We Know You Remember (30)

“Take all the time you need,” said Silje.

“As if I need any of this. Do you really think that?”

Elsebeth Franck studied the detective.

“You remind me of her, do you know that? She was so blond, so confident and beautiful; I can look at old photographs of myself and think I was pretty cute too, but I never stood a chance around her. I don’t think someone like you could understand what that was like.”

“What do you mean?”

“Being rejected. Always being rejected. But I still wanted to be around her more than anyone else. Why do we do that?”

“Sunlight,” said Eira. “We want to bask in it.”

Elsebeth Franck nodded slowly, but continued to study Silje, so closely that it was almost like she was trying to spot something beneath her skin.

“Could you tell us what happened that day in Nylands J?rn?” Eira asked.

“I wish I’d gone instead,” said her husband. “But she insisted. It was for my sixtieth birthday.”

Elsebeth had gone into Nyland to buy the last few bits and pieces for his party and to collect the wine they had ordered. The ironmonger also functioned as a pickup point for the state-run off-license in town.

“I was trying to find the right light bulbs—it’s not so easy anymore, the wattages are all different from the ones we’re used to—and as I was standing there, I heard his voice behind me. Over by the drills. There must have been something inside me that recognized it immediately, because I stopped and listened, even though I was in a hurry; I had so much to do at home. The man was talking to a member of staff, they seemed to agree that one of the brands was better than the others, but he couldn’t decide, and then I heard him say those words and it was like a jolt shot through me.”

Her husband had moved his hand to her back, rubbing it gently.

“I remember exactly what he said, slipping back into the old melody, the dialect from up north. All I could see was the back of his head over the shelves, but I knew. It just came out. ‘Adam Vide,’ I said, and he turned around. No one else in the shop, just him. Those eyes. They were the same. He looked away and put down the drill, then hurried off towards the till and the door, but I’m sure of it. I’d heard him say the exact same thing before.”

“What did he say?”

Elsebeth asked her husband to go and make some coffee. Once he had left the room, she continued, speaking quickly, her voice low.

“‘She’s the best of ’em.’ He said the exact same thing that night, only then he was talking about ‘the blonde one, the pretty one,’ not a drill. That’s what he was like, Adam Vide, though I didn’t know his name at the time, it was only during the trial . . . We were at the gas station, eating burgers, and I’d had my eye on him . . . There was a whole group of them, and I thought he was handsome but not too handsome, if you know what I mean, and I got it into my head that he was interested, that he was looking at me; I thought he had such nice eyes, blue with a hint of green, like the sea on holiday. But it was Anette he wanted, of course it was, it was always Anette. I heard him when I passed on my way to the toilet. ‘You can hit on the other one if you want,’ he said to his friends—meaning me, clearly—but they could forget about the pretty one.”

Elsebeth had spent a long time in the toilet that evening, and by the time she emerged, Anette was already giggling away on Adam Vide’s lap. She was drunk, they all were, they’d been to the drag races, the biggest party of the year in J?vredal, and the boys weren’t local, people came from all around for it. Anette shouted for Elsebeth to join them as they staggered out to the cars, the boys had more to drink in their tents down by the lake, said, “Come on, don’t be so boring.”

“The last thing I saw was her squeezing in between two of them in the front of a Cadillac with flames on the sides. She had her legs over Adam Vide’s, and his hands were all over her, his were already under her dress, she was swigging from a bottle, singing along with some song that was thundering out across the car park. Moonshine, they said at the trial. I didn’t want any. I’d slept with a few boys I didn’t really like in the past, just so I didn’t seem boring. I sometimes pretended to fall in love with them, because that made it feel a bit better.”

She straightened up as her husband came back into the room, reaching out to lovingly and protectively stroke his cheek.

“It might be best if I talk to them on my own,” she said.

“You know you don’t have anything to be ashamed of, don’t you? You know I’m here.”

“I know.”

A kiss on the forehead, and he withdrew to another part of the house.

“He doesn’t know everything,” Elsebeth explained. “It’s not true that I haven’t thought about it since. It’s there all the time. I should have dragged her out of that car, I knew it didn’t feel right, but I was so angry with her that I didn’t do a thing; I can see her now, arms waving in the air as they drove away, but what did I do? Cried and kicked the ground as I walked two kilometers home through the woods, I felt so sorry for myself.”

She got the call from Anette’s mother late the next afternoon, after someone found her in the tent and raised the alarm.

Seven young men had taken part in the rape, the youngest just sixteen years old. He was the one who had brought the whole thing to a close by shoving his entire hand inside her, tearing the walls of her vagina in the process. By the time Elsebeth found out what had happened, Anette was in surgery. She had split, right through to her abdomen.