing now? Jesus, Pål. You’re playing with fire. Jesus Christ, Pål, you’re heading into the depths of the forest.

The dog tugs at the leash.

‘Yeah, come on, Zitha,’ he says, ‘Come on.’

He’s thought a lot about that school reunion. They arrived one by one, face after face, half-forgotten memories dancing in front of his eyes. Ådne from Class 6B worked for the national health service and had lost his wife to cancer. Bjarne from 6C had MS. Kjartan from 6A had become a multi-millionaire, something to do with selling equipment to the oil business. Tine, Mimi and Anja tottered on high heels, drank gin & tonics and white wine and talked about Thomas Dybdahl, Karl Ove Knausgård and George Clooney, and were on the razz for the first time in ages. A lot of the lads turned up with pear-shaped bodies and potbellies and tried as well as they could to chat about football and the old days. All Pål could think about was how everyone had lost. Everyone, including me, has lost. We’re losing all the time, and we’re losing hard, but at the same time our helplessness shines like small, blushing suns.

Pål passes the kindergarten. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a moped parked over by the old substation. He speeds up, continues down towards Madlamarkveien, crosses over it and enters the wood on the other side. He doesn’t take the tarmac path through the wood, he goes into the pitch darkness. He walks carefully through the ferns, the overgrown scrub, the twisted roots, letting Zitha sniff and lead the way.

He stops for a few seconds and turns his face towards the black tops of the trees. A clear, starry sky hangs above them.

There were other people too. Back in his younger days. People who lived in the darkness. People who dared do things he never would. People who crossed lines. People with wild eyes and clenched fists. The Tjensvoll Gang.

Malene mustn’t ever find out about this, he thinks. She must never know what her father was up to.

He’s arranged to meet him at nine o’clock.

11. O LORD (Daniel William)

I came down here to fuck these girls

O Lord

I came down here to fuck all of these girls

O Lord

Cause I’m a bad man

Yes I’m a bad man

But I’m a real man

I came down here to kill these girls

O Lord

I came down here to kill all of these girls

O Lord

Cause I’m a bad man

Yes I’m a bad man

But I’m a real man

He’s not exactly a songsmith. But then neither are Dejan, Simon or Vegard. So he’s been responsible for the lyrics. They’re not particularly good, but that’s one of the ones he’s happy with, one of the ones that feels real.

Daniel remembers one time in third year when they had a writer visit the class, wow, like, oh, so interesting, Mr Writer Dude, wow, did you really begin writing poetry when you were in second year? You read a thick book by a Russian writer, you say? Oh wow, Mr Writer Dude, I’m so impressed.

Makes no difference. No one hears what Simon is singing anyway.

But real.

The lyrics of that one song. At least they’re real.

Oh Lord.

Daniel checks the time again. 20:59

He often wakes up in the middle of the night, ready to burst he’s so aroused. He’ll wake up in the dark feeling like he’s lying in a cold cave far up in the mountains, where ancient water drips down around his naked feral form, where diseased bats sail above his ringing head, where long curtains of stone hang down through the darkness, where blood boils within those black lungs of his, lungs that look like stone furnaces, where indiscernible spears cut through the foul air now and then, spears glistening with silver and grease, where screams are to be heard, long-drawn-out screams, that begin with a faint, barely audible tinnitus in the distance, before growing and gushing towards him like heavy trains, like jets of pain, banging like bolts against his hearing. Then he knows who’s woken, the caveman, the stoneman, the ironman: He just knows.

20:59

O Lord

A thousand million kilometres beneath the earth.

Sandra. Now.

12. THAT WAS KIND OF WEIRD (Malene)

Adidas Superstar.

It just felt kind of weird.

Malene places her dad’s shoes beside one another. The pair he likes best. She knits her brow. They’re worn out, those trainers. He ought to get himself a new pair. She’s told him. You ought to get a new pair of trainers, Dad. No, no, he said. The more worn in they are, the better.

Dad probably isn’t aware she does it. Every night. Places his shoes neatly beside one another. Tiril certainly doesn’t spot it. Her head is full of her own stuff. She probably hasn’t noticed that he has a pair he wears every day. White with black stripes.

There’s no other trainers I feel so comfy in, Dad says.

She gets to her feet.

Felt weird, that hug.

Malene has always been Dad’s girl. He has driven her to gymnastics six days a week and she’s always felt that he’s been hers. She’s always crept into his lap and felt it a safe place to be. It’s not the kind of thing you think about when you’re little, then it’s just children’s TV, pizza and Saturday treats, but one day you realise that you’ve always gone to Dad, without really knowing why. She’s heard it before: a Daddy’s girl. Tiril has said it often enough, that’s for sure: go on, run to Daddy.

That hug.

It might not be anything.

But. It was weird.

Something about the way he held her. Something about his breathing. He has been acting pretty strangely of late. She never used to think about what he did when they went to bed. It was sort of obvious. He watched TV. He tidied up. He loaded the dishwasher. He hung up clothes to dry. But now? When she says goodnight to him it’s like he has an aura of fear about him. How long does he stay up, actually? Maybe he’s sad and can’t sleep. Maybe he misses having a girlfriend. She has never had a boyfriend herself. She hasn’t been quite ready for it. But she’s not an idiot, she understands if Dad misses having one. But still. This feels like it’s about something else. That hug, for instance. She came out of her room and caught sight of Dad. He was standing in the hall with Zitha. On his way out. And then he just started acting really weird. His bashful eyes grew moist and he suddenly pulled her close, quite roughly, it was totally spooky. Not in a nice way, not in the warm, cosy way he usually does. It was rough.

Malene fixes her eyes on the door, as if it will open merely by her doing so.

Jesus, Tiril’s become a real pain in the ass. Fourteen, behaving like an idiot. Fine, they’ve never been very close, but she is her sister. They’ve slept in the same room, she’s borrowed toys and jewellery, they’ve taken Zitha out for walks thousands of times and Malene has looked after her since she was small. But now it’s as if she’s disappeared into some idiotic land of her own, going around scowling at everyone, smearing thick layers of emo make-up on, and thinking Evanescence is the answer to everything in the world. It’s fine that she’s got her mind on singing next Thursday. It’s great that she was picked to perform at the final performance of the International Cultural Workshop, and it’s obvious that the director has seen she has talent, it’s all good, but it’s utterly impossible to get an intelligent word out of her, and she can’t be bothered to do her homework, she just lies in bed listening to her iPhone.

Malene puts her forefinger in her mouth, bites right down to the quick.

That hug.

It’s just like Sandra at school, she’s out of it at the moment. Maybe it’s something that happens to everyone, one day you’re just out of it? One day you just have to explode? It happened to Mum. Her head was blown open, and she left. Is it going to happen to Malene too? One day, she’ll be completely out of it?

She takes a few steps forward. She feels her ankle, it’s still sore, how long will it take before she can start training again? She misses it a lot. The smell of the gym hall, the girls in the locker room, that feeling of floating through the air, the kick she gets from it.

She opens the front door, as though to check if he’s standing there, right outside. As if she almost believes he is. Dad.

But there’s nobody out there. Only the yellow glow of the street lights. Only a row of wheelie bins stretching all the way down to the main road. Only the stars in the night sky. Only this autumnal chill after a bright, warm day.

Dad is forgetting things, and his eyes aren’t just dry, they’re vacant. As though at times they’re far away. He smiles all the time, he smiles when they are eating dinner, he smiles in the mornings, he smiles when he gets in from work, he smiles when he sits with the laptop in the evening and he smiles when they have visitors.

Malene nods.

She hurries to the kitchen, runs her hand across the hob, goes through the living room and checks no candles are burning, tries the handle on the veranda door. Out in the hallway she reaches for her shoes. Slips her feet into them, grabs the green jacket from the peg and puts it on.

She goes out. Because there’s something wrong with that smile and she is the daughter of her father, Adidas Superstar.

13. I’M COMING NOW (SANDRA)

Love endures all things: There’s a tingling on her tongue, as though tiny creatures were dancing across it.

The shop has to be inviting, that’s what the manager said when she got the job. When people come through the door in the morning they have to feel welcome. Of course, Mr Spar. They’ve been happy with her up to now, hard to find fault with Sandra. A good girl, no denying she always has been. Always did her homework, got good marks, kept her room tidy and folded her clothes neatly. Sandra has never been able to live any other way, she gets a guilty conscience from just thinking about not doing things in a neat, proper and orderly fashion. Oh yes, her mother usually says when they have family over, you know Sandra, she was already tidying up toys when she was just a little tot.

She’s done her part of the job. The floors are clean. She can go.

‘Sandra?’

She gives a start. Suddenly aware of Tiril behind her, standing by the bottle return belt. Her hair is lank, make-up heavy, fingernails black and her gaze harsh. Headphones on. Does she always have to look so angry, is it necessary? Does she have to look like everyone’s going to die at any moment?

‘Where’re you going?’ Tiril asks, chewing her gum slowly and pulling off the headphones.

Sandra’s can’t bring herself to meet those eyes. ‘My mum and dad are waiting,’ she says, stepping into her shoes. ‘You’ll lock up, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, did you think I was going to leave it open or something?’

Tiril responds as if someone has had a go at her. It’s weird to think that girl is going to sing in the gym hall on Thursday. She seems like she hates everything and everybody, what is it she’s trying to prove? Sandra feels her anger form an aching lump in her chest. She does everything she can to be kind to people, to be open and understanding, everything she can for people to like her. She’s used to people being polite. There’re a lot of things you could say about Mum and Dad, but she agrees with them that the least you can expect from people is that they’re friendly and polite, we only share a short time on this earth together so it’s important to meet one another with love and kindness, that’s the message of Jesus and the message of love.

Daniel, I’m coming now.

‘No, no, I just meant … anyway, look, I’ve got to run.’

‘Okay, so run then.’

Sandra feels a nauseous surge in her stomach. ‘Do you know what?’ she says firmly, her own boldness making her nervous. ‘Do you know what? You can choose, are you aware of that?’

Tiril blinks for a fraction of a second but maintains her composure. ‘Choose fucking what?’

‘The light or the dark,’ Sandra says quickly, startled by herself. She turns and hurries towards the exit.

‘How sweet,’ says Tiril. She goes back into the shop.

Sandra takes a deep breath, as though she’d done something illegal. She brings her tongue across the dry skin around her mouth and stops in front of the mirror hanging by the back door.

Now Jesus isn’t the one I’m going to kiss any more, she thinks. She’s never told anyone that she used to kiss Jesus. She’d turn out the light, creep under the duvet, close her eyes, blush, begin to move her lips and then she’d kiss Jesus. Her body would tingle, making her feel warm. But all that has to end, now that she’s got her boy.

‘Daniel,’ she whispers, allowing her lips to part.

‘Daniel,’ she repeats, while applying a layer of lip gloss.

‘Daniel,’ her lips mouth, as she adjusts her new bra, trying to get her boobs to sit the way she thinks he’d like.

‘Daniel,’ she whispers while she fixes her fringe, moves the silver cross into place in the notch of her neck, dries the sweat from her forehead and tries to find that particular facial expression, ‘I’m coming now.’

Then she opens the door, feels the air hit her, and she runs.

14. FOG (Rudi)

Rudi sees a wizened hand run through her fringe, wiping her teary eye, then a smile play across her mouth.

‘Rudi boy,’ she says again, and it’s so bloody good to hear a friendly word from her that he almost breaks down with joy. ‘Yes sir,’ she says and sighs, ‘you and me, twenty-seven years,’ and she has such a beautiful ring to her voice when she talks like that, ‘Europe and all kinds of weird and wonderful.’

‘Caaarrie, Caaarrie,’ sings Rudi, his shoulders swinging.

‘Right sexy, that Joey Tempest,’ Cecilie says breathily.

Rudi starts slapping his hands on the dashboard, aided by the liberating feeling of drama hour now being over. He overlooks the fact that she just drooled over another man, turns his head and grins at Cecilie.

‘You know what,’ he says, ‘I think you should take a little trip down to … that … you know … that place … you know. Daddy’s treat!’

He sees how flushed she becomes back there, her face shining as though a light’s gone on, and Rudi feels he’s the one who’s flicked the switch.

‘Uh-hm,’ she says, ‘Mariero Beauty.’

‘The very place,’ Rudi says proudly. ‘The name makes no odds to me, could be called Mariero Ass for all I care, but nobody can say Rudi doesn’t respect his woman and pay her bills, and if what she needs to feel good is to have sludge and cucumbers and sundried tomatoes smeared all over her face, then no one is going to say that Rudi didn’t fork out. Eh? Have I ever once refused to pay for something you wanted? Including the times I thought what you wanted to do was bloody idiotic, like lying under a palm tree or—’

‘There’re no palm trees there, you’re—,’ she cuts in, but Rudi wants to finish what he’s saying:

‘Metaphors, baby, they’re metaphors — do you know what metaphors are? Pictures. Pictures of things. You say one thing but mean something else and in lots of ways get to say two things at the same time. No, buggered if I know what you’re lying under or not lying under as long as it’s women tending to you and not men, you can lie down on a bed of oregano as far as I’m concerned—’

‘Oreg — heh heh, there’s no oregano.’

‘No, well, what would I know about what’s there or not,’ Rudi says, delighted she’s happy again, ‘but, all the same, as you well know, I have never—’

‘No, you have nev—’

‘Got in the wa—’

‘No, you have n—’

‘Or been tight wi—’

‘Money, no, you have n—’

‘Or let you f—’

‘You certainly have not, Rudi boy,’ Cecilie says, a wonderful firmness to her voice.

No, he thinks. I treat my woman the way women should be treated. Rudi forms his mouth into a determined pout, moves his hand to his inside pocket, takes out his wallet and pulls out a five hundred note.

‘Here,’ he says, reaching his right hand back between the front seats. ‘Go and make your face shine. Stick it in a bucket of spinach. Yes indeedy. Say hello to Mariero Beauty from Rudi and tell him your face is worth the money. And tell him who’s paying.’

‘Thank you so much,’ he hears from the back seat. ‘You’re really good to me.’

‘Damn right I am,’ says Rudi, feeling just how much love is crammed inside the little Volvo.

What a night, he thinks. Cold, clear, so bloody beautiful.

Hey Granny! Should have been around to see this, old hen.

Rudi peers through the windscreen, they’re by the forest. ‘Okay,’ he says, looking at the clock. 20:58. ‘Nearly time.’

‘Tomorrow,’ says Cecilie, kissing the five hundred note with dry lips.

Rudi grins, thinks everything’s rosy, wouldn’t mind if they played Coldplay on the radio one more time. But what’s the song about? Saint Peter, Roman Catholics and bells that ring?

Time to concentrate. That’s the thing about love, takes hold of your brain, and if you’re not on the ball, it can gobble up the whole world.

Ow! Ow! Stop it!

The phone, Jani’s ringtone. He picks it up. 20:59

‘Ye yo, brother?’

‘Cut that English crap out,’ he hears on the other end of the line.

‘It’s Americano, brother,’ he answers, laughing.

‘Whatever, it’s stupid, you’re from Norway, from Rogaland, from Stavanger, from Tjensvoll. Don’t put on an act. Now listen, I’ve just been doing some thinking about this venture of ours,’ says Jan Inge.

‘Thoughts are free, what were you thinking?’

‘Well,’ Jan Inge says, wavering. ‘There’s something foggy about it.’

‘Foggy?’

‘Yeah, foggy.’

‘Okay?’

‘I’m dubious. I’ve got a nose for this kind of thing. We’re not exactly in a risk-free line of business.’

‘Okay. Will we call it off? Callitaday and pull out? I haven’t met him yet—’

‘Listen. Working in a risky business means taking risks. You go and meet the guy. But keep your eyes and ears open. Your objective has to be to clarify what’s foggy.’

‘That was nicely put,’ says Rudi.

‘That thing you said about remembering the guy, or wondering if you remembered him. What was that?’

‘Dunno, just the feeling I got when he called. Or the feeling he got. I don’t know. There was something old about it.’

‘Old?’ Jan Inge’s tone is sharp.

‘Yeah, old, as in the past.’

‘Hm. Old can be good and old can be a mess. Is there anyone who’s got something on you?’

‘Naah…’

‘Stay on your toes. Keep Chessi out of it. She can wait in the Volv—’

Shit!

What was that?

‘Hey Chessi, what the fu—’

‘Rudi?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m here, it’s just, hold on — bollocks — did we hit something? Chessi?’

Cecilie peers out the back window, Rudi slows down and Jani Inge shouts down the end of the line about how he needs to take it easy, he can’t be going around attracting attention, Jesus, can’t he do anything right, hello, what’s happening?

‘A cat!’ Cecilie cries.

Rudi gulps and breathes easier.

‘Just a cat,’ he says into the phone.

‘Just a cat?!’ he hears from the back seat. Rudi glances in the rear-view mirror and sees that she’s crying again, and he wonders when this is going to end. Is he going to have to live with this until he’s six feet under, is she going to be so difficunt for the rest of her life?

‘Sorry, Jani,’ he says, ‘it was just a cat.’

He can hear Jan Inge breathing heavily.

‘You sit yourself down again now,’ says Rudi calmly.

‘Right, will do,’ says Jan Inge. ‘Okay, talk to you later, get things sorted out. Keep your eyes open. Ears. Fog and clarity.’

Rudi nods, hears the sound of his best friend putting his inhaler to his mouth, pressing down and sucking in the acrid air. He can picture that fat boy so well it almost hurts.

‘Okay, brother, talk soon. You sit down, okay? Pick a classic and open a packet of crisps. The Hills Have Eyes?’

Rudi hangs up and indicates a left turn. He swings in by the little shop at the bottom of the hill that’s been there as long as he can remember. He pilfered that place empty throughout the entire eighties. Remembers the time he and J-J-Janne D-D-Dobro sauntered out with so many packs of cigarettes in the pockets of their bubble jackets they thought they’d keel over with the weight. Janne Dobro had such black eyes she’d put you in mind of a bird. She’s probably selling Asfalt magazine now. Liked her heroin, Janne. She was called J-J-Janne D-D-Dobro because of Mini from Haugtussa, he was so small his father took offence every time he clapped eyes on him. Mini was so in love with Janne Dobro he started to stutter every time he saw her.

Used to be called Gosen Grocery Store, now it’s part of a chain, Spar. Everything’s going to the dogs. The socialists have won. An impersonal society. It’s true what Jani says, nobody dares run their own business any more. We’re the only ones. The last bastion of independent entreprenuers. But Rudi doesn’t park outside the shop, it’s too visible. He drives a little further on towards the woods, up a small back road, and brings the car to a halt in a little grove.

