Playdate

by Alex Dahl

  ‘Thank you. I guess it was partly thanks to you, really. If you hadn’t pushed the possible revenge motive, I probably wouldn’t have made the connection.’

  ‘Did you tell them everything?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. This is true, I told them everything they need to find Jacqueline and Lucia.

  ‘I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you. Waiting.’

  ‘And hoping,’ I add, my voice cracking. I’m so tired. The one thing that helps, right now, is to imagine an invisible thread between myself and my child, a thread that is shortening every moment until I get her back.

  83

  Lucia

  Maman is shouting and she grabs Antoine by the shoulders and drags him backwards, away from me. I’m shouting, too, but mostly crying because I am sadder and more afraid than I have been in all my life. Maman is saying very bad words like ‘putain’ and ‘connard’ and I know what they mean because sometimes Gabin says words like that to the other boys and then he has to sit in Monsieur Arché’s office all afternoon.

  Antoine takes Maman by the wrists and makes her sit down on the bed. He says, ‘Listen to me, Jac. Listen. Écoute! Écoute! Écoute!’ She is screaming and I am screaming too. Antoine reaches out for me for a moment, but Maman leaps up off the bed and claws at his face. I don’t know how it even happens, because it’s as if my legs decide and not my head, but I run from the room and down the stairs and outside into the night and across the courtyard.

  The night is black but with many big stars and they are so close it’s like I could pick them like cherries from a tree. I run through the cow gate and up the hill, cutting my feet on sharp stones in the mud, and it’s just like the first day when I came here, but I keep going until I reach the edge of the forest. I choose a tree almost at the edge, one with very wide and bushy branches low down so it’s hard to see up into it. I climb up and sit across a thick branch very high up. It’s cold and I’m wearing only my nightdress, the one with my name stitched across my chest. ‘Lulu-Rose’, it says. But maybe that isn’t my name. Maybe The Truth was A Lie. I don’t want to ever come down.

  I count to one hundred three times, first in Norwegian, then in French. I start to do it in English, but that’s much harder, so I only get to number eleven, and then I hear some strange sounds. I stand up carefully on the branch, holding on to the trunk, and then I can make out the shape of Le Tachoué in the moonlight, far down the hill. Someone is crying and shouting my name – I think it’s Josiane. I hear a second voice too, and it sounds like Maman. Then it’s quiet for a long time before I hear the sound of a car starting. I can just about make out the shape of it moving up the driveway.

  I hear a strange sound and realize it’s actually my own breath going whoosh, whoosh, like waves on the beach. I clutch the trunk and stare at the car disappearing at the top of the driveway, and then at the empty house. Then I notice something unusual. Le Tachoué is shining very bright, like a yellow star in the night, but the light isn’t coming from inside the house like I thought – it’s flames, big flames, twisting out from the windows and licking at the roof. It doesn’t take long for the whole house to be burning, and the smell of smoke fills the air, even up here in the woods.

  84

  Jacqueline

  It’s the first thing her hand touches upon as she scrambles to get out of Lulu-Rose’s room, away from him, fumbling to feel her way down the dark corridor, Antoine in close pursuit. A tall wrought-iron candelabra, hanging on the stone wall, never used. It is easily wrenched loose from its mooring and Jacqueline swings around just as Antoine catches up with her, his hands trying to grab her. She smashes the candelabra full force into the side of his head before he has a chance to realize what’s happening, and he crumples to the ground, making a strange high-pitched spluttering sound, before falling silent.

  Her heart is racing, but she feels strangely calm, like all her senses are sharpened. It’s as if she can hear the moths in the attic flapping their wings, as if she can see in the dark, Antoine’s beautiful face struck motionless but his eyes staring at her, as if she can taste his blood in her mouth.

  A noise separates itself from the silence. It’s a wild cry and Jacqueline realizes it’s coming from Josiane’s room. Josie is in her tent, curled up against the far canvas wall, her knees drawn up, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clamped around her ears. ‘No, no, no!’ she’s screaming between sobs, and when Jacqueline reaches out to touch her, the little girl’s eyes open and she stares at her mother as though she’s never seen her before.

