‘What makes you think that?’ Norah asked.
‘Because you’re not like that.’
‘Like what? Angry? Oh, believe me, I’m angry. Angry enough for ten people.’
‘I know,’ Sandra said. ‘But you’re not stupid. You don’t want to spend the best years of your life in prison. Not because of a piece of shit like him.’
Norah didn’t reply, but lowered the gun a little.
‘Put the gun away, Norah.’ Now it was Max’s turn to reason with her. ‘You’re a good person. And you’re definitely not a murderer.’
Norah thought of Coco and Grimm and, completely irrationally, unable to separate her emotions of the last few weeks from the present situation, she thought of Valerie.
Norah looked at Balder. Balder looked at her.
Norah raised the gun and pulled the trigger.
63
Like water. Time had frozen like water in a lake. Balder was kneeling before her, his eyes squeezed shut. Sandra and Paul had screamed; Max’s hand was clapped to his mouth; Theresa and Grimm just stood there, their arms hanging at their sides.
It was a moment before time began to thaw. The first thing Norah heard was the thud of the gun as it hit the ground. Then she heard someone breathe out and realised that it was her. Then Balder opened his eyes. And then, realising that Norah had shot into the air, high above Balder’s head, everyone started talking at once.
Balder blinked as if waking from a nightmare, but he didn’t move. Norah looked down at him.
His mouth snapped open and shut.
‘Go,’ she said.
He stared at her.
‘Get out of here.’
Balder got up awkwardly and Norah knew from the way he moved that he had wet himself. He looked about him. It occurred to Norah that he was scanning the place for the cameras he’d had installed, looking to see if they were on. The world’s vainest man wanted to know if he was being videoed. Then he pulled himself up to his full height and set off. It didn’t take long for him to leave the bright floodlit circle—only two or three seconds before the darkness began to swallow him up. Grimm watched him go for a moment, clearly unsure whether or not to follow. Norah knew that she wouldn’t have the energy to stop him.
And then Sandra and Max and Paul were there with her, hugging her, and no one said anything for a while.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Norah asked eventually.
‘I had a bad feeling,’ Sandra said. ‘You sounded so strange on the phone. I called Max straight away and he was worried too. I got on the next plane.’
‘I don’t think you know what an unbelievably bad liar you are,’ Max said.
‘Lousy,’ Paul agreed.
‘You have a lot to explain to us,’ Sandra said.
‘I will,’ Norah said. ‘Tomorrow.’
They fell silent again.
‘Norah?’ Paul said when everyone was feeling a little calmer. He pointed at the gun that was still lying on the ground.
‘I wonder if anyone heard the shots,’ Sandra said.
‘I think we’d know by now if they had,’ said Max.
‘Is it still loaded?’ Sandra asked.
‘No.’
‘Okay,’ she said, bending down to pick it up. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘No,’ Norah said, also reaching for the gun. She snatched it up and slipped it into her bag, which was lying on the ground a few metres away. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
When she stood up again she caught Theresa’s eye.
‘Don’t forget to send the video,’ Norah said.
‘I’ll do it as soon as I get home, promise.’
Norah gave her a nod and Theresa vanished into the darkness.
Only Grimm was still standing there; he seemed uncertain what to do. ‘Okay then,’ he said.
Norah didn’t know what to say.
‘I’m sorry about Valerie,’ Grimm said.
His eyes glistened in the darkness. Norah gave him a brief nod then he too turned and left.
‘I’m freezing my bum off,’ said Paul. ‘Haven’t we been here long enough?’
‘Yes,’ Norah said. ‘Let’s go.’
Norah didn’t even wait to get home to ring Coco, but called her from the taxi. Coco picked up at the first ring, but didn’t say her name, the way she usually did.
‘Coco?’ Norah said.
Silence.
‘Hello?’
Silence.
‘Hello?’
Nothing.
‘Coco, can you hear me?’
‘I can hear you,’ Coco said.
‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Norah asked.
Silence.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m speechless,’ said Coco.
Norah understood and hung up with a grin.
Theresa had kept her promise.
64
When she opened the door, her flat came rushing towards her. Suddenly she was alone and all was quiet and still again. Her home. No pictures on the walls, no rugs on the bare boards, no books on the shelves. No ghostly memories floating about between floor and ceiling. Norah stepped in, closing the door behind her, and sat down at the kitchen table. She took her phone from her bag—no reply from Alex, nothing. Of course not. She put the phone aside and listened.
There were no footsteps overhead. Theresa must have gone home to her real flat. No other sounds either; nothing was stirring. Norah went over to the window and looked down onto the square. There was a couple snogging on the exact same spot where Arthur Grimm’s dark figure had once stood peering up at her.
Really, Norah thought, I ought to look down at the pair of them and smile. I ought to feel a huge burden fall from my shoulders because it’s all over.
But it wasn’t all over.
Something wasn’t right.
Norah sat down again and closed her eyes to think.
Something wasn’t right.
Something to do with Grimm.
She got up and was climbing onto the chair to take the book out of the cupboard when she stopped, mid-movement. She knew what was wrong.
