Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel) (36 page)

She obviously did not dare to touch the paper. She still cast her eyes around the bare room, glowering. There were no curtains behind which to hide a camera. No two-way mirrors. The cupboard door in the corner was locked.

“And why are you giving me this?”

Now her tears were held in check. She used the back of her hand to knead her eyes.

“Don’t ask. I assure you it’s entirely legal.”

“But where can somebody like me cash a ticket like this, then? My God, Billy T. Look at me! There’s not a bank employee in this city who won’t blow the whistle and bring that whole gang of yours to the counter to haul me in, if I pull a stunt like that.”

“You can ask them to phone me,” he said, without thinking. “I’ll give you my cellphone number. If that’s too much trouble, I’ll come and vouch for you.”

Getting to his feet, he grabbed a sheet of paper from the desk, tore off a corner, and scribbled down the numbers.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Sølvi said.

“You don’t need to, either. Don’t entirely understand it myself.

A slender hand was extended to Billy T., closing around the betting slip and the phone number.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, before coughing violently. “Maybe I’ll check into a hotel. A real, proper hotel. With a bathtub and everything.”

“Don’t use it all up at once.”

“No, of course not. But you, Billy T. …”

She stood at the door now, about to leave.

“I’m still really angry,” she said softly, racked by another cough. “Not saying anything about Oddvar, that was – that was … totally mean.”

“I know that. I know.”

“So these here …”

She pulled Billy T.’s red thermal mitts from her pockets.

“I don’t fucking want them any more. You’re still a shit. Bye.”

She flung them on the floor and disappeared. Billy T. stared at them, two bright-red specks on a worn blue linoleum floor. He picked them up and stuffed them into the wastepaper basket.

Jenny had given them to him for Christmas.

Hanne shivered in the chilly weather, happy that her taxi trip was over. There was a light in the living room on the third floor, a cozy warmth that made her smile. She wanted to have a bath, and soak for a long time in the tub. With a glass of red wine. Music. She jogged beside the low stone dividing wall.

“Hanne.”

A tall man stepped from the shadow beneath the trees by the street lamp on the opposite side of the road.

“Do you have a minute?’

Hanne slowed down, feeling her anxiety change into an almost uncontrollable anger so sudden it took her breath away. Quick as a flash, she tried to remember when she had seen him last. It had been many years ago. Certainly six. Possibly more. She did not recall. Did not want to recall.

“Kåre,” she said dully, and regretted it at once.

To speak his name was to give him acknowledgment. Recognition; it was to admit that he was someone to her. He never had been, even though he had had the chance for so many years.

“Hanne,” he said again, stiff and awkward.

His hand was only just extracted from his coat pocket and quickly thrust back down again, as if on closer reflection he did not find it entirely natural to hold out his hand to his own sister.

“What do you want?”

Her voice was sharp, loud: she began to walk.

“As a matter of fact—”

Abruptly, she turned to face him.

“I’m not interested. In talking to you. In whatever you want. Bye.”

“I must really insist.”

“You can, if you like. It makes no difference.”

Once again she tried to leave. She wanted to run, but didn’t; she forced herself to step away, quickly, but she simply walked, and now, at last, she found herself in front of her gate.

He grabbed her arm.

“You must talk to me, Hanne. Alexander can’t live with you. He has to come home, and you need to talk to me about this. You understand that very well.”

His grip on her upper arm was hard, almost painful.

“Let go of me,” she spluttered.

“Yes, if you promise to stand still. You must appreciate that you can’t just take a sixteen-year-old into your house without discussing it with the child’s parents. For God’s sake, Hanne, you’re—”

“I discussed it with you on Christmas Eve. That’s enough for me.”

He laughed despondently.

“Discussed it? Are you telling me that phone call was a conversation?”

“You were told where he was. Let me go.”

He did not let go, but loosened his grip a little, as if he finally understood that he had no right to force her. She tore herself free.

“You both threw him out,” she said, rubbing her elbow. “You threw out your own son on Christmas Eve!”

“Indeed we did not. Of course we didn’t throw him out.”

He suddenly looked diminished. His shoulders slumped in his expensive coat, and his facial features grew sharp in the overhead light from the street lamp. His eyes disappeared below his heavy forehead.

“We didn’t throw him out, Hanne. We just had a … we quarreled.”

“About what?”

“That’s not really anything to do with you.”

“You wanted to send your boy to see a psychologist because he’s in love with another boy.”

“That’s not why, Hanne. Because he’s so … Alexander is a confused soul. He’s so … stubborn. Rebellious. I think he’s unhappy. He keeps to himself too much, and he’s no longer doing so well at school. So, we … Hege and I think he could benefit from talking to a professional person. And this homosexuality business …”

“
Homosexuality business!
”

Hanne had to pull herself together to stop herself from hitting him. Instead she threw her arms up and to the side, and took a step back.

“There you have it! Where have I heard those words before?”

She placed her forefinger on her cheek in an exaggeratedly thoughtful pose.

“Hmm … well, then – yes, that’s it. Now it’s come to me. It was Dad, of course, I do believe. That was exactly what he said to me. Or mostly
about
me, actually. I can barely remember him ever saying anything
to
me. Homosexuality business.
What the hell is “homosexuality business”, Kåre?
”

Her brother ran his fingers over his eyes. There was something helpless about the gesture, something childish and discouraged; her father had never done anything like that, but Kåre was so like him otherwise, as all three of them were: Hanne, her brother, and Alexander, all carriers of the most dominant genes in the universe, as her mother had once said, and for a moment Hanne thought that Kåre was weeping.