  ‘Come on,’ says Jacqueline.

  ‘No,’ says Josiane. ‘No, no, no!’

  Jacqueline half drags, half carries Josiane from the tent and out into the hallway, angling her away from Antoine’s body, though she’ll probably see him anyway because a bright shaft of moonlight is streaming in through the ancient lead windows at the top of the stairwell, bathing everything in its yellow light.

  Jacqueline rushes towards the stairs, holding Josie like a baby. Lulu-Rose could have reached the stone houses of the hamlet further down the valley from Le Tachoué by now, if she ran fast enough. Or she could be up any one of a thousand trees in the forest, shivering and holding her breath as Jacqueline and Josiane search for her, most likely unsuccessfully. Or she could be hiding somewhere in the vast house, in which case Jacqueline will never forgive herself. But either way, Jacqueline is out of time. Antoine knew. But how? He might have alerted the authorities already, and even if he hadn’t, intending to confront her first, she simply can’t risk it. She has no choice but to leave Lulu-Rose behind.

  She carries Josie outside and places her trembling little body in the front passenger seat.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she says, forcing the terrified girl to meet her eyes, but Josie starts to scream Lulu-Rose’s name. Jacqueline closes the car door and locks it from the outside, but Josie keeps screaming hysterically. She will forget all this – she’s so young. They will start a new life somewhere, they will build a home together once again, and that will be possible because Jacqueline and Josiane are each other’s home – she knows that now and should have known it all along. It was enough.

  She tears across the courtyard into the barn and switches on the lights. She can hear Samba bleating through the thin partition wall separating the animal pen from the main barn. She grabs a can of gasoline from the many lined up on the shelf to the side of the door, then rushes back outside. As soon as she is through the front door, she begins to splash the gasoline up the stone walls and the wooden beams, down the length of the corridor leading to the kitchen, into the vast, dark rooms lining it. She runs up the stairs, pouring gasoline as she goes, and when she reaches the end of the landing by Lucia’s room, she hurls the rest of the liquid towards Antoine’s immobile shape by the wall. As she turns to leave, she hears a faint bubbling sound coming from him, like the sound a fish still alive in the fish counter might make, struggling for a few last breaths. Some squeaking, too, like he is trying to speak.

  She retches at the smell of gasoline and pushes her fist hard against her gut – it’s as though her insides will fall out otherwise. For the last time, she walks slowly down the sweeping wooden staircase built by her great-grandfather. At the bottom of the stairs, she stands entirely still for a long moment, feeling Le Tachoué vibrate with memories around her. Then she brings out the long matches from her pocket and strikes one after the other, throwing them like flaming arrows into the corners of the room. The hallway flares up and bursts into flames.

  85

  Elisa

  They are all looking at me when I sit back in the chair.

  ‘Thank you for your patience,’ says Haakon Kjeller. ‘We’ve had the team look into the information you provided. We’ve also called another press conference in the next hour in the hope of receiving crucial feedback from the general public. In the meantime, the team is working intently on sorting through the initial responses from police across Europe – the photographs of Jacqueline Olve
Thibault have been sent out across the line. We’re continuing to keep them out of the press at present.’

  I nod.

  ‘As you can imagine, we have quite a few questions for you.’

  I nod again. ‘I understand,’ I say.

  ‘We’ve run the DNA sample given by your husband against Lucia’s DNA sample on file.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘The test suggests with a probability of one to 750,000 that Lucia is the biological child of Fredrik Blix,’ says Jens Stenersen.

  I look up at the ceiling, trying to contain the tears pooling in my eyes. It’s not like I needed a fucking DNA test to know that. Fredrik is there in Lucia’s expressions and gestures, in the sharpening or softening of her facial feature as she’s grown, in her long, thin fingers, in her dimpled smile.

  ‘However, we’ve had another tipoff we consider highly reliable, which compromises your previous account. I’m going to give you a chance to tell the truth this time or the consequences may turn out very serious, both for you and for Lucia.’

