Cursed Read online

  Then Jonas came along.

  To begin with, the little boy had only strengthened those feelings. They were a family. With a capital F. She loved going home, breastfeeding him, watching him grow. But Henning was not a reconstructed man; he wasn’t the type to do the laundry and change nappies without being asked, didn’t always know what was good for a child or a family. For the first year, in particular, he just buried himself in his work, sleeping in another room at night because he had to be fully functional during the day, and using the weekends and any free time to relax, catch up on the news, and not least, cultivate his sources. Nora had to ask him to take Jonas out for a walk in the pram so she could get an hour’s sorely needed nap.

  Their love and friendship had faded. In the mornings, in the bathroom, they had passed each other like strangers. They had communicated almost exclusively by text message, and then only about practical, everyday things. The structure she had wanted for her life was crumbling. The walls were starting to move again. Whenever she said anything, he promised he would try harder, but it never took more than a week before he had slipped back into his difficult ways.

  The separation was more a cry for help than anything else; that’s to say, she’d hoped that Henning would see it as such. Instead, he became angry and sad, and not just a little suspicious – he kept accusing her of having found someone else. She sometimes saw him prowling up and down outside the building she had moved into, cigarette in hand, looking up at her windows.

  They managed to work together regarding Jonas. But then came that awful day that neither of them could bear to think or talk about. Nothing could ever be the same again. They both knew that if they had only managed to find a way to carry on living together, Jonas would still be alive. They couldn’t look each other in the eye. Divorce was the only sensible option, even though it represented a level of sorrow and defeat that she had never quite managed to accept.

  Life carried on, in one way or another, and she had met Iver at a time when she desperately needed to laugh and to think about something other than Jonas and Henning. Iver was able to leap out of bed on a Sunday morning and drag her down to the quay at Vippetangen to catch a boat out to one of the islands. Or take her to a bowling alley; she had never had much interest in ball games, but had to admit afterwards it had actually been a lot of fun. Iver might also read a book to her in the evening, sometimes naked, when there was nothing they wanted to watch on TV.

  Almost everything was different with Iver. And yes, he liked her, he even liked her a lot, she was fairly certain of that. But he didn’t have the same glow in his eyes. Perhaps it was unfair to compare Iver with Henning, she thought, or Henning with Iver, for that matter, but that’s what happened when you started to wonder if you’d made the right choices in life – you asked yourself questions and had feelings, which, after the argument with Iver the night before, seemed even more relevant.

  Perhaps ‘argument’ was the wrong word for what had happened. A prerequisite for an argument was that two people disagreed and gave voice to that disagreement. Iver had said nothing, just mumbled a few syllables into his three-day stubble, and then gone home, without giving her a hug or a kiss or anything that might indicate how he felt about what she had just told him.

  It was so typical of Iver – to back off when things got serious. There was never a right time to talk about difficult things. And if she did manage to manoeuvre him into a corner, his response was always the same: ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’ As though the right moment would magically pop up out of nowhere one day.

  The fact that he behaved like this was perhaps the only answer she needed, Nora thought. And now that he was back on his feet again, after having been signed off, she knew what it would be like. He’d be working late; his mates would have the beers lined up at the bar; there’d be jobs he just had to follow up – anything to avoid sitting down and talking to her. But he was going to have to say something at some point. Just as she was going to have to say something to Henning.

  She had no idea how she was going to manage that.

  The streets were damp and leaden; yellow leaves lay in the gutter like dull reminders of the summer that had been. The mornings were still light enough, but there was an ominous chill in the air, a shudder of winter that made Nora pull her jacket tighter round herself. She looked up Uelandsgate to see if the bus was coming, then stood in the queue at the bus stop and checked her watch. Thirty-five minutes until the morning meeting. That meant she needed to come up with something to write about, quick.

  ‘Here, let me help you.’