‘Chessi,’ he says, killing the ignition. ‘Come on. It was a cat. A cat, okay? We can’t do anything about it.’

She’s sniffling in the back seat. He recognises the level. It’s not disaster sniffling, it’s demonstrative sniffling.

‘Do you hear me? I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Youandme, baby. Mariero Beauty. It’s going to be okay. Right? Come on, be a doll now, lie down on the seat, and just keep calm until I get back. And don’t smoke, okay? People get all flustered, you know, if they walk past a car filled with smoke and nobody inside. They get suspicious, ring home to the wife, tell her they’ve come across a car filled with fucking smoke. You can manage without one for a while, right?’

She sniffles again.

‘Is this what Jani meant when he said I should go out and get some air?’ she says. ‘It could have been a kitten, Rudi!’

‘No, no, it was a fully-grown cat, didn’t you feel the bump? No kitten would have made the car jolt like that. Listen. Chessi. Afterwards,’ he says softly, ‘afterwards we can drive someplace and sit and look at something. The sea or something. You like looking at the sea. You can teach me that. How to look at the sea.’

Cecilie folds her arms. Doesn’t reply.

He recognises the signs. It’s all about being smart now. Not making a big deal out of things. He tries to sound as warm as he possibly can: ‘Great, baby, so cool of you to take it that way, no one wants to be together with a chick who’s high-maintenance. Five minutes, okay, ten tops, then I’m back, who knows, I might come back with a million bucks in my pocket. Then you’ll have one million five hundred. Remember, tomorrow, Mariero Beauty!’

No reaction.

Rudi takes a deep breath. Okay, he thinks, all right. He really needs to dig deep here. He looks at her, as directly as he can, he smiles, with as much charm as he can muster, sucks his cheeks in and sings: ‘Don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to fall asleep, cause I’d miss you babe and I don’t want to miss a thing.’

She gulps.

Yesss.

She looks at him.

Laughs a little.

Yesss.

The Aerosmith Trick.

Never fails. Not once since he first did it, standing in front of her, sucking in his cheeks and imitating Steven Tyler, has it failed. The woman just falls apart.

‘Baby! Youandme! Daddy has to do a little bit of work now, then I’ll be back. Come on, down in the seat with you.’

Rudi gives her a wink. To say she smiles would be an exaggeration, but she wriggles down into the seat in any case.

He opens the door and feels the cold prickle of the September air on the back of his neck. He looks around. The old forest. It’s strange being back here. It was Granny’s forest in a lot of ways. She spoke about it so much, and all the things she did there when she was little. The flowers she picked and how much better things were before, in the good old days. Rudi has never got that out of his head. He often thinks about it, thinks how right Granny was, it was better in the good old days. More peace. More style.

Rudi begins to hurry along the path. He glances about him again, feels the surroundings sucking him in. Then he comes to a halt.

‘Hm,’ he says, almost loudly.

‘Pål,’ he says.

‘It’s as if … there’s something about that name. It … shit … it calls something to mind! But what? Hm? Pål, Pål, Pål…’

Rudi walks on. We’ll soon see, he thinks, who you are and who you’re not, Pål. You called me. You’ve reached out your hand. And who are you? I’d love a cigarette now. If I’d known it would be this hard to stop then I never would’ve quit. Women. It’s not bloody easy. You’ve got to be a sly eagle with a good Aerosmith trick in order to be supple enough to get around their corners. Except for Gran. She had her head screwed on. Skål, you old jelly roll.

Rudi, without even being aware of it, raises his hand, puts it to his forehead and salutes, while he strides across the forest floor.

Good thing Tong’s out on Friday, he thinks. Not the same when the gang isn’t together. He brings in good money, Tong. He puts Chessi in better humour, he’s always been able to do that. He’s a psycho all right. But he’s always ready for action.

Pål, Pål, Pål.

Have you taken a beating from me? Is that it?

Are you out for revenge? Is that it?

Are you the devil, Pål?

15. A WOMAN DRESSED IN JEANS AND A LONG-SLEEVED SWEATER WALKS ACROSS A YARD (Jan Inge)

120 kilos now. 120 on the nose. 120 on board.

Jan Inge has been holding the telephone in his hand for almost a minute. He has been standing like a statue on the living-room floor with the phone two feet from his stomach and his eyes turned to the ceiling. Typical me, he thinks, lost in thought. That’s what everyone says, that he has great concentration. And no one dares disturb him when he’s thinking, there’s no one who lacks respect for JANI WHEN HE’S THINKING.

He pictures it like that. In big letters.

Like those neon signs in small American towns beset by gruesome atrocities.

Jan Inge has always been like that, with his head full of big letters.

He puts away the phone. Jan Inge misses the old house telephone. He nods, making the fat on the back of his neck wobble. Grey with red numbers. That telephone worked like a dream, but hi-tech advances meant they had to throw in the towel. So much new technology at the moment that it’s becoming a problem. Mobile phones are okay, with top-up cards at any rate, but all this pressure on you to use the internet, it’s not good. It’s not like it was in the good old days.

There it is again. THE GOOD OLD DAYS. You can’t say it without big letters.

Jan Inge glances at the wheelchair at the far end of the hall.

120 on the nose.

It’s important Rudi doesn’t screw this up. He needs to see through the fog. But if there is one thing Jan Inge has learned, it’s that where it seems most foggy, that’s where the gold might be, and if you want to get your hands on the gold, you have to venture into the fog. As long as Rudi keeps his wits about him and doesn’t start blabbering.

Jan Inge takes the inhaler from the pocket of his jogging pants and sucks. He shuffles across the floor in felt slippers, down the long hallway. He stops in front of the wheelchair.

120 on board.

He has always been fat. Or at least thickset and chubby. So was Mum, may you rest in purgatory, you detestable person. There have always been a few surplus kilos on this body, always a little extra to offer, but 120? He was weighing in at about 100 for a number of years. Nice round number. Easy to relate to. It accorded him a little class, some executive authority. It’s only right for a boss to be a few kilos heavier than the others. Rudi, lanky though he is, weighs ninety-five after all. But after a while it started to rise. An occasional check on the scales now and again. Oops. 105. Down to 100. Oops. No, seems to have gone up, this … 110 … Jani 110, since when?

It rhymes, Tong said, just before he went inside.

They had done a job in Jæren, a clean break-in, got lots of computers, just easy-to-sell stuff that would mean clean cash from Buonanotte. Well planned, well executed. Keys, swipe cards, the whole shebang. There had never been a single mistake on Tong’s watch, never been anyone sent down. If there is one man you can count on, it’s Tong, because he doesn’t count on anyone. Thank Christ he’s getting out on Friday. He carried out the job itself perfectly, but then? You’d think he had suddenly become an amateur again. Thirty-five years old, tonnes of experience, and he ends up doing something like that? It’s the drugs, Tong. Jan Inge has told him a thousand times. You think your senses are sharpened. But that shit has chomped lumps out of that brilliant brain of yours. We have a policy in this company, we rack up a few lines before we go to work, to get our heads up and running, but we don’t degenerate into a gang of junkies. But what do you go and do, Tong? You hit a party in Orre after the job, you stuff your nut full of speed, and God knows what else, and you know how horny that coke makes you, and then you’re pulled in for intercourse with a minor. A month later you’re in the dock, faced with two fuming parents and a sobbing girl, all pointing the finger at you, and you claim you had no idea that she was only fourteen.

Jan Inge has said it a million times: listen to me, you horny Korean, the coke has gobbled at your brain, and I know what I’m talking about — my mum drank five bottles of spirits a week and she went as mad as a March hare and as empty as a drum upstairs, and she was a terror and nobody, neither man nor beast, misses that old bitch. Well, all right, Chessi … poor bag of bones … maybe she … no, Chessi remembers shag all. She was only little when Mum died. She can’t go around missing someone she practically never set eyes on.

But me, I remember that sicko, and I’ve nothing good to say about her, no wonder Dad took off when he got that job in Houston.

Jan Inge has spent a good deal of time thinking about it. Thinking about what exactly was wrong with her.

And he has arrived at the conclusion that she lacked something.

That she quite simply didn’t have it in her to love people.

And that’s why Jan Inge has drawn his own conclusions about what is important. To find your own people. To find your own family. To hang on to them. To love them long and love them right. No matter if they make a major blunder that lands them back inside Åna, and no matter if they take 120 kilos on board.

Dad heading to Houston was of little consequence. At least he always sent money, give him his due. Sent money right up until Chessi turned eighteen. And Christmas cards. Or that time in 1985, Jan Inge thought his heart was going to burst out of his chest: a package arrived from Dad in the USA, a package in the post. A SodaStream!

And a huge box with a BETAMAX VCR and a pile of videos.

Love from Dad.

He still has the SodaStream. It’s down in the basement somewhere.

Doesn’t work any more. But it worked back then. Every kid in Hillevåg was at the front door slavering after home-made fizzy drinks. They could pick and choose who to let in. Those were the days. Won’t ever throw it out, that SodaStream is a trophy. They were over in Houston a few times, him and Chessi, travelled halfway round the globe on their own; she was so small the first time he had to hold her by the hand for hours. Jan Inge can still remember how clammy their hands got, but forget about trying to let go, then she just wailed as though the plane was going to crash. No, Janinge. Those were some trips. Just him and Chessi. Just him and her up in the clouds. Are we flying now, Janinge? Yeah. Are we flying into the sun, Janinge? It’s a great country, the US, free and easy; Dad took them to burger joints, let them do their own thing, watch films and that, while he was at work. As for going back to Norway; that was never going to happen. He was clear about that, they could come and live in the USA, but he was never going back home to Norway.

And he never did come home.

Jan Inge puts the inhaler back into his pocket. He nods to himself. Looks at the wheelchair. It’s been sitting there for years. It was Rudi who got hold of it when Chessi broke her foot. Typical Rudi. He’d bend over backwards for her.

People like that, thinks Jan Inge, you hold on to people like that.

Bit foggy, the job they were on at the minute. As long as Chessi manages to keep calm. She has to stay in the car. He can’t have her getting under Rudi’s feet while he’s working. She’s too volatile. It’s from Mum, thinks Jan Inge, bad genes. She’s ill-tempered and difficult, you’d be hard pressed to say otherwise. But she is his sister. And she is Rudi’s girlfriend. And that’s how it should be.

Jan Inge lowers himself into the wheelchair. It sinks a little beneath his weight, but it supports him well. It’s easy to control, a nice little contraption. He smiles. A dark lustre comes over his narrow pinhead eyes and he rolls off down the hall.

He trundles into the living room and over to the table, picks up a remote control, presses minus, and the ceiling lights dim. He continues over to the armchair in front of the flatscreen, remains seated while he shoves the armchair over to the window, and then parks the wheelchair in front of the TV. This is ingenious, he thinks, and then glances out the window and sees how dark it has become outside. Good, working in daylight, that’s not for us. Rudi will manage this. But it’s a good thing Tong is getting out on Friday. God bless that little mole of a Korean. He’s a demon, but it’s been tough without him, been like a football team without a striker, to draw an analogy.

This, thinks Jan Inge, rocking back and forth a little in the wheelchair, this is ingenious.

Then he trundles across the living-room floor. Goes past the hall and manoeuvres himself into the kitchen, where he opens the fridge and takes down a one-and-a-half-litre bottle of coke and a big bowl of chocolates. He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out a family size bag of paprika crisps, before heaving the goodies on to his lap and wheeling back to the living room.

Jan Inge parks the wheelchair in front of the TV, and takes hold of the remote controls.

No problem having 120 on board with this thing, I’m able to get around like a robot.

God, she was so cute when she was small. Wimpy, awkward and weird. Jan Inge suddenly pictures her as he tears open the crisp bag and arranges the remotes and the goodies in his lap. He’s really looking forward to following up Carnival of Souls withThree on a Meathook. Seeeerious grindhouse. 1973. Maximum low-budget. Dirty as a rubbish heap. Brilliant scene when Billy goes into the house and finds the dead girls, and the harmonica soundtrack really adds to the atmosphere.

He could have written a book on horror by now, after all the films he’s seen and studied. It’s doubtful there’re many people out there with a better collection of horror or more knowledge of the genre than him. It’s about time he attended one of the international horror conventions. Show his face. Let them know he exists.

God, Cecilie was so cute back then.

She used to waddle around like a penguin. She’d open that little mouth, her voice all smurfy and nice: Janinge bruuv Cecili sisssa.

Yeah.

I can live with this all right, a cold dark September night in 2012, with coke, treats and a horror movie ready, snuggled up in a wheelchair. It’s a starry night outside. After a few harsh autumn weeks, a bright warm day turns up out of the blue. It’s a sign, but of what? Joy or the apocalypse? Your best mate is out trying to clarify a slightly foggy job, and it may be twenty-five years since you soared through the clouds with your little sister’s hand in yours, but you can still feel the imprint as you sit there in front of the flatscreen, as though she is still clinging to you while you cross the Atlantic.

Yeah.

The fog needs to clear.

Snow flickers on the screen. The old VHS player whines. A woman dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved sweater walks across a yard, over towards a shed. She has shoulder-length hair. Just before she is about to unbolt the door, she turns and looks around. Then she pulls back the bolt, opens it, and goes inside. She screams. Three women hang impaled on meat hooks.

Jan Inge smiles and rocks a little in the wheelchair.

It would be nice to see Dad again.

GOOD MEMORIES.

16. INDEPENDENT THOUGHTS (Tiril)

The door slams behind her and Sandra runs off. That daft-looking run of hers. Her right arm under her tits and her tottering legs. Tiril goes into the backroom and grabs a marker from the Spar cup on the break table. She pulls the top off with her teeth and stretches her fingers out in front of her. Which way? Her fingers are thin, her skin is clean and her nails are painted black and bitten down to the quick. They’ve always been told off for that, both her and Malene; do the two of you have to bite your nails?

Tiril sits down on one of the chairs, sets her jaw, concentrates and begins to write. Letter by letter, going over each twice and making them as decorative as she can.

She clenches her fist, closes her eyes: This pain is just too real. Then she hangs up her work clothes and walks into the empty, semi-darkness of the shop. She hears her own footfalls, they resound upon the newly washed lino. Over to one of the tills. Nobody has noticed anything so far. Tiril opens the cabinet with the little key. Not many packs of Prince left. Lots of Marlboro Gold. She fetches out a ten-pack, puts it in her pocket, exhales.

The front doors are locked, she walks into the backroom again, stopping at the bottle deposit belt and tapping the pocket of her jeans to check if she’s got the lighter, the little black one. She looks around one last time. Everything is okay. She switches off the ceiling light, turns on the alarm, 8789, and goes out.

Tiril sits down on the loading ramp in front of the deliveries door, half hidden behind the large wheelie bins. Her feet dangling over the ground. Dad is probably out taking a walk, she thinks, while trying to get her blunt nails underneath the plastic wrapping of the cigarette packet. He’s probably out with Zitha, she thinks, giving up, bringing the packet to her mouth and tearing the plastic with her teeth.

She sniffles, pulls out a cigarette, puts it between her lips, spins the wheel of the lighter, watches the flame grow and lights it.

There’s just so much that time cannot erase.

The worst thing would be if she was standing in front of the whole school, with Thea on the piano, and everything’s going well, everything’s perfect, and then she forgets the words. Not that she thinks that’ll happen, she knows them backwards, but still she worries about it. She just needs to think that she is Amy Lee. That she actually comes from Little Rock, Arakansas, she hasn’t grown up here, she doesn’t live this pissy life in a little suburb in a stupid oil town in crappy Norway. Shitty Stavanger doesn’t exist. She has woken up every day of her life and looked out at the Arkansas River, skyscrapers and the big American sky.

‘Jesus, Tiril, have you started smoking now as well?’ Malene — shit, where did she come from? — is standing in front of Tiril shaking her head. Her arms folded, she rolls her eyes.

Tiril’s eyes flash angrily. ‘What’s it to you?’

Malene assumes a neutral expression and shrugs.

‘Yeah, yeah, no surprise there. Jesus, Tiril, you’re fourteen. Smoking is lethal.’

Jesus. She’s such a bloody old biddy.

‘Yeah, so? It’s lethal to live, in case you didn’t know.’ Tiril takes a long drag and blows the smoke into her sister’s face. ‘Are you following me or something?’

Malene sits down beside her on the loading ramp. She shoots a glance at Tiril’s hands. ‘Jesus. What have you done?’

I knew it, thinks Tiril, I knew she’d comment on the tattoo.

‘None of your business,’ she says, letting the cigarette hang between her lips as she squints her eyes and stretches her hands out towards her sister.

L O V E

H A T E

‘Lol,’ says Malene. ‘That’s so tweenie. Are you actually going to walk around with that?’ Tiril takes a good drag of the cigarette. Whatever, she couldn’t be bothered replying. ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘why has Dad never actually found himself a girlfriend?’

Malene looks at her. ‘Well, don’t know really … why do you ask?’

‘No reason, am I not allowed to talk now, not allowed to have independent thoughts?’

Malene rolls her eyes. ‘Sure, Sure.’

‘I mean, Mum got herself a man before she left Dad.’

‘You don’t know what you’re on about,’ Malene says sharply.

‘Jesus.’ Tiril plants her forefinger in her sister’s shoulder: ‘Listen, you know that Sandra one?’

‘In my class?’ Malene looks up. ‘The one you clean with?’

‘Mhm.’

‘What about her?’

‘Nah, you probably already know. So…’

‘Give it a break, what do you mean?’

‘Do you know what she’s up to?’

‘No … up to? What do you mean?’

Tiril makes a fish-face and blows a perfect smoke ring. ‘She’s off screwing Daniel William in the woods.’

Malene’s lips slowly part. ‘What!? Daniel William?’

‘Mhm.’ Tiril nods assuredly. ‘Tears out of here after work. Straight over to the woods. Screws.’

‘Je-sus.’ Malene shakes her head. ‘I knew something was up.’

‘Yeah, just ask Tiril.’

‘Daniel William.’ Each syllable of his name escapes her mouth slowly. ‘That’s just … I mean he’s … Shit. Je-sus.’

The sisters remain sitting beside each other. They smile and shake their heads. Tiril loves the feeling of knowing more about people and what they’re up to than Malene, and that she’s the one who’s clued in, the one who’s a tweenie and pissed off all the time.

‘Tiril,’ says Malene, after a while.

Her tone is stern. She’s always talked like that. As if she thinks she’s my mother, thinks Tiril. Come on then, out with it, since you’re so bloody grown-up, such great mates with Dad and think you can lick your way in everywhere, sitting there smiling saying yeah, fine, whenever Mum calls. Come on, out with it, since you think you’re such a good judge of who’s tweenie in their head and who isn’t.

