The Reckoning: Children's House Book 2 (Freyja and Huldar)

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  But now he was in rehab, he said, and had found God. If he could share his experiences and help others when he got out, he would be content. Freyja felt sick. Not one word of regret, not a single hint of remorse for what he had done, not one mention of the girl’s parents. And naturally not a word about the victim, whom he had robbed first of her innocence, then of her life. Instead, there was a long description of how God had forgiven him and intended to use his energies in future, since by his own account he was now doing God’s work. If that was really the case, God had better review His policy of forgiveness and get Himself a lie detector, pronto – and fire His personnel manager while He was about it.

  In spite of the rage it stirred up, Freyja continued reading. She couldn’t remember whether the man had mentioned his family. If he had, there might be some information about Thröstur, and she was also curious to know if Jón’s wife had maintained any contact with him while he was in prison. But either the journalist hadn’t asked about his family or Jón hadn’t been willing to answer.

  The article left Freyja with a bad taste in her mouth. She was convinced of three things: one, that he was faking his newfound piety. The way he kept banging on about God simply didn’t ring true. He wouldn’t be the first person to hide his real nature behind a sudden conversion to Christianity. All you had to do was memorise a few choice quotations and trot them out at regular intervals. It didn’t hurt either to carry a Bible around with you and cast mawkish looks heavenwards, especially when there were rays of light piercing the clouds.

  Two, little faith should be placed in his protestations of sobriety. How was he supposed to carry on drinking behind bars? He had no choice but to go on the wagon while he was locked up. Besides, attending AA meetings was a pleasant distraction in an otherwise dreary existence at Litla-Hraun, and even those who had no problems with drink turned up to the meetings simply to break the monotony of their days.

  Three, Freyja was convinced it was a lie that this was the first and only time he had given in to his lust for children. Paedophile urges didn’t suddenly manifest themselves in middle age. A man like him, constantly under the influence of alcohol, was bound to have abused a child before. And Freyja, familiar with so many other distressing examples, could guess with a fair degree of accuracy who that victim had been. The child closest to hand, of course, which meant either Thröstur or his sister Sigrún. Perhaps both. Presumably that was why social services had intervened in Thröstur’s case when he was eight years old, but that didn’t explain why the files and other paperwork had gone missing. Nor why Sólveig, who had treated the boy, had behaved so oddly. Given who Thröstur’s father was, Freyja was sure the woman must remember him. The headteacher’s ignorance was more plausible, since the boy’s mother must have withheld his father’s identity. She must have wanted a new start for herself and her children; to leave the past behind. That would explain their frequent moves too.

  To acquaint herself with the details, she looked up the records of the trial. The annual report could wait. So could Molly.

  Chapter 10

  ‘I’m freezing to death. Can we please just leave?’ Thröstur hugged his jacket tighter around himself. Though the zip was broken the jacket still had plenty of wear in it, so there was no need to shell out for a new one. Anyway, with the total lack of choice on this shitty island, he didn’t know where he’d find another one this cool. His teeth were chattering and a punishing wind was seeking out the rips in his trousers. The rips had cost him extra; they weren’t a sign of wear. But now all they revealed was gooseflesh.

  He was such an idiot. He’d forgotten what day it was and dressed with his image in mind, not for hanging around out here. Not that remembering would have helped much, since he hardly owned any clothes that were suitable. He was wearing his only decent pair of boots – black, laced high up the calf – but even they were freezing as he didn’t have any socks on. They weren’t genuine Doc Martens, but similar enough to fool people from a distance. At least, he hoped so.

  Resenting the weather was pointless; he should just call it a day. ‘It’s so fucking cold, Sigrún. We might as well come back tomorrow.’ If only he could rekindle the heat that had flowed through his veins earlier when that bloody cop and that bitch of a psychologist had blurted out their errand, he could have stood naked in a blizzard without feeling a thing.

  His sister shook her head. ‘Let’s wait. Coming back tomorrow wouldn’t be the same.’ She was wrapped up so warm that you could hardly see her face. His gaze fell on her hands. She was wearing an old pair of gloves and had cut off the last two fingers and sewn up the holes on the right hand. Why she couldn’t just wear mittens to hide the stumps like she used to was beyond him. But he would never refer to her missing fingers, though whether this was to protect her or himself he didn’t know.

  He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. He’d heard somewhere that your blood vessels contract when you smoke, which should theoretically make you feel warmer. This was as good a time as any to put it to the test. Besides, he was desperate for a fag; he hadn’t had one since they were waiting at the bus stop. The habit was one reason why his dole money was so quick to run out.

  ‘Don’t smoke.’ Sigrún flapped her hands in the air as if her brother had already lit up. ‘If they see the smoke, they might guess we’re here. It’ll only draw attention to us.’

