The Therapist

by Helene Flood

  Arild has taken down all three cameras and set them on the kitchen counter so I can take a look. They’re small, the size of the tiny erasers on the end of mechanical pencils, with a short cable attached. At their base is a flat circle the size of a one-kroner coin. That’s the transmitter, Arild explains. It sends data to the recipient’s computer, or even to his mobile. For a moment there’s an inkling of admiration in Arild’s voice – just think what’s possible with modern technology! Then he shows me the pieces of black tape used to hold the cameras in place: the one in the hallway on the edge of the ceiling lamp; the one in the kitchen on the inside of the refrigerator grill; the one in the bedroom on a lamp. The microphones are just as small, and the cameras in both the kitchen and the bedroom had microphones attached. If they’re cunningly hidden, they’re extremely difficult to spot. Arild isn’t sure whether he’d say these were cunningly hidden – they were half-hidden, perhaps – but they’re easy to overlook if you don’t know what you’re looking for, and especially if you have no reason to suspect that they would be there at all. He has conducted a thorough search of the house. He can’t rule out the possibility of something being in the loft, but the cellar, stairs, and the ground and first floors he’s sure about. The rooms in which I spend my time are now surveillance-free.

  Then he shows me my security system – and it consists of some serious equipment. Outside the front door is a light with a motion sensor. If anyone comes within range of the sensor, the light will turn on. There’s another one of these by the terrace door.

  “Don’t be scared if one of them gets triggered,” Arild says. “Very often, it’s just a cat. But if you’re a person looking to break in somewhere, and you suddenly find yourself lit by a floodlight, you’ll be in for a real shock.”

  There’s also a camera outside, attached just under the roof above the front door. All this gives me a wonderful sense of satisfaction: now I’m the one installing the cameras. The camera continually records and sends the footage to the security centre in Økern, as well as to me. Arild helps me to download an app so that I can watch the video on my mobile. We log in, and see the empty front doorstep.

  I now also have the mother of all locks on the front door, a huge thing with several keys and a fat safety chain on the inside. Arild shows me how motion detectors have been installed in the hallway and the kitchen, on the veranda, and on the stairs up to the first floor. They were installing these when they found the cameras. He’s attached a camera to the wall outside my bedroom, so that I can also have eyes on the stairs and outside my bedroom door. He shows me how yet another hefty lock on the bedroom door works, and hands me a set of keys that looks as if it might belong to a caretaker. The bedroom window now has a reinforced hinge, so that I can leave it open at night, sure that it’s almost impossible for anyone to crack it open. If the alarm is triggered it’ll howl like a banshee throughout the entire house, as well as at their constantly manned security centre, where one of Arild’s two apprentices, Kristoffer or the other trainee, will be sitting, keeping an eye on things. The instant the alarm is triggered the apprentice will jump into the car and call me on the way. Arild shows me how I can turn off the alarm, but recommends that I let it scream for a couple of minutes to scare away the intruder. Kristoffer will say “octavia” when he calls, to which I will answer “risotto”. The code words have been set by him, in case the intruder is someone who knows my way of thinking. It all seems very complex, and I like it. I like everything about it – the bunch of keys, the app for the surveillance video, the code words. I feel safe.

  It’s almost eight by the time Arild is ready to leave. It must be way past his normal working hours.

  “Thank you for being so kind,” I say.

  He shrugs, looks young all of a sudden.

  “I have a daughter,” he says. “If it was her . . .”

  We say our goodbyes and he drives away. I go back inside, lock the front door, put on the safety chain and go upstairs. Look around me at my house, secured like a fortress.

  I’m home.

  Now things will be different, we promise each other. We raise our glasses of cheap bubbly as the New Year’s fireworks colour the sky red and blue and green. We’ll take Tenerife home with us – all this, which is who we really are, which is really us, we say to each other. After all, this is how it used to be. We’ve always had fun together. Always taken care of one another. It’s just that there’s been so much that’s happened over the past year – the house, the money, the work. But things will be different now.

  “I’m going to stop using snus,” Sigurd says. “It’s a stupid thing to do anyway.”

  “I’ll stop nagging so much,” I say. “I know that all the work on the house takes time, that you’re doing the best you can.”

  “I’ll stop bugging you about finding more patients.”

  “I’ll support you when you’re busy at work and have to work long days.”

  “I won’t work as many long days,” Sigurd says. “I’ll make sure that improves. I’m done with Atkinson.”

  We seal our agreement with a kiss. Things will be different now. But we’re already afraid. As if even mentioning our everyday lives in Oslo, while here on holiday where we’re having such a good time, threatens to ruin everything. Afterwards, we say no more about it.

  It starts well. Sigurd works fewer evenings; I stop mentioning the fact that our bathroom isn’t finished. We go out together every now and again – not anything expensive, but we eat dinner at a pub and go to the cinema occasionally. On my birthday Sigurd books a table at a mid-priced restaurant and we have a few drinks and try to resurrect the atmosphere from Tenerife. We sort of manage it. We’re home by half past midnight; make love before we fall asleep.