‘Tiril,’ Malene says again, as though she has a fly in her mouth.

‘Yeah? Christ. I’m right here. Are you blind?’

‘It’s just,’ Malene hesitates, ‘do you know if there’s anything wrong with Dad?’

Tiril turns to face her.

‘With Dad? What do you mean?’

‘No, I don’t know.’ That E.T. expression comes across Malene’s face. She shrugs. ‘No, I don’t know. Just seems like something’s up.’

‘Oh,’ says Tiril, taking a last drag of the cigarette before flicking it off the loading ramp and taking a pack of gum from her jeans pocket. ‘That’s just Dad,’ she says, ‘he’s always been like that.’

‘So, you haven’t seen him then?’

‘Tonight?’ Tiril takes a piece of chewing gum and feels the fresh taste spread through her mouth. ‘He’s never around here anyway. Do you think I’d be sitting here smoking if he was? He’s off in the woods. Or in Sørmarka. Or up on top of Limahaugen looking out over the fjord. Him and Zitha.’

‘Mhm,’ says Malene. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

She looks at Tiril.

‘You should get a haircut,’ she says, reaching towards Tiril’s hair. ‘You’re getting split ends.’

‘Don’t,’ Tiril says, pulling away.

Malene’s gaze is still fixed on her.

With that look.

Can you please stop, don’t give me that look.

‘You’re so cute,’ says Malene, ‘it’s going to go great on Thursday.’

I’m going to start crying if you look at me like that.

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ says Tiril. ‘It might go really badly.’

‘No it won’t,’ Malene says, getting to her feet, ‘I’m coming to watch, Dad’s coming to watch and everyone’s going to be there. Mum would probably be there too if she could. Everyone in the gym hall is going to love you, you’re going to be great.’

Tiril looks askance at Malene. The nice gymnastics body. The supple movements. Malene, you walk like you were royalty, Grandad says. Tiril liked it when she injured her ankle last year. She didn’t say it, but she did. Miss Perfect Gymnast had to limp. Poor beautiful bitch.

‘Hey. Malene?’

‘Mhm?’

‘Do you think you can choose, I mean, between light and darkness?’

Tiril sees Malene lift her troubled gaze. Sees it drift over the school, the woods, up towards the telecom tower and the top of the hill, and it almost looks as though she’s muttering something.

17. IT’S A SUN BULLET (Daniel William)

If you kill someone, you cross the line.

If you never kill anyone, you never cross the line.

If you love someone, you cross the line.

If you never love someone, you never cross the line.

If you cross the line, the earth opens its jaws and swallows you.

Love?

Daniel throws the moped helmet back and forth between his hands.

He tilts his head to both sides, stretches his neck and tramps his feet restlessly.

If the fact that he needs to have her is called love, then that’s fine. That’s what we’ll say: I love you. Shit, he’s nervous now.

Typical. Just before something’s going to happen, it comes, that feeling. The cold and nausea in his stomach, the flashing behind his eyes and that freezing sensation in his temples. He tried to talk to the Child Welfare Officer about it once, told him about how he sometimes got cold and nauseous and felt he was losing control. He said he felt a crackling in his head and a flashing behind his eyes. He said he grew angry, lost the plot. The guy from Child Services was understanding, put his head to one side and asked him how he felt and what he thought and how he wanted to deal with it himself. Just like that psychologist with the stupid glasses, he talked like that too: And what do you think about it? Is that all they can do, ask questions and look sympathetic, is that what they learn at university, is that what they get paid for? Do they not bloody well have a solution? Haven’t they been studying for forty years in order to give him a solution?

Daniel continues throwing the helmet back and forth. If she doesn’t come soon then he’s going to have to go. It can get too much. He knows where the danger lies. No matter how caveman horny he gets, it’s like it just tips over, and everything is all fucked-up and cold. Then he needs to jump on his bike and ride and ride and ride until his head is like an empty room with all the windows open.

Do you hear me, Sandra?

Get a bloody move on, I can’t take this here.

He swallows and begins knocking his helmet against the brick wall of the substation. Looks around. What a shithole. Really disgusting, tall weeds and thicket, are they going to lie down and screw here? It’s not on, screwing in all this kak, probably wino piss and whatnot. It’s just not on.

Daniel lets the helmet in his hand come to rest and takes out a fresh cigarette. He shouldn’t smoke so much before she gets here, his breath will smell bad, but bollocks to that, he needs something to settle the nerves.

There’s lots of oil money round here. Loads of big houses, specially down by the fjord, not least on the road where Sandra lives, on Kong Haralds Gate, all filthy rich down there. Daniel always feels ill at ease when he walks into houses like that, may as well face it, he doesn’t belong in them. But then they hardly belong there themselves, the money is just an oil fluke. It’s not money they’ve worked for, it’s a windfall, money that rained down upon them like hell can rain down on other people.

Sandra Vikadal.

Imagine if the two of them end up together. Maybe he’ll inherit heaps of money. He’s a lawyer, her dad, rolling in money those lawyers. Her mother works at the church, plenty of money there too, in that church system.

Daniel inhales the smoke. He hears a dog bark in the distance. A car passing on the road behind the woods.

He’ll own a car in any case, a car to drive round with his lawyer-daughter wife, who’s always in good humour and who he sleeps with once a day. That’s what his last foster father said. You’re not a man if you don’t have your own garden to piss in and a car you can drive whenever you like. Daniel wants an American car. A Buick RAM. If he gets rich, he’ll buy Veronika a car too. Wonder what kind of music Veronika would like if she could hear. There’s nothing to stop deaf people from driving, is there? She’s totally kickass when she sits in front of him smiling in her Buddha position while he’s hammering away on the drums. Veronika will get to be around, that’s for sure. He’ll take bloody good care of her, she can sit in the Buddha position for the rest of her life, listen to him play the drums, break out in that deaf laughter of hers and be as weird as she wants. She can live with him and Sandra, no problem. He just needs to make a shitload of money so they can all live well. Veronika can have a whole Buddha floor to herself. It’s just a matter of raking in the money. Good thing he writes songs, that means royalties. Daniel knows he needs to write some new lyrics soon. Dejan is on at him the whole time, come on, songsmith, come on with the poetry shit. Yeah, yeah, he says, I’m working on it. But he isn’t. Everything has been blocked lately.

He lifts his head as he hears a sound.

There she comes. Running across the football pitch.

Is it a sun bullet?

Wow, she’s slightly knock-kneed. He hadn’t noticed. She runs like that and all, knees banging together, one hand under her tits, her head sort of dancing from side to side, her other hand swinging out as though it had a mind of its own, alive, free from the rest of her. Christ she looks gorgeous, looks super sexy running along, God, so fucking foxy, those wobbly legs make her whole body kind of dangle like a doll or something.

Daniel straightens up, he feels a wild electron fire up in his head, he flicks the cigarette out on to the road in front of the kindergarten and runs his hand through his hair, exhales as much as he can and inhales as much fresh air as he’s able, feels his face break into a silly smile, feels a rush through his body. He gulps.

Look at that.

Look at her.

Look at her run.

Oh Christ she is so fucking gorgeous.

And just then as he watches her surge towards him, the sentences discharge in his head, like the report of rifle shots, and he knows that soon he’ll write some lyrics, true lyrics, real lyrics about the strongest light any person’s ever seen: girl light, Sandra light. The eternal light from a muzzle, lyrics nobody needs to bury 1,000 kilometres under the ground.

Yess.

Candyfloss.

18. HOLY DIVER (Pål)

A light cleaves its way between the black tree trunks, flashing through the woods. Pål gives a start, he turns his head in the direction of the road and catches a glimpse of a car disappearing down towards the shop.

He tries to regulate his breathing, follow Zitha as nimbly as possible, allow her to traverse the forest floor, not upset her. Zitha isn’t a meek dog, but she’s never liked cars. Yeaaah, Zitha, yeaaah, good girl. Can’t have her barking like she did a while ago, mustn’t draw any attention to ourselves, that’s not on.

Pål draws his coat closer around him. The cold is becoming deep-seated, inching its way into his bones. Must try not to think, just get this done.

Pål hadn’t given Rudi a thought in years. But then one day, just as he was opening the post box, retrieving yet another letter bound for the bus shelter bin, an old memory abruptly emerged from the deep. Rudi. Videoboy. An obscure, dim recollection of a day in 1986. Then it slipped away just as suddenly. He began to sift through the memories in his head. He’d heard rumours from time to time. They’d turned out to be as criminal as people thought they would. Could he call them? Surely they wouldn’t remember what happened in 1986. That poor girl lying in the room. The sick set-up they had in the house. All the horror movies. Neither he nor Hasse understood it at the time, but now it was easy to see: Jan Inge used the girl as payment for the favours he got people to do. He had people carry out minor thefts for him and he paid them by letting them see uncensored horror films, and giving them all the cola and sweets they wanted. And letting them sleep with the girl. The sister. He rented her out like a whore. She was only thirteen, fourteen maybe. And Pål remembered her well.

He had slipped the envelope into his inside pocket. Then brought out his mobile and sent a text to directory enquiries. His hands were trembling slightly as he punched in the number he’d been given.

‘Ye yo, Rudi here, yeah?’

‘Hi, eh, it’s Pål…’

‘Who?’

‘Pål. Yeah. Fagerland.’

‘Okay, Fagerland away.’

‘Wha? Eh, listen, you probably don’t remember me—’

‘Nope, can’t say that I do. Who did you say you say you say you say?’

‘Pål. Fagerland.’

‘No, doesn’t ring any bells…’

‘Right, I see, well—’

‘Out with it, man, out with it, Pål Skål, what brings you round to this haunted house?’

‘Well. I … I was just wondering if you … if you and your…’

Pål heard a sigh then the person on the other end disappeared.

He walked into the kitchen. Drank some water straight from the tap and tried to understand what had happened. Were they cut off? Did he hang up? He decided to ring again. Put in the number. It rang for a little while.

‘Yeah, Rudi.’

‘Hi, I think we must’ve been cut off there. It’s Pål again.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right, well, I was wondering if you … or your…’

He disappeared again. The same way. Pål tried to get his head around what had happened. Rudi took the phone. He wasn’t disinterested in talking to him. But he hung up. They weren’t cut off. Pål nodded to himself. It was obvious he was going about things the wrong way. He punched in the number yet again.

‘Hell-o, you’ve reached Rudi-o, yeah!’

‘Hi, Pål again, we seem to be getting cut off, I—’

Silence on the other end of the line.

‘Or … eh … are we getting cut off?’

Still silence.

‘So, anyway, I heard a couple of years back that the two of you, eh, you and that guy Jani, that—’

It happened again. He hung up.

Pål sat down at the kitchen table. Malene and Tiril would be home soon, he couldn’t keep at this very much longer. But Rudi was answering the phone. And then Pål said something wrong, and then he hung up. Okay. He put the number in again.

‘Yeeeeeep, Rudi here, yeah.’

‘Rudi, hi, man! It’s Pål here, you know, Pål from the old days, the eighties, eye of the tiger, the final countdown, holy diver…’

‘You’ve been out too long in the midnight sea! Hey, all right, still not ringing any bells, whatsupdude?’

There was a different tone to his voice now.

‘Been such a long time. Want to hang? What about meeting up, taking a stroll, say Tuesday night, Gosen Woods, by the big rock, nine o’clock, when I’m out walking the dog?’

‘Great plan, Påli, you holy diver. Heh heh! Did you hear Dio died? Shit, that’s the way it goes. Talk to you!’

Rudi hung up.

Down, that´s what it is, thought Pål and nodded. Down too long in the midnight sea. That clicked. I’ve just made an appointment. That’s how it’s done. These people don’t accept just anything.

‘Yeaaah Zitha, yeaah, good girl,’ he whispers, feeling the ground beneath him starting to slope upwards. Zitha keeps moving across the forest floor, sniffing. He stops and looks up at the rock. It doesn’t look as big as he remembers. The football pitch is up there, but everything is a lot more open than he remembers.

Pål walks up to the crest and lets his gaze sweep around. It’s a long time since he’s been here. He chose this spot because he recalled it being overgrown, because in his mind the rock was so big you could stand behind it and hide from the world. But that’s completely wrong. That’s how memory works. Things are exaggerated, things are diminished and things are moved around.

It’s way too exposed. They can’t stand here and talk.

Is this a good idea? Seeking out these people?

Pål wipes his right eye with a shaky hand. It has to go away soon. He feels worn out. So worn out by all of it. His eyes, the long nights. Why couldn’t he just leave everything the way it was? Why did he have to get into all this? He had everything he needed. The house. The kids. A job. Was it all down to his fingers, his breath, the cold light of night, his empty life, the desire to be sucked into the cold glow of the screen and disappear?

I don’t know, he thinks.

I just don’t know.

It just happened.

Pål goes over to the rock and leans against it. He inhales and exhales. Wonder how things are with Videoboy’s sister now? Maybe she’s married with kids, maybe she got herself an education, maybe she lives in another country.

What is it I’ve been doing, he thinks.

Day after day, evening after evening, night after night.

Footsteps?

Zitha’s ears stand on end.

19. IF IT WAS A KITTEN (Cecilie)

Cecilie is curled up in the back seat. She isn’t very tall. Just one metre fifty-nine. As for curling up, she’s good at that. She peers up at the beige upholstery in the roof of the Volvo. There are slashes in it from the time they drove home from a job over in Ålgard. Rudi had taken too much speed and wanted to write ‘fuck’ with his knife.

She blows out the smoke. It fills the car.

If it was a kitten I’ll kill him, she thinks. Maybe I’ll just do it anyway. Get rid of his Motörhead T-shirt, get rid of all his shit, get the whole of Rudi out of my head, rewind to the life I had before life began. Kill him. So I can go to his grave, lay down a wreath and whisper: Hi, Rudi, sweetheart, you’re dead.

She slides up and rolls the car window down a little to let out some smoke.

Take Cecilie along, she could use a little air. Those lads, what do they think she is? Stupid, that’s what. They get up every morning thinking they can make the world how they want it, and they think she’s an idiot. And she lets them talk to her as though she is an idiot.

Cecilie slips two pasty fingers out the gap in the window and drops the cigarette, before opening the pack and taking out another. Get some air. How’s this getting some air?

She lights the cigarette, inhales deeply and lies back down on the seat.

Bloody Volvo. She’s so fucking tired of waiting while the boys are on a job somewhere or other, and she’s so fed up of this car. It’s uncomfortable to sit in, it stinks, the gearbox is loose, the axle is dodgy and the steering wheel will soon be hanging off. Why can’t they get a new car? One like normal people have. But no, no, they’re not going to do anything like normal people. A4 people, Jani calls them, and it’s obvious he doesn’t look up to them.

Cecilie hears a faint noise and raises her head. She ducks down when she sees two young clear-skinned girls come walking up the hill towards Hafrsfjord.

‘Friends wouldn’t be a good idea,’ Rudi says.

‘Wouldn’t be good for you, Chessi.’

‘And not for the company either,’ Jani says.

‘It’s all part and parcel of our profession, we have to keep to our own kind.’

Cecilie brings herself up on to her elbows, looks out and sees the girls are gone.

But imagine she wants some friends? Imagine she does. But she hasn’t any. She was banged by every moron who came through the door with a stolen carton of Marlboro, a Walkman or a ghetto blaster; she spread her legs, heard the boys groan, closed her eyes and thought of Dad in Houston. She eats cinnamon buns, takes walks to the sea and has a boyfriend who has problems sleeping and sings Aerosmith songs when he gets nervous. She’s allowed go to the skincare clinic once a month.

Cecilie gets up abruptly and opens the door. She puts her feet on the soft earth and looks towards the woods. It’s so dark. She doesn’t like the darkness, never has, only in movies. She turns and begins walking up the road in the direction they came from. She speeds up. If it was a kitten. She squints ahead of her. It was around here somewhere. What kind of place is this anyway?

Shush shush little baby.

Shush shush little one.

Just be quiet.

Mummy’s got five hundred kroner and Mummy’s going to the beauty clinic.

You can come along.

Or maybe we’ll go to Houston. Say hello to Granddad. You’ll like him. He never should have left us. He was such a laugh. It always felt like Christmas Day when he was in the room. His smile was so big it swallowed everything. Doesn’t seem like either of his kids have inherited that good humour.

Cecilie halts as she catches sight of something on the road.

She bends over.

It’s a hedgehog.

A little bloody hedgehog.

Cecilie lifts it up into her arms. The creature has curled itself up. It feels like a stinging ball in her hands. It must have scurried out on to the road on its tiny feet, quickly understood it wasn’t a good place to be, then curled itself up to meet death.

‘Mummy is going to look after you,’ she whispers to the hedgehog, feeling her anger mount. She turns and stomps back angrily, a severe sway in her hips. There’s a lot you don’t know, Rudi, she thinks, her heels digging into the ground. You think you can just run over anyone at all and act as if nothing has happened, but there’s a lot you don’t have a clue about. Tong would do anything for me, did you know that? He’s getting out on Friday, I’m picking him up at half eight, and he’s one sick Korean and he would do anything for me, did you know that?

Her speed increases for every step she takes.

Rudi.

We’ll kill you, you ugly prick.

20. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT? (Sandra)

Waking up at three in the morning, jolted by a dizzy heart, to stare at the darkness in fear. Being wide awake, feeling how ready her body is, how sharp, anxious and all set it is, as though she were a soldier. Where are you? What are you doing now? What are you thinking about? Sandra tilts to one side: No, you must never leave me, you must never look at anyone but me, nothing must ever change from the way it is now.

That terrible fear that one day it will end. She refuses to believe it, because Sandra and Daniel are the ones who are going to make it: I will never leave you. I will never look at anyone else. Here are my hands, look, they’re touching you, look, they want to caress you, and here’s my mouth, look, it wants to kiss you, feel it, it’s yours: Promise me, yes? Do you promise, yes? Sure? Yes? Positive?

Yes.

Nobody will threaten us.

No.

This will never end.

One day he was just standing there, like a snowdrop when the ground frost releases its hold.

That was only a few weeks ago, and there was a life before this but now it’s no more than fading echoes in her body. The girl with three freckles on her nose and the slightly goofy teeth has gone crazy. She can’t concentrate on her homework, when her mother and father are speaking it’s like they’re muttering in the fog. The same with her friends, it’s utterly impossible to grasp what they’re babbling about.

She knows that relationships fall apart. She knows that people leave one another. But this is different. This is a higher power. This is for the rest of her life.