  I need to stick with the story I’ve already told them. It’s watertight. It gives them everything they need to find my child while preserving my own relative innocence. I open my mouth to repeat what I’ve already told them, but in my head, gruesome images rush at me, silencing me. A little girl, just a baby. Rose. Her father, Nico. The man I love. Jacqueline, screaming in the night. I close my eyes.

  My thoughts are interrupted by a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently. I look up. I’m still here, still in the interrogation room. The police officers are still staring at me. I see Kjeller on the screen; his lips are moving.

  ‘What?’ I whisper.

  ‘Get ready,’ he says. ‘It looks like the team over in France have found something.’

  86

  Lucia

  The flames stretch up high into the sky and they make everything light, even though it’s night-time, so I can see big clouds of smoke rolling up the hillsides. I shimmy down the tree, but my hands are so cold I can’t grip the trunk properly and I fall the last bit. Everything hurts – my eyes, my lungs, my legs, my heart. I run back down the hill and all the while I’m thinking about the night when Maman tried to put out the big fire in the courtyard. It really was Mikko’s car that was burning. I also think about back when I didn’t know The Truth and refused to talk and didn’t want to be at Le Tachoué and didn’t want a twin sister and thought that Mikko or Maman might kill me. Before I became happy here.

  I can feel the heat from the fire when I reach the courtyard. The right side of the house is completely on fire, and so is upstairs. I hear a weird noise and it sounds like barking and then I remember Safina and Boulette in their crates in the kitchen. The left side of the house isn’t on fire yet, only a little bit, so I open the back door and then the sounds from the dogs get really loud. They’re yelping and howling because they think they’re going to die. I scream ‘Antoine!’, but he doesn’t answer. He must have gone in the car with Maman and Josie. There’s a lot of smoke, it comes out into the courtyard. I hold my breath and crawl on my hands and knees into the kitchen and when I get to the cages over by the door to the pantry I undo the clasps on the cages and Safina and Boulette run out, barking like mad. I can’t hold my breath for much longer and the air is hot, like it’s on fire too, so I rush back outside into the cold.

  The dogs are going crazy and they push their bodies against me, needing me to pet them. I’m so cold and alone; all I have is them now. I run across the courtyard away from the house and open the door to the barn because the barn isn’t on fire. Samba is in her pen, stomping around, ears twitching. I let myself and the dogs into the pen and that’s fine because they know each other and love each other like friends. I sit down in the damp hay and I’m shivering so much. Samba, Safina and Boulette notice how cold I am, because animals can feel many things, sometimes more than humans can, so they snuggle up really close to me to make me warm. I’m so tired and even though my eyes are still crying and my heart is hurting, I fall asleep.

  When I wake up, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been asleep for very long, but the air’s all smoky and Boulette and Safina are barking and tearing around Samba’s pen. I try to get up but everything hurts and I can hear a strange noise slowly coming closer, like wailing.

  87

  Selma

  Her anxiety levels are through the roof when the plane takes off; it is already late and the sky is a murky, dense charcoal. They only just made the last connecting flight from Oslo to Toulouse via Amsterdam, landing at midnight. She presses her face against the window, watching the lights on the ground grow increasingly distant until they disappear. It will be hours until they get there, hours without news, hours in which anything could happen. The last they heard was that Jacqueline Olve Thibault is thought to have been living near the Spanish border at a vast, distant mountain farm, passing Lucia Blix off as her dead daughter, Rose. Selma thinks of the vision she had of the missing child all those months ago, cradled in a mother’s arms, just not her mother’s arms.

  ‘You okay?’ asks Olav.

  ‘Yeah. Just can’t stop thinking about it. We could land to the news that they’ve found her dead, after all.’

  ‘Or that they’ve found her alive.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You know, there are some things I just don’t get. Who tipped off police saying she’d been killed in Belgium?’ asks Olav.

  ‘Jacqueline herself, I imagine.’

  ‘And where is Eilaanen?’

