‘But you can’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do this.’
My stomach ached. I had wandered into a kind of hell.
‘You have to understand, Ingrid,’ I said. ‘Whatever you say, this will have consequences. You’re a fantastic mother-in-law. You do more for Vanja, and you mean more to Vanja than anyone else. And I’m incredibly happy about that. And I want this to continue. We don’t have much family around us, as you know. But if you won’t come clean we can’t trust you. Do you understand? Not that you won’t be able to see Vanja, because you will, whatever happens. But if you won’t come clean, if you don’t agree to put this behind you, you won’t be able to see her on your own. You’ll never be alone with her. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Yes, I do. It’s a great shame. But that’s the way it’ll have to be. I can’t confess to doing something I haven’t done. Even though I feel like it. I can’t do it.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’re not going to get any further with this. I suggest we drop it for a while, and then we can discuss it again and work out what to do.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But it won’t change anything, you know.’
‘OK.’
We walked down the steps in front of the French school and followed Döbelnsgatan up to Johannesplan, along Malmskillnadsgatan and down David Bagares gata, all the way without saying a word. Me stooped with long strides, her almost jogging beside me. It shouldn’t be like this, she was my mother-in-law; there was no reason in the world for me to correct her, or punish her, except this. It felt unworthy. And even more unworthy when she denied everything.
I put the key into the lock and swung the gate open for her. She smiled and went in.
How could she be so calm, and answer with such confidence?
Could it have been Linda after all?
No, of course it couldn’t.
But was I wrong? Had I made a mistake?
No.
Or?
In the yard the white-clad hairdresser was smoking. I greeted her and she smiled. Ingrid stopped outside the front door, which I unlocked.
‘I’m going now,’ she said as we went up the stairs. ‘We can discuss this later, as you suggested. Perhaps you’ll have found out what happened by then.’
She took her handbag and two of the plastic bags, smiled as usual as she said goodbye, failed to give me a hug though.
Linda came into the hall after she had gone.
‘How did it go? What did she say?’
‘She said she hadn’t been drinking when she’d been with Vanja. Not today, either. And she couldn’t understand how the levels in the bottles had gone down.’
‘If she’s an alcoholic, denial is part of the whole picture.’
‘Possible,’ I said. ‘But what the hell can we do? She just says no, I didn’t do it. I say yes, you did, and she says no, I didn’t. I can’t prove anything. It’s not as if we have CCTV in the kitchen.’
‘As long as we know, it doesn’t matter much. If she wants to play games she’ll have to take the consequences.’
‘Which are?’
‘We-ell. We can’t leave her alone with Vanja.’
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ I said. ‘What a pile of shit. Fancy having to walk around with my mother-in-law and insist that she’s been drinking. What is this?!’
‘I’m glad you did. She’ll probably admit to it in the end.’
‘I don’t think she will.’
How quickly a life sets new roots. How quickly you move from being a stranger in a town to being absorbed into it. Three years ago I had been living in Bergen, at that time I knew nothing about Stockholm and knew no one there. Then I went to Stockholm, the unknown, populated by foreigners, and gradually, day by day, though imperceptibly, I began to thread my life into theirs until now they were inseparable. If I had gone to London, which I might well have done, the same would have happened there, just with different people. It was that arbitrary, and so momentous.
Ingrid rang Linda the next day and admitted everything. She added she didn’t think it was that serious herself, but since we did, she would implement the necessary measures to ensure it would never be a problem for anyone again. She already had an appointment to see an alcohol therapist and had decided to spend more time concentrating on herself and her own needs, as she thought that was where part of the problem lay, with the enormous pressure she put on herself.
Linda was desperate after the conversation because, as she said, her mother was so optimistic and keen it wasn’t possible to have proper communication with her, it was as though she had lost her grip on reality and had started to live in a kind of light, carefree future world.
‘I can’t talk to her! I have no real contact with her. It’s just platitudes and words and how fantastic this and that is. You, for example, had praise heaped on you for the way you handled the situation. I’m fantastic and everything is wonderfully brilliant. But it comes one day after we told her we don’t want her to drink while she’s looking after Vanja. I’m seriously worried about her, Karl Ove. It’s as if she’s suffering, but she doesn’t know she is, if you get me. She represses everything. She deserves to enjoy her twilight years. She shouldn’t have to be tormented and suffer and drink to drown her sorrows. But what can I do? She obviously doesn’t want any help. She won’t even admit there are problems in her life.’
‘But you’re her daughter,’ I said. ‘It’s no wonder she doesn’t want you to help her. Or admit something is not as it should be. Her entire life has been orientated towards helping others. You, your brother, your father, her neighbours. If all of you were to help her, everything would unravel.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. But I just want contact with her, do you understand?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Five days later I received an email with the Aftenposten interview attached. Reading it just made me sad. It was hopeless. I had no one to blame but myself, yet I wrote a long reply to the journalist in which I tried to expand on my side of the matter, that is give it the semblance of seriousness it had in my mind, which of course led to my faring even worse. The journalist rang me straight afterwards, suggested adding my email to the interview on the website, which suggestion I rejected, this wasn’t the point. All I could do was give the newspaper a miss that day and stop thinking about how I came across as stupid. So I was stupid, OK, I would have to live with it. Close-up interviews also included photos of the featured person’s private life, and as I didn’t have any I asked my mother to send me some. Since they hadn’t arrived by the deadline and the journalist was asking for them I rang Yngve, who scanned some and emailed them through while mum’s photos came a week later, carefully glued onto thick card with detailed information underneath in her handwriting. I could see how proud she was and despair rose inside me like a wall. Most of all I felt like disappearing into the depths of a forest somewhere, building myself a log cabin and staying there, far from civilisation and gazing into a fire. People, who needs people?
‘A young Sørlander with nicotine-stained fingers and faintly discoloured teeth,’ he had written. The sentence was indelibly etched in my brain.
But I got what I deserved. Had I not myself written up an interview with Jan Kjærstad many years ago entitled ‘The Man Without a Chin’? And that without appreciating what an insult it was…
Ha ha ha!
No, bugger it, this wasn’t worth the worry. I had to refuse everything from now on, endure the last months as a house husband with Vanja and then resume work in April. Hard, methodical, keeping an eye open for anything that imparted joy, energy and light. Cherish what I had, ignore everything else.