Resin

by Ane Riel

  His undeniably best move on that first evening had been to assure them that everything would carry on as before, that the chef would be staying and that not as much as a comma would be changed on the menu, though the menu would, frankly, have benefited from having its punctuation revised and the ‘G’ replaced with a ‘C’ in ‘Gordon Bleu’. But irrespective of the spelling, the food was truly excellent, and the chef was a nice guy who didn’t say very much but one to whom laughter came easily. He turned out to be a distant cousin of Roald’s, but Roald didn’t realize it until the chef mentioned it the following year.

  Roald could never prove if the break-ins started when he moved in or if they were a continuation of thefts which had occurred in Oluf’s time.

  When he questioned his aunt delicately on the telephone she replied that Oluf had never mentioned anything about break-ins, but he had wondered at the rapid depletion of the stock room at times. She sounded somewhat anxious at the question, and Roald quickly dismissed it as insignificant and distracted her with an update about the undertaker’s gout.

  Roald, however, continued to ponder it. And one day he discovered how the thief had got in. Only it didn’t make things any less bizarre.

  Dear Liv

  When I was a child in the bookshop I had an invisible friend called John Steinbeck. When my parents were too busy to take care of me or I felt sad at school, he would keep me company.

  All the time I was at school I was only sent outside the classroom once, and that was because John Steinbeck suddenly poked out his head between my English teacher’s legs, while she was asking me questions about Of Mice and Men, which you must read. I couldn’t help laughing and, once I had started, I couldn’t stop. My English teacher got hysterical because I kept staring at her legs. As I lie here, the memory can still make me laugh.

  From that day onwards my classmates made even more fun of me, but I think it frustrated them that they never discovered my secret.

  I’ve never told a soul about my invisible friend, but I have a hunch that I can tell you.

  All my love,

  Mum

  Carl and the Game

  Carl was always with me when I went out at night. It was good to have someone to talk to once Dad could no longer come with me. He had to stay at home and look after the house and the things and Mum, he said, so now it was my turn to take care of the other business. I didn’t tell him that I brought Carl along. After all, I was supposed to be doing it on my own.

  Carl was everything I wasn’t. Or didn’t want to be. Like scared. Scared of people who didn’t live on the Head, scared of not being able to find enough things for Dad and not enough food for Mum, scared of making a noise, scared of being caught, scared of going out when it was daylight, and scared of everything that was hiding in the dark. And scared to admit that he was scared. He would only ever tell me.

  But he could also get sad.

  And angry.

  He could get really cross with Mum, say, because she ate so much and moved so little and grew so big that we wondered whether the floor was strong enough to hold her. After all, there was so much stuff upstairs in the bedroom – and Mum in addition to it all. Sometime after my granny’s death, Dad started sleeping in the white room to give Mum more space in the double bed, seeing as she spent all her time there.

  I don’t really understand how she grew so fat. Yes, she ate a lot, but not that much, and it wasn’t cakes and things like that all the time. Sometimes it could just be a loaf of white bread that I’d brought back. And veal chops from the pub. And cheese and ham and potatoes and carrots and frozen peas that melted on the way home.

  No, it was as if the food grew once it was inside her. And yet she asked for more. That, in particular, drove Carl crazy. But he would also get sad because our mum really was the sweetest mum we could imagine, and once she had been the most beautiful woman in the whole world, or at least on the island. Now all that was about to disappear inside her behind pillows of fat, and her eyes no longer shone like they did in Dad’s drawing. I think that her beauty and her glow were trapped along with all the words somewhere in her stomach where they were waiting to be set free. But you can’t cut open your own mum’s stomach, can you?

  Carl and I would talk about it. Why you couldn’t just make a hole and cut away everything that wasn’t necessary, so that she would be freed of everything that weighed her down and become her old self again. But we weren’t sure that you could cut into someone who was alive without her being no longer alive afterwards. The very last thing we wanted was that she would stop being alive. And we didn’t want to hurt her either.

  I very nearly persuaded Carl to ask Dad about it one day, but he didn’t dare. And I don’t think Dad would have listened anyway; he never listened to Carl.

  And if I’m being totally honest, I knew that Dad couldn’t see him. Only I could.

  Carl was, I could feel, a bit annoyed that they hadn’t taken better care of him when he was little. And though I could see him and hear him and play with him most of the time, it was a bit like he was missing. If nothing else, it would have been nice if he could have helped me carry things, because my bag could be very heavy when we walked back home at night.

  The pub was our favourite place. Carl and I often didn’t get any further than the pub because it pretty much had everything we needed. Dad did warn me not to go there too often. I wouldn’t want to get caught, would I?

  He used to go there lots in the past, but it got too difficult for him when they began locking the back door. But there was always a basement window left a little bit open at night, and it overlooked the back. It was too small for Dad, but I could just about squeeze through it. In time I got very good at easing the hook off the hasp and opening the window enough to wiggle through, feet first, getting a foothold on the radiator and jumping from there on to the floor without making a sound. The window led to a small corridor and from that you could get into the stock room or go up some steps to the kitchen.

