“Wasn’t he a good boy?” Thóra asked, remembering what his surviving sister had said. “Elisa seems to remember him as a good person.”
“He was the inquisitive type,” the woman said. “Let’s put it that way. He was constantly trying to earn his father’s affection—which he never won. He soon gave up on me. What saved him was how kind his grandfather was to him. But when he died, Harald lost his bearings. He was a student in Berlin and soon began using drugs and playing at cheating death. One of his friends did die. That was how we found out.”
“You didn’t back down and try to repair your relationship?” Thóra asked, although she knew the answer in advance.
“No,” said Amelia curtly. “Subsequently he developed this ghastly interest in black magic; his grandfather had got him into it. When Amelia Maria died he joined the army. We did nothing to stop him. It didn’t turn out to be the best decision—I won’t go into details, but he was sent home after less than a year. He had plenty of money which he had inherited from his grandfather and we didn’t see much of him. But he did contact us when he decided to come here; he phoned to let us know.”
Thóra looked at the woman thoughtfully. “If you’re asking me to understand, I can’t. But I do sympathize. I don’t know how I would have reacted myself—perhaps exactly the same. But I hope not.”
“I so wish I had been the type of person who could rebuild my relationship with Harald. Now it’s too late and I have to come to terms with it.”
Thóra found this ironic. Perhaps the revenge curse had worked after all? “Don’t think that I want to make your suffering any worse, but I must point out that it has affected other people too. Now, for example, a young man is in prison, a medical student who was a friend of Harald’s. He won’t have a chance of being reaccepted by society after making friends with your son.”
Amelia looked out of the window. “What will happen to him?”
Thóra shrugged. “He’ll probably be convicted of failing to report a dead body and mutilating a corpse, and he’ll do some time in prison. Presumably they won’t let him back into the faculty of medicine at the university. I have a hunch that he’ll take the rap to spare his other friends from being implicated—but you never can tell. In fact I think Harald mentioned him in his will. That’s some compensation.”
“Did he prove to be a good friend to Harald, in your opinion?” the other woman asked, looking at Thóra.
“Yes, I think so. At least, he kept his promise to Harald—however repellent and stupid it may have been. Your son didn’t exactly choose his friends on the basis of how normal they were.”
“I’ll take care of him,” whispered Amelia. “That’s the least I can do. He can enroll in medicine abroad. We would have no problems arranging that, even if he does get sentenced for what he did.” She stretched out her fingers and then clenched her fists as if feeling a twinge of arthritis. “It would make me feel better to be able to do something. It would ease my suffering a little.”
“Matthew can arrange that, if the offer’s sincere.” Thóra got ready to stand up. “I suppose there’s nothing else,” she said, sincerely hoping that there wasn’t. She had had enough.
Amelia took her handbag from the back of the chair and put it over her shoulder. She stood up and buttoned her coat, then shook Thora’s hand. “Thank you,” she said, and seemed to mean it. “Send us the bill—it will be paid the moment it arrives.” They exchanged farewells and Thóra walked rapidly toward the exit. She could not wait to get out into the fresh air.
On her way she walked past the hall where the map of Iceland was on display. She stopped and watched Matthew and Elisa strolling around the horizontal relief map. When he saw her out of the corner of his eye, Matthew looked up, took Elisa lightly by the arm and pointed at Thóra. They exchanged a few words and Matthew hurried up the steps to her.
“How did it go?” he asked as they walked past the foyer window with the poem etched into the glass.
“Fine—badly,” replied Thóra. “I honestly don’t know.”
“You owe me lunch,” he said, opening the door for her. “But since I’m a fair person and not at all hungry I’m quite prepared to accept it in kind.”
“How do you mean?” Thóra asked, although she was well aware of the scenario that was unfolding.
They walked off in the direction of Hótel Borg.
Thóra slipped out of the bed two hours later and got dressed. Matthew did not stir. She found paper and a pen on the desk, wrote a brief note to him and placed it on the bedside table.
She left the room without waking him, hurried out to the street and walked toward Skólavördustígur to fetch the car marked “Bibbi’s Garage.” She deserved the rest of the day off.
Her phone rang in her coat pocket and she answered it.
“Hello, Mom,” her son said cheerfully.
“Hello, darling,” replied Thóra. “How are you doing? Are you back home?”
“Yes, I’m here with Sigga,” he answered awkwardly. “We’re discussing names, like you told me to. Is Pepsi a girl’s name or a boy’s name?”
About the Author
Yrsa Sigurdardóttir is an award-winning author of five children’s novels who is also a leading Icelandic civil engineer directing one of the largest hydro construction projects in Europe—an unusual assignment for an Icelandic woman. When she is not working on-site (about six months of every year), she lives with her family in Reykjavík. Her second novel featuring Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, My Soul to Take, will be published next year. To learn more about her, please visit www.verold.is/yrsa.asp.
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Credits
Jacket design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket photograph © by Antony Nagelmann/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LAST RITUALS. Copyright © 2007 by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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