Phantom(32)

He nodded so that she didn’t have to say the name.

‘He began to come home late. Said he was meeting friends, but they were friends I had never met. One day he admitted he’d been to a coffee shop in Leidseplein and smoked hash.’

‘The Bulldog Palace with all the tourists?’

‘Right. I suppose that’s part of the Amsterdam experience, I thought. But I was afraid at the same time. His father … well, you know.’

Harry nodded. Oleg’s aristocratic Russian genes from his father. Highs, furies and lows. Dostoevsky land.

‘He sat in his room a lot listening to music. Heavy, gloomy stuff. Well, you know these bands …’

Harry nodded again.

‘But your records, too. Frank Zappa. Miles Davis. Supergrass. Neil Young. Supersilent.’

The names came so quickly and naturally that Harry suspected she had been eavesdropping.

‘Then, one day I was hoovering his room and I found two pills with smileys on.’

‘Ecstasy?’

She nodded. ‘Two months later I applied for and got a job at the Office of the Attorney General and moved back here.’

‘To safe old innocent Oslo.’

She shrugged. ‘He needed a change of scene. A new start. And it worked. He’s not the type to have lots of friends, as you know, but he met a couple of old pals and got on well at school until …’ Her voice fell apart at the seams.

Harry waited. He took a swig of coffee. Braced himself.

‘He could be away for several days in a row. I didn’t know what to do. He did as he wanted. I rang the police, psychologists, sociologists. He wasn’t legally an adult, yet there was nothing anyone could do unless there was evidence of taking drugs or law-breaking. I felt so helpless. Me! Who always thought it was the parents who were at fault, who always had a solution at hand when other parents’ children went off the rails. Don’t be apathetic, don’t repress. Action!’

Harry looked at her hand beside his on the coffee table. The delicate fingers. The fine veins on the pale hand that was normally tanned so early in the autumn. But he didn’t obey his impulse to cover her hand with his. Something was in the way. Oleg was in the way.

She sighed.

‘So I went to the city centre and searched for him. Night after night. Until I found him. He was standing on a corner of Tollbugata and was pleased to see me. Said he was happy. He had a job and was sharing a flat with some friends. He needed his freedom. I shouldn’t ask so many questions. He was “travelling”. This was his version of a gap year, sailing round the world, like all the other kids on Holmenkollen Ridge. Sailing round the world of Oslo city centre.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Go on.’

‘He said he would be home again soon. And would finish his studies at school. So we agreed he would come back and have Sunday lunch with me.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes. And when he’d left I saw that he had been in my bedroom and stolen my jewellery box.’ She took a long, quivering breath. ‘The ring you bought me in Vestkanttorget was in the box.’

‘Vestkanttorget?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

Harry’s brain rewound at top speed. There were a few black holes, some white ones he had repressed and large, blank expanses alcohol had consumed. But also areas with colour and texture. Like the day they were walking around the second-hand market in Vestkanttorget. Was Oleg with them? Yes, he was. Of course. The photograph. The self-timer. The autumn leaves. Or was that another day? They had ambled from stall to stall. Old toys, crockery, rusty cigar boxes, vinyl records with and without sleeves, lighters. And a gold ring.

It had looked so lonely there. So Harry had bought it and put it on her finger. To give it a new home, he had said. Or some such thing. Something flippant he knew she would perceive as shyness, as a disguised declaration of love. And perhaps it was – at any rate they had both laughed. About the act, about the ring, about their both knowing the other knew. And about all of that being fine. For everything they wanted and yet did not want lay in this cheap, tatty ring. A vow to love each other as passionately and for as long as they could, and to part when there was no love left. When she had parted it had been for other reasons of course. Better reasons. But, Harry established, she had taken care of their tawdry ring, kept it in the box with the jewellery she had inherited from her Austrian mother.

‘Shall we go out while there’s still some sun?’ Rakel asked.

‘Yes,’ Harry said, returning her smile. ‘Let’s do that.’

They walked up the road that coiled to the top of the ridge. The deciduous trees in the east were so red they looked as if they were on fire. The light played on the fjord making it resemble molten metal. But it was, as usual, the man-made features of the town below that fascinated Harry. The anthill perspective. The houses, parks, roads, cranes, boats in the harbour, lights that had begun to come on. The cars and trains hurrying hither and thither. The sum of our activities. And the question only the person with the time to stop and look down at the busy ants can allow himself to ask: Why?