  I always brought my smallest torch, but I was very careful about using it, especially in the kitchen, where one of the windows could be seen from the road. It was better to wait for my eyes to get used to the darkness, to try to be like the owl. My eyes had grown so used to darkness that in time I saw best at night.

  I would take all sorts of things from the stock room. Mainly tins and toilet paper, but sometimes also food from the big freezer. If there were any sweets, I’d always take some because Mum loved sweets. As I mostly picked bags with small pieces, liquorice pastels and gummy bears, say, I didn’t think that they could be making her fat. I also tried very hard to bring back biscuits because there was something very special about eating biscuits in bed with Mum. We would always break and shake them before we ate them. ‘So the calories can fall out,’ she would say. That made us laugh.

  But, to be honest, I never really understood what she meant. I never saw any calories fall on to the duvet, the books or the other things. Nevertheless, I would always snap and shake my biscuits. I still do. They taste much better that way.

  Every time I would remember to peek inside the fridge in the pub kitchen and I’d often find foil trays with food that was already cooked. Sometimes I’d take them out and hold them for a long time, breathing in the smell of the food. At times I might taste a bit as I stood there, even put a few trays in my bag. But I had to be very careful and never leave the fridge door open for a long time, Dad said. There was a light inside it, and someone might see it through the window. There were no curtains.

  The thought of light and noises that might give me away terrified me. Darkness and silence were my friends.

  I never took too much at any one time. That was the whole point of the game. Otherwise I might get caught, and that was the worst outcome imaginable. Not only because it would put an end to the game, but also because I didn’t know what they might do if they caught me. The strangers.

  To begin with, I thought the game was just for fun, but in time I realized that w
e played it in order to survive. And that the consequences of being caught were unbearable. In time I realized that this game was deadly serious.

  Dad spoke about them, the others. That, yes, they took part in the game, but not in a nice way. The strangers hoped to spot us so that they could do nasty things to us. Carl and I wished that he had never told us because it was hard not to think about it when we were off on our own. The thought would make Carl’s heart beat so hard that I could hear it.

  One day when I asked Dad if we couldn’t just stop the game, he said something I’ll never forget: ‘But then your mum would starve to death, and I would be sad.’

  He gave me such a strange look as he said it.

  It was at that moment that I finally noticed what was happening to his face. His beard had grown enormous. Before, I thought that it looked like the undertaker’s larch hedge just after he trimmed it. And that it was lovely and soft to touch. Now Dad’s beard looked more like a pile of twigs. It was dry and black and white at the same time, and a few wood shavings and bits of cobwebs were trapped in it. I even spotted something stirring inside the beard – possibly an animal trapped in the cobweb, or maybe it was just his mouth moving. His hair had also grown long and strange, and his eyebrows were so bushy they looked a bit scary.

  But the weirdest and the worst were the eyes staring at me from under the bushy brows. They were staring without seeing, like a milky layer was covering the kindest eyes I knew. It was as if I couldn’t see Dad any more.

  That day the responsibility on my shoulders truly dawned on me. How much depended on what I dragged home in my bag. That day I became big in a very small way because I still had to fit through the basement window in the pub.

  Whenever I was in the pub kitchen I always looked around for things that Dad might like. There were all sorts of things in the drawers, and I usually found something for him. It might be a tea towel. Or a soup ladle. Or a roll of cling film or possibly an egg slicer. I didn’t always know what something was, but if I liked the look and the feel of it I was sure Dad would too.

  The strangest thing I ever found on my trips was a long thingy under a bed in a holiday cottage. There were batteries inside it, but you didn’t have to take them out and press them against your tongue to make it buzz. You could just press your tongue against the thingy itself, push the button and the whole thing would vibrate! Dad told me it was a kitchen utensil, for making eggnog. But when I tried it out I was very disappointed with the result.

  Every now and then I managed to sneak one of the pub’s pots or pans into my bag. I had to be especially careful with them, Dad said. It was best only to take things people wouldn’t notice were missing, at least not immediately. But when I dragged home one half of the kind of bicycle which comes apart in the middle he couldn’t hide his excitement, and he begged me to fetch the other half as soon as I could.

  And so I did. And when I realized how happy bicycles made him, I started finding even more. All kinds. It was easy, because I didn’t have to climb inside people’s houses to get them. Bicycles were usually left in places where they were easy to take and, if they were unlocked, it was easy peasy. Carl didn’t really like cycling, so I pushed them home across the Neck. For his sake.

  But I’ve got ahead of myself. Before all of that, before Mum got so fat that she could no longer leave the bedroom, and before Dad stayed at home on the Head at night to look after the things, and before I noticed the cobweb in his beard. Before all of that, other things happened.

  Such as me getting a baby sister.

