by Alex Dahl
I have nine unanswered calls from Iselin, twelve unanswered calls from Sindre, and three from a private number. My heart begins to rush in my chest, painful and loud. They know. A message comes in, from Sindre.
Hey. I’m back early from Reykjavik. I’d really like to speak with you as soon as possible. Can you call me? I’m sorry about everything. So sorry. I love you.
He definitely knows. Oliver told him. He must have got cold feet; he acted weird all morning, stabbing at his phone, refusing to engage with Kaia like he did last night. And the way he looked at me… How could he do this to me? I am not going to let a fourteen-year-old, acne-ridden, limp little goody-two-shoes ruin this for me. I’d rather kill him.
I get back in the driver’s seat and push the pedal down, making the Volvo spin on the salt grit left on the road from winter.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Iselin
The plane shudders through the clouds. Noa’s hand is clammy in my own. Afternoon is blushing on the horizon and I begin to pray inside my head, the same kind of prayer I used to turn to whenever it was touch and go with Kaia. My baby. Please, please, please, I whisper.
When I was little, trying to just get through the days up there in Svartberget, I taught myself a technique for managing my feelings. I sensed that you can’t fix everything all at once, sometimes you just have to focus on getting your breathing steady, and then you can begin to bring the problems you have out into the air, one by one. I used it when my father would scream at my mother, his voice reverberating around the flimsy walls, until she burst into tears. Noa and I would sit in our hiding place in the attic, drawing doodles in Biro on our wrists. I’d keep all my focus on my breathing, counting to fifteen while inhaling and twenty while exhaling, until I could be sure he’d passed out drunk. I used it when Kaia was fighting for her life. I’d stroke her hand through the hole in the incubator lid, inhale and exhale, always fifteen in, twenty out, and allow myself to focus only on that and the image of her baby face etched on my mind. Breathe and pray. Pray and breathe.
*
The plane is ushered north by a strong tailwind and the flight is mercifully short. As soon as the doors are opened, Noa and I are helped off by two men. A little indoor van is waiting by the gate and they drive it fast through the terminal building. They know it’s an emergency, that a child is in danger, that the police are involved, that I’m the mother of the little girl who has been taken. My phone is bleeping non-stop with an onslaught of missed calls and messages.
There’s no trace of Alison, reads the most recent one. It’s from Sindre Juul.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Alison
The house is empty. That little shit must have had the sense to call his mother. It’s lucky for him, otherwise I would have broken every fucking bone in his body. I would have run him over with the car. His head would have smashed underneath the wheels – I picture it clearly in my mind. I’m not going to have a lot of time, but I have to get the bag. You’re in the car, strapped in and waiting. I see you from the window at the top of the stairs, sitting motionless and obedient in the back seat, tiny milky hands held still in your lap. I kick Oliver’s door open, just in case he’s cowering in there, the goddamned fucking traitor, but the room is empty. I grab the bag from your room and run back downstairs.
Again, I drive fast; much, much faster than is allowed, and I can tell by the look in your eyes that you’re afraid now. Very afraid. I want to tell you that everything is going to be okay.
Got your passport. Got Dinky Bear. Got everything but the girl. But we’re fixing that. We’re going to fix it, baby bear. Everything is going to go back to how it was supposed to be. It’s going to be me and you – the heart keeper. I know now that you can hear me, and that you can see me, and feel me. I know what you need me to do and I will do it because then everything will be undone. Fixed.
‘Are we going home now?’ you ask in a thin voice.
‘No, sweetie, not just yet.’
‘I… I want to go home.’
‘No,’ I say, and turn left at the junction, toward Bogstad.
‘Where are we going?’
‘We are going to play a game.’
‘What kind of game?’ I don’t answer you, because you don’t need to know everything at once; children need to learn about patience. I look from the road to you and back to the road, and my heart is trembling in my chest, with my enormous love for you. I almost laugh out loud at the unbelievable turn of events, at what is about to happen, at how in spite of all this stress, miracles really do exist. I wasn’t going to do it yet, but after what Oliver has gone and done, I’ve got no choice. Your face is drawn and afraid and I hate to see you upset because all I ever wanted was to take care of you and to love you and to keep you safe.
‘Don’t worry, Mills,’ I say and give you my most loving, reassuring smile.
