The Quiet Mother

56

Somehow she made it back to her house through the snow and all the Christmas decorations, determined to act normal. Act as if nothing had happened. She was going to forget this and never think about it again. She slunk out the back door of Glaumbær and disappeared into the night. She didn’t ask for help, didn’t scream in despair that she’d been raped. She hid it all inside.

The man had been quick to vanish when he was done, spat a few horrible words at her and left her lying on the floor, paralysed with terror and disgust. Added to that were shame and anger and strange self-recrimination. All of those emotions started festering in her mind, and she would struggle with them for a long time.

She didn’t feel the cold on the way home. Twice she had to stop to puke. She took busy, well-lit streets and was constantly looking around, fearing that the man was following her and would ambush her and do her even more harm. She sped up and started running, and finally ran as fast as her legs would carry her, and when she got home, she locked the door carefully behind her and pulled a chest of drawers in front of it just to be sure. But she still didn’t feel safe. She would never feel completely safe again.

She had bruises on her neck and her entire body was sore, and she was in a great deal of pain where he’d had his way. She felt her body up and down and had no sooner stepped out of the shower than she stepped back into it and washed herself again, as if she could wash off her disgust with soap and water.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she sat down in her small kitchen and stared out the window at the neighbours’ Christmas decorations, red and yellow lights on their balconies and poinsettias in their windows, and tried to clear her mind of what had happened. It was utterly impossible. She could only throw a thin cloak around the burning pain for a brief moment at a time before it pushed its way forward again, absolutely relentless.

The first thing she heard when she turned on the radio the next day was that there had been a huge fire in Reykjavík that night, and that the nightclub Glaumbær had burned to the ground.