  Nora hurried into the Aftenposten building. Birgitte Kråkenes was bending over with her back to the door as she tried to wrestle a full bottle of water up onto the blue dispenser. Birgitte was the first person people met when they came into the editorial office.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, and turned towards Nora. ‘These things weigh a ton.’

  Nora was quickly beside her, and together they lifted the transparent plastic bottle, which was wet with condensation, up into position. Birgitte thanked her again and smiled.

  As the receptionist, she was always smartly dressed and she had a welcoming, wrinkle-free face that made Nora green with envy. Birgitte’s skin had a special glow about it, a hint of summer or something peppermint-fresh – Nora had to dig around in her memory to recall her own skin being like that. The worst thing was that Birgitte was only a few years younger than her and had two children. But Nora couldn’t help liking her. She gave everyone who arrived at the newspaper office a pleasant welcome.

  ‘There’s someone here to see you, by the way,’ Birgitte said, as she sat down behind the reception desk on a chair that didn’t creak.

  ‘At this time?’ Nora asked, grabbing a freshly printed copy of the morning edition from the pile in front of her, and, with half an eye, glancing down at the headlines.

  Birgitte nodded and pushed her dark, chestnut-framed glasses up on her nose. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

  Nora stretched her neck to see. A man was sitting by her desk, his legs crossed and looking around restlessly. He was wearing dark clothes, in a style well suited to his colouring. His hair was longish and messy, black with some grey streaks through it.

  ‘And does this man have a name?’

  Birgitte examined the paper in front of her.

  ‘Hugo Refsdal,’ she said, looking up again.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Nora commented. ‘Did he say what it was about?’

  Birgitte shook her head and shrugged.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Nora said. ‘Nice jacket. Is it new?’

  Birgitte smiled and glanced down at her dark-grey blazer. ‘New? No, I’ve had this one for a long time.’

  ‘Well, it’s very nice,’ Nora said.

  Birgitte’s smile lasted until the phone rang. She picked up the receiver with one hand and waved to Nora with the other.

  Nora carried on walking through the editorial office, an open-plan room that was just as boring and neutral as any other editorial office she had been in over the course of what would soon be a ten-year career as a journalist. There was wall-to-wall carpeting, light-coloured walls, meeting rooms with big windows, and masses of cables and computer screens. The most recent IT bling was a 75-inch TV screen, placed in the middle of the room; it had become a gathering point, especially when the sport was on – which was practically all the time.

  She nodded to some of her colleagues, who were already at their desks, ignored the incessant ringing of telephones and voices that rose and fell and focused on the man, who stood up as she approached.

  Before she had reached the desk, he said, ‘Hello,’ and took a step towards her with an outstretched hand. ‘We’ve never met before, my name is Hugo Refsdal. I’m Hedda’s husband.’

  Nora shook his hand. It was sweaty.

  ‘Hedda?’ she repeated, wiping her fingers discreetly on the back of her trouser leg.

  ‘Hedda Hellberg.’

  Nora stopp
ed.

  She hadn’t heard from Hedda since they’d been at college together, when they shared a tiny flat up at St Hanshaugen. Nora didn’t think that Hedda had ever worked as a journalist; she had certainly never seen her byline anywhere.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Nora said, at last. ‘Hedda.’

  Nora had lots of good memories from that time. Every day had been a party, and the world had been theirs for the taking. She had realised very early on that she wanted to be a journalist, whether it was for radio, TV or more traditional media. She had imagined herself covering wars and catastrophes, immersing herself in the problems and asking critical questions, teasing out the truth, becoming a wiser person and maybe even helping other people to become wiser at the same time. She had wanted to mean something to other people.

  But reality proved to be very different. The only time that Nora actually heard from her readers was when they wrote to point out that she had got her facts wrong or simply to have a go at her. People had no shame when they could hide behind a keyboard.

  Pulling herself back to the present, Nora looked at Hedda’s husband, standing in front of her. It was hard to work out what he wanted, but Nora realised that something was amiss.