  The cigarette was already half out of the packet but Thröstur pushed it back in. If he ignored her and lit up, it would only stress her out. And she was right, too; after all, his sister was an expert at avoiding being noticed. In contrast to his own ‘fuck you’ attitude, her aim was to be as inconspicuous as possible, almost invisible. She had been like this for as long as he could remember: desperate to pass under the radar, because the minute someone noticed her, disaster would strike. She wasn’t safe anywhere: at school or at home, at clubs or games, any activity that involved other kids. Although the teasing and bullying had diminished as the years went by, she was still suffering the effects. Don’t see me. Don’t notice me. I’m not here.

  This desire for invisibility was reflected in her clothes. Strangers, if they noticed her at all, would get the impression that Sigrún was going out of her way to be as dowdy as possible. You’d have thought she was Amish in those drab-coloured clothes that were too long and baggy to suit anyone. Her hair matched: long, frizzy and mousy. She had never owned any mascara or lipstick, and although he would be the last to admit it, he spent more time in front of the mirror than she did.

  He knew why. So he let her creep along the walls without commenting on the fact. That was her method; his was the exact opposite. The tunnel rings now making his earlobes ache with the cold were a sign of that. ‘How long have we been hanging around here anyway?’

  ‘Not that long.’ Sigrún peered round the corner of the large, white church. ‘They must be about to leave.’ She leant against the wall again but he couldn’t follow her example; the concrete was too chilly. In her intact left hand she was holding a bunch of flowers they had bought at a supermarket before catching the bus to Fossvogur. The flowers were a bit limp and as uninspiring as you’d expect from such a cheap bunch. It didn’t matter: bouquets from the florist’s cost three times as much and it would be ridiculous to waste all that money on a dead person. It was the thought that counted. Sigrún stole another look round the corner. ‘As soon as they’ve gone we can head over.’

  Thröstur bit back a protest. The annual visit to the grave was important to his sister, though personally he thought it a waste of time. The dead were dead, and wouldn’t be any less dead however many people flocked to their graves. But it wasn’t often that she asked him a favour, so to refuse would be out of the question. He had nothing better to do, anyway. He never did. He had been unemployed for the last six months and although he was getting a bit bored, anything was better than spending one’s days in meaningless drudgery. All his jobs to date had been boring, pointless and badly paid. He wasn’t that much worse off on
the dole, all things considered, and not having to get out of bed in the mornings was a big plus. He wasn’t exactly rolling in it, though: the last job he’d had was part time and he hadn’t realised that would reduce his entitlement to benefits when he lost it. But it was easy to be wise after the event, and the money just about covered the necessities, so it could be worse. Still, there was no denying it would be nice to be able to afford a proper pair of DMs. And a new jacket.

  ‘I’m freezing my balls off here.’ The instant he’d said it he regretted complaining. The look she gave him through the scruffy mane of hair blowing over her face was hurt and anxious. She was so desperately vulnerable. The slightest hint of criticism that most people wouldn’t even notice could assume huge proportions in her eyes. He should have known better.

  Thröstur hastily backtracked: ‘Anyway, whatever. They must be leaving in a minute. How long can they hang about in this weather?’ He noticed Sigrún relax slightly. Unfortunately, though, the couple were as well prepared for the weather as she was: the woman in a shiny, metallic-coloured down jacket with a leather collar; the man dressed just as warmly, if not as colourfully. What a bugger. They could lie down and take a nap on the gravestone if they felt like it without suffering any ill effects. In which case he would die of cold out here and end up with a stone of his own. Flippant though the thought was, it sent a strange shudder through him. It must be the effect of the cemetery. Though he was only twenty-four and unlikely to die any time soon, it was an unsettling thought that one day there would be a headstone with his name on it.

  The realisation that Sigrún would be the only person to visit his grave just made the idea even bleaker. Their mother was unlikely to have the time. She worked flat out and when she did come home she mostly shut herself away in her room, completely knackered. That wasn’t going to change any time soon. She was hopeless – in his opinion, not Sigrún’s. His sister loved their mother as a child should, whereas he could never forgive her. Sigrún argued that there was nothing to forgive. In her opinion, their mother couldn’t have acted any differently. She was a victim of circumstance. Well, Thröstur had no sympathy for her kind of victim; he kept it for the real ones, like him and his sister.

  He didn’t hate his mother, though he didn’t love her. For years he had felt nothing but anger, but as time wore on and their horrific past grew more remote, he found himself pitying her. It was the nearest he came to affection.

  You couldn’t help feeling sorry for her when her life was so shit. It didn’t even matter that her present wretched existence was self-imposed. It was her own choice to isolate herself and work herself to death in a futile attempt to atone for what could never be undone. She didn’t have the guts to set fire to herself, perform hara-kiri, or flog herself with a whip like people in other cultures. Her penance was to turn herself into a human doormat. And she dragged him and his sister down with her, though perhaps she didn’t realise it. She probably thought she was sacrificing herself for them and settling her debts that way. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  He was hit by the craving for nicotine again as he contemplated their miserable, rootless existence. Everyone else seemed to have some kind of security in their lives, some kind of anchor, but not him and Sigrún. After their so-called father had been put away, they had moved house every year for the next five years. Every time people worked out who they were, they had to pack their bags. The moment the other staff where their mother worked started whispering, she would change jobs, moving from one low-paid occupation to the next. So it had gone on until she was hired by a fish factory and discovered that the foreign women who worked with her on the conveyor belt hadn’t a clue about her background. Once she’d made it clear that she wasn’t after their friendship, they had left her in peace.

