Then one day she became pregnant. And, to her surprise, she found herself considering an abortion. Until then she had really believed she wanted children, or one anyway. Eight months later she gave birth to Amalie. She was filled with such happiness that she repressed the memory of her thoughts of abortion. Two weeks later Amalie was taken to hospital with a high temperature. Ragnhild could see that the doctors were uneasy, but they couldn't tell her what was wrong with her child. One night Ragnhild had considered praying to God, but then dismissed the idea. The next night, at eleven o'clock, little Amalie died of pneumonia. Ragnhild locked herself indoors and cried for four successive days.
'Cystic fibrosis,' the doctor had told her in private. 'It's genetic and means that either you or your husband is a carrier of the disease. Do you know if anyone has had it in your family or his? It may manifest itself in frequent asthma attacks or something similar.'
'No,' Ragnhild had answered. 'And I assume you're aware of client confidentiality.'
The period of grieving was managed with professional help. After a couple of months she was able to talk to people again. When summer came they went to Gilstrup's chalet on the west coast of Sweden and tried for another child. But one evening Mads found his wife crying in front of the bedroom mirror. She said this was her punishment because she had wanted an abortion. He comforted her, but when his tender caresses became bolder she pushed him away and said that would be the last time for a good while. Mads thought she meant having children and agreed right away. He was therefore disappointed, disconsolate, to find that she meant she wanted a break from the act itself. Mads Gilstrup had acquired a taste for mating and particularly appreciated the self-esteem he felt when giving her what he interpreted as small but distinct orgasms. Nevertheless, he accepted her explanation as the reactions to grieving and hormonal changes after childbirth. Ragnhild didn't think she could tell him that from her side the last two years had been a duty, or that the last remnants of pleasure she had been able to work up for him had disappeared in the delivery room when she had peered up into his stupid, gawping, terror-stricken face. And when he had cried with happiness and dropped the scissors just as he was supposed to cut the victory tape for all new fathers, she had felt like walloping him. Nor did she think she could tell him that, as far as the mating department was concerned, for the last year she and her less than brilliant boss had been meeting each other's demanding needs.
Ragnhild was the only stockbroker in Oslo to have been offered a full partnership as she left for maternity leave. To everyone's surprise, however, she resigned. She had been offered another job. Managing Mads Gilstrup's family fortune.
She explained to her boss on the farewell night that she thought it was time that brokers schmoozed with her, and not vice versa. She didn't breathe a word about the real reason: that, sad to say, Mads Gilstrup had been unable to manage the sole task he had been entrusted with, that of finding good advisers, and that the family fortune had shrunk at such an alarmingly rapid rate that Ragnhild and her father-in-law, Albert Gilstrup, had both intervened. That was the last time she met her boss. A few months later she heard he had taken sick leave after years of affliction with asthma.
Ragnhild didn't like Mads's social circle and she noticed that Mads didn't, either. But they still went to the parties they were invited to, since the alternative – ending up outside the clique of people who meant or owned anything – was even worse. It was one thing to spend time with pompous, complacent men who deep in their hearts felt that their money gave them the right to be so; however, their wives, or the 'bitches', as Ragnhild labelled them in secret, were quite another. The chattering, shopaholic, health-freak housewives with tits that looked so genuine, not to mention the tan, although that was genuine, since they and their children had just returned from two weeks in St Tropez 'relaxing' away from au pairs and noisy workmen who never finished swimming pools and new kitchens. They talked with unfeigned concern about how bad the shopping had been in Europe over the last year, but otherwise their horizons didn't stretch further than skiing in Slemdal or swimming in Bogstad, both near Oslo, and at a pinch, Kragerø, in the south. Clothes, facelifts and exercise apparatuses were the wives' topics of conversation as that was the means to holding onto their rich, pompous husbands, which of course was their sole real mission here on earth.
When Ragnhild thought like that she could surprise herself. Were they so different from her? Maybe the difference was that she had a job. Was that why she couldn't stand their smug faces at the morning restaurant in Vinderen when they complained about all the welfare abuse and tax evasion in what they, with a slight sneer, called 'society'? Or was there another reason? Because something had happened. A revolution. She had begun to care for someone other than herself. She hadn't felt that since Amalie. Or Johannes.