  The Dead and the Newborn

  Maria and Jens Horder reported their daughter missing shortly after the New Year. Sadly, there was every reason to fear that she had drowned in an accident. Jens Horder himself went to the police officer in Korsted to tell him what had happened. Or rather what he assumed had happened:

  Liv had been out playing on her own the day before. There was nothing unusual about that. She was used to being out in the fields and the surrounding forest, and she had never given them any cause to worry. However, yesterday she hadn’t come home in the afternoon, as she usually did. When it started getting dark Jens had searched all over the Head for her. Liv would never leave the Head on her own, he assured the police officer. He was afraid that Liv might have fallen and hurt herself in the forest, and he didn’t want to abandon his search and drive to the main island until he was absolutely sure that he had looked everywhere she might possibly be. His wife, Maria, had also searched. Though mostly in and immediately around the house.

  Jens Horder had gradually extended his search, he said, and eventually got as far as the north beach, though he didn’t think that Liv would have gone there on her own, as she knew perfectly well that she was not allowed. Nevertheless, there were signs to indicate that she had been there: when Jens Horder had examined the shore in the darkness, Liv’s beloved leather wristband had appeared in the beam of his torch. It had been lying, half buried, in the sand in front of the small wooden jetty where their dinghy was moored; or rather, should have been moored. Jens Horder had not in his wildest imagination thought that Liv might walk as far as the deserted beach and then dare venture out in the dinghy on her own. But she was, he had to admit, a stubborn little soul, and once she set her heart on something, it took almost supernatural powers to change it. Earlier that day she had pestered him to go sailing, but he had said no. It was far too cold for a little girl like her to go sailing in January.

  Now, however, it looked like she had taken matters into her own hands. And, tragically, she had chosen to do so on a day when a strong wind had started blowing from the west.

  As Jens Horder explained how he had searched the shore the officer felt the father’s terror and envisioned the foaming waves crashing on to the beach like grey-white explosions in the dark. He had a daughter the same age as Liv. He, too, had been out last night and heard how the wind tore through the high street and seen how every now and then the fast-moving clouds would reveal an icy moon. To imagine a child alone at sea underneath that moon – your own child …

  He studied Jens Horder, who he hadn’t seen much of in the last few years. Once, way back when, they had sat in the same little schoolroom, but after his father’s sudden death it hadn’t proved possible to make Jens attend regularly, and one day he simply stopped turning up. Since then the school had moved to new and better premises and the teaching staff had expanded. The officer’s own daughter would be starting school soon.

  He had caught only the odd glimpse of Jens Horder’s young daughter, whom he kept mistaking for a boy, in the pickup truck with her father. It had caused him to reflect on how isolated a life she must live on the Head. For that same reason he had toyed with the idea of driving up there with his own daughter to say hello. Just to see how they were. People on the island valued their privacy, and it was well known that the Horder family especially didn’t welcome visitors – but even so, seeing as they had a child? Judging by the size of the girl in the pickup truck, he had surmised that the children would start school together.

  But it was not to be.

  Jens Horder told the police officer that he had eventually found the dinghy further up the coast, where the island meets the sea with big boulders and a steep slope up to the forest. His heart broke when he spotted the empty boat wedged in between two big boulders, having apparently drifted eastwards with the current. The stern was under water. Not far from there he had seen one oar in the waves, which had sucked it out into the darkness, only to hurl it back to the shore like a lost lance. At least that was how the officer imagined the scene. The current in that location was known to be dangerous.

  Horder had managed to free the dinghy from the stones but lost it again when the current pulled it back out. He had called out for his daughter over and over, he said, and he had shone his strong torch at every inch of coastline. But there were no footprints anywhere to give him even the slightest hope that a child had crawled ashore.

  He had searched the who
le night until the sun had finally risen but had found nothing but a painfully familiar rabbit-skin glove which had been washed ashore. Again, the police officer could imagine the scene: how the glove had looked at the water’s edge, dark and glossy, like a drowned animal. The black despair that must have consumed Jens Horder when he realized its significance.

  At last the desperate father had given up his search and returned to his wife with the devastating news. And now he was standing in front of the officer in his old coat, wrapped in woollen scarves and a shabby cap which looked like something from another age. His face was sunken and pale, and the beard he had grown in recent years made him look considerably older than he was. Not least because both his beard and hair had become remarkably grey this winter. The police officer had noticed it when he had bumped into Horder just after Christmas. People were even talking about it in the village store. How Jens Horder had suddenly gone grey.

  And now this.

  His prematurely aged hand clutched a small leather wristband.

  ‘We need to send a team out to look for her,’ the police officer said in a voice alien even to him. ‘I’ll contact the mainland right away. Perhaps they can dispatch a helicopter.’ He could see from the anguished face in front of him that his words did not rouse any hope at all.

  ‘I know my daughter,’ Jens Horder said. ‘If she was alive, I would know.’

  He was a man who knew with absolute certainty that he had lost his only child. He hadn’t come to report her missing; he had come to report her dead.

  When the police officer realized this he experienced a moment of all-consuming despair, as if he were the grieving father. He tried to pull himself together and play his role with the calm that it demanded. But everything he did or said felt wrong. In an attempt to show his sincere sympathy, he accidentally smiled. It was totally misplaced. It was a smile that had gone astray, and it was doomed because it didn’t belong in this moment. It had no place faced with this man and his tragedy.