One day he was just standing there. It was the week Tiril left an hour early to rehearse the Evanescence song. Sandra could feel the sweat making her T-shirt stick to the skin between her shoulder blades while she vacuumed the floor, and in the distance she picked up some sounds from the entrance. Sandra has clear instructions not to open the shop after closing time. They’ve told her not to talk to anybody if they knock on the glass, because there was an incident a few years ago where a guy managed to break in and threatened one of the cleaners while he stole money and whatnot.

But the sounds wouldn’t cease; it was raining cats and dogs out there, and Sandra moved cautiously towards the door, worried about what she was going to see.

There was a boy standing outside with a moped helmet in one hand. He looked so small, so wet, so terribly good-looking and he didn’t look dangerous. What did he want? He was trying to form words with his lips; he smiled, pointed at himself to show that he wanted to come in; what was it he was trying to say?

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. She pointed at the door while she wagged her finger. She mouthed the words as clearly as she could: ‘I can’t let you in, I’m not allowed.’

But he just stood there.

He was so good-looking!

His mouth was so … so bright.

And then she realised who it was. Bewildered, she said: ‘Daniel?’

‘Yeah.’

She watched him form the words with his lips. It was a super strange moment, she felt it right down to the soles of her feet. It was Daniel William Moi standing there, the boy there were so many rumours about, the foster brother of Veronika from the flats. And the weird thing was that she said his name and smiled at him, stupid Sandra who’s only fifteen, and that he actually smiled back, Daniel William Moi, the one in sixth form nobody dared talk to, the one all the girls thought was so hot with those deep eyes of his, and dangerous. The fact that she smiled at him and that he smiled back, it was almost unreal.

‘Yes,’ he repeated, pointing at himself again.

Sandra’s eyes began to blink. Was she going to let him in? Now he said that word again, what was it he was saying? He started doing something with his hands too, as if he was drawing in the air, a square, no, a circle, while his lips repeated what he was attempting to say.

He began to laugh, and Sandra couldn’t help but laugh as well, it was a really odd situation, two people standing miming and laughing on either side of a glass door. Now he began to write something on the rain-soaked windowpane, what was it?

Sandra went as close as she could. He put the moped helmet down on the ground, his hair was already wet, his face glistening, and when he stood up he traced his forefinger across the glass again. But what he wrote was washed away by the rain.

Now he was standing right against the pane.

Today’s paper?

Is that what he said?

He’s so gorgeous!

Today’s paper?

‘What are you saying?’ Sandra spoke louder.

He read her lips. He’d probably learnt it from Veronika, the lip-reading, and he repeated, as slowly as he could:

toi

let

pa

per

Sandra burst out laughing, she felt her face crack up. Daniel William Moi was standing there yelling for toilet roll. He was so cute, you could see how white his teeth were when he laughed and he was soaked to the skin. She leaned towards the glass and formed the words as clearly as she could:

‘Wait. Wait. Okay? Wait.’

He nodded, and she dashed back through the shop. Sandra knew she was doing something wrong, but it felt right so she did not allow herself time to think, she just ran into the backroom, ran with one arm under her breasts and the other swinging through the air, got the keys to the entrance and whispered to herself: ‘I’ll do it. I’ll just do it.’

‘Hi,’ he said and laughed as she let him in.

‘Quick,’ she pulled him further into the shop, away from the windows, ‘quick, I’ll lose my job if they think I’m letting people in…’

‘Right, yeah…’ The rainwater was dripping from him and forming small puddles on the floor, he shook his long fingers and sprinkled the droplets around him.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, feeling the perspiration begin in her armpits and under her hairline. ‘It’s only water.’

‘I’ve been at band practice — I play in a band — and I’d promised Inger, that’s my foster mother, to buy toilet paper on the way home, but I forgot the time and got here a bit late, and well…’

He looked at her.

Sandra swallowed.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘my name’s Daniel.’

He extended his hand. She took hold of it and felt small. She released it quickly.

Sandra nodded and swallowed again, ‘I know,’ she said, something catching in her throat.

He looked at her. For a long time. Sandra tried to look away, because his gaze was so penetrating, but she wasn’t able to.

‘What’s your name?’

His voice was so deep.

‘Sandra Vikadal,’ she said and curtsied.

She curtsied!

‘Well, look, you can get toilet roll,’ she said hurriedly, to cover what she’d just done. She turned so he wouldn’t see how stupid she looked. ‘But I’ll have to just give it to you,’ she said, ‘because I can’t open the till…’

He laughed as he followed her along the aisle towards the shelves with the toilet paper. ‘Theft.’

‘Gosh, yeah,’ she said.

They stopped in front of the shelves. She grabbed a packet, felt the fear over what she was doing course through her hands, then held it out to him.

He’s a lot taller than me, she thought.

And then — it was so unbelievably strange and so unbelievably nice and Sandra has thought about it every day since, as though it were a sign — then he jutted out his chin, giving his face a sort of silly look, and raised his forefinger. He held it in the air in front of her. Then he brought it to her nose, gave it a gentle press and said:

‘Now the two of us have a secret, Sandra Vikadal.’

And then?

Then the days, the hours, the minutes and the seconds just came crashing down. They collapsed on top of one another. The following night he was back, she let him in without any questions, the night after that he kissed her in the backroom, and the next night she met him in the woods for the first time, and the next night … everything merged together, she hardly slept, he took her over, they kissed and kissed and neither mouth could get enough, they touched one another and touched one another and neither pair of hands could get enough, they stared into each other’s eyes and Sandra felt she was drowning in them, they entwined hands, and what did they talk about?

The future, countries they would travel to, things they would see, how beautiful the world was right here, right now. They talked about each other, about the storm of emotions that had suddenly arisen one rainy night, they retold and retold their own short history, how he had stood outside the shop with the moped helmet in his hands — you were so wet! — how he had tried to make her understand what he was saying — toilet paper, I said! A thousand times. But you, you thought — I thought it was today’s paper! Over and over again they repeated their own short history, and they thought it was the most important story of all. And every day they came closer. Every day, greater courage in their kisses, every day, greater courage in their hands, every day, greater courage in their words. Every day, a wild joy over recognition — Oh, you’re well sexy in those jeans — and an equal joy in discovering new things — Your lips look so beautiful when they gleam like that — and every day an all-engrossing interest in everything the other person does — I just have to hear that band, I’ve never liked metal but I’m sure I’d love them — and every day a drawn-out farewell, that horrible moment when they had to part:

Oh, do you have to go?

Yeah. I have to.

I hate this.

Me too.

Don’t go.

I have to.

I hate this.

See you tomorrow, yeah?

Yeah.

If not I’ll die.

Yeah.

You’re mine.

I’m yours.

See you tomorrow.

And now?

Now it’s serious. Sandra runs across the football pitch and Sandra has decided: she’ll lie down, she’ll be brave.

She gasps when she catches sight of him by the substation. A pressure lifting from her chest; he hasn’t left. She runs faster, as fast as she can and throws herself into his arms.

‘Daniel,’ she sobs.

‘Hey…’

‘I’ve missed you so much! I thought you’d be gone! I didn’t think you — I thought—’

‘Hey, come on…’

He takes her face in his hands.

‘Hey, hey…’

He tilts her chin up with two fingers.

‘You…’

He looks her in the eyes.

‘Hi,’ he says, holding her gaze. ‘Do you think Daniel would leave you? Eh? Do you not know Daniel would wait until Friday, until next month, Jesus, until it bloody well started to snow, if it’s you he’s waiting for?’

She sniffles and feels the tears roll down her cheeks. A ‘hhha’ escapes her mouth, and Sandra stretches up on her toes, closes her eyes and kisses him, for a long time.

‘You taste of salt,’ he says, laughing.

‘It’s the tears,’ Sandra says, sniffling. ‘Tears of joy.’

‘They taste extra nice,’ he says.

Then they begin walking into the woods while holding each another. Daniel with his arms around her slender waist, she with her arms up along his back, him backing up, her following his steps. It looks like ballet and that’s probably what it is.

Sandra unbuttons her top.

They totter further into the woods. Their breathing is heavy, his hands rove over her backside, she undoes the last button, they kiss one another, whisper ‘Here?’

‘No, not here, it’s too exposed.’

‘Further in?’

‘Yeah, further in.’

‘What about here then?’

‘No, across the road, the forest is denser there and no one can see us…’

Then they stop. Sandra is naked from the waist up. He stands there gasping. He places his hands on her breasts and sighs.

‘Do you want to do this?’ Daniel whispers.

‘Yes,’ she whispers, closing her eyes, ‘yes, it’s what I want.’

‘Do you want to do this every day for the rest of your life?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

They sink down on to the ground.

‘No matter who I am?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

‘No matter what has happened to me?’

‘Yes, I want to do this every day for the rest of my life.’

‘Cool,’ says Daniel, ‘that’s really fucking cool of you.’

21. GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN (Rudi)

Rudi strides through the woods. He’s a tall man, well over one ninety-five with long arms which don’t always know what to do with themselves. His face is pockmarked, his whole body is lopsided and he looks like a roaming tower moving across the ground.

He stops for a moment to think.

Not many men have as good a woman as he has. Anyone thinking of laying a hand on her better fucking watch out. You can call it what you want, call it being a psycho, call it jealousy, I call it love and Chessi does too. Do you not think I’ve looked after her? Do you not think Rudi has given her what she wants? Didn’t she get to see Aerosmith at Sweden Rock Festival? Dream until your dreams come true!

Rudi froths saliva between his teeth and continues pounding across the forest floor. Hasn’t he taken her to both Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, hasn’t he laid the tickets on the table and paid for the whole shebang? Weren’t they a fixture at Norway Rock in Kvinesdal until the festival went bust, doesn’t she get as many thousands of pints of beer as she wants, didn’t she stand and almost weep with joy in front of Motörhead and didn’t she almost come when Twisted Sister played ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’? Didn’t he hold her and rub her back when she puked in the tent in the middle of the night. And hasn’t she got an amazing fucking metal tattoo on her back that he paid for? And isn’t she allowed to go to that skincare shit, even though he thinks it’s disgusting.

Rudi spits into the woods, feeling strong and fair.

She’s grumpy and electric, always has been. She’s not approachable in the morning, you need to stay weeeell bloody clear of her until she’s had her coffee. But those are the kinds of things you just have to cope with when it’s love that’s at stake, you need to be generous, you need to let her sit in her room and mope — yeah, she can keep that room until she dies, every girl needs to have a room of her own.

Rudi spits again, before halting in his tracks and spinning all the way round.

Here. A wistful feeling sneaks up and strikes Rudi. Gran’s cabin could have stood right here. God bless the old bag of bones, they were the good old days. Land, fields, sheep and cows and no mobile bloody phones, no interfuckingnet and nobody ringing up to ask if you’re interested in faster broadband; no, mister, I’m interested in your dick on a skewer. Good thing for you, Gran, that you didn’t have to live to see this shit.

Focus.

Rudi peers into the forest. He pricks up his ears. A sound? His eyes dart back and forth in the darkness, trying to adjust to the lack of light. He orders his pulse to slow down.

No, no sounds.

Need to get hold of that du-du-du du-du-du du-du-du song. It’s impossible to remember the name of it. Coldplay. What is it he’s singing? I used to rule the world. Chessi is going to put her finger down her throat and puke, heavy ballads all the way there. Rudi can’t stand pop either, metal all the way. But that one song there, that takes the roof off the church. He needs to get it on CD, then he won’t have to sit wondering if they’re going to play it on the radio when he’s out in the Volvo, and no way in hell is he getting any SPOTIFUCK or PISSTUNES or YOUSCREW and sitting listening to Mötley on a computer or watching the old videos on a mobile phone, that’s an insult to all music.

Tapes. And CDs.

Rudi nods to himself.

He never got into vinyl. Jan Inge likes records. He’s got those old country records his dad left behind when he went to the US. Might be hi-fi, but it’s just scratches and stress. Rudi has always been of the opinion that if it’s good sound you want, just turn up the volume, then you’ll hear everything loud and clear. But each to their own, he thinks, I mean, it’s not like I sit doing my nails with silver polish and read poetry while the moon glimmers behind a cloud either.

Pity you never had the chance to meet my woman, Gran. Cecilie’s her name! Lots of sharp edges but you’d be hard pressed to find better. Granny would’ve liked her. She’s sitting on a silver cloud up there in heaven with flowers in her lap, and one day she’s going to say: Rudi. There you are. Welcome to heaven. Is that right? You became a crook, I see, well, to every man his own life, welcome to heaven! She had a lot more respect for an individual on God’s green earth than the rest of that unspeakable family of his: Get thee behind me, Beast from Sandnes. Is that what a brother is supposed to be like? And is that what a sister-in-law is supposed to be like? Spitting in your own brother’s face at Gran’s funeral? Telling him you never want to see him again as long as you live?

Rudi breathes in and out deeply.

Who are you, Pål?

The question is: should they move? Away from Jani. Get their own place. A damn hard question. Hard in every way. It’s by no means certain Jani could handle it. It’s by no means certain it’d be good for the company. It could actually ruin everything. A damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn hard question.

He waves his big hands in front of him in the darkness.

Focus, like Jan Inge says, you need to focus, Rudi. Don’t talk too much. Don’t get lost in thought.

He takes long strides up towards the rock where he’s arranged to meet Pål. He catches sight of him when he’s halfway up. Rudi comes to a stop and studies him. There’s no immediate recognition. Of course the guy had to have a dog. He needs to start saying it to people. Dogs prohibited. Pål looks worn out. His shoulders are slouching, his hands are nervous and his face is sad. He can’t say he recognises him.

Rudi continues on and Pål catches sight of him. Rudi gives him a firm nod and assumes his sternest look, Pål raises his hand and gives him a lopsided smile.

‘All right?’ Rudi halts.

‘Yeah, hi, I’m På—’

Rudi glances quickly left and right. ‘No,’ he says, grabbing Pål by his jacket. ‘No, we can’t stand here. Come on.’

‘Okay…’

They walk down the hill, cross the path and break off into the woods. The dog barks. Rudi hears Pål breathing nervously beside him and lifts his hand up in the air as a signal to remain silent, while continuing to pull Pål after him. He looks intently toward the tree trunks ahead.

‘Can you make your dog shut up?’ Rudi hisses. ‘Or do I have to find a stone to beat his head in with?’

Pål bends down quickly to the dog, whispers in a commanding voice: ‘Zitha! Quiet!’

Rudi mutters to himself, annoyed. They cross the road and enter the small forest on the far side, which seems less inviting, less frequented, and after a short time Rudi points toward the substation.

‘There,’ he says. ‘Behind that.’

‘Okay?’

‘The hum from the substation,’ Rudi says. ‘Away from prying eyes.’

They tramp through the undergrowth, towards the graffitied brick wall. The substation emits a steady, monotone sound. They stop. Rudi smiles sideways and says:

‘Påli dude. I was thinking about you earlier today. You say we’ve met before? In the old days? Did you massage J-J-Janne D-D-Dobro’s melons? Did you live on the same road as Tommy Pogo? Did I steal comics from you? Did I beat you up under the street lights by Tjensvoll Shopping Centre?

Pål looks down. ‘Eh, no, eh, it—’

‘No?’ Rudi clicks his tongue. ‘No?’ he laughs. ‘Yeah, they were the good old days. That was what made us men, eh?’

‘I…’ Pål clears his throat. ‘I lived here when I was small. Or, I mean. I still live here, and … yeah, I, or, everyone knew who you were of course, or the Tjensvoll Gang, who all of you were rather, and eh, what all of you, y’know, did—’

‘You’re struggling a little. Were you afraid of us?’

‘Eh…’

‘Were you?’

‘Everyone was.’

‘Heh heh.’

‘The whole area was, we—’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rudi interrupts, ‘old times. Now our paths cross once again and you’ve gone grey, my friend, but have I? Heh heh! Can’t say I remember you. Okay, Pål, focus. The ball’s in your court, we don’t have any unfinished business, I haven’t beaten you up, you’re not out for revenge and I’m guessing you don’t want to invite me round for dinner? Heh heh! And if you do, then I’ve only one thing to say — Rudi ain’t no homo! I’d cut my own head off before I’d take a cock up the hole!’

Rudi jabs Pål hard in the chest.

‘No,’ he says, inhaling what feels like a kilo of air, while thinking that people can say what they like about fresh air being the best thing there is, but when you’ve quit smoking you know what the real truth is. ‘No, you don’t get much of a laugh if you’re not up for a laugh. So Wally, the dog whisperer, what will we do?’

‘Eh …. well—’

Rudi places his hand on Pål’s shoulder. ‘Nervous? Okay, listen to me. Breathe in. And out. And in. And out. This is what you discover the older you get. All people — almost all, there’s always an almost — that’s the thing. This is what I want to teach my kids, if I have any. All people — almost all — are okay. They might look like inside out goatskin, but they’re okay. Come on, Kåli, you need to breathe here! In, out, in, out! Yeah. Repeat after me, Tåli: All people — almost all — are okay. There’s something for you to think about.’

Rudi stops himself. Focus. He takes his hand off Pål and straightens up. Scrutinises him. Just a regular guy. Not much else to say. Could do with a bit more facial hair, maybe. Shy looking.

‘So. Pål. Fagerland. What is it this fudgepacker has got on his mind? Have you got a woman, Fåli?’

‘Eh … no…’

‘No? Thought as much. You’d know to look at you. Yeah, I can see how things might be tough. If I didn’t have—’

Rudi clears his throat. How many times has Jani said it: No names. No stories. Nothing personal. He’s said it a billion times.

‘Anyway,’ Rudi says, ‘one day the ladies are going to come knocking on your door too. And that’s when you need to start … yes, so anyhoo … Pål. Fagerland. What is bothering this guy?’

Pål shifts his feet.

‘Spit it out, Gåli. And remember to breathe now.’

Pål gulps. ‘The Ace of Spades,’ he whispers, glancing up at Rudi.

Rudi begins slowly to nod. ‘I see,’ he says, in recognition. ‘Double up or quit?’

Pål looks down at the tall grass. ‘Yeah,’ he says softly.

‘Double stakes or split?’ Rudi raises his bushy eyebrows.

‘Yeah,’ whispers Pål.

His shoulders drooping over. His eyes, so scared looking. Standing there, slouched over. The dog’s leash hanging slack from his wrist. His meek, embarrassed voice. Is he crying? Jesus, this guy is in a bad way.

Rudi starts removing his jacket. He pulls the sleeves back the right way round and hands it to Pål. Then Rudy takes off his sweater, which he also hands to Pål. And even though it’s beginning to get very cold, he pulls off his T-shirt. Then turns his back to Pål.

‘See?’

‘Yeah…’

‘What do you see?’

‘Well…’

‘You see that it says Motörhead?’