  ‘Is there somewhere more private we can go?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to sit here and—’

  He broke off as one of the foreign correspondents walked past. Refsdal followed him with his eyes until he was well out of hearing. Nora had the feeling that Hedda’s husband might burst into tears at any moment.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Nora replied. ‘We can go over there,’ she pointed to the room where the management meetings were always held.

  Refsdal waved his hand as though to say ‘lead the way’. Nora put down her jacket, found her mobile phone and headed over.

  ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ she asked, over her shoulder.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘A glass of water? Anything else?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. I drank enough coffee before I came out.’

  Nora carried on towards the meeting room, greeting colleagues as she went, and wondering what Refsdal wanted to talk to her about. He followed, a couple of paces behind, negotiating the chairs and desks.

  They entered the IKEA-yellow room with its oblong table in the middle, covered with the day’s papers, and sat down, each in a red fabric chair at opposite sides of the table.

  ‘So,’ Nora said, leaning forwards, ‘how can I help you?’

  Although Refsdal seemed to acknowledge her direct question, he struggled to reply. He looked away and focused on something outside the room. He clasped his hands together, only to let go of them again, and then laid them flat on the table.

  ‘Do you know who Oscar Hellberg is?’ he eventually asked.

  Nora thought about it. ‘He’s Hedda’s father, isn’t he?’

  ‘He was Hedda’s father,’ Refsdal corrected her. ‘He died almost two months ago now. Lung cancer, even though he never smoked a single cigarette in his life.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Nora said.

  She had met Hedda’s father once, when he came to Oslo to visit his daughter. Because Nora shared a flat with Hedda, he had taken them both out for a meal. She remembered him as a handsome man – attractive and well dressed – and genuinely curious about the people he met. Especially the waitresses.

  ‘It was very hard for Hedda,’ Refsdal continued. He picked up a pen that was lying on the table in front of him and played with the top.

  ‘She sat by his bedside day and night for the last couple of weeks.’ Refsdal fidgeted in his chair, and held the pen as though it were a knife. ‘Even though she knew that Oscar would die, she still struggled to accept it when he finally did. She became more and more detached. We have a son, and she barely paid any attention to him.’

  Nora noted that he was talking about Hedda in the past tense.

  ‘She came to me some weeks after he died and said that she wanted to get away for a while – to “rest”, as she put it. And I thought, great! Whatever she needs to be herself again.’

  Refsdal put the top back on the pen and then used it to scratch his stubbled chin.

  ‘I was a little taken aback when she said she wanted to go to a clinic in Italy for three weeks, but maybe that was what she needed. How could I know? So I thought, OK, fair enough, don’t begrudge her those three weeks. We can see how things are when she gets back.’

  It took a little time before Refsdal continued. Nora sat patiently and waited, watching his eyes, which seemed to be looking for something on the wall. He didn’t blink until his eyes filled with fluid.

  ‘She wanted total peace, she said – didn’t even want to take her mobile phone with her. She didn’t want us to call her at the clinic, she just wanted to be alone and “find her feet again”. She even wanted to take the train to the airport alone, but in the end, I finally managed to persuade her to let me drive her. Which I did, I drove her to Gardermoen, and when I dropped her off, she said that she loved me, that she loved us, our family. Smiled, for the first time in weeks. Obviously, I was glad and thought that everything would be fine. But…’

  Refsdal ran his free hand through his hair, a movement that reminded Nora of Iver. He always did the same with his hair, as if it needed an airing every now and then.

  Refsdal carried on talking: ‘At the end of the three weeks, I went to Gardermoen to pick her up. I even took Henrik out of school for the day so he could be there when his mum came home.’ He put the pen down on the table, folded his hands. ‘But Hedda wasn’t on the plane.’

  There was silence in the room.

  ‘We waited and waited, looked everywhere – all over the airport – tried to talk to the people who have the passenger lists and things like that, but they weren’t allowed to say anything. So I called the clinic in Italy where she said she was going to stay. And that was when things started to get very odd indeed.’