“Don’t you understand that the boy has to be allowed to choose?” she said, to put an end to the unbearable silence; her brother just stood there, opening and closing his mouth, running his fingers over his eyes, shrinking into his coat. “Alexander has to find his own way. He’s in good health, but he’s a teenager. Being a teenager’s a bit distressing.”

“And you know that,” he said, pulling himself up to his full height. “You, who have almost never spoken to him. As far as I understand, you’ve hardly been home since he turned up. It’s quite typical of you, I have to say. Expressing yourself with the greatest authority about a boy you’ve only just met. Hege and I can just be discarded, of course. We’ve only known the boy, looked after him, and loved him for sixteen years. I appreciate that you haven’t exactly changed.”

“Changed? Have you ever known me?”

“I was twelve when you were born, Hanne. A twelve-year-old boy. You can hardly hold it against me that I didn’t find a snotty little child much fun. And besides … Have you ever considered that it might not have been
only
our fault, everything that’s happened? That it wasn’t
exclusively
Mum and Dad who bear the responsibility for you being an outsider?’

“I can’t be bothered listening to this.”

“You’re difficult, Hanne. Difficult and moody. You’ve been like that since the day you were born. I remember when you turned three …”

His laughter, rasping, desperate, nasty, made her listen, yet again.

“Mum had baked a lovely cake. Bought you a new dress. It was red, as I recall. A red dress was what she had bought, and I was forced to stay at home. I was fifteen and had to stay at home because of a snotty brat’s birthday. Mum had invited some children from the neighborhood. You spoiled it all.”

The words seared into her back. This was a story she did not remember, that was not hers. Kåre knew things about Hanne that she had no knowledge of herself. He owned a piece of her, of her life and her story, and she did not want to know any of it.

“You cut the dress to ribbons,” he continued. “I can still remember the thin strips of red fabric. Mum was in tears. You just sat sulking in a corner, staring at her with those eyes of yours, those eyes—”

“I was only three,” Hanne said slowly, without turning around. “You’re holding something against me that took place when I was three years old. Incredible.”

Again that laughter of his, hoarse, almost desperate.

“I could easily mention other birthdays,” he said. “Your eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth. Just give me a number. I could continue all night long with stories about how you never wanted to be part of us. How you always resisted. You wanted to be different, at any cost. If you didn’t get your own way, you just upped and left. You’re the one who runs away, Hanne. Which was demonstrated most forcefully when Cecilie died.”

Hanne closed her eyes. Something tightened in her chest. Her lungs would not do their task.

“Don’t put that name on your lips,” she squeezed the words out. “You’ve no right to talk about Cecilie.”

It was not certain that he heard it. It was really impossible to breathe. She had to use the wall for support. He came closer, his steps were distinct, and she wanted to go, but could not breathe.

“At least
I
was at her funeral,” he said. “That’s more than can be said for
you
. You had gone off, as you always do when things are tough.”

His voice was right behind her now, low, close to her ear, she could feel his breath on her cheek.

“Yes, I was there. I wanted to talk to you. Wanted to show you that I was sorry on your behalf. But you weren’t there. Exactly as you weren’t there when it was Mum’s fiftieth birthday. You were nine years old, Hanne, and quite clear about how much you hurt her. You’re never there when anyone needs you. So don’t come here and say that I’m not there for my son. I love Alexander, I want to help him, and I want him to come home.”

Breathe, she thought. Breathe out. Breathe in.

“You didn’t fit into our family, Hanne.”

His voice was gentler now, less strained. His hand settled on her shoulder, burning through the fabric of her jacket, through her woolen sweater; she felt his fingers on her skin and wanted to brush them away. All her strength went into breathing, to forcing her lungs in and out, and Kåre’s hand remained where it was.

“Of course it’s mainly Mum and Dad’s responsibility. They were adults. But it became so much, Hanne. Of you. Of your bloody-mindedness, your oddness. You just absolutely didn’t want to. You always wanted to think, do, and say something different from all the others.
Always
. Exactly like …”

A heavy downpour began. They both peered up, unconsciously, as if they did not believe it possible for the weather to turn so suddenly, from light drizzle and silence to torrential rain in a matter of seconds. Hanne felt her breathing ease.

“Alexander,” she called out in the racket made by the rain drumming on the ground, the rooftops, on the shoulders of Kåre’s coat in tiny muffled beats. “Exactly like Alexander. He’s like me. You’re going to destroy him.”

She began to cry. She did not register it at first, did not realize that she was crying until the raindrops tasted salty on her tongue.

“We won’t destroy him,” Kåre said. “We’ll help him. These homo … This homosexuality he uses as an excuse—”

“He uses as an excuse?”

She was whispering now. Gasping out the words, again.

“Uses as an excuse. So that’s what you think. That he has fallen in love with a boy in order to be difficult and moody.”

“It’s not just like that. I didn’t mean to say … ‘uses as an excuse’. Apologies. That was expressed stupidly. But Alexander’s too young to make such decisions yet. We have to help him on to the right path, to … He’ll find it so difficult if he takes the wrong steps as far as this is concerned. You know that yourself, Hanne. You know that. Really. Everything will be so much easier if he understands that this is just an episode. A phase in his life.”

Hanne managed to turn away from him, managed to walk backward. She was in floods of tears and the full force of the rain was hitting her in the face. Her clothes were sodden now, water running everywhere, ice-cold winter rain down her back, underneath her clothes, her shoes gurgling with every leaden step she took, away from her brother.