  When does it change? When Sigurd starts working more? One day in February when he comes home late he says he’s been to the Atkinsons’ again – “She never fucking gives up,” he says. Now there’s less light in the stairwell than she’d imagined, and he has to start all over again. I find a box of snus in his jacket pocket.

  “Are you using snus again?” I ask him. He sighs heavily.

  “It helps me stay focused when I’m working late,” he says.

  It won’t be like before, he says to me – it’s just for a while. I brush my teeth wearing sandals because the concrete floor of the bathroom is freezing cold, and then I think, why should I hold back when he doesn’t?

  “Not to sound the way I used to,” I say, “but it’s so cold in the bathroom, I don’t know how much more I can take. Couldn’t we make an effort this weekend – have a look at tiles and heating options for the floor? Just to get started?”

  “And how are we going to pay for that?” Sigurd says. “My pockets aren’t exactly overflowing with cash these days – maybe yours are different?”

  Not like before, we say. We won’t hold anything against one another. We have to be able to mention the challenges of everyday life.

  I’m not sure when we slid back into our old ways; I think it must have happened gradually. Just as we gradually stopped talking about how things were different from how they’d been before Christmas, things gradually stopped being different, too.

  Sigurd working longer hours – sending a text: I’ll be late. Home nine or ten. He eats leftovers in the kitchen, or a sandwich if I haven’t made anything. I prepare a proper dinner more and more rarely, because what’s the point? He sits in front of the T.V., his laptop on his knees. I go to bed first. He says he’ll be up soon. I’m often asleep by the time he comes to bed. Even if I’m still awake, we’re too tired for anything other than a quick kiss. He’s out of the house in ten minutes in the mornings. I never go anywhere; am always at home.

  He tells me he’s taking a cabin trip with the guys, and I suppress the urge to ask him how on earth he has time for that when the bathroom is still unfinished. I get an e-mail from Ronja – she’s in Argentina, teaching En
glish and learning the tango. I have no-one to take a cabin trip with.

  It’s dark outside when he leaves, early that morning. I wake as he leans over me and kisses me on the forehead.

  “I’m going now,” he whispers. “Just go back to sleep.”

  I hear his footfall on the stairs, but must be asleep before the door clicks shut behind him.

  Friday, March 13: Krokskogen

  The ringing shakes me violently awake. Although ringing isn’t right – the sound is more invasive than that. More a roaring or howling. I jump into a half-sitting position, fumbling half-blind through the objects on the bedside table for my mobile so I can orient myself, but give up and cover my ears with a pillow first. I clamp the pillow over both ears with one arm as I manage to find my mobile with the other. It’s four-thirty in the morning and the display says ALARM! ALARM! ALARM! in capital letters and irascible exclamation marks. I get up, bare feet slapping across the cold floor and still holding the pillow over my head as I cross the room to the control panel Arild installed for me. I have first to identify myself by fingerprint and then enter a code, and all the while the alarm continues to shriek its stabbing thrusts, angry and threatening, so loud that it hurts my ears when I can no longer keep them covered with the pillow. I enter the code incorrectly the first time because the pillow slips, and the panel emits a high-frequency, piercing beeping that can only be heard in the space between two blasts of the alarm. On my second attempt I get the code right, and the howling stops.

  The silence is unfamiliar after all the racket. I have to hand it to Arild – he’s installed a proper alarm. It wouldn’t surprise me if half of Nordberg were on their feet after this. I sink down onto the bed, feeling deaf after the blaring siren, as if I can no longer hear the usual sounds of the night – the creaking of the timber, the wind outside, a car moving down Carl Kjelsens vei or the train down at Holstein station – because my hearing has been muffled by the noise. Then my telephone buzzes.

  “Hello,” I say.

  My voice is small in the silence left in the alarm’s wake.

  “Octavia,” says the voice on the other end.

  “Risotto,” I say.

  “This is Kristoffer from Arild’s Security.”

  “Hi.”

  “Is everything O.K.?”

  I haven’t managed to check.

  “I think so,” I say.

  “Where are you?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  “Is the lock untouched?”

  I go across to the door and check. The thick chain is hanging there, just as it was when I went to bed. I tug on the door; it’s firm in its frame.

  “Yes,” I say. “It seems so.”

  “Good,” says Kristoffer. “I’m on my way down to the garage now. I’ll be with you in around fifteen minutes. Just stay in the bedroom for now – I’ll check the house when I arrive.”

  “O.K.,” I say.

  For someone so young, the apprentice seems to have a great deal of authority in a crisis.

  “In the meantime, you can take a look at the video footage,” he says.

  It feels good to have something to do. I open the app as soon as I’ve hung up. Sitting on the bed, I can see what happened at the front door from five minutes before the alarm was triggered. Arild’s system has an element of empowerment in it. From having been so unprotected, left to a police force that hasn’t communicated with any noticeable care for me, I now have control myself. I tap the playback icon and see a dark screen where nothing has happened just yet, and feel a certain satisfaction at the fact that I’m now spying on my spy.

