We Know You Remember (90)

The tool in Elvis’s hand slipped, something sharp hitting the cuticle. She looked up.

“Sj?din! God, that never even occurred to me. Are you Magnus’s sister? Of course you bloody are, I knew his little sister was in the police now.”

The air suddenly felt slightly easier to breathe, despite the candles, as Elvis dropped the usual salon chat about what a woman was worth, what she should treat herself to.

Eira dodged a few questions about Magnus, about how he was these days, what he was up to, who he was seeing.

“What was she really like, Lina?”

“What has Magnus said?”

“Nothing,” said Eira. “You know what brothers are like.”

“He probably just wanted to forget too.” Elvis put down the nail file. Picked up one of the small bottles she had brought over and applied a neat layer of undercoat, holding Eira’s hand steady. “People only ever talked about how nice and beautiful she was. You couldn’t disagree with them—you’d look like a terrible person.”

“Do you remember Ricken?”

“Of course I do.”

“He said that Lina was just messing with Magnus.”

“She was the worst,” said Elvis. “Sorry, I’d never say that to anyone else, but you are his sister, you might as well know. Lina broke up with him and then took him back, she was seeing other people but claimed she still had feelings for him—you know how it is, the person who’s in love practically loses their mind. You don’t think you can live without them in the end.”

She pushed Eira’s hand beneath a heat lamp and left it to rest there for a while.

“I was actually kind of into Magnus myself,” she said. Her cheeks flushed slightly, or maybe it was just the heat of the lamp. “Not that I told the police or anything, they probably would’ve thought I killed her in some fit of jealousy. But I never stood a chance against Lina, not in anything. I sort of started seeing him after she disappeared, I guess it was a comfort thing, or I don’t know . . . I couldn’t be like her. Magnus changed too, I noticed that. He was always pretty lively before, I’m sure you know. Someone who slaloms through life, this way and that; the type of person everyone loves because he’s so handsome and nice. And kind too, I always thought he was kind, but then . . . Sorry to have to say this, but he wasn’t so kind to me. Told me to stop being so clingy when I just wanted to hang out . . . Well, you know. When you get too keen. I thought he was sad and that I was the only person there for him, that he needed to be comforted. Love, you know? Ugh, God, sorry, I forgot . . .”

Elvis turned off the lamp and got to work on the next coat. Some of the varnish ended up on Eira’s skin, but she wiped it away. Did the same thing again.

“So he’s OK these days?” she asked, voice hesitant.

“Magnus? Yeah, yeah, he’s got a girlfriend over by the coast.”

“I hope she’s good to him.”

“I think she is.”

“He could be jealous, too,” Elvis continued. “Not with me, but with Lina. Properly green with envy, you know? To the extent that he would spend half the night standing outside her house just to see whether she brought anyone else home. I lived really close by. I used to hear him pull up on his motorbike.”

“Was he right? Do you know whether Lina was seeing anyone else?”

“She’d kill me if I told you.”

Eira smiled. “Well, she can hardly do that now.”

“No, but . . . All that stuff about how bloody saintly she was, that’s still there. You don’t talk crap about the dead, you know? You’re supposed to rise above all that. Start sobbing and going on about how she was the most amazing friend ever.”

“But . . . ?”

“She could be so mean. One minute she wanted me to come over because I was her best friend in the whole world, and then she’d call me a retard—all because I wasn’t as smart as her. Just because she read these fancy books, French authors and that kind of thing, books you could barely even understand. I’m sure she just pretended to read them, as though anyone actually cared.” Elvis looked up again. “I would never use that word, ‘retard,’ I mean. But that’s what people said back then. You wouldn’t do it now. Or no one with any sense would, anyway. It’s a handicap—though you’re not meant to say that either. I should know, I work as a care assistant too. ‘Functional diversity,’ that’s the term. Still, that’s what Lina called people when she thought they were being idiots. And I just kept on hanging out with her.”

Elvis reached away from the table and grabbed some paper from a holder, blew her nose. She wiped her hands on a wet wipe.

“You should try a bit more color, if you ask me.”

“Maybe next time.”

Eira studied her as she screwed the lids back onto the bottles, put everything in order.

“Who was Lina seeing? The person you weren’t allowed to talk about?”

“I know I should’ve told the police, but I was only fifteen . . . If the police had found them, Lina would’ve hated me forever. She’d lied to her parents and said she was hanging out with me, that’s why they never asked. Lina’s folks were so strict, teetotalers, they went crazy when she snuck out to go drinking and that kind of thing. One time it got so bad they said they were going to send her off to live with relatives in Finland, or to some school somewhere, with super-strict rules and curfews . . .”