The Forgotten Girls

by Sara Blaedel

  “I’m glad you’re staying.” She didn’t know what else to say, but he didn’t seem to expect an explanation for why she was not joining the search. He simply walked with her to the car and got his jacket out of the backseat.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as she got in.

  17

  CAMILLA STOOD IN the kitchen, arms folded across her chest, and looked out the window. Out in the field, Markus and two of his new friends from school were taking turns riding the new ATV that Frederik had bought for him. She thought the four-wheeler was much too fast for boys their age, but nobody took her seriously when she worried about their safety. Each time they just told her that it was safer than a two-wheel motocross bike—as if that was any comfort. Camilla also did not accept the argument that everything was perfectly all right as long as they only rode it on private property. From what she could tell, an accident could just as well happen in your own field.

  While the bike was moving at high speed, Markus stood up from the seat and leaned to the side to make it ride on two wheels before taking a sharp turn to the left. He was breaking every agreement they had about driving slowly and carefully; clearly he’d forgotten that she could see him from the kitchen.

  Camilla walked back into the rooms where the walls were still peeling and unfinished. Two of them were completely untreated and there was a sour, musty smell.

  She opened up the tall windows facing out toward the courtyard. For the first time, she felt like turning her back on her new life.

  The minister had just left, their conversation having turned into an argument when she realized that he had only come to see her to talk her out of getting married in the yard. He had insisted that the only appropriate thing would be to have the actual ceremony in Roskilde Cathedral and suggested that she could then have the wedding reception in her backyard.

  He didn’t understand that she wanted to keep it informal. Camilla wanted to be surrounded with joy and laughter. She didn’t want an organ or the church choir, which made her think of everything that had happened to her future husband’s family. And when the minister finally confessed that he would like the media attention that the Sachs-Smith wedding would undoubtedly attract, to also benefit the cathedral, Camilla had definitively decided that he would not be marrying her at all.

  “Hey!” Frederik called from the entrance hall. She had called him right after the minister left.

  “Hey,” she said wearily, turning her back on the bare walls and cardboard-covered floors.

  He walked over and kissed her, and she savored the warmth of his body for a moment. “Now we don’t have a minister either,” she lamented and dropped her hands despairingly.

  He held her at arm’s length and smiled. “You sure do scare everyone off.” He kissed her again, running his hands up her back while gently nibbling at her earlobe. “I can go by the parish office later and have a talk with him. Don’t you think we can bring him around?” he whispered as he pulled up her shirt to find her soft skin.

  Camilla removed herself from the embrace and took an angry step back. “Like hell you will!” she said, tucking her shirt back in. “I don’t want him to come around. I’m the one who’s mad!”

  “Come on!” said Frederik. “He married my sister. And he buried our mom and my brother, too. He’s part of the family.”

  She could tell he was getting annoyed.

  “If you still want to get married in two months, we’re going to need him. He already changed his plans for us and squeezed us into his full schedule,” Frederik reminded her, “so we can be a bit flexible, too.”

  “It’s not about being flexible. It’s a question of having a wedding that reflects who we are,” she tried. “You just give in and go along whenever there’s the slightest conflict.”

  “I don’t think that’s entirely true,” he continued calmly. “But there’s no reason to make things more difficult than they need to be.”

  “Difficult!” she burst out. “It’s not difficult to get the mayor to marry us instead. We just have to make an appointment. The most important thing is that we feel comfortable and that the day turns out exactly how we want to remember it.”

  “Of course,” he hushed. “But we’re not going to go running to the mayor just because you got carried away by your temper and fired our minister.”

  Camilla was so furious that tears welled up in her eyes as she turned her back to him and walked away.

  SHE CLOSED THE door behind her and slumped down by her desk. No way was she backing down. Every fiber of her body objected to the idea of a church wedding. That was not at all how she imagined it, and the minister could have just told them from the beginning that it would not be possible. Then she would have looked for another minister. There were plenty of churches in Roskilde. But right now she was mostly angry that she didn’t have Frederik’s support.

  She straightened up and tried to force herself to think of something else. Suddenly she realized that she had thought about little else but the wedding since she and Frederik moved in together. She had left several phone calls from her previous editor at the morning paper unanswered, and she had shown no interest in what Terkel Høyer wanted from her.

  She folded her hands under her chin and stared out the window, a feeling of emptiness washing over her. Then she closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. She hadn’t even been listening when Louise told her about the missing twin girls. In fact, she hadn’t heard much of what her friend said because she had been so preoccupied with her own problems, mostly needing someone to listen.

  She sighed heavily. She remembered something about one of them living off the grid until her death last week, and that the whereabouts of the other sister were unknown.

  She heard Frederik calling from the living room that he was going back to the office, but she didn’t answer although she knew he was probably waiting for her to come out. Instead she tried to think of the deceased twin’s name. She opened her laptop, typed “Lisemette Eliselund” in the search field, but quickly saw that there were no results.