  As her wages from the fish factory weren’t sufficient to support the three of them, she cleaned offices in the evenings after everyone else had gone home. The empty buildings offered another kind of respite from the glances and whispering, and she seemed content enough with this, though her chronic fatigue was clear to see in her haggard face and drooping shoulders. When Thröstur quit school after year ten and started work, she could have taken it a bit easier, but didn’t, telling him to put his wages in a savings account for the future instead. Ever the martyr. He had jumped at her offer but squandered his money as quickly as he earned it.

  Although Sigrún did well at school, she had also left after completing her compulsory education and initially joined their mother at the fish factory, where she was miserable. Hampered by her two missing fingers, she couldn’t keep up and was forever being told off, though she worked as hard as she possibly could. Yet, typically, she had lasted a whole year before finally handing in her notice.

  Next she took a job as a filing clerk at the insurance company where she still worked now, happily tucked away in a back office, alone among the papers that needed archiving. She performed her job so well that she had made herself indispensable, though her wages didn’t reflect the fact. But then she had never requested a pay rise or made any other demands. What she did with her money was a mystery. She didn’t seem to spend anything. Presumably she paid it into a savings account, as their mother had advised Thröstur to do, which meant she must have built up quite a tidy sum by now. He was always urging her to treat herself and stop this ridiculous penny-pinching, but she just looked shamefaced when he asked what the hell she was saving up for. Perhaps she dreamt of a round-the-world trip, of travelling as far from her roots as humanly possible. He could understand that.

  Thröstur stamped his feet in a vain attempt to get the circulation back in his toes.

  ‘Shh! I think they’re coming. Shall I take a look?’ Sigrún pulled the hood away from one ear and listened. Once he had stopped his stamping, Thröstur could hear the crunching of snow and the faint echo of a conversation. It must be them. At last. With any luck they would hurry to their cars and take themselves off. They were unlikely to stand around having a long chat.

  When he and Sigrún had arrived, one of the cars had already been parked there and the other was just pulling in. The drivers had got out, nodded to each other – rather coldly, it seemed – and briefly shaken hands, after shifting their flowers from their right to their left arms. Their bouquets were large and cumbersome, unlike the pathetic bunch Sigrún was holding. Neither the woman nor the man had so much as glanced in their direction, and Thröstur and Sigrún had edged into the shelter of the church so as not to attract their attention.

  Thröstur would hardly describe himself as sentimental but even he couldn’t help reflecting on the sad fate of the parents’ relationship. The first time he and Sigrún had visited the grave, the couple had arrived in the same car and held each other tight as they walked into the cemetery. He didn’t even like to think about the funeral, at which the parents had seemed, if anything, even closer. As they followed the small white coffin, looking absolutely shattered, their faces had taken on identical expressions of horror when they spotted Thröstur, Sigrún and their mother. The three of them had sneaked into a back pew, where their mother had thought they could pass unnoticed.

  Every single head in the congregation had turned in their direction when the couple stopped dead, staring at them, transfixed. That moment had felt like a lifetime. Then the woman had slumped against her husband, her eyes smudged black from the tears that kept pouring down her cheeks. Her husband’s face was red and angry. The wet eyes of the other mourners stared unwaveringly at them. The intruders’ terror had been plain to all when the mother of the little girl in the coffin began to howl, and all eyes had followed them through the crowd as they forced their way out, fleeing that grief-stricken keening.

  Thröstur pushed away the memory.

  It did nothing but stir up grief and anger. Why wasn’t it possible to rewind life and change the past? If only he and his mother had been home that day, he wouldn’t be stuck with this unbearable memory now, not to mention the consequenc
es of it.

  As with so many things, he held his mother responsible for the incident at the funeral. He and Sigrún had only been kids, but she should have known better. It hadn’t occurred to him that the girl’s parents would blame them, but an adult should have foreseen it. When Sigrún insisted on going, their mother should have refused, but as usual she had caved in at once. There wasn’t a hint of steel in her nature, as if somewhere along the way her entire backbone had been extracted in one piece. He was quite different. Although what happened at the funeral was unspeakably awful, it did have one positive result. That night, as he lay in bed listening to his sister’s muffled weeping, Thröstur had decided that from then on he would stand up for himself and whenever he encountered an injustice he would tackle it head-on. No one had any time for martyrs. Not until hundreds of years had passed, and even then people’s admiration was lukewarm.

  Without warning the wind dropped and the couple’s emotionless farewells carried clearly to where Thröstur and Sigrún were standing. He snatched a glance round the corner and saw them clasp hands briefly, apparently without meeting each other’s eye. They climbed into their separate cars and drove away. He saw the rear lights through the cloud of exhaust fumes as they slowed down, turned right and vanished. The prospect of finally being able to move warmed Thröstur up a little. ‘Come on. They’ve gone.’