  ‘I bet he’s dead, like Batz says. Vilkainen, too.’

  ‘Why, though?’

  ‘Because he knew where Lucia really was. No way Jacqueline could take that risk.’

  ‘What, you think she killed him?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What about the blood stains in Bastogne?’

  ‘Either she got Batz or Vilkainen to kill him there, or it was planted to divert everyone.’

  For a long while, Olav and Selma sit in a tense silence, Selma staring out at a full moon casting the layer of clouds in a metallic sheen, Olav playing a game on his phone. As soon as the plane touches down at Schiphol, they switch their phones off flight mode.

  ‘From Jens at Kripos,’ says Olav. ‘They’ve raided the farmstead where she is believed to be held. Apparently it’s burning.’

  88

  Lucia

  I saved the animals and then the animals saved me. The flames from the farmhouse blew across the narrowest part of the courtyard and the barn’s roof caught fire. The dogs barked, so I woke up, and when I went outside there was a whole line of firetrucks coming down the driveway. It looked like one of the scenes Lyder used to build with his Lego.

  A man gave me water and wrapped me in a metallic blanket like a silver cape. Then a helicopter came and took me from Le Tachoué, but it wouldn’t take Safina, Boulette and Samba, even when I cried, so I need to know where they are now and who is looking after them. A nurse is sitting by the side of my bed. Every time I look at her, she smiles. A policeman is standing by the door and I want him to go away because he has a strict face like my head teacher, Monsieur Arché, and he has a gun in his belt which makes me feel afraid.

  ‘Where’s my dog?’

  The nurse jumps when I speak. ‘Oh, I will find out for you, chérie. I am sure your dog is fine.’

  ‘Can you find out about my goat, too?’

  The nurse smiles and nods. She has a thick red braid and at first when I opened my eyes I couldn’t make out that it was her hair because my eyes sting still. Lots of smoke got in them and I have to rinse them with salty water for two weeks.

  ‘They’ll be here soon,’ she says and checks the levels on the water that goes into my arm.

  ‘Who?’ I ask, but just then there’s a knock on the door.

  The policeman steps aside and a man and a woman come into the room. Behind them is a little boy and some other people, some of them in police uniforms. The woman and the man are both c
rying and the woman carefully picks up my hand. The woman is my mother and the man is my father and the little boy is Lyder. Lyder is carrying Minky Mouse. My eyes are crying because I wanted to see them again so much, but I didn’t think I ever could.

  ‘Lucia,’ they say, over and over, and it feels so good to hear my name. My name is Lucia Blix.

  ‘Can I have yellow hair again?’ I whisper, and everyone laughs.

  Mamma says, ‘You can have everything back, my angel. Everything.’

  89

  Marcus

  He picks up today’s issue of Dagsposten, the iconic image of Lucia Blix back in her mother’s arms on the cover. He runs his fingers gently down the outline of her face – over her eyes clamped shut, her smile, the tears streaming from her eyes.

  ‘Lucia Blix Recovered Alive at Remote French Farm’, reads the headline, by Selma Eriksen. Marcus reads her words one more time, his eyes twitching with exhaustion – he’s hardly slept in two days.

  Toulouse: On the morning of 12 May, Lucia Blix of Sandefjord, who had been missing since 19 October 2017, was finally reunited with her mother and father, Elisa and Fredrik Blix, at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse. The child had been airlifted to the University Hospital in the early hours after being discovered alive in a burning barn by the fire brigade of Saint-Girons at a remote farmstead near Rivèrenert in the French Pyrenees. She is currently receiving medical treatment for smoke inhalation and shock, but is otherwise in good health and spirits.

  Lucia Blix has been at the center of one of the world’s most baffling abduction cases since disappearing from a playdate at a schoolfriend’s house in Sandefjord nineteen months ago. The Blix case has attracted enormous media attention, both in Norway and beyond, but remained unresolved until 12 May. Lucia Blix was initially thought to have suffered the fate of thousands of other children stolen from their families and trafficked by professional networks for sexual exploitation.