  Then she logged on to Infomedia and tried searching the newspapers’ database, but again—nothing. Well, obviously the articles had not been electronically saved so far back, she thought, but she’d wanted to give it a shot before calling Louise.

  Camilla immediately picked up on her friend’s sullen tone but asked her anyway if she knew the name of the woman who had reacted to the published photograph of Lisemette.

  “Do you know where she lives?” Camilla asked after writing down the name.

  “I believe it was somewhere down by Gørlev—but try running a search with her phone number,” Louise answered without asking what her friend planned to do with it.

  It wasn’t like her at all, Camilla thought to herself. Louise was usually all ablaze as soon as she showed any interest in one of her cases. It was only after she hung up that Camilla realized that her friend could have been upset.

  She did an address search for Agnete Eskildsen and figured that she could easily sell the story—that is, if she was able to crack it.

  “Can Filip stay for dinner?” Markus called up the stairs.

  “No,” Camilla called back without getting up.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you and I are going out to eat!”

  She suddenly craved time with Markus, just the two of them the way things used to be, and she wanted to get out of there before Frederik got back.

  “So can’t he come, too?”

  “No,” she yelled, well aware that her son had grown into enough of a teenager that it could lead to a major argument if he felt offended by her rudeness. “He can stay for dinner tomorrow,” she suggested, offering a deal to keep the peace.

  “Fine,” Markus sulked and slammed the door as he went back outside.

  She rested her head in her hands for a moment before getting up and going to survey one of the guest rooms. Then she got her duvet and pillow and made up a bed before returning to the of
fice to set up an appointment with Agnete Eskildsen.

  At this moment, family life was getting on her last nerve. They could all bite her.

  18

  LOUISE CALLED IN sick the next day after tossing and turning most of the night, her head buzzing with bad memories she’d tried so hard to repress and didn’t want to deal with now. After maybe an hour of early-morning sleep, she came to in a daze. She couldn’t face dealing with Eik; forget about Hanne.

  After seeing Jonas off to school, she went back to bed and spent most of the day just staring into the white ceiling of her bedroom while concentrating on chasing off the shadows that filled her with memories and painful thoughts.

  She was still in bed later that day when Jonas put his key in the lock to let himself in and dropped his book bag on the floor. She was thankful her son was home, and safe. She always worried about him and felt better knowing he was under her roof. But she was not ready to come out of seclusion just yet. She lay quietly, hiding from reality. She heard Jonas’s footsteps and him talking to Dina even though the dog was deaf. She heard him take the leash from the hook in the hallway; shortly after, the door slammed behind them.

  Then Louise got up and wrote a note. She took a quick shower, got dressed, and was out the door before Jonas got back. With a slightly guilty conscience, she got in the car.

  AN HOUR LATER she was driving down Main Street in Hvalsø. Just before the church, she signaled and turned down the road toward the rectory. Louise parked the car and turned off the engine. She sat with her eyes closed, completely still for a moment before she opened the door and got out.

  She barely looked before crossing Main Street. Ever since moving, she had avoided it when visiting her parents. The fear of running into a familiar face was lodged inside her just as it had been when she’d fled town twenty-one years ago.

  The bell in the store clanged as she closed the door behind herself. She let the heavy, humid scent of flowers that filled the small room from floor to ceiling wash over her. From the back room she heard the sounds of conversation and a door being opened.

  “Coming,” a light voice said. Then the woman came into view.

  For a moment they paused and stared at each other in silence before Louise regained enough strength to bend down and grab one of the ready-made bouquets from a bucket on the floor.

  Vivi had been in Klaus’s class and although she had put on the pounds since Louise last saw her, she still looked the same. She was one of the girls who had faithfully hung around Big Thomsen and the rest of that gang throughout their youth, Louise recalled, eyes locked on her debit card, which was already in the machine.

  They had not exchanged a single word and they still didn’t as Louise accepted the bouquet wrapped in light green paper and exited the store.

  She had walked a distance down the sidewalk before she stopped to put her debit card in her wallet and close her purse. Then she crossed the street and walked toward the church.

  The gravel on the path crunched under her feet. Louise did not know exactly where Klaus was buried. She had not been there the day of her boyfriend’s funeral. Couldn’t cope with everybody staring at her and people whispering. All she knew was that his grave was somewhere behind the church. Her younger brother had told her.

  Mikkel had been there and placed a single red rose on her behalf. Louise had never asked for any details. She did not want to know how many people had shown up or which songs they had sung. All she heard was that Klaus’s younger sister had broken down by the coffin after saying a few words; when Mikkel wanted to recount what she had said, Louise had asked him to stop. The sister had been away at boarding school when it happened but after the funeral she never went back. At least that was what Louise had been told.

  As she got to the church, a sense of guilt hung over her once again. She had worked on it and fooled herself into thinking that she had finally managed to put it behind her, but she was never able to rid herself of the shame of the rumor.