‘Yes,’

‘Good.’ Rudi turns and takes back his clothes. ‘So now you know.’

‘I can’t get out of it,’ he hears Pål say while he puts his clothes back on.

‘Staying up at night?’

Pål nods.

‘The internet?’

Pål nods again.

‘That’s what’s wrong with the world today,’ Rudi says, and spits.

Pål looks at him. ‘So I was thinking … I don’t know, maybe it’s a stupid idea but I’ve got into a situation which I can’t manage to, y’know, debt collection and…’

‘I know, you don’t need to explain. Go on…’

‘And then I came to think of you and him, what’s his name, Jan Inge, and—’

Rudi lifts both hands. ‘Whoa! Stop! No names. Erase! Rewind! Dude, no names!’

‘Okay, no names, but you two came to mind, from the eighties,’ Pål says, his forehead sweaty. ‘I have two kids. Two girls. I’ve done something stupid. I…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I—’

‘Yeah?’

‘I need a million.’

‘A million?’ Rudi laughs.

‘Yeah.’ Pål nods and looks down at the undergrowth.

‘Listen,’ says Rudi, slapping Pål on the back, ‘sorry I’m laughing here, but … I mean … you need a million, and—’

Pål’s eyes brim with desperation. ‘Help me,’ he whispers, a lump in his throat. ‘Help me, please. I have two daughters—’

‘Yeah, don’t they have a mother?’

‘Yes, but it’s … it’s complicated. I’m up to my neck in this…’ Pål pauses, swallows, before looking up at Rudi: ‘I’ve no place to go. Please, help me. I’ll do anything.’

Rudi nods. He folds his arms.

‘Anything,’ Pål whispers.

Rudi puts his fingertips against one another, all ten of them, and begins pacing restlessly in front of Pål while he speaks.

‘Firstly: It’s sad, what’s happened to you. You’ve done something stupid. Secondly: You’re not alone, this happens the best of us. Thirdly: You’re looking for a solution. That’s good. Fourthly: You’re a Motörhead man. I appreciate good taste. I like that we’re cultural brothers. Do you like Coldplay? No, Rudi’s just kidding with you. Heh heh. Sorry. Back to the game, to put it like that. Fifthly: You think we can get our hands on a million?’

‘Yeah, I…’

‘Do you or don’t you?’

‘I … I don’t know what I think. I don’t know what you … I just remember … in the old days, when you were in the Tjensvoll Gang … people said that…’

‘And what makes you think I don’t work as a gardener now, or crochet tea cosies?’

‘Huh?’

‘Go on,’ said Rudi. ‘Go on.’

‘I’m sorry if I … I just thought … is there anything I can do to get hold of a million? Then I had the idea of calling you.’

‘Ah, Påli. Is there anything I can do to … you’ve got the right attitude, maestro. You’ve got in touch with a good company, I’ll give you that. You’ve realised that there’s something called expertise. You have what Jani calls intuition. But is there anything I—’

They hear a rustling behind them.

‘Down!’ Rudi puts his hand on top of Pål’s head and pushes him down into the bushes. He turns round as quick as a flash, peers back into the woods. ‘Down!’ he repeats. ‘And keep the dog quiet!’

Oh, sweetbabyjesus.

‘Rudi, you rotten pimp!’

Cecilie comes storming through the undergrowth. Her eyes are bright red with anger, tears have run down her cheeks, blackening them with smeared make-up, and what is it she’s carrying?

‘I hate you!’

She comes to a stop just in front of him, with something in her hands — what the hell is that?

‘Chessi, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!’

She throws it at him, what the fuck is it? He brings his arms up to catch it, a hedgehog!

‘What are you playing at? Have you lost it completely? I’m at work, twatmuff! At work! You know bloody well that this is unacceptable, what do you think Jani’s going to say? I take you out in the Volvo to get a little fresh air, toss five hundred kroner bills your way and you can’t manage to sit still for five little minutes, you barge in with…’ He throws the hedgehog onto the ground. ‘You need to fucking get yourself tog—’

Cecilie’s lips quiver. She sniffles, goes down on her knees in front of the animal. ‘Rudi,’ she says, her breathing fitful, ‘it’s a hedgehog. And you just drove right over it.’

Rudi bends over and hugs her. ‘It’s okay now. Rudimann is here. I didn’t do it on purpose but you can’t—’

She frees herself from his arms, gets to her feet and takes a small step backwards. Points towards Pål who appears behind them, his features contorted in a expression of fright.

‘Who’s that?’

Rudi clasps his hands round the back of his neck and sighs. ‘Yeah, this is…’ He stops himself. ‘This is someone I’m working with.’

‘What a lovely dog…’

Cecilie goes down on one knee. She stretches her arms out to the dog. It sniffs its way over, snout to the ground, and enters her embrace. Pål stands nailed to the ground. Not so strange, thinks Rudi, people are usually slightly taken aback when they first meet Chessi.

She gets to her feet. Puts her hand out towards Pål.

‘Cecilie,’ she says, in a high-pitched voice, shaking the hand of the stranger. ‘Cecilie Haraldsen. I’m Rudi’s woman. Such a cute dog, what’s its name?’

‘Zitha,’ says Pål, ‘she’s called Zitha.’

‘Zitha, yeaaah,’ Cecilie pats the dog across the snout again, gives Pål a pleasant look. ‘So, what are the two of you working on then?’

Something seeps into her expression. Her forehead furrows slightly. ‘But … have I … have I seen you before?’

‘No, don’t think so,’ says Pål. ‘No.’

Cecilie nods. ‘Just thought I’d seen you before.’

Jan Inge is not going to like this. Cecilie doing as she pleases. Flirting with this Pål guy. Bollocks, thinks Rudi, snapping after his thoughts. Get thee behind me, Satan. She’s my whole life. She’s the twisted light, she’s canary-yellow happiness.

‘Okay, Chessi,’ he says, ‘now you’ve shown us the hedgehog, are you satisfied? Pål’s got troubles, you understand? He’s got two daughters, and a mother, their mother that is, but it’s complicated, and I think you’re just complicating it even further now. Can you head back, so as we can finish off our meeting here?’

22. DAD’S SHOES (Malene)

Are you out there, Dad?

Malene is standing on the loading ramp behind the shop. She knows it’s at rest but it feels like a boat that’s rocking. She’s conscious of the stinging in her ankle as she lets her gaze gather what she has in front of her, the houses, the high-rises, the woods, the sky, as though her eyes were somehow magic and could capture everything; the people in the buildings, the forest behind the school, what’s happened and what’s going to happen.

Dad, what are you up to?

Malene feels a dull thumping from the pulse in her ear. It makes her think of the tension just before a gymnastics competition, her feet on the mat, her body fully concentrated. She feels like she has her dad’s shoes in her hands, even though she knows she doesn’t. She feels she’s standing in the bathroom folding her dad’s jeans, even though she knows she isn’t. She feels like she’s sitting in her dad’s lap, even though she’s fully aware that she’s standing on the ramp.

Tiril lights up another cigarette behind her, the nauseous smell of it drifting her way. She hears her sister shift her feet in irritation.

‘Well? Are you just going to stand there staring? Hey? Lol?’

Malene doesn’t reply.

Once when she and Tiril were small, Dad fell off the garage roof and broke his arm. Malene had noticed a dead magpie lying up there. A dead bird? Dad would take care of that. But he’s clumsy when it comes to that sort of thing. He’s not that kind of man. Dad is the type of man who lets the screwdriver slip and gashes his hand, he’s the type who stumbles when he goes on top of a garage roof. Malene can remember Mum shaking her head and laughing as they drove to the hospital. She did that a lot, Mum, laughed at people. Always so sure of things, Mum, so sure about everything. Thought people just needed to pull themselves together, thought that everyone had to take care of themselves. That’s how she goes on when she rings from Bergen: Everything all right, Malene? And then, before Malene has the time to answer: Good, that’s what I thought. Or: How’s the ankle? And then, before Malene has a chance to answer: It’ll be fine, you’ll soon be back on the mat.

Malene was terrified. She can remember the smell in the car as they drove to the hospital. She couldn’t take her eyes off Dad’s arm, dangling by his side.

‘Hey, Maly? That thing I asked you about. Do you think it’s true? Y’know, about choosing, between the light and the dark?’

Malene doesn’t reply. She knows she’s a girl who’s one metre sixty-two with high cheekbones and a slender figure, a girl without a best friend, who sometimes feels alone, but never feels lonely. She knows she’s a girl who reads books and listens to ‘Payphone’, ‘Hot N Cold’, and ‘Rolling in the Deep’, a girl who likes to feel her body sail through the air. She knows she’s a girl who’s never had a boyfriend, who’s never bunked off school, who’s always done her homework and taken things one step at a time. She knows that one day she’ll marry a man who won’t allow himself be henpecked, who’ll carry her as though she were a queen. She knows that one day she’s going to leave this town, travel to Bergen or Oslo, and study there. And she knows she’ll come home every Christmas. She knows she’s cautious, but she knows she’s courageous. She feels that if a fire is burning someplace then it’s her job to fetch the water.

Malene stretches out her injured foot. It’s unstable. Can’t rely on it any more. Behind her, Tiril puts out her cigarette.

‘Of course you can,’ says Malene, without turning to look at Tiril.

Then she whispers into the darkness, low enough for her sister not to hear her: ‘It’s Malene. Are you out there? Please. Talk to me, Dad. What is it I haven’t noticed? Tell me what to do.’

23. LIKE THIS? LIKE THIS? LIKE THIS? (Daniel William)

Only a matter of moments stand between Daniel and that addictive experience: entering a girl. Up until now it’s been a pounding desire, stronger for every day. Envisioned and borne by turbulent currents in his body, raging rapids, which no power can halt, so cold they burn. When he’s felt it rise, he’s often thought about just going out into the dark, seizing hold of the first girl he sees, dragging her into the forest, throwing her down, peeling her clothes off and drilling a hole in her. He’s closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, felt how the power can’t be overcome, how it’s that which is God. Sparks fly within him, the flash of a million sledgehammers falling on blazing iron, a roaring noise in his head. It’s not evil, nor good, but it’s real. The earth’s crust needs to split, light must be torn, knock-kneed girls need to quiver and glisten, sing and die and be hunted like wounded animals across the great darkness.

What is it that the sight of her breasts does to him? Why do they set off such raving hunger, why must he press his lips against them, why must he cup them in his hands? What is it the sight of her closed eyes gives rise to in him? No, they’re almost closed, the lids are quivering over her eyeball, like someone at the moment of death, a slightly moist twinkling under the arched lashes. Look at her lips, slightly parted, what is it they do to me? What the fuck is it you do to me?

No one can see them. They’re hidden away in an empty wood, now nobody can get in their way. He stares at her. Sandra pulls down the zip on her jeans. She hooks her thumbs into the waistband, lifts her behind, and begins to wiggle free of her jeans while jerking her hips to and fro.

Daniel gasps.

Now she’s lying there glistening, now she’s lying there glowing.

She’s only wearing panties. She spreads her legs.

Daniel breathes through his nose, his chest is pounding, the oxygen in his head diminishing, he sets his jaw. Her legs are apart, her knees slightly raised. He kneels down, then bends over her, his palms resting on the soil and weeds.

‘Take off your clothes.’

She whispers.

‘Daniel, come on, take off your clothes.’

She opens her eyes slightly, liquid gold runs out. Her voice takes hold of him, she could have asked anything at all of him and he’d have done it. Daniel’s made up his mind. This is what he was put on this earth for.

‘Say it again.’

She smiles.

‘Don’t smile.’

‘Take off your clothes.’

He jerks back up on to his knees, unbuckles his belt, unbuttons his jeans, feeling no nerves, only the hard warmth. He pulls his jeans down to his knees and sees Sandra’s eyes fall upon him.

‘Oh,’ she says.

Your hands. Touch me.

But she doesn’t. She just lies there. Her eyes have closed. Your hands, he thinks again. Touch me. But she doesn’t. She just lies there. Daniel pulls off his underwear, his erection like a crowbar, then she begins taking off her white panties.

Then she looks up at him:

‘Are you sure it’s your first time, Daniel?’

He blinks confusedly and fixes his eyes on the strange country she has between her legs, which isn’t a flower, isn’t an animal, it’s impossible to say what it is, he only knows he has to get in there. A dog barks not too far off in the distance, but the sound barely registers in Daniel’s consciousness before disappearing again.

‘Wha? Yeah — yeah, why are you asking about that now?’

She pulls him close, her hands move down over his body. She touches him, takes hold of him, guides him into her, pushes a whimper of pain aside, and he begins to move, the wild dogs storm across the fields and he can’t call them back, it isn’t possible to escape this heaven.

‘Like this? Daniel? Like this? Like this?’

24. SAY GOOD NIGHT TO THE GIRLS (Pål)

Hear about what they did today. Hear about what they’re going to do tomorrow. Fix their duvets a little, lean over them, as though they were still two little tots, give them a hug and a kiss on the forehead. Say goodnight to the girls. Go into the kitchen, clean away the day’s mess. Bread in the breadbin, load the dishwasher, turn it on, check the calendar to see if you’ve forgotten anything, a dentist’s appointment, a parent-teacher meeting. Let Zitha outside to pee in the garden. Into the sitting room, slide down in the armchair, put your feet on the pouf, three remote controls in your lap, flick through the channels, watch an episode of Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad. Maybe read a few pages of Michael Connelly or Jo Nesbø. Feel the daylight withdraw, see the wind play with the trees outside, see the moon exposed in the sky, hear the night come with corrosive silence. Get up from the chair, walk quietly across the floor, turn out the lights in each room downstairs, open the door to the basement. Tread gingerly on the creaky first step, go down carefully, set your feet on the cold tiles at the bottom. Go in the door to the right of the laundry room, don’t turn on any lights, the blinds are drawn, sit down at the computer. Turn it on. Hear the humming of the fan increase, feel your neck tense, an effervescent rush in your temples and your pulse ticking in your throat, as you push aside the sick feeling unfurling in the pit of your stomach. See how the cold light of the monitor blanches the room, your fingers on the keys, sometimes catching sight of your own reflection but not allowing your gaze to fix upon it. Do this, just do this, say that it’s soon over, say it’s the last time. Betsson. Oddsbet. Betsafe. Centrebet. Username: Maiden. Password: Zitha. Blackjack, live odds, casino, roulette, poker. Bonus. Win. Raise. Win. Lose, lose, lose. Say goodnight to the girls.

Seen from the outside it’s obvious that it can’t work. It’s so obvious he can’t understand that he’s done it. How long is it since he played his last ever game? A month? No, two weeks? Three days? No. Last night. Last night, he sat in the glow from the screen and played a round of blackjack, adding another few thousand to the debt he’s no longer able to deal with. All the letters, the warnings about repossession, collection agencies, all the bills. He doesn’t open them. He slips them into his inside pocket, takes them with him on his evening walks with Zitha, and makes sure they all end up in the same rubbish bin at the same bus shelter in Folkeviseveien.

No matter how easy it is to see from the outside, that this could never work out, it’s the inside that counts. That’s where we live, where we ache and burn, and that’s where I’ve been, Pål thinks, while he stands there trying to conceal his amazement from Rudi and his girlfriend. They’re a few metres off, Rudi with his arm around her, bending down, talking to her. There’s a hedgehog by their feet.

The inside. That’s where I live, he thinks. The nausea, I’ve become so good at pushing it from me, I’ve learnt to treat it like a ball I can just wrap my hand around and fling towards the horizon. Turn around, smile at the girls. Hi, Malene. Hi, Tiril.

To think he believed it could work. In retrospect it seems ridiculous, before it seemed easy. The kids will stay with you, Pål. You get the house, you get the car, you’ll get child support and double child allowance. You get everything, Pål. You’re going to manage fine. He pocketed his pride and resentment, accepted her money, as he always had done. Pål worked as a case officer for the local authority and it was written all over him: Never going to earn much money. Like it was written all over her: Going to earn a lot of money. And back then, when they started out, nobody could see foresee any trouble.

Why should we think about money troubles? Why should we think about the economic imbalance between us? After all, we share everything, said Christine. Pål made a quarter the amount she did, but he didn’t experience any feelings of displeasure about it, just as he didn’t feel any displeasure at having an ambitious wife who travelled abroad with Statoil, who constantly worked overtime. He liked that she was on the go, the same way he liked his own ordered life, and instead of thinking that a job with the local authority is an insecure job, because there’s no opportunity to earn more money if you should suddenly find your life beginning to go under, he thought that a job with the local authority is a good job, because at least you have one if the world begins to go under.

When she left, things looked okay, Pål didn’t need to change his habits, didn’t need to start shopping at cheaper supermarket chains or cancel his newspaper subscription. He managed to pay the bills, was able to live like before. The support payments from Bergen were generous. But after a few years things started getting a bit tight. The upkeep on such a big house was expensive. The money from Bergen became more infrequent. And after four or five years Pål had to face the fact that funds were running low. He needed a new lawnmower; he had to get drainage problems outside the house sorted after some damp damage had shown up in the basement. Where was he going to get the money from? He cut down on things here, there and everywhere, food, clothes, holidays, downloaded TV series off the net. But it still wasn’t enough. He traded in his car, it didn’t help. He borrowed money from his mother, it didn’t help. And then one night he began to gamble. Almost out of curiosity. It helped. After a few minutes he was sitting with several hundred thousand in his account. Pål, nervous and grinning, switched off the computer. Never again, he said to himself, and got the area round the house drained and damp-proofed with the money, but a month later he was back in front of the screen, and so began the life he’s lived since: win a little, lose a little, win less, lose even more.

It’s not just nights he’s been playing. Lately he’s been in the sitting room with a smile plastered to his face, the laptop on his knees, two windows open, one an online newspaper, the other a gambling site. On Sunday, he’d said, casually, his eyes on the screen: Hey Malene, what’s your favourite number? She gave him a strange look and said, eh seven, why do you ask? Oh, was just wondering, he said, betting on seven. What are you doing, Dad? Hm, ah, just checking the weather forecast in the paper here. Lose. Lose. Lose. Continue. Continue. Continue. Personal loan, maxed-out card, GE Money Bank are throwing loans at people these days, and no one knows who Pål Fagerland is, apart from them: Hi Pål, how’s it going? The telephone rings late one night. Listen, we wondered if you wanted to come along to a poker tournament in Riga? Or: Hi Pål, we transferred 500 euros to you today, a little bonus. And when does that call come? Just as he’s logged on. After a few day’s absence. They know who you are. No one else.

The inside.

That’s where I live, he thinks. But what is it that’s going on inside of me?

