Mia Krüger was kneeling on the floor in her flat, a line of pill jars in front of her, looking for a reason not to open the lids.
She had paced up and down the empty flat all night, spent hours going back and forth, her arms hugging her cold body, before finally passing out on the mattress in front of the window.
There, she had dreamt happily. About Sigrid. A recurring dream. Her twin sister in a white dress, running through a yellow wheat field, smiling, waving.
Come, Mia, come.
And it had been so soothing. It had made her so calm. So warm. Made her feel that life really was worth living after all. But then she had woken up. To the sound of the city. The noise of reality. To this overwhelming darkness, and now she could not remember why she had agreed to try living. Because she had made up her mind, hadn’t she? Out at the house by the sea. On that lonely island, Hitra. To leave this world behind. She had decided a long time ago – did she really have to go through all this again?
Come, Mia, come.
Yes.
At least try?
No.
Come, Mia, come.
Mia was so cold her whole body was trembling. She tightened the duvet around her and reached a thin, white arm towards one of the jars. Tried reading the label, but was unable to see it properly. She had not turned on the light. She couldn’t be sure she had paid the electricity bill.
She got up to get a drink.
I don’t drink.
She had been good, put all the bottles away, in an attempt at living, being healthy and virtuous; hidden them at the bottom of the laundry basket.
I just hide bottles among filthy clothes I hope to wash, in a washing machine I haven’t even connected, in a flat, in a city, in a world I don’t want to be a part of.
She caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror and remembered seeing herself some months earlier in one in her house out on Hitra.
Back then, she had barely had the guts to look herself in the eye, but she did so now, staring at herself, a kind of ghost, deep inside the mirror.
Sparkling, blue Norwegian eyes. Long, dark hair cascading over skinny, white shoulders. The scar by her left eye. A three-centimetre cut, a scar that would never disappear. The tiny butterfly she had had tattooed just above her knicker line on her hip after a night of youthful stupidity in Prague. She stroked the small silver bracelet on her right wrist. They had been given one each at their confirmation, her and Sigrid. A child’s bracelet with charms, a heart, an anchor, and a letter. M on hers. S on Sigrid’s. That evening when the party was over and the guests had gone home they had been sitting in their shared bedroom in Åsgårdstrand when Sigrid had suddenly suggested that they swap.
You take mine, and I’ll have yours?
Mia had never taken the silver bracelet off.
Mia Moonbeam.
Her grandmother’s pet name for her.
You’re very special, did you know that? The other children are fine, but you know things, Mia, don’t you? You see the things that other people overlook.
Granny had not been her biological grandmother, yet she had loved her as if she were her own. Sigrid and Mia. Mia and Sigrid. Two gorgeous twins adopted by a middle-aged couple, Eva and Kyrre Krüger, when their birth mother, who was too young, did not want to, could not look after them.
Mum. Dad. Granny. Sigrid.
Four graves in the same cemetery; all that was missing was hers. Mia poked her arm through the pile of dirty laundry, retrieved a bottle and carried it, still shivering in her underwear, back to the mattress on the floor in front of the line of pill jars.
See a therapist?
Screw that.
She had tried, hadn’t she?
Mattias Wang. With his wispy moustache and in the smartest part of Oslo, kind and good, clever and committed, educated and trained to within an inch of his life, and yet he knew absolutely nothing.
‘Do you know what I think, Mia?’
Mia twisted the cap off the bottle