She glanced at the clock and thought of calling a cab, but decided it wasn’t wise. Was she going to repeat all her stupid, impulsive mistakes? Was she going to go round to Grimm’s flat in the middle of the night to confront him—after all that had happened? Of course not. She’d wait until morning and she certainly wouldn’t go alone. On the other hand…Was she even right? Or was she just imagining things?
Norah closed her eyes, trying to remember. Grimm had stood before her and seemed to hesitate. Relieved—and yet, at the same time, tense. But then, he was always like that. Like someone about to attack. He had looked at her and said, I’m sorry about Valerie.
Adrenaline shot into her bloodstream, leaving her dizzy.
I’m sorry about Valerie. Those were his words. He hadn’t said, Sorry about your friend, or anything like that—the kind of thing people said when they were talking about someone they didn’t know. No, he’d said, Valerie—and there hadn’t even been any mention of Valerie just then. And the look on his face…He’d had tears in his eyes.
All at once, Norah was certain: Grimm had known Valerie.
She wrestled with herself. No, she thought. She mustn’t confront him alone again. Not after all she’d been through. That would be—
She jumped. Someone was ringing at the door.
She knew who it was even before she heard his voice over the intercom.
‘We have to talk.’
Norah hesitated.
‘What do you want?’
‘I have to talk to you,’ he repeated.
Cursing, Norah buzzed him in and heard him enter the building. She went into the kitchen, loaded the gun and laid it on the chair beside her, covered with a teacloth. Then she hurried back to the door and peered through the spyhole.
I shouldn’t let him in.
Softly, tentatively, he knocked at the door.
Bu
t I have to know.
Norah opened up to him.
That face. Balder had chosen well.
‘May I come in?’ Grimm asked.
‘Of course,’ Norah said, standing aside to let him past. She wasn’t going to walk in front of him.
Grimm squeezed past her and Norah realised that his calm was feigned. He was as tense as before, though he was doing all he could to hide it.
‘Straight ahead,’ said Norah. ‘We’ll sit in the kitchen.’
Grimm obeyed, sat down at the table.
‘So, what do you want?’ Norah asked.
‘You know what I want.’
‘I’m too tired for riddles, Dr Grimm.’
‘Ask me.’
Norah felt herself break into a sweat.
‘What do you want me to ask you?’
‘I made a mistake. And you noticed.’
Norah felt as if something were sticking in her throat, preventing her from swallowing. Something alive.
‘You knew Valerie,’ she said.
Grimm was silent for a long time.
Then he said, ‘Yes. I knew Valerie.’
And when Norah said nothing, ‘I hadn’t thought about her for years. But when you mentioned her to me, it all came rushing back.’
‘Why did you do it?’ Norah asked.
Grimm looked at her in bewilderment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Earlier this evening, in the Prater. You said you were sorry about Valerie. You must have known I’d find that strange. So why did you say it? You were already off the hook.’
Grimm studied his hands on the wooden table.
‘Maybe I wanted to talk about her,’ he said. ‘I’ve never talked about her to anyone.’
Nor have I, Norah thought.
‘How did you come to know her?’ she asked.
‘Pure chance,’ said Grimm.
And he told her everything. How he and Valerie had become close, how their friendship had developed into an affair. It was all completely legal—Valerie was over sixteen—but they’d kept it quiet because they knew people would have disapproved of the age difference.
‘What happened?’
‘She fell in love with another man,’ he said. ‘And left me.’
‘Is that why you killed her?’
Grimm leapt to his feet; the chair clattered to the floor.
‘What did you just say?’
Norah was silent.
‘Are you mad?’ Grimm yelled. ‘Do we have to go through all this again?’
Norah shook her head mutely.
‘Calm down,’ she said.
‘I have an alibi,’ Grimm said. ‘I wasn’t even in town when Valerie died. Anyway, I’m sure you know how she did it.’
He didn’t want to say the words either, Norah thought.
‘Someone could have done it to her,’ she said.
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Grimm. ‘I thought you were Valerie’s best friend. You must have known what she was like.’
‘What was she like?’ Norah asked.
‘Beautiful,’ said Grimm. ‘Funny. But very, very moody. And resentful. And seriously unstable.’
Norah said nothing.
‘I came here to come clean,’ Grimm said. ‘Yes, it’s true, I knew Valerie. Yes, I had an affair with a sixteen-year-old when I was a young man. Some people may find that reprehensible, but it isn’t punishable. Especially as Valerie was—or seemed to me—the more mature of us.’
He sighed.
‘Our affair was over a good six months before she died.’
Norah felt him trying to catch her eye, but kept her gaze firmly on the tabletop.
‘There’s no big mystery, Norah. No shady conspiracy. I didn’t murder Valerie. She killed herself.’
Norah raised her eyes and met Grimm’s gaze, fighting back her tears.
‘I know.’
Norah sat and thought for a long time after Grimm had left. So many of the supposed coincidences of the past few weeks—big and small—had been orchestrated by Balder, but Valerie and Grimm really had known one another. King Coincidence had struck after all.