He won big one time, felt the money rain down upon him one time, and that one time he’s believed it was down to talent, but the laws are such that eventually he’ll lose, everything. That’s the heart of the game. He knows that. But how does that help? It doesn’t, not at all. Pål was terrified of smoking when he was small. It didn’t prevent him from starting to smoke. He smoked for seventeen years. The only reason he managed to quit was Malene, when she was ten and lay crying because she was sure her daddy would die. That was something that raked at him on the inside. Pål knows that it’s not going to work. But no matter how well he knows it, he still believes in that jackpot every night, the one that can cancel all his debts and make him rich and worry-free.

Zitha rubs her snout against his thigh and Pål feels his jaw loosen, his chin drop, hears himself sigh.

‘Yeaah,’ he whispers, glancing over at Cecilie and Rudi, ‘yeaah, good girl.’

He was amazed when she showed up. She hasn’t changed since the time he went into her room. 1986. She’s just the same, only more run-down. Just as thin, just as bony, just as discordantly composed. Her skin was soft and pink back then, now it’s grainy and grey, but still freckly.

Pål needs to take pains to avoid being recognised. It’s not going to go down well if Rudi realises he’s been one of her — well — customers. To think she was the first girl Pål was with. Two hundred kroner? Wasn’t it two hundred kroner he stole from his mum and dad? They took the bus out to the house in Hillevåg, he and Hasse. Pål handed the money over to Videoboy, was directed towards a room that lay at the end of a long hall. She was lying in there. A little girl under a duvet. Posters on the walls, one of a cat and another of Wham! He undressed. She giggled, he remembers, and lifted the duvet. He got into the bed, put his hands on those tiny tits. He didn’t sleep with her, didn’t have time, he came as soon as her fingers stroked his dick. Pål felt sick with shame afterwards, ran away from the horror movies and the rented girl and never went back.

And now here she was. She’d become Rudi’s girlfriend.

He was always a nutcase, thinks Pål, looking over at the pair of them. Was this a good idea? Help him get hold of a million? Rudi was always twisted but now he seems even more so. Probably the same with criminals as the rest of us, we become ourselves more and more as life goes on, we expand, and it’s not only the good sides that grow, the bad ones do too.

The eighties come wafting back to Pål, a time smelling of Sky Channel and late nights, flickering bike lamps, humming dynamos and puddle rock. The Tjensvoll Gang, sick rumours circulated about them. They looked tough, they lived by their own rules, they had the courage not to give a shit, not about school, or teachers, or parents, if they had any. Pål never possessed that kind of courage. Hasse was drawn to it, his curiosity greater than any moral qualms, he had to get to see everything, but Pål grew frightened when he heard about the things they got up to. Even their names scared him, Rudi, Tommy Pogo, Janka Bat. People spoke of Rudi’s eyes sparkling the time he held a wailing cat in his grip, knocked it on the head with a stone, opened its mouth, placed a firecracker on its still pink tongue, laughed so much he almost retched, closed the cat’s mouth, lit the fuse, took a few steps back and said:

‘This is the most fun I’ve ever fucking had, and it hasn’t even happened yet.’

People said the cat’s head cracked and its eyes exploded like glass. Two weeks later they stole a can of petrol from the garage of a house in Ragnhilds Gate, captured a hedgehog, doused the animal with it and watched the flames rise into the night sky as they discussed what to do next, and did anyone have any drain cleaner at home?

Rudi has placed both hands on Cecilie’s shoulders. It looks like he’s trying to press her down into the ground. She nods. Then she looks over at Pål while saying something. Pål swallows. Are they talking about him? Has she recognised him?

Rudi looks in his direction.

No, thinks Pål. I need to go. He’s going to kill me.

There’s a flash in Rudi’s eyes. He raises his forefinger.

I need to go. Now.

Rudi begins to walk towards him.

‘Nice to meet you, Pål,’ says Cecilie, ‘I have to be off, so … see you.’

Pål clears his throat but doesn’t manage to get a word out.

She bends over, picks up the hedgehog and begins walking back down through the forest. A bit like a soldier, Pål thinks, and sees Rudi approach. He looks like one of the trees in the forest, like one of the trees has torn its roots up out of the soil and begun ambling across the earth in the darkness.

‘Okay, Pål Wall.’

Rudi hawks and spits.

No, no, no. I should never have done this.

Rudi puts his finger on Pål’s chest, jabs him hard a few times. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry about it. Woman stuff. You’ll know all about it when you get yourself a lady, Påli—’

Woman stuff?

‘Sorrysorrysorry, daughters? Two daughters? But no wife? Rudi’s not going to stick his nose in. You know all about it. What do I know? Isn’t it the very reason someone like you and someone like me are talking? Woman stuff, it’s a full-time job, man. You smoke? No?’

They didn’t recognise me.

‘Quit a few years back,’ Pål says, and breathes out.

‘Yeah, I quit too. Couple of weeks back. Hell to pay. No. The ladies. Got to have a spine of steel. Love, Snåli. You know about love?’

‘Yeah, I’ve—’

Rudi fixes his eyes on him.

‘I’m a man of love, Jåli.’

That look of his, utterly mad. It’s like he’s going to spontaneously combust and lava’s going to flow out of his head.

‘Never doubt it, not for a fucking minute,’ Rudi says, seething. ‘You can talk all the shit you like about Rudi but he’s a man of love, never ever doubt that. You hear me, Swalli?’

‘Yeah, of co—’

‘Good. I can’t stand talking to people who don’t listen. But. We can’t stand here nattering. Will I tell you what’s wrong with the world today, Wålli? The internet. There you have it. What happened to the human factor? Answer me that, Zålli. The internet. Don’t get me started, brother! The internet, that’s what wrong with the world today. As you well know, my keyboard-clicking friend. And The Good Book, who reads that nowadays? And the family, who watches over them nowadays? Okay, Håli, I’ll tell you how we’ll do this.’

Say goodnight to the girls, Pål thinks, trying hard to hold back the tears. I need to get away from here, this is all wrong, I need to get home and say goodnight to the girls.

25. A LOW FRIGGING GIRLY THING TO PULL (Tiril)

‘Tiril?’

Malene is standing on the loading ramp with her arms folded. Her head moving slowly from side to side, like a leaf in a light breeze.

Tiril bites the top off a fingernail and spits it out on the tarmac. She takes out a fresh cigarette, tucks her chewing gum up between her lip and her front teeth as though it were a pinch of snus, produces the lighter, watches the flame light up the darkness before bringing it to the cigarette.

She doesn’t reply. Why should she go around answering people all the time? Amazing how someone’s always pestering you. Everybody’s alone in this world, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re born alone and you’ll die alone.

‘Something’s up with Dad.’

Malene turns to her. She speaks in a low voice. She has a forlorn expression on her face. Sometimes Tiril wonders if she practises that look, so people will feel sorry for her. Tiril certainly couldn’t be bothered perfecting any bogus expressions of her own, even though she’s the one they should feel sorry for, because she’s the one who’s fourteen, she’s the one with a horrible body, the one without any friends, while Malene gets everything handed to her, just sits there in Dad’s lap being the understanding, talented little gymnast with good grades.

‘I can just feel it,’ Malene says, still speaking in a hushed tone. ‘There’s something up with Dad.’

She can just feel it.

Jesus.

‘Relax,’ says Tiril. ‘You’re so dramatic. He’s out taking Zitha for a walk. That’s what he does every night. Zitha is a dog, she needs to be taken for walks. It’s not Dad there’s something wrong with, it’s you.’

Malene crouches down right in front of her. Tiril doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it when people get all in her face. It’s like when that Norwegian teacher crops up behind her shoulder, smelling of coffee and asks so veeeeeeeery gently how are you getting on here, Tiril. Just great, Miss, get lost and sort out your own life, on your period, are you?

She blows smoke straight into her sister’s face.

‘You need to quit that, it’s disgusting.’ Malene waves the smoke away with a grimace.

‘No. It’s great. Cancer of the future, pleasure of the present.’

‘Knock it off. Listen to me,’ says Malene. ‘I can feel it, you understand?’

Tiril shakes her head: ‘You can feel it. You know what, I’m so bloody fed up of you thinking you can feel how things are with Dad.’

‘Tiril, stop—’

‘Who do you think you are? Dad’s girlfriend? The way you go round tidying his things, as if he didn’t have his own life, do you think he likes that? Do you think he likes you putting away his Adidas and folding his trousers, I don’t know what you’re thinking, I mean, it’s sick! You’re, like, his daughter! And then you sit on his knee as if you were even younger than me. Jesus, it’s disgusting.’

Malene recoils. Her eyes screw up slightly and the corners of her mouth begin to quiver.

Jesus, now she’s going to start crying.

That is a frigging low girly thing to pull.

She’s never going to be like that, she’s never going to cry unless she’s in real pain. Harshini and Vera both do it as well, they’ve been at it since first class, crying about nothing and then the whole class gathers round them and it’s all poooooor you, Harshini, and poooooor you, Vera. Jesus, it’s not poooooor anyone, or if it was it should be Kia Pogo, she’s actually paralysed, she actually has a reason to think everything’s fucked up. No, it’s just a low, frigging, girly thing to do because they’re weak and don’t have the guts to deal with things themselves. It was cool when Frida Riska tore into them, Vera and Harshini both, went over to them and said: ‘Girls, enough of the crocodile tears. You hear me?’

Tiril gets to her feet. She looks away.

Mhm. There’s the sniffling.

Time for the waterworks now, maybe? Pooooor me who’s always looking after Dad. Pooooor me who does all the housework. Ungrateful you, who just goes round giving out and being pissed off. Isn’t that what you’re going to say?

Malene stands up, grabs hold of Tiril’s arm. She tries to pull herself loose — ‘what are you doing? Are you going to hit me now as well?’ — but her sister clutches her tight.

‘You can say what you want, Tiril.’ Malene looks her in the eyes. ‘You can say what you want about me, we can talk about that another time, when you’ve had a chance to think about it. But this here, this is about Dad. Understand?’

Tiril tears herself free from Malene’s grip. She stares at her while fixing her clothes.

‘Is that so? You think you’re the only one who’s ever right? You think you’re the only one with eyes in their head? Don’t you? That you’re the only one who can think and understand and actually has a brain?’

‘No. I—’

‘No! So quit it and … just quit it! What is it you want?’

Malene looks down. ‘I’m sick of arguing with you, Tiril,’ she says quietly.

Tiril takes a last drag of the cigarette, drops it, puts it out with her foot and dislodges the chewing gum from beneath her lip. She takes a few steps along the loading ramp and looks over towards the school. Some day she’s going to get out of here, and she’s never going to come back. She’ll get away from here, away from Madla, away from Gosen, away from poxy fucking Stavanger.

‘I’m not arguing,’ Tiril says coolly, ‘I’m discussing.’

Behind her, she hears Malene let out a heavy sigh. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Whatever.’

Her hands hang by her sides. Malene stands there with her nice body. And Tiril stands there with her horrible body and a pain in her stomach. Two boys skate by in the car park below. One of them points at the girls and shouts something. It’s Bunny’s little brother and that guy from Haugtassa, Hassan. Tiril extends her middle finger, holds it up to them and shouts: ‘Fucking retard!’

Can’t she give it a rest.

Standing there breathing so heavily.

‘Yeah, yeah!’ sputters Bunny’s little brother. ‘Emo! Looking forward to you making an asshole of yourself on Thursday! International Cunt Workshop!’

‘Wanker!’ shouts Tiril, hears them laughing and watches them skate out of sight. Bunny’s little shit of a brother, cheeky little prick. Not a day goes by without him making some remark, something wrong with that guy.

‘Listen…’ she says, without looking at Malene. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

‘Right, right,’ her sister says hastily. ‘Whatever. I’m heading home. See you when I see you’

Tiril bites her lip. ‘Look…’ she takes a deep breath: ‘That thing about the clothes. I didn’t mean it. Dad likes it. I’m sure he does. It’s just … you always have to be so … it’s like, you always have to do the right thing the whole time. When did you get your period, by the way?’

Malene looks like E.T. again, she gives a little start and laughs. Tiril grins.

‘Well, I—’ Malene stops herself. Looks closely at Tiril. ‘But have you—’

‘No, no. I’m as clean and pure as a preacher’s sheets. Heh heh.’

‘Summer last year,’ Malene says, ‘right after we got home from Copenhagen. It’s a real hassle.’

Tiril looks around. It’s a hassle, yeah, but it sucks being the last in the class to get it. Not that she’d want to have been the first, not like Amalie, that was so embarrassing, she got it super early, but if it doesn’t come soon she’s going to start to wonder if there’s something wrong with her, no matter how much it hurts.

She doesn’t have Malene’s nice figure. She doesn’t have Malene’s eyes. She isn’t good, nice and kind like Malene, but she has the eyes of Amy Lee, and she, too, is able to see. Bunny’s little brother and his mate skating by the low-rises. The woods. The school. The telecom tower. The hill.

Tiril feels the cold worming its way into her body. All right, she thinks, hopping down off the loading ramp. Fleet of foot, clear in mind. All right.

‘Come on,’ she says, setting off.

‘Huh?’

‘Limahaugen.’

‘Huh?’ Malene scuttles after her.

‘Well? Didn’t you want to look for Dad?’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Well then, come on,’ says Tiril, continuing up the hill by the school, ‘and I’ll prove to you nothing’s wrong. Dad is standing up there, I’ll bet you a hundred kroner on it. He’s standing up there, on top of Limahaugen looking out over the fjord, Zitha by his side, her tail wagging, and when we get there she’ll come running and barking, but then you’re the one, Malene, who’s going to have to explain what we’re doing there, okay?’

Tiril stops in front of the flats, turns and breathes on her sister.

‘Well, have you got a hundred? I’m not going if you don’t.’

Malene nods and takes a banknote from her pocket.

‘Do I smell of smoke?’

Malene sniffs.

‘It’ll go away.’ Tiril hurries uphill toward Limahaugen. ‘Dad will be disappointed, you know, if he finds out. Think you might need glasses by the way, you’re making a lot of weird faces, maybe your eyesight is bad.’

Bunny’s little brother, that prick.

Tiril clenches her fists.

Guess who’s going to get a taste of Tiril tomorrow.

26. SHE BRUSHES OFF LEAVES, GRASS AND MOULD (Sandra)

‘Like that? Daniel? Like that?’

It hurts a little. She has the weight of a boy lying on top of her, his entire bodyweight. Only a few moments ago she thought about just abandoning herself to it, and she managed too, but now she’s suddenly thinking there’s a boy on top of her, she’s never experienced that before and he’s thrusting something inside her. Ouch.

It stops abruptly. She feels a trickling sensation ease through her body and it doesn’t hurt so much any more.

I love this boy, she thinks. I love this. He’s all mine.

Why is he stopping? Why is he pulling out of me? Sandra opens her eyes as she feels Daniel getting up. She props herself up on her elbows, covering her naked breasts. He’s on his knees in front of her, features tightly drawn, looking away, looking into himself.

‘Daniel? What is it?’

He doesn’t answer. His face is contorted, his eyes wide open, as though his pupils are just going to disappear. Sandra draws her legs back, feels a tightening in her chest.

‘Daniel? Is there something wrong?’

He holds his hands in front of his crotch, he’s quivering all over, sweating, not looking at her. Sandra reaches out despairingly, her hands touching his stomach.

‘Don’t!’ he hisses, getting up and pushing her away.

‘What is it?’ She sobs. ‘Daniel? What have I done wrong? You know I love you, you know I just want … it was nice, Daniel!’

They hear the sound of a dog barking, not far from them. Daniel pulls up his jeans, giving her a stern look as he crouches down.

‘Daniel, I—’

‘Shhh!’

He brings a finger to his lips. He shoots her another severe look. Sandra feels her throat go cold and a sweat break out under her hairline. She’s never seen him like this before, it’s scary.

But she does as he says. Keeps quiet.

Footsteps. They hear footsteps. Moving quickly over the ground, nearby. They both crouch down further. Daniel zips up the flies of his jeans. Sandra pulls her panties on hurriedly, wiggles her hips into her jeans and nervously fastens the buttons on her top one by one. They look around for the source of the footsteps. That dog, the barking of that dog, they’ve heard that before. Is someone spying on them? My God, it could be someone from the class. It could be Mum, it could be Dad.

Daniel points. Once again he puts a finger to his lips. Sandra feels her stomach throb with fear, she looks around anxiously. Now he gives a firm nod, his teeth clenched, in the direction of the woods. What is it she’s supposed to see?

There. A girl.

Or, a woman.

She’s walking between the trees. God, she’s walking right towards them. A woman, she’s carrying something, what is it, a cat? It’s an animal in any case, and she doesn’t look good, this woman, not at all, frail and rough with unruly witchlike hair, shabby clothes and smudged make-up — there’s that dog barking again.

‘Down!’ whispers Daniel and lies down flat on the ground.

Sandra does the same. Her heart pounding in her chest.

The woman walks by. It’s a hedgehog she’s carrying. It’s the weirdest-looking thing, the woman is tiny and as thin as a sheet of paper, around forty or something, with crooked teeth and red eyes, walking along muttering to herself.

She continues on down towards the road.

They get back up when she’s out of sight. They try to look at one another but can’t manage to. Sandra has tears running down her cheeks and feels like she’s ruined everything. She did something wrong but doesn’t know what, and now he’s furious. Wasn’t she good enough at it? Were her hands not skilled, did she use her tongue wrong, was her body not attractive? Has he slept with hundreds of girls before her and just thought she was horrible, stupid, small and tight and no good at anything? Please, Daniel, give me one more chance, I’ll be better, I promise, I’ll do everything the way you want.

‘There’s someone here,’ he says, in a low voice.

She’s about to say something, but he puts his hand over her mouth.

What’s he on about? How can he talk like that after what’s happened?

There’s that dog barking again.

He turns. Whispers: ‘Understand?’

Sandra nods, she feels so small and stupid that she obeys everything he says.

Then they hear it, both of them. The sound of someone laughing.

‘We have to go,’ he says. ‘It’s not safe here.’

Sandra feels like she’s going to shatter into a thousand pieces. There’s nothing about Daniel to indicate they’ve slept together, that they’ve looked as far into one another’s eyes as people can.

‘We can’t be here,’ he says, straightening his jacket. ‘We’ll just walk calmly across the path, me first and then you half a minute after.’

Daniel stops.

‘Fuck. Where’s my helmet?’

‘Helmet?’

‘Fuck,’ he says again. ‘Never should have—’ He shakes his head. ‘Okay. Me first. Then you follow half a minute later. I’ll take the Suzuki. You walk home.’

Home?

She’s not able to get up, not able to breathe, she can only cry.