‘Who is Mills?’ you ask, and your words fill me with anger because we’re past this now, we’ve come to a place where we no longer need to pretend or lie. We can just be together, open to this new life, and to miracles. I breathe deeply, and consciously let go of my anger, and of everything that has happened. It is a beautiful day; the sun is shining after a rainy morning, just like I hoped it would, and here we are, you and me, the Juul girls, on our way to the lake.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Iselin
A police helicopter hovers low over the E6 eastbound and I force myself to keep my eyes on it. We pass it, and I try to decipher the crackle of the police radio.
‘Is that helicopter for my daughter?’ I ask, and the young red-haired police officer driving the van hesitates, then nods.
‘We’re about to block the main roads out of the city,’ he says. Noa and I exchange another glance. Where, where would she take her? What does she want? I know what she wants. She wants Amalie’s heart back. I see her in my mind, at Blåkroken, my trusting child sitting beside her, unaware that this woman could hurt her. A new message appears on my phone, the husband again.
Oliver knows where they might have gone! Hurry!
Chapter Sixty-Five
Alison
‘Further out,’ I say, my voice dancing across the cold, dark water. You’re so very afraid now, but that’s because you don’t understand. We always fear what we don’t understand. I’ve learned this over and over in my life, and now you will learn it, too. It will all make sense soon. You shake your head and turn away from me, staring out at the lake. We’ve come to the north shore because it is quiet, far away from the road and the little beach on the opposite shore where people like to walk; no one will see or hear us here. I am standing in the exact same spot I chose just a few days ago and it really is perfect.
‘Please can I come back now?’ you say.
‘No! Further out! I told you what to do!’ You’ve started to cry, and you are shaking both with sobs and with cold. Your body is so thin and pale it’s a translucent blue; like the meek sky, like the water itself. The scar on your chest is so long it looks like someone tried to saw you in half, and it is dark and purple, now, in the unforgiving daylight. It wasn’t there before, but it doesn’t matter, we all change with time, and life scars us all. In the end, it’s your scars that make you beautiful, and I hope you will come to know this. You take another couple of steps out into the lake, your arms held awkwardly to your sides, then you stop and turn back toward me. I can’t swim, you whispered when I explained what was going to happen. You won’t need to, I said.
I close my eyes. I’m back there. So are you.
‘Now get under,’ I shout. You don’t say anything, but you drop slowly to your knees in the water, and it rises above your waist. I close my eyes, ready. You begin to wail and the sound of your voice closes around my heart, but there is another sound booming across the lake and it sounds like a helicopter tearing at the air. It’s working; we really are back there, even the sounds are the same.
‘Now!’ I shout. ‘Say it!’
‘Mamma,�
�� you shout.
‘No, Mommy!’
‘Mommy,’ you say.
‘Louder!’
‘Mommy,’ you scream. ‘Mommy!’
All I wanted was to hear your sweet voice calling me, needing me, and I charge into the freezing water, screaming your name, feeling around for your flailing body, and manage to grab hold of your slippery, thin arm. I got you. I got you, baby bear, and I will never let you go again. We fixed it now, it’s all different, it’s all undone, and we can walk away from here together. We can go to California, or to the south of France or to Paris or anywhere else in the whole world. Together.
But the sound of the helicopter doesn’t desist even though we don’t need it anymore. I got her, I shout. I got her, she’s here, I found her, it’s all fine now, and I’m laughing and crying, spitting stale, earthy lake water, but it’s so loud and I have to cover my ears. The helicopter is directly overhead, whipping the surface into frothy wavelets and I can’t both cover my ears and hold onto you and you slip away from me, back into the dark water, or no, you’re carried away, and I’m carried away too, or dragged, rather, and placed on the ground, hard hands hurting me. There are voices shouting in my ears and over my head and people crying but no matter what, I won’t open my eyes.
Epilogue
Alison, Gaustad Hospital, four months later
There is a garden here and every day I sit in it for a few hours. It doesn’t matter if it rains – nobody says anything, or tries to stop me. It’s raining today, though it’s July, and the raindrops that fall onto my skin are plump and warm, carrying particles of sand and earth from other places.
Soon, you can go home, Alison.
I don’t know what that will mean.