  Louise bangs for a chopper ride. Her brother was the one who heard it first down by the soccer stadium. At first she had laughed and ignored it. At the time she had been seeing Klaus for almost five years, and he just shook his head and could not even take it seriously. It was only when she started noticing that people whispered about her, at times so loudly that she could not help but hear what they were saying, that it started bothering her. But by then the rumor had taken hold and it didn’t matter what she said. No one could answer when she asked them to tell her whom they had seen her ride with. Because the only one she ever rode with was Klaus.

  Louise held her breath for a moment, pulling herself together. The path ahead of her ran straight as an arrow between the low evergreen hedges, which framed the grave sites on both sides of the path. He was somewhere down this way.

  She took a few steps but felt her aversion and grief rise up like a shield, blocking her movement. She didn’t want to go down there. It was no more than ten yards but she simply couldn’t.

  Back in the small church parking lot, she threw the bouquet in a trash can and hurried away. She walked back to the car, her head bowed and eyes on the pavement, struck by an overwhelming sense of loss. Loss of dignity and loss of love.

  Her throat contracted as she ran the last part of the way to the car. She felt as conflicted about this town as ever. It trapped her, yet she couldn’t seem to let it go.

  19

  AGNETE ESKILDSEN GOT a thermos from the kitchen counter and placed it in front of Camilla before turning around to pick up the small plate of cookies next to the coffeemaker.

  When Camilla had called and asked if she could stop by, she had told Agnete she was a freelance journalist who wrote for various newspapers and magazines. The older woman had accepted this without further questions.

  “I understand you worked as a care assistant at the institution Eliselund down by Ringsted,” Camilla began. “And that’s how you recognized the girl with the scar?”

  The woman nodded, and for a moment it looked as if she were lost in a labyrinth of old memories.

  “Yes,” she finally replied. “It really was a pity because she was such a pretty little girl.”

  “So it happened down there?” Camilla burst out. “Do you remember when it happened?”

  Agnete Eskildsen nodded again. “It was in 1970,” she answered without hesitation. “I know because I quit immediately after. That’s why I can say with certainty that it was in July. I preserved berries for the entire first week that I was at home.”

  Camilla raised an eyebrow, surprised that this was a detail she recalled after so many years.

  “During my last year at Eliselund, I was the night nurse in section C. My first husband had fallen ill, so I picked up quite a few night shifts. I spent the days at home with him, and toward the end the only thing I could get him to eat was the stewed fruit I made from our garden,” Agnete Eskildsen explained, adding with a little smile that she hadn’t been very brave back when she worked nights. “We had to make the rounds every hour, and I didn’t like going into the men’s dormitory because they’d be in bed with each other and it wasn’t a quiet affair.”

  She briefly lost herself in the memories.

  “One night I thought one of the men had a cramp. When I walked into the room, his whole bed was shaking so hard that it had moved away from the wall. I was alone on duty and not really happy about the situation but finally I walked over and lifted up his covers, and then it turns out he was just masturbating. We got exposed to the strangest things,” she said, shaking her head once again.

  “How old was Lisemette back then?” Camilla asked.

  “I’d say she was around eight at the time,” the older woman answered hesitantly.

  “What do you recall about the two sisters?”

  “They were like two peas in a pod,” she answered spontaneously.

  Camilla nodded encouragingly.

  “One functioned better than the other one, of course, but when they were toget
her they just seemed happy,” Agnete Eskildsen remembered. “There was some trouble one time when one of them, the brighter one, had to go to the sick ward for some sort of surgery. Or maybe she’d gotten hurt; I don’t quite recall. In any event, they were separated, and it turned into a big mess.”

  “How so?” Camilla asked with curiosity, pulling her notepad closer.

  “The one who got left behind started banging her head against the wall so violently that the caretaker had to take her to the sick ward. They had to give her a sedative and bring in an extra bed. You couldn’t separate those two.”

  Camilla looked at her in surprise. “Surely there must have been other times when they had to be apart? They must have gone to the bathroom occasionally?”

  Agnete Eskildsen smiled for the first time since unlocking her memories and shook her head. “Back then they had large toilet rooms, mind you. There were four toilets lined up against each wall so they’d sit in there together. We’d bring twelve of them to the restroom at a time as I recall.”

  “In the same room?” Camilla burst out.

  “Sure. I guess that wouldn’t pass today,” the older woman said, “but that’s how it was done back then.”

  She smiled a little and told her that there had actually been quite an uproar when the restrooms were converted and partitions put up around the toilets.

  “They didn’t want us to close the doors,” she recalled and explained that the residents didn’t care for change.

  Camilla tried to picture it: a large, tiled room with toilets all lined up. It brought to mind the mucking ditch in a livestock barn. No, that wouldn’t pass today, she thought.

  “I can’t actually think of any other times that the girls were apart,” Agnete Eskildsen continued, shaking her head pensively. “When they transferred from the nursery section, they were placed in one of the large dormitories with fifty beds and their two beds were pushed together. That wasn’t usually allowed so they did make some concessions. But then again, they were forgotten girls,” she added.