‘Get a grip, Sandra.’ He’s not looking at her. ‘Get up. Don’t sit there blubbering. I’m off now, you follow after.’

She gets to her feet unsteadily. I have to do what he says, she thinks, otherwise he’ll leave me. He knows about this sort of thing. He’s older than me.

‘Okay,’ she says, mustering her most grown-up smile. ‘Half a minute,’ she adds, trying to sound upbeat. She leans forward, gives him a peck on the cheek. ‘So, did you like it?’

His eyes flit around, avoiding her gaze.

‘Hm? Yeah, yeah, it was great, see you tomorrow.’

What’s with you, Daniel William Moi?

How can you be so cold?

Are you a dangerous boy, Daniel William Moi?

She wants to hurl herself at him, wants to hit him more than anything, hit him with both hands, but she refrains. She smiles, brushes off leaves, grass and mould, and says: ‘Yeah. Sure. See you tomorrow.’

27. VOLVO (Jan Inge)

He’s pleased with this wheelchair.

Jan Inge rocks slightly forward and back while watching a movie. It handles like a dream, much better than you’d think to look at it. Ingenious idea Rudi had that time. Chessi needs a wheelchair. Where do they have wheelchairs? Wherever sick people are. Where are there sick people? At the hospital. Okay. Rudi drives to the hospital. He just walks straight in the door. He sees a wheelchair: That’s mine.

Rudi at his best. Utterly fearless.

Easy to change course too. Jan Inge brakes hard in front of the living-room table and turns the chair smoothly around. Carrying 120 here, after all. About time Rudi called. But that’s Rudi’s style, if you take him on you have to be willing to take on the best and the worst, like beer and calories, to make a comparison. But loyal? People have come and gone in this company, good people who’ve accepted Jani’s leadership style and realised this isn’t some half-ass gang, bad people who haven’t understood a single rule, people who’ve run themselves into the ground on drugs, made for a lousy atmosphere and been disloyal.

A cushion wouldn’t go amiss, if you were planning on sitting here for a while. And some kind of headrest. Be surprised if Tong couldn’t knock something up. There’re few things he can’t fix up, it’ll be good to have him around again.

Jan Inge grins at the TV as though it were an old friend, and that’s what it is, after all. A classic, Three on a Meathook. Well made, if you consider the budget and the fact it came out in 1973. Yeah. That scene’s so good. The axe isn’t even big, just a little hatchet, and it chops the woman’s head right off.

There. Darkness. Zoom in on the house.

The father walking around calling out to Billy.

Why didn’t you listen?

It’s too late now.

That’s what’s so good about horror movies. They’re all about it being too late. If Jan Inge ever writes that book, he can call it something along those lines.

It’s Too Late.

A Study of Horror Movies.

By Jan Inge Haraldsen.

That bloody surname. It doesn’t command any respect. He’d have to change his name if he was going to be a writer.

Jan Inge Wilson.

Doesn’t sound that good.

What are writers called?

Hamsun.

He can’t remember that many writers from school. But then again there weren’t many days he went to school.

Jan Inge Hamsun

That has a certain ring to it.

JAN INGE HAMSUN

Vibrant. But a bit Nazi.

Knausgård? Jan Inge Knausgård?

Bit boring. Bit German.

Jan Inge Nesbø?

Bit used-up.

Spielberg? Jan Inge Spielberg?

Not enough like a writer.

Jan Inge Cash.

No. He’s not really a writer-writer, Johnny Cash.

Nooo … Jan Inge … what’s his name…

Yess.

JAN INGE KING.

It’s Too Late. A Study of Horror Movies.

By Jan Inge King.

Jan Inge pivots a little on the wheelchair, nodding to himself.

It’s all about grabbing hold of life while you can.

Some people have that little extra. The company was vulnerable when Tong went inside. Cash flow was better when he was working. He can be a bit iffy upstairs but that’s the drugs. And as soon as that’s out of the picture, which Tong promises it is, then it’s hard to find fault. It’ll be good to have him home, then the gang will be all together, then they can avoid having to trust people they half know as well as complete strangers. Melvin. Tødden. God, he’s happy to be rid of that sick hippie, and Hansi, what a disgusting individual. He’d start jabbering away when he was drunk. When Rudi drinks he just wants to sing, dance, shout, mess about and screw Chessi, but when Hansi drank he wanted to hit the town, then he’d start blabbering, and then it’s not far to the copshop on Lagårdsveien 6, and before too long you’ve got Tommy Pogo standing at your door. Well, anyway, all that’s behind us now. Have to organise a party for Tong on Friday. Show him that we care. That he’s bloody well welcome back.

WELCOME HOME, YELLOW SUBMARINE, WE’VE MISSED YOU.

That’s what’s important, thinks Jan Inge, filling his mouth with crisps. Keeping the gang together. Being a good leader. He saw a programme about business executives on TV, and after listening to them, he can’t say he breaks with any of the fundamental principles of sound leadership. Trust. Presence. Ambition. Resolve. Seeing your co-workers. Seeing their good sides. Supporting them. Inspiring them. Being there for them in adversity. No, Jan Inge can’t see that he breaks with any of the fundamental principles. On the contrary, they’re precisely the same basic principles he adheres to when it comes to leadership:

No drugs (only when we’re on a job!).

No to porn (ruins your head!).

Never harm individuals (what have they done to us? Are we animals?).

No to excessive violence and weapons (= copshop on Lagårdsveien 6!).

Small jobs = good jobs (get too big, Lagårdsveien 6!).

Yes to break-ins, no to hold-ups (Lagårdsveien 6!).

Keep calm! (Chaos is our enemy!)

Only talk to your own people (who else can you trust?).

Focusfocusfocus (!!!).

The biggest danger is Rudi and Chessi moving out. That’s not a pleasant thought. What he needs to do is make sure things are so good for them in the old house that the issue doesn’t arise. A charter holiday? Is that what they want? Jan Inge can surprise them and splash out. He could spring a surprise trip on them. And what about the SodaStream? How about he actually digs it out to see if it can be fixed?

LEADERSHIP.

‘No,’ Jan Inge says aloud. He rocks a little back and forth. On the TV screen a dead girl lies in a bathtub filled with a mixture of water and blood. ‘No,’ he says again, even louder. His voice fills the room, as though he were addressing someone. ‘No,’ he repeats firmly, ‘need to get back down to a hundred. Too much of a good thing, this here.’

Why are you doing this! What do you want!

That’s Rudi’s ringtone. Jan Inge is torn away from his meandering thoughts and reaches out for the telephone. ‘Yep, Jan Inge King speaking.’

‘King?’

Jan Inge rolls his blueberry eyes.

‘Okay, Mr King, noisy at your end, what are you … hang on, hang on, I’m listening, hang on, Three on a Meathook? Ha ha. You study day and night, you do.’

Jan Inge grabs the remote control and mutes the sound.

‘Always on the hunt for knowledge. So, what gives?’

‘The Volvo won’t need repairs.’

‘No?’

‘Nope.’

‘But we need to go through it together.’

Jan Inge squeezes the mobile phone between his jaw and shoulder, turns the wheelchair and trundles toward the door to the veranda.

‘Oh?’

‘A few details we need to take a look at.’

‘But no repairs?’

‘No.’

‘Otherwise everything went okay with the Volvo?’

‘What do you mean?’

There’s something amiss with Rudi’s voice.

‘Well, just wondering if everything else was okay with the Volvo?’ Jan Inge rocks back and forth in the wheelchair.

‘Eh … yeah? I mean yeah! Yeah. Everything’s good with the Volvo.’

‘Okay, well, if you say so.’

‘Kein problem. Back to your studies!’

Jan Inge hangs up. Then he unlocks the door to the veranda, shoves it open and feels the white September night meet him. He feels the chill of a slight prickle on the top of his head. His bald spot’s getting bigger, but can’t do anything about that, runs in the family, bad hair. He seesaws the wheelchair gracefully over the doorsill, steering with steady hands, rocking a little back and forth before gliding out on to the veranda. Never fails, that whole Volvo thing, he thinks, surveying the run-down garden. Weeds and shit. All that junk and other crap lying about rotting. It attracts attention. They ought to have a clean-up soon. Straighten out company HQ. They can just talk about the Volvo and they understand one another. Don’t need any set code, can just talk about the Volvo.

And that, he thinks contentedly, despite the presence of a creeping unease over what may have occurred; that is the innermost secret.

To be so tight with your colleagues that you understand everything. That you need only listen to the sound of their voices to figure out what kind of humour they’re in. That you don’t need to look in their eyes for more than a moment to know what’s going on.

That to me is VOLVO.

28. TITANIUM (Malene)

The sisters walk across the fields by The Iron Age Farm.

They’ve been here before. All the kids in the area have been here. First in kindergarten, a herd of children out in the rain or wind, and then in primary school. Out to look at the ruins of the Iron Age houses situated on the slope between the high-rises and Limahaugen, with a view over Hafrsfjord, where the battle which united Norway into one kingdom took place: 872, Harald Fairhair.

They’re surrounded by darkness, ahead of them they can see the red signal lights of the telecom tower at Ullandhaug, they can see the lights from passing cars down on Madlamarkveien, and they don’t have the energy to talk.

The first girl is angular and ungainly, with small hips and a boyish stride, she’s bent forward and moves with a jerky gait. Her chin juts out, her eyes often narrow and often flash with anger. She’s good at football, has a foul mouth and wears heavy make-up. The other girl has grown-up features and beautiful, high cheekbones. The first one has said she wants to be an environmental activist with Amnesty and write songs of her own. The other has said she is going to concentrate on gymnastics, continue studying in any case, perhaps something within sport or health.

She might well be a little anxious about the future. Anxious it could present further changes.

It was a normal training session. A Thursday afternoon at the end of May. Spring was in bloom, the air full of birch pollen, the summer holidays were right around the corner and Malene had had a good season. After a difficult winter where she had felt stiff and heavy, she was back in form. She’d done well in the regional finals, third place on the beam, a good routine on the parallel bars had given her second place behind Ylva from Sandnes Gymnastics Club, and she’d executed a lovely vault where she’d finished with her first double somersault in a championship and taken home her first gold medal. In the Norwegian Cup in Trøgstad she’d been on the winners’ podium again, third place in the vault and parallel bars.

Malene trained six days a week all season. She could feel her own strength, she could trust both her mind and her body, and people remarked how she had a new gracefulness about her. She’d grown, was elegant and had gone from being a good gymnast to being considered one of the best in the region. Not as ruthless as Mia, her best friend in the club and not as solid or tough as the Russian twins in Stavanger Gymnastics Club, but people viewed her differently than before. The jump was still the weakest part of her routine, she still lacked the necessary explosiveness, but she trained with determination and she knew everything was moving in the right direction. She had been doing gymnastics since she was seven years old and now she was reaping the rewards.

She was standing. The hall was full of girls, young beginners who practised their first round-off backflip, girls of ten in the advanced group doing arm support swings on the parallel bars. They giggled, ran and landed on the crash mat, Sigrid Ueland making comments the whole time: Bravo, Ingrid! Shuttle runs! Don’t play with the hoop, Nora! What kind of wrist is that, Tuva? The vaults are all right, Mia, but otherwise you’re too careful! You’ll get a half-point more for a proper finish! You’re going to get a Christmas present from me, Pia! You’re running like a bunch of old ladies! Legs together! Legs together!

Without Sigrid, Malene would never be where she is. A powerhouse of a woman with a steely personality, a legend in the city, gymnastics champion and PE teacher, over fifty years of age but still very strong in both mind and body, imperious as well as ambitious on behalf of the girls, with crimson lipstick beneath bright green eyes.

‘Malene! The double!’

Sigrid called out to her and Malene hurried from the beam over to the iPhone laying on the little table by the benches and wall bars. The other girls cleared off the mat and made room. Malene turned up the volume, ‘Titanium’, David Guetta & Sia. She always has to have loud music on when she’s going to do her elements, it gives her energy and shuts out the world. Then she took up position in a corner of the hall. She allowed the music to play a little until it rose to a pumping tempo, she tensed her body and could feel Sigrid’s eyes boring into her. The younger girls began chanting her name until it resounded throughout the hall — just as she’d done for the bigger girls when she was smaller, cheered them on, given them the noisy support they needed to get their adrenalin going.

‘Come on, Malene! Come on, Malene!’

I won’t fall, I am titanium. She began her run up. Not too many steps, she ran as hard as she could, did a chassé, perfect, not too short, went into a somersault, over into a backflip — was it a bit too high? A bit too far?

Malene felt a millisecond of nervousness as she sailed through the air performing the double backflip, but it all went so fast she didn’t have time to think, and then she landed. Pain screeched through her body. It felt as though her right ankle had been torn right off. She screamed, fell on to the mat and clutched her foot. In the very same second she knew what had happened. Talus fracture. She erupted in a flood of tears. Sigrid came running over as she shouted to one of the others: ‘Mia, ice!’

Malene was in more pain than she’d ever known, but all she could think of while Sigrid examined her foot with a seasoned eye, was: ‘Now I won’t be able to do gymnastics for months. Maybe never again. All the work I’ve put in to get here has been wiped out.’

‘Pia! Turn off the music! Ice and tape!’ Sigrid’s powerful voice rang out through the hall. The music stopped, Pia ran. The smaller girls stood around Malene with their hands to their mouths and eyes large as saucers.

One small mistake was all it took. Had she not been concentrating? Had she done something wrong in the chassé? No. It was the backflip. It was too high.

‘There’s only one thing to do now, Malene,’ Sigrid said calmly. ‘You put this behind you,’ she continued as she taped the ice pack tight around Malene’s ankle before elevating it and stating that they’d have to go to A&E to get an X-ray. ‘You’ll be back in this hall next week, even if you come on crutches, you’re coming along with us to camp in the summer, do you hear me?’

Malene nodded and writhed in pain.

‘You’re not going to let this fester, you’re not going to let it get to you. Do you understand?’

She nodded again.

‘You’ll be back on the mat in a few months and this won’t affect you.’

Malene began strapping her ankle and icing it regularly, she went to the gymnastics hall to begin training herself back up carefully, but as the weeks went by she felt less and less at ease. Her friends, who’d been so considerate to start with, were occupied with their own things, her injury wasn’t exotic anymore. Malene felt stupid, her fear wouldn’t release her and she limped her way through the whole of the summer holidays. She avoided meeting Sigrid’s eyes because she knew what they were saying: Don’t quit, Malene. She began doing exercises, began going to the physiotherapists, but the ankle wouldn’t heal. Every day she checked it when she got out of bed in the morning: was it stronger today? Every second of the day went to thinking about the pain and just as Sigrid had feared, the pain won out, over Malene’s mind as well. Then summer came round again, with the Olympics in London, a few of the other girls travelled to England with Sigrid, they saw sixteen-year-old Gabby Douglas beat Victoria Komova, but Malene didn’t go along. She sat home reading text messages from the UK: ‘Mally, you should have been here.’

Everyone says change is a good thing. Malene isn’t so sure about that. Tiril loves change. She hated it when Mum left but apart from that she loves everything new. She throws herself into one new thing after the other, never looks back, just keeps on going.

They’ve always said we’re like night and day, Tiril and I. Am I the day, then? Is she the night?

The sisters continue on up the hill towards the top of Limahaugen. It’s not windy, there isn’t even a hint of a breeze, but still it feels colder as they get higher up, and Malene considers what Dad always says about it being the nicest place in the world and thinks how true that is.

‘Look at that,’ he likes to say, ‘eh? Take a look. The fjord down there. Those three islands out there. Eh?’

You don’t get it, Tiril. You’re so knotted up in your emo brain that you don’t understand. One day you’ll suddenly have been cocky one time too many. Suddenly the pain you flirt with will turn serious. Suddenly you’ll have lost everything you can’t live without. What do you think life is? A game about suffering?

They stop at the top of the hill. Look at one another.

Dad isn’t there. Zitha isn’t there.

Tiril gives a self-assured shrug. She purses her lips, assumes that cheeky look, the one that makes her look like a fox. ‘There you go,’ she says and blows a bubble with her chewing gum. It bursts in the wind with a dry snap. ‘Now what do you say? Isn’t it just like I said?’

Malene grabs hold of her sister. And then she slaps her across the face.

29. HERE’S TO YOU MR HEDGEHOG (Cecilie)

A dog. A nice little dog. A black-and-white one, maybe. Would you like that? Baby? A black and white one?

Cecilie carries the hedgehog in her arms, resting against her stomach. It still feels warm to her, as though death hadn’t prevailed just yet.

He looked kind, that Pål guy, she felt it in her gut. His eyes looked frightened, but kind all the same, he had shiny skin. He ought not to get mixed up with them. He doesn’t belong in our world, thinks Cecilie.

Rudi’s actually kind as well, he’s just not always able to show it, just so much crap with him. ADHD. That’s what he says. ‘It’s the ADHD, Chessi, you know how it makes me act. But so what. Never bothered me,’ he says. But that’s bullshit. She’s well aware of that. It’s a load of bullshit. When a guy sits there jiggling his foot day in day out for forty years then it does something to him. He’s got beetles on his brain.

Cecilie emerges from the darkness of the woods and walks over to the car. Holding the hedgehog with one hand, she opens the boot. There’s usually all kinds of odds and ends in there. It’s a storeroom so to speak, the Volvo. She picks up a hammer, looks at it, thinks it over, then takes it out and slams the boot. With the hammer in one hand and the hedgehog resting against her stomach she takes a few steps into the woods. She halts when she comes to a little patch of grass.

Yeah.

You can rest here.

Mr Hedgehog.

Here’s to you. Sorry.

Cecilie puts the hedgehog down carefully. It sinks down and spreads out a little, as though it were breathing out heavily. ‘Look, baby,’ she whispers. ‘Do you see the hedgehog? Do you see, its ears are just as small as your Mummy’s, see? It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

She waits, as if for an answer, and nods.

‘Yeah,’ she whispers. ‘It’s really lovely. Now we’ll bury it. Hallelujah.’

Cecilie takes hold of the hammer and begins making a furrow with the cleft end, the part you pull out nails and things like that with, whatever it’s called. Yes, she thinks, you can tell by looking at people if they’re kind or not and that guy Pål, he looked kind.

She has a calm feeling in her chest. Digging up the earth does her good. Friends of my own, she thinks, girls. No. She’d just feel stupid if she had a load of friends. They’d know all kinds of stuff while she doesn’t know too much at all.

But it would be nice to have some friends all the same.

But if she was to have friends she couldn’t have Rudi.

But if she sets Tong on Rudi?

Then there’ll be war.

The strongest will win and the weakest will die.

Five hundred kroner to take away my ashes.