The medicines they give me make my thoughts clear, like diamonds lifted from crumbling black earth. They come to me one by one now, not all at once, and I can turn them over and around in my mind, before letting them go. I understand everything now. I understand that the truth, no matter how painful, is all we’ve got.
Oliver told his father the truth. It was the right thing to do. Now, he comes here to sit in the garden with me, every Thursday after school. He’s coming today, and we will sit a long while with our heads thrown back, letting the warm summer rain wash across our faces. Oliver will let me hold his hand and he will try to hide the fact that his eyes are still sad. Before he goes back out to where Monica waits in the parking lot, I will tell my boy that I love him.
Sindre fell apart, like me. He’s at home again, and soon, I will be there too. I don’t know if we can share a home again, Sindre and I. How could we? He comes sometimes, too, but we don’t speak much, we just walk around the garden or stare at the walls in my room.
I imagine Kaia Berge is at home with her mother, wherever they are now. Iselin wrote to me, which was more than I could have hoped for. She’s going back to art school and they will be moving far away. A fresh start, she called it. Iselin asked me to not write back or try to look for them, and I never will.
Amalie is gone. She isn’t in the lake, or in her room, or in the heart beating in Kaia Berge’s chest. She’s gone, and she isn’t coming back. Still, I sometimes feel her in the soft evening breeze, in the impossible beauty of the tight pink rosebuds in this garden, in the shimmering light of the uncountable stars strewn across the infinite darkness of the night sky – every last one of them another world.
Acknowledgements
A novel is a hugely collaborative undertaking – if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a medium-sized city to produce a book. I have a lot of thanking to do. Firstly, thank you to the wonderful team at MBA Literary Agents, and above all my agent, Laura Longrigg, for the enthusiasm, encouragement, support, and the incredible way you look after me. Thank you also to Jill Marsal and Louisa Pritchard, how very fortunate I am to work with you both.
Thank you to the whole team at Head of Zeus – I enjoy working with all of you so much. A big thank you is due to Madeleine O’Shea, my editor at Head of Zeus – it is a real pleasure to work with you. Your instinct and insights are pitch-perfect and have hugely benefitted The Heart Keeper.
Thank you to the whole team at Berkley/Penguin Random House USA, above all Michelle Vega, my US editor, whose wise insight and enthusiasm has helped me enormously in crafting this book.
Thank you to my writing community – to Tricia Wastvedt for so many years of support, both creative and personal, and for wisdom and friendship. And thank you to Barbara Jaques; writers need writer friends and your support is very much appreciated. And to everyone in my writing group: Christine, Mina, Mary, Di, Jane, and Fiona.
The Heart Keeper was also a heart-breaker to write, and I was fortunate to have an incredible support system around me. Rhonda Guttulsrod – thank you for the walks and the laughter and the teary phone calls and the endless unicorn jokes and octopus emojis; your friendship means so much and has been nothing short but a lifeline. Thank you to Sinéad McClafferty L’Orange for the regular bubbles and the philosophical discussions that were also lifelines. A very big thank you to Krisha Leer for the medical input, the walks and the coffees, and for making me feel sane and understood. Thank you to Trine Bretteville and Elisabeth Hersoug, whose friendship has withstood decades and is very important to me. Thank you to Lisa L – for listening, and for teaching me to listen (and for caring).
Thank you to Laura, for being my person, my forever; my heart-keeper. Thank you to my mother, Marianne, for everything, as always. Thank you also to Judy and Chris Hadfield, for your enthusiasm, support and endless dog-sitting. Thank you to my children, Oscar and Anastasia, for being the measures for what is important, for what is not important and, most of all, for love itself.
This book had a pretty fabulous soundtrack, but still, it was written largely to a single song – ‘House on Fire’ by Sia, so thank you, Sia, for the song that will always be The Heart Keeper song for me.
A very big thank you is also due the staff at the neonatal intensive care unit at Ullevål University Hospital, who saved my firstborn’s life against all the odds in December 2006/January 2007, in particular Stefan Kutzsche. Many of the experiences of the characters in this book were drawn from that very traumatic time. I will never forget how hard you fought to save my son – there are no thank yous big enough.
This book is dedicated to organ donors everywhere.
About the Author
ALEX DAHL is a half-American, half-Norwegian author. Her first book, The Boy at the Door, has been translated into ten languages and is also published by Head of Zeus.
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