Norah’s gaze fell on the kitchen cupboard. She climbed on a chair, took out How to Disappear Completely, sat down with it, opened it and pulled out the letter that she had slipped between the pages.
A perfectly ordinary white envelope. Her name in Valerie’s schoolgirl handwriting, like a slap in the face. No address. No stamp. No postmark. The letter had been delivered by hand. For a long time Norah had driven herself half mad, wondering when Valerie had brought it round.
Norah had been at home that evening. She had sat in her room, reading, trying to ignore Valerie’s devastating texts and smiling at Milo’s messages, waiting impatiently for a suitable time to elapse so that she could reply to him without appearing uncool. She hadn’t felt guilty for a moment. For months Valerie had claimed to be in love with some mysterious stranger she couldn’t talk about; Norah had sometimes wondered whether it wasn’t all made up. But Valerie had insisted. And now, all of a sudden, Milo was supposedly the love of her life again. Norah was, quite frankly, pretty sick of Valerie’s moods.
•
She turned the letter over in her hands. When had Valerie written it? And when had she brought it round? What if Norah had seen her posting it? Would she have gone down to her? Would they have made it up? Would everything have turned out differently? Norah tried to avoid stepping on that carousel of what ifs. The fact was she hadn’t found the letter until the following afternoon; her mother had emptied the letterbox while she was at school and left it on her bed. By then everyone knew that Valerie had disappeared.
Norah ran a finger over the paper—the same finger she had used to slit open the envelope all that time ago. She pulled out the letter. She had read it only once before. Almost twenty years ago.
Norah,
I’ve called and texted you hundreds of times, but apparently I’m not worthy of a reply. I loved you. More than I loved Milo, more than I loved anyone—even myself. I don’t know how you could hurt me the way you did. It’s all so fucking unfair. YOU’RE so fucking unfair. You’re probably just a bad person, only ever thinking of yourself. First you use people, then you chuck them. I’m sorry for you, Norah. You’ll never understand what love is. You’ll never find anyone else who loves you the way I loved you, because YOU DON’T DESERVE IT. You’ll never have a real home. You’ll never marry, never have children. You’ll never have any friends and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never belong anywhere. You don’t deserve that either.
I want you to know that I’m doing what I’m doing because of you. Because of what you’ve done. Don’t ever forget that. You’ve broken my heart. And I know I should make peace with you, I know I should write something forgiving, but I can’t. I’m not a fucking liar like you. V.
Norah sat there for a long time, staring at the paper—at Valerie’s soft, round handwriting, so different from the tone of her letter.
When Norah had read the letter back then, as a teenager, she’d immediately panicked and tried to call Valerie. She was just setting off to look for her when she heard she’d been found. Milo told her. It was the last time they spoke.
She never showed anyone the letter or told anyone about it. She felt too ashamed, too guilty.
But she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away either. And now she wondered what would have happened if she’d spoken out back then, instead of keeping silent. If she’d shown someone the letter. Would she have been told what she needed to hear? That it wasn’t her fault. That Valerie was sick. That she was probably more unstable than anyone had realised. That a healthy girl didn’t kill herself just because one of her friends went out with a boy she’d have liked for herself. Would Norah’s life have been different without the burden of her secret?
She thought of Grimm. The rational part of her must have known all along that he was innocent—that Valerie had killed herself.
But there
was another part to her. The part that had a but for every fact—that was always asking are you sure?
Valerie killed herself. Are you sure?
She wrote me a suicide note. Are you sure? How do you know she wasn’t forced to write all that?
And so on.
She had wanted to believe that it wasn’t her fault. That there was some other explanation. Any explanation.
Carefully Norah folded the letter and put it away. She knew what she had to do. It was time for a confession.
65
The lake was still frozen, like back then, but Norah didn’t venture out on it. The ice looked thin and fragile; it wouldn’t hold a grown woman. The trees at its edge were dripping.
Norah looked out over the lake.
This must have been where Valerie waited that night. Norah had imagined it so often—seen her standing here, on the ice, or at the edge of the woods, waiting. How long had she waited before she realised that no one was going to come this time—that she was alone. An hour? Two hours?
Norah shivered. How this place had haunted her.
She no longer knew the exact wording of the dozens of texts she’d received that evening, but she remembered the gist. All those big words. Betrayal, deceit, malice. And the threats.
We are meeting by the lake, aren’t we?
If you don’t come you’ll see what I’m capable of.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t answer. She knew what Valerie could be like and she decided she’d had enough. She wasn’t going to put up with it anymore—wasn’t going to follow that girl’s every command. It wasn’t as if anything dramatic had happened. Okay, so she’d fooled around with Milo. And yes, Valerie had fancied him since primary school—but then, so had Norah. And if he’d suddenly fallen in love with Valerie, would Norah have flipped out like that? No way.
Then there were the threats. Norah hadn’t even thought of them as threats until one day, when Katharina happened to see one of her texts from Valerie. Tell me, she’d asked casually, does Valerie often threaten you? Norah was thrown into confusion. For her, that was just the way Valerie was. A bit of a drama queen, that was all. Valerie was never thirsty; she was always dehydrated. Valerie was never bored; she was always dying of boredom.
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