  For the first minute I stare at the empty screen. Then, out of the blue, the light comes on. I see my front step, and on it a figure dressed in black, a hand stretched out towards my door. The figure freezes in the light, stands there for a moment, very still. Then it pulls out of the camera’s field of view. A few minutes pass, and nothing happens. At the bottom of the screen a text appears: Automatic light activated 04:33. After two minutes the light turns itself off. I wait. Almost another two minutes pass. Then the light turns on again, an object passing across the screen so quickly that I almost can’t see it at all, it’s gone, and then the text ALARM! appears below the image, in the same warning script as when I checked my mobile. Nothing else happens. If the spy has gone or attempted to break in somewhere else I don’t know, but since the alarm hasn’t gone off again it seems he hasn’t managed to get into the house. I change the view to the camera in the stairwell. It’s empty.

  Several minutes pass, and nothing happens. The worst of my tension begins to fade, and with my mobile in my hand, sitting in my secured control room, I feel fairly safe. I have the kitchen knife there on Sigurd’s bedside table, in case I should need to defend myself, but it seems unlikely I’ll need to use it. Just the thickness of the security chain keeping the door in place puts the idea to shame. I’ve fortified myself. Have got myself the protection I needed.

  I watch the video again. This time I notice that the dark screen isn’t totally dark; the glow of a distant street lamp makes it possible to see the outline of the figure dressed in black before the sensor is triggered. Then the image is flooded with light, and the black figure, moving until this point and stretching out a hand, stands still, then pulls away. Quickly. Backwards. As if he’d burned his fingers on something. I play the video back again. The sequence is so short; just six seconds. I watch it over and over again.

  The figure dressed in black isn’t frightening. First, he’s terrified of the light – there’s something pathetic about it. It isn’t what I would have expected from a psychopathic murderer. Second, he’s thinner than I imagined, more limp. In fact, the more times I watch the film, the clearer this becomes. Perhaps he’s a young boy, or maybe my spy is a woman. I can see nothing of the figure’s face; it’s wearing a hat pulled low, and from the moment the light comes on it keeps its face looking down. Perhaps this is a clever move, to prevent its face being seen by the camera. But it’s also cowardly. To withdraw, head bowed.

  Yes – the more I watch the recording, the safer I feel. So this figure is what’s been scaring the pants off me since Sigurd disappeared. This skittish, slim person has made me so paranoid I’d started to fear for my sanity. This figure – who freezes as soon as a light is turned on him, or her. Who backs out of sight, head bowed, like a scolded dog. Who I now have control over, have scared away – have captured on camera.

  First it makes me want to laugh. I pause the video at the moment in which the black figure takes its first step back, away from the door. Then anger surges within me, from my stomach and up my throat. My arms and legs are filled with energy and intent; my breathing is hard and heavy. I take the kitchen knife from Sigurd’s bedside table, get up from the bed, disarm the alarm, and go across to the door and unlock it.

  The house is dark and silent. I walk quickly down the stairs, the knife in one hand. Once I’ve seen that the living room and kitchen are untouched I become braver, truly tearing down the stairs, stamping my feet as I go. I’m so eager that I forget about the loose treads; painfully stub the toes of my left foot against one of them.

  The frosted glass panel Sigurd put in the front door has been shattered; through the round, gaping hole I can see out towards the trees at the bottom of the drive. The cool night air seeps in. On the floor is an object, surrounded by a few shards of broken glass. I go across to it, squat down before it. Pick it up. Hold it in my hand.

  It’s a garnkule made of glass. Hanging from it is a key and a paper label. The key is shiny. On the label, written in Margrethe’s careful, slanting handwriting: Krokskogen.

  I’m sitting at the kitchen table when Kristoffer arrives. I hear him parking his car; letting himself in; crossing the floor down there and opening a couple of doors. Then he makes his way up the stairs. He starts when he sees me.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “
Hi,” he says. “Is everything O.K.?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw blood down there.”

  “Oh,” I say, looking down at my foot, “that’s just mine. I mean, I stubbed my toe. Nothing to worry about.”

  He nods.

  “I thought you were going to stay in the bedroom?”

  “They threw something into the house. I had to see what it was.”

  He doesn’t look convinced, so I keep going:

  “It could have been a firebomb, or, a what-d’you-call-it – a Molotov cocktail.”

  “What was it?”

  I gesture towards the key, which lies on the table before me. He moves closer to it, squinting at it, stooping to take a proper look.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a garnkule. They’re used as floats on fishing nets. They come in different sizes so you can manoeuvre nets of different weights.”

  I hear the echo of Sigurd as I speak. The misplaced and incomprehensible pride he took in the souvenir that had been his father’s, as if neither I nor anyone else he told about it could understand. Kristoffer looks at me, confused.

  “Our cabin key is attached to it,” I say.

  “Oh. Right.”

  Kristoffer goes out to secure the house, looking upstairs, downstairs, in the loft and cellar, in cupboards and storerooms. It takes him just over half an hour. I feel so calm – I’m in control. The garnkule lies before me and I stare at it – it’s as if the answer might be found there, in the dark green glass that reminds me of the sea.