  Nora leaned even further forwards across the table.

  ‘The lady I spoke to said that she’d never heard of Hedda, and that Hedda had never booked to stay at the clinic.’ Refsdal played with the ring on his finger, turning it round and round. ‘You can imagine what went on in my head.’

  Nora nodded slowly.

  ‘I phoned everyone I could think of; asked if they had heard from Hedda. But no one had, so the only thing I could do was to call the police.’

  ‘When did you do that?’ Nora asked.

  ‘Eleven days ago.’

  Nora regretted that she hadn’t brought a notebook with her. ‘I don’t remember seeing anything in the papers,’ she said.

  Refsdal gave her an exasperated smile. ‘Hedda’s family have always been anxious to keep up appearances,’ he said. ‘They didn’t want anything about it in the papers. They thought that maybe Hedda would turn up again, and then there wouldn’t be any awkward questions. But eleven days have passed now, and we still haven’t heard a word from her.’

  ‘So, in effect, Hedda has been missing for a little over a month?’

  Refsdal nodded.

  ‘And what have the police done about it?’

  ‘Well, they’ve done everything they can,’ he said, and exhaled loudly. ‘They’ve confirmed that Hedda did not get on the 09.50 flight to Milan that day, and that any traces of her stop at Gardermoen. No one has seen her since that morning outside Departures.’

  Nora looked at him thoughtfully. ‘What about the surveillance cameras at the airport?’

  ‘There are hundreds of them, of course, and they’re recording all the time. But if the police don’t ask for the relevant recordings within seven days, they’re deleted.’

  ‘And as she was supposedly away for three weeks, to begin with…’

  ‘…there are no pictures of her.’ Refsdal completed Nora’s sentence. ‘Not from Gardermoen, at least.’

  ‘But the police haven’t said anything about her being missing?’

  Nora already knew the answer to this question. The
police preferred not to involve the media in cases where there was a clear suspicion that the missing person might either have committed suicide or run off with someone else. Media attention always made it harder to come back.

  ‘No,’ Refsdal said, and looked down.

  Nora thought for a moment.

  ‘Given how hard she took her father’s death, the police assume that she’s committed suicide, is that it?’

  Refsdal lifted his head slightly, then nodded.

  ‘I don’t know if Hedda ever told you,’ he said, wiping away a little wetness from the tip of his nose with his sleeve, ‘but her aunt disappeared as well, sometime in the nineties. Everyone assumed that she had committed suicide.’

  Nora recalled that Hedda had spoken about her Aunt Ellen.

  ‘Which is why everyone now thinks Hedda has done the same,’ Refsdal said. ‘That it runs in the family.’

  ‘But you don’t think that’s what happened?’

  Refsdal picked up the pen again.

  ‘Which is why you’re here,’ Nora continued. ‘You want me to write something about her.’

  He looked down again. Was silent for a long time.

  Finally he said: ‘Hedda and I once talked about smart people.’ He smiled tenderly at the memory. ‘If we’d ever met anyone we envied because they were so smart.’ He shook his head gently, a smile still playing on his lips. ‘And Hedda said that she’d never met anyone smarter than you.’

  Refsdal looked up at her.

  Nora held his gaze, before she suddenly realised what he had said. ‘Than me?’

  ‘That’s what she said. And I remembered because of your name. You both have names from Ibsen plays.’

  Nora was embarrassed, but she flashed him a quick smile, and a memory popped up of one evening when she and Hedda had drunk a lot of red wine and, for some reason, had started to talk about Ibsen. In their drunkenness, they both dug out their copies of Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House and tried to have a conversation using only the lines of their namesakes.

  Happy memories.

  ‘I thought you could perhaps investigate a bit more,’ Refsdal continued. ‘You knew her, after all. And you’re a journalist. You can engage people in a different way from me.’