29 #2
I’m tempted to ask her if he’d opened up to her and how many times that had happened, but it’s just the demons Elias recognised earlier – the ones Ron had left behind in me.
I grind my molars to banish at least one of them.
‘That bitch really did a number on him,’ Inga says.
The carton finally slips from my hand and knocks against the enamel.
My blood roars straight into my ears as I begin to straighten the small disaster.
For someone who works with people who have been hurt, she says it with terrifying certainty.
I clear my throat and mop the remaining spatters of milk from the table, reminding myself that I’m supposedly Elias’ fiancée. I should know these things.
‘Yes,’ I say simply, not wanting to push too far and show her just how little I know about Elias Crane – Jakob Halvorsen.
‘You know, I’m just happy she retracted the allegation before it did more damage, or else I swear I’d be taking the first plane…’ She is still speaking. But my ears are ringing too loudly to catch the rest.
Then one word cuts through.
‘Rapist?’ Inga scoffs, as if the word itself is filth she refuses to leave on him. ‘Jakob?’
I swallow the bile that rises within a heartbeat.
‘I’ve never known a gentler soul. He wouldn’t hurt anyone,’ she might have said.
I can’t focus.
She works herself up until she has crowded me away from the table without seeming to notice, taking over the mugs and rearranging them with restless hands.
‘I always felt like she wanted something from him,’ she adds, her eyes narrowed.
Her words keep coming, but they no longer arrive as sentences.
They blur into a hum beneath the sudden violence of my pulse.
Rapist.
The word keeps coursing through me, knocking loose every careful version of this man I have tried to construct from fragments.
A prickling heat crawls beneath my clothes.
He wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Sound thins in and out as if I’ve been pushed underwater.
Inga starts talking about her degree. About social work.
About how she chose it because once, she had been young and furious enough to believe the world could be divided into people who hurt and those who could be saved.
Because she wanted to help those who ended up in the claws of bad people.
Bad people.
My fingers curl around my camera bag.
I look through the fire at Elias.
He is crouched alone beside the fire, holding himself together in front of people who think they know him and his demons. The flames devour him. The smoke winds in the air above him, briefly taking the shape of black horns.
And I stand there with milk drying on my fingers, wondering which claws Inga thinks he escaped from.
And which ones belong to him.
‘Sorry,’ I interrupt, my mind reeling, ‘would you mind telling me where the lavatory is?’
The words die on her tongue as though I’ve yanked her clean off whatever track she was on. ‘Yes, it’s right down the hall, up the stairs to the left of the telephone.’
Every joint in me locks up.
‘You have a telephone here?’
She smiles. ‘Sure. Only a few families kept theirs when they changed the lines over. They cost a fortune. Unfortunately, mobile is useless out here, so most people just walk over if they need something.’
Something opens in my chest, and my next breath rushes in a little easier.
Right down the hall.
My fingers stop drumming against the edge of the table. Even my hands seem to forget what they were reaching for.
The phone’s close enough to touch, but getting there means crossing the yard and passing through the sitting room.
Would I call Anna? The police? What would I say?
What was the name of this place again? Rypevik, someone said, or something? I can’t remember a sign at the entrance because we probably drove past it while I still had the blindfold on.
I don’t know where I am. What the address is. I don’t know if Conall is part of this or whether making that call would drag my sister into whatever Elias has set in motion.
My body stiffens. My mouth goes dry, throat raw with a silent scream that slowly begins to die as my eyes find him again.
The man I’ve spent a year writing to, travelling to photograph places he couldn’t reach, trying to keep his mind away from chains. Defending him.
But he was never just a convict with sad eyes and poetic silence.
My fingers shake against my thigh as I wonder if Melody had ever stood this close to people who might have helped her, if she had known how to make the danger sound real.
Do I?
I incline my head at Inga’s moving mouth without hearing anything else. The yard reduces itself to distances and timing: table to door, door to sitting room, sitting room to telephone.
Sunna strikes up a conversation about reindeer hide. I wait until Elias’ attention shifts towards Anders, then ease away from the table and towards the door when—
‘Oh,’ Inga calls from across the yard, ‘dial zero for an outside line first, then the hash key!’
The words carry cleanly through the space.
Elias’ head turns inch by inch, like an animal catching the scent of blood.
And he stands.
Slowly.
Firelight flickers over him, stretching his shadow long across the frozen earth as he unfolds to his full, terrible height.
He doesn’t shout. Doesn’t hurry. His jaw sets as he looks from the door to me.
‘I’ll show her,’ he says as his nostrils flare.
Every fine hair on my neck rises.
Fucking Inga.