‘She’s a fascinating girl,’ Live Smith went on. ‘But then we have so many pupils like that here! What makes Kristiane special is the unpredictability of her predictability. I’ve had many autistic children here, but-’
‘Kristiane is not autistic,’ Johanne said quickly.
Live Smith shrugged her shoulders. But she wasn’t smiling.
‘Autistic, Asperger’s, or perhaps just… special. It doesn’t really matter all that much what you prefer to call it. What I mean is that it’s a pleasure to have her here. She has a wonderful ability to learn, not just to study. She can ask the most remarkable questions, which, if you look at them on her terms, can be strikingly logical.’
This time the smile was genuine. She even laughed out loud, a happy, trilling laugh that was new to Johanne. Given that she knew so little about the family, she knew Kristiane extremely well.
‘But you know all that. I just want you to understand that it isn’t only the teachers who work most closely with Kristiane who have grown fond of her. We all care about her, and learn something new from her every day.’
Johanne tugged at her scarf and licked her lips, which tasted salty.
‘Thank you,’ she said calmly.
‘I’m the one who should be thanking you. I have the best job in the world, and it’s children like your daughter who make me grateful for every single day in this school. So many of our children come up against limitations everywhere. It can mean three steps forward and two steps back. But not with Kristiane.’
‘I have to go,’ said Johanne.
‘Of course. Can you find your own way out?’
Johanne nodded and opened the door. As she let it swing shut behind her, she was aware of the smell of soap in her nostrils. She hurried down the long corridor, the heels of her ankle boots clicking on the newly polished linoleum. When she finally reached the large glass doors at the main entrance, she couldn’t get them open quickly enough.
The winter cold hit her, making it easier to breathe. She slowed down and stuck her hands in her coat pockets. As usual, Kristiane had insisted that they park a few hundred metres from the school so that they could then take the same circuitous route as always.
The weather had finally turned. A long spell of cold without snow had made the ground hard, ready to receive the dry fluffy flakes that were now drifting down over eastern Norway. The ski runs crossing the green lungs which the capital city still felt it could afford to maintain had been crowded with youngsters and parents with small children over the last few days of the Christmas holiday. Fresh, powdery snow covered the slopes every day. Adults and children armed with spades and shovels were busy on frozen football pitches. It wasn’t just that the city was lighter now that it was dressed in white, it was as if its inhabitants gave a collective sigh of relief at the fact that nature had declared herself back to normal. For this season, at least.
Johanne knotted her scarf more tightly against the snowfall, and tried to think rationally.
The file had probably just been misplaced.
She just couldn’t quite manage to believe that.
‘Fuck,’ she muttered. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
She couldn’t work out why she was so upset. True, she was more or less constantly worried about Kristiane, but this was ridiculous.
Misplaced, Live Smith had said.
Johanne increased her pace.
A new, frightening anxiety had sunk its claws into her. It had started with the man by the fence. The man they didn’t recognize, but who called Kristiane by her name. The only unusual thing about the permanent feeling of unease that had tormented her since then was that she was dealing with it alone. Isak treated Kristiane as if she were robust and normal, and always laughed away any worries. Adam had always comforted Johanne in the past, at least when she was feeling particularly low. But now he no longer had the same patience. His resigned expression as soon as she hinted that all was not as it should be with her daughter made her keep quiet more and more often. She tried to calm down, telling herself that she had read too much. All the knowledge she had acquired over the years with Kristiane had become a burden. While Ragnhild knew that strangers could be dangerous, Kristiane was often completely unsuspecting. She might allow just about anybody to take her away.
Sexual predators.
Organ thieves.
She mustn’t think like that. Kristiane was always, always supervised.
She had almost reached the car. It couldn’t be more than an hour since she parked, but the car was snowed in. Not only that, a snow-plough had driven past and left a metre-high pile of snow between the old Golf and a narrow, one-way street.
Johanne stopped. There was no spade in the car. She had left her gloves in Live Smith’s office.
For the first time she dared to follow the thought to its conclusion: someone was watching them.
Not them.
Kristiane.
The Vik-Stubo family had never had curtains in the living room. It didn’t bother them that people could look in from the street, and the room felt lighter for it. However, she had recently begun to imagine something hanging there, something not too heavy. Something to stop passers-by from looking in. The people she didn’t know, but who were out there. The rational part of her brain knew that a man by a garden fence, a friendly man in a toy shop and a missing file didn’t exactly constitute stalking. But her gut feeling said something completely different.
Angrily, she started sweeping the snow off her car with her bare hands. Her fingers quickly grew stiff with cold, but she didn’t stop until the car was completely clear. Then she started kicking away the compacted pile left by the snowplough. Her toes were sore and her ankles ached by the time she finally decided it would be possible for her to get the car out.
She flopped down on the driver’s seat, stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. She pulled out much too quickly into the road, driving over all the snow she hadn’t cleared away. She skidded and shot off, travelling at twice the speed limit. At the first junction she realized what she was doing, and slammed the brakes on just in time to avoid a collision with a lorry coming from the right.
She sat there leaning forward, her hands resting on the wheel. The adrenaline made her brain crystal-clear. She could plainly see how absurd it was to think anyone would be interested in watching a fourteen-year-old girl from Tåsen.
As soon as she put the car back in gear once more, she felt less worried.
‘You mustn’t worry because there isn’t enough to do,’ the secretary said sweetly, handing Kristen Faber a file. ‘If a client doesn’t turn up, it gives you time to do so many other things. Tidying your desk, for example. It’s rather a mess in there.’
The solicitor grabbed the file and opened it as he headed for the door of his office. A miasma of sweat, aftershave and neat alcohol lingered in the air around the secretary’s desk. She opened a drawer and took out an air-freshener spray. Soon the smell of last night’s boozing mingled with the intense perfume of lily of the valley. She sniffed the air and pulled a face before putting away the aerosol.
‘Hasn’t he even called?’ shouted Kristen Faber, before a coughing fit saved her the trouble of replying. Instead she got to her feet, picked up a steaming cup of coffee from a low filing cabinet behind her and followed him into his office.
‘No,’ she said when he had finished spitting phlegm into an overflowing waste-paper basket. ‘I expect something came up. Here. Drink this.’
As Kristen Faber took the cup, he almost spilled the coffee.
‘This fear of flying is too bloody much,’ he muttered. ‘Had to drink all the way back from fucking Barbados.’
The secretary, a slim, pleasant woman in her sixties, could well imagine that there had been a great deal of fucking in Barbados. She also knew he hadn’t restricted his drinking to the duration of the flight.