Cecilie gets to her feet. She looks at the little grave she’s made. ‘See,’ she whispers and points. ‘There we go. Hmm?’

Again she waits, as though for an answer.

‘Yeah. You’re right. It’s deep enough now. Cheers, Mr Hedgehog. You can rest here, can’t you?’

She crouches down and picks up the animal. It’s cold now. Stiffer as well. She lays it down in the hollow and covers it with earth.

I could always get a job, she thinks. Could find something to do with plants and flowers. I’m good at working with soil. Jesus, I’m so lucky I don’t have to work, Jani says. Work? Do you know how much money people would pay not to work? says Rudi.

But I’m good at screwing.

I’ve been good at that since I was small.

Cecilie puts her foot over the soil and flattens it with the tip of her shoe. Then she stands there for a few moments looking at what is just a plain patch of earth, before grabbing the hammer and heading back towards the car.

She lights up a cigarette.

Jani never misses Mum, he hates her. Cecilie hates her too, but sometimes she misses her as well. In a way. Maybe not in a Mum-the-way-she-was way, but Mum all the same. Mum the way she could be, perhaps. Mum the way she wasn’t? Is that possible? To miss Mum the way she wasn’t?

But Dad.

He was always so happy. Dad was like a funfair.

If Cecilie was to make a list of her top five heavy rock ballads, then it’d be:

‘Dream on’ by Aerosmith. Obviously. ‘Carrie’ by Europe. ‘Still Loving You’ by Scorpions. ‘Dreamer’ by Ozzy. ‘When the Children Cry’ by White Lion. And ‘Jump’ by Van Halen. But that would make six. No matter. David Lee Roth would have to be on there. Even though ‘Jump’ isn’t a ballad. Puss would say it wasn’t a good list if there’s no Motörhead. It’s not her fault Lemmy’s no good at ballads.

‘Baby,’ she whispers. ‘We’re going to listen to heavy rock, you and me. We’re going to raise our hands in the air and listen to heavy rock, you and me.’

Cecilie snaps out of the thoughts going round her head as she spots a boy emerging from the woods. She lowers her head, puts her hand to her stomach and looks at the ground. A girl follows just after. She shivers a little, looks away, trying to make herself invisible.

Puss.

Sometimes she wants to kill him and sometimes she wants to marry him. It’s practically the same thing, Cecilie feels.

Baby, she thinks, watching the boy and girl scurry out of sight. We’ll get Uncle Jani to fix up a nice room for you in the basement. And then we’ll get a nice dog, you and me. A black-and-white one. Or maybe we can get a place of our own. A house. Maybe.

I smoke too much but I need a cigarette now.

I’m not pretty but Rudi thinks I am.

And so does Tong. Friday. That’s when I’m picking him up and then anything could happen.

Cecilie makes her way back over to the hedgehog’s grave. Once again she pats the topsoil with the tip of her shoe.

30. THEY’RE TAKING OVER THE WHOLE WORLD (Daniel William)

A thousand kilometres underground.

I want to go down, I want to go down, a thousand kilometres beneath the earth. To the place where dreams are boiled in rusty oil drums, where feet scrape across bleeding stones, where small boys pluck squirrel eyes under the light from hanged girls. You’re going down, you hear me? A thousand kilometres under the earth. Don’t touch me, you hear, don’t fucking touch me. You can just lie there, you bitch, you can just lie on your back, being all sexy, closing your eyes and whimpering with glossy lips but you have no idea, you hear me, no idea.

Daniel darts like a ragged dog across the forest floor. Setting his heels down hard into the ground, gritted teeth, breathing through his nose with his fists clenched. If he could hit someone he would; smash a face to a pulp, kick someone in the guts, break them up and hollow them out until they were dust.

Nobody is ever going to put their hands on me again.

Play the drums while Veronika watches, drink with Dejan and the others, work out until I’m built like a brick shithouse. Full stop.

Bury girls a thousand kilometres underground.

He slid in and out of her, once, twice, then it cascaded through him. It was impossible to control. He shouted at himself, pull back, keep calm, but it didn’t help. It was just a wild storm. No matter what he did, no matter what he screamed at himself, it was impossible to hold back. It pumped through him and he just about managed to pull out of her, just about managed to cover himself with his hands before it blasted out of him, wave after wave.

So unbelievably embarrassing. So unmanly.

Daniel keeps a look out for his helmet. Have to just strike that whole girl idea, shit plan anyway, having yourself depend on something as fickle as a girl. What the hell did he do with that bloody helmet. There you have it. Girls, they screw your head up. Just because they’re gorgeous. He’s been walking around like an idiot the last few weeks, a silly grin on his face, only sleeping two or three hours a night, thinking about roses and all kinds of girly crap, even thinking about a house and kids, no wonder he just tossed his helmet someplace. It’s not right, hardly recognise myself, he thinks, as though nothing matters any more, apart from her, apart from her body, apart from getting inside her.

He doesn’t like it.

Daniel speeds up.

Losing control.

I don’t like that one fucking bit.

Anyhow, it’s the last time I’ll ride out to these woods and snog a fifteen-year-old who sings in a choir, wears a cross round her neck, has a lawyer daddy and a Jesus freak for a mother and thinks the world is a lollypop.

Cotton Candy, sunbullet mine

Explode my body out of time

Bowlegged baby, how you shine

Running over space and time

Bring my shovel, bring my axe

Bring my rifle, fill your cracks

First I fuck you, then I kill you

First I fuck you, then I kill you

Cause I see you running, whore

I see you running, whore

Bandylegged you set ashore

Away with another man

Daniel nods to himself as he feels the lyrics tick out in his head. It’s like the words burrow their way up through the dirt in his mind. The lyrics are suddenly there, totally complete. He just needs to remember them, just needs to get them down on paper as soon as he gets home.

Daniel glances up, holds his breath.

There’s that dog again.

Closer now.

And voices?

Daniel catches sight of the substation, not too far off. He slows down. There’re people behind the tall weeds. Two of them. He hears one of them say:

‘Calm down, man! Make the dog shut up! Listen to me now!’

Daniel comes to a halt. He looks right, then left. He takes a few steps into the woods and gets behind a tree. He squints.

There’re two of them. Two men. Both around forty or something. One of them, who’s really lanky, must be all of two metres, is waving and swinging his arms around, he looks like a tree in a storm. The other one isn’t that tall and he’s kind of difficult to see. He’s the one with the dog on a lead.

‘Okay,’ he hears the guy with the dog say.

‘Good,’ says the tall guy in a raspy voice. ‘You need to calm down, Påli, if this is going to work out. That’s one of the fundamental principles right there. Keep cool! What’s important here is to think, you get me?’

What’s going on here?

‘Okay, you’re a Motörhead man, so that probably makes you a Metallica man, am I right?’

‘Yeah, or I used to…’

‘Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself — is that how you feel, hombre?’

‘Well…’

‘Where do I take this pain of mine — I run but it stays right by my side?’

‘Well I…’

‘Maybe you’re a Judas Priest man too, eh Kåli?’

‘Ehh…’

‘Breaking the law, breaking the law…’

‘Can’t really—’

‘Too bad Rob Halford turned out to be a queer, but there are a lot of things in life you have to turn a blind eye to, or whaddayasay, Gnåli?’

What’s going on here?

Daniel hears footsteps, he turns around — it’s Sandra. Reacting as quickly as he can, he hurries on to the path, nods in the direction of the men behind him and pulls her into the darkness of the woods, whispering: ‘Don’t make a sound.’

He points. Sandra twists herself loose. She looks angry, her eyes are red, but there’s no time for him to think about that, he points again in the direction of the two men and whispers as quietly as he can: ‘Just listen!’

She looks over at the men behind the substation. The taller one lays his hands on the shorter man’s shoulders.

‘Okay,’ they hear him say. ‘You think I’m a magician. A wizard. You’re right, and you’re wrong. You’ve got problems. It’s understandable. What we’ll do is…’

Sandra gives a start, takes a step forward, craning her neck.

‘Th—’

‘Shhh!’

She mouths something.

There’s that light again. That expression in her face. Sweet Jesus. There’s not one girl, not in the whole world, who’s as beautiful. What’s she trying to say?

I know him.

Feeling how bloody gorgeous she is, feeling it all through him, Daniel mouths a reply.

Do you know him?

She opens that beautiful mouth, still without uttering a sound:

Yes.

He moves his lips soundlessly once more:

Who is he?

‘…I’ll go back to my people, Tråli. You go back to yours. I’ll see what I can come up with. And l’ll see you tomorrow. All right?’

Sandra stands on tiptoes, crying, she takes hold of Daniel’s face, kisses him and then whispers: ‘He’s the father of Tiril, the one I work with, and Malene, a girl in my class, he’s their dad.’

‘She’s in your class?’

Sandra nods. ‘Mhm.’

‘Okay,’ says the shorter guy. The one who’s the father of these girls. ‘Where will we meet? When?’

‘It’ll have to be here. No surveillance cameras in the woods, y’know. Same time. Then we’ll see if we have a solution to your problem. And remember: the internet is the root of all evil. So don’t you go turning on that computer now, dude! Set aside a little time with a few good records instead. Number of the Beast! Overkill! Sabbath Bloody Sabbath! Or what do I know, maybe you listen to Coldplay when nobody’s around? Ha ha, fucking bedwetters. Okay, brother. See you tomorrow!’

Then he spits, spins around and leaves.

He staggers out on to the forest path not too far from Daniel and Sandra, tall as a tree, looking neither right nor left, just walking like some sort of Frankenstein in fast motion.

Over by the substation the shorter guy emerges from the bushes. He looks around as though he doesn’t want to be seen. Then he crouches down in front of his dog. He puts his nose against its snout and stays like that for quite a while. Eventually he straightens up, heaves a sigh with his whole body and begins walking. With heavy steps at first, which become gradually lighter. Then he bends down and unhooks the lead from the dog’s collar. He picks a stick up off the ground. The dog freezes, its ears standing straight up. The man holds the stick in the air in front of the keyed-up dog, holds it until the animal is about ready to burst. Then he hurls it in the direction of the football pitch by the school and calls out:

‘Go Zitha! Go on! Good girl!’

The man disappears from view. Daniel turns to Sandra. They look at one another, pupils flitting from side to side in an attempt to capture each other’s gaze.

‘What was that?’ he whispers.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you ever spoken to him?’

‘No … I think his name’s Pål or something, but no, I’ve never really met him,’ she says.

They hold hands, fingers entwining.

‘But you know the daughters?’

‘Well, yeah, a little.’

‘It seems like they’re in trouble.’

‘Yeah’.

They squeeze one another’s hands, tight.

‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sandra sobs. ‘I’m not able to think about it right now. What about us? Are we in trouble? Daniel?’

Daniel looks at her for a long time. Then he says:

‘We’re not in trouble, baby, no fucking way.’

She sobs involuntarily and feels her knees give way.

‘But you need to be getting home,’ he says.

‘Yeah, Mum and Dad are going to kill me, I’m way too late.’

‘Listen, sexy. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. All right? I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’

Sandra nods.

‘I’ll come by the shop,’ he continues, ‘you text me when Tiril has gone and then I’ll come. Then we’ll think about what we can do. Okay? Don’t tell anyone about what you’ve seen, no one, okay?’

She nods again.

‘Every day,’ she says, ‘every day for the rest of our lives, just you and me.’ She strokes him across the cheek. ‘And it felt amazing,’ she adds.

‘That was only the beginning,’ Daniel says proudly, ‘shame we were disturbed.’

‘We have the rest of our lives,’ she whispers, giving him yet another kiss, a long one, and Daniel thinks about how he wants a kiss like that every day, then his life would be in order, then everything would be okay.

She tears herself away from him, reluctantly, and runs off.

Look at that girl.

Look at that ass.

That’s the meaning of life running off right there.

When she’s out of view he begins searching for the moped helmet. His arms are tired, as though he’s been chopping wood all day. Life can be so fucking good. Play the drums. Work out. Party with Dejan and the others. But if your woman wants you to stay home with her then you better know what to say. Sure thing, baby. Because when you’ve found a girl who puts up with a lot and gives back so much, you need to hold on to her, hold on tight.

But what is the father of those two girls up to?

There’s my helmet. On the gravel in front of the substation.

Girls. They’re taking over the whole world.

31. § 196 (Tong)

To the right of the sea-green cell door hangs the torn-out page of a notepad. There’s nothing written on it. It’s just hangs there, sellotaped to the wall, at head height next to the light switch.

There’s a cork notice board on the wall between the door and the bed. No pictures pinned to it, no family photos, just two postcards and three pornographic clippings. Mina from Flekkefjord, a cheerful brunette with a navel piercing, small tits and an African ass. And two other girls, without names, kissing one another.

There are tinned foods, bottles, ketchup, a couple of sandwich spreads as well as some toiletries lying on the end of the desk. Along with two packs of chocolate chip cookies. CSI: Miami is playing out on a 24-inch flatscreen on the centre of the desk. A few binders stand along the bookshelf, in addition to a couple of crime novels. Harlan Coben. Wilbur Smith. A book about meditation: Meditation, Path to the Deepest Self.

He stands in the centre of the room. Feels the weight distribution on the soles of his feet. Three points. Under his big toe, under his little toe and on the edge of his heel. Takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and exhales slowly while he feels the balance strengthen his body. Neck straight. Muscles tensed from his armpits to his fingertips. Knees active, thighs strong. Silent.

There’s enough jabberers, in here as well as out there, and if they’re not talking your head off then they’re telling you what you want to hear and one is just as bloody annoying to listen to as the other.

Tong opens his narrow eyes. Tightens his fists. He propels himself towards the torn-out page taking only a couple of purposeful strides. He opens his palms, kicks out with his right foot and makes contact with it before landing with precision on the floor again. Bullseye.

He straightens up, bows as though a master stood in front of him and walks the few steps to the little bathroom, where he — unlike many other inmates — has his own shower. Tong is in newly renovated A3 and he’s a guard’s helper, two advantages in so old a prison, with so many dingy cells, run-down blocks, poor ventilation and often times four men to a room.

He bends down and takes hold of the blue-and-white towel with the words ‘Correctional Services’ written across it. Squeezes it before lifting it to his forehead and wiping the small band of sweat below his hairline from the half-hour of training he’s been doing since he was locked in for the night.

A day and a half, then he’ll be out. Then a new life begins. A new style. A new Tong. Quit the drugs. Quit working with Jani and Rudi. He’s moving up a notch. Get the situation with Cecilie sorted out. In or out. All or nothing.

Third conviction. Åne prison is all right but he’s tired of it. The first time, in the mid-nineties, was okay. A good bunch on C2 back then, the older screws still say it. ‘Jesus, Tong,’ Hangelanden says, ‘what you lot had going on in C2 back then, best block we’ve ever had.’ Were good, those times. Almost everyone was someone you knew. Rune, Espen, Diddien and … anyway. All in the past. Only immigrants here now. Back then it was ninety per cent white and ten per cent black. Now it’s the other way around. Now it’s ninety per cent immigrants. The blacks sitting in for rape, the paedos and then the Lithuanians, the Polacks and the Romanians. Idiots who can’t pull off a real job, the ones who stand in your room at night rummaging through your handbag. The ones who smash your windscreen and take your stereo. The ones who are happy to get into a fight, who bump off one another all the time and who send the daily wage they get at Åne home to Poland and think life’s hunky-dory in here. Fifty-six kroner. Fantastic immigration policy. What are they doing here? Tong is adopted but no way does he see himself as a foreigner. He’s Norwegian, he just has the wrong complexion. Simple as that. Send the fuckers home. Close the floodgates. Full stop.

Doing time in Åne isn’t like it was. Things were slacker, there were more fights in the exercise yard and the screws weren’t as extreme about doing everything by the book as they are now.

Tong has stayed clean this time. He’s kept away from the others, been strict. Not that he’s become a Christian or anything, but simply because he couldn’t face it any more. And he’s tried to get that into that kid Bønna’s skull. But he doesn’t get it. He thinks prison is fucking great, you can relax here and it’s a lot less stress than outside. ‘Bønna,’ Tong says, ‘listen to an old dog, that’s what I used to think too. But when you land in here for the third time, then you start to see you’ve screwed up. You realise it’s a pile of shit, the whole thing. You’re fed up with it.’

Tong turns the tap on, lets the water run for a few seconds, bends down, opens his mouth and drinks. He’s got an okay bathroom at least. Was a relief coming here after the first few months in the old block. Rooms without ventilation, rooms without a bog.

Being in the nonce wing is different from doing time for assault or dope. First time he was sent down was for complicity in trafficking of grade A drugs. Four years, got probation after three. That was all right. The second time, aggravated assault, eighteen months, probation after a year. No problem for Tong to get out on probation once he’s inside. No difficulty adapting to the system. But this time it’s different. Being stuck on the nonce wing is very fucking different. Even though he’s not a paedo, even though every inmate in the prison knows who Tong is — he’s not even on the paedo wing — it’s different. The looks the other prisoners send him, they’re different. It’s as though they enjoy it, the fact that he’s not serving time for drugs or violence. As though they want to make him out to be a bit of a paedo all the same.

And if he runs into that girl, that little fucking whorebag, if he so much as catches sight of her again, then she’ll be sorry. No fucking way she looked like she was fourteen. No fucking way she behaved like she was either.

Everything had gone well. They were partying after the warehouse job in Orre. They’d made off with over sixty laptops and a load of other equipment. Then they headed over to that horny bastard Hansi’s place, and there’s always a young crowd there, girls and boys, and line after line on the glass table. She sat on his lap, wanted cocaine and speed and everything she could get, rubbed her crotch against him like he was a car and her pussy was the car wax. He took her into the bedroom and banged her in every hole a woman has. What’s wrong with that?

That’s what he said to the lawyer: ‘Listen, Hanne, no fucking way did she look fourteen, I was off my head, but I didn’t do anything wrong. She wanted me and I wanted her and what’s wrong with that?’

Hanne did her best. She was his prosecutor last time and like he told her: ‘I’ve had you as a prosecutor, Hanne, you were one vicious bitch, now I want you on my side.’ Ah well. Not her fault. It was that slut’s fault.

What he’s going to do about Cecilie, he really doesn’t know.

But he’s done working with those idiots. Rudi and Jani. All done.

Tong gets to his feet. He takes a chocolate chip cookie from the open packet and chews it slowly. His hair is jet black, his facial features are sharply carved as though someone had cut them with a knife. He swallows the biscuit, making sure there’s no crumbs left in his mouth. He straightens up, tenses his body, opens his eyes wide, doesn’t blink. Assumes the stance. Finds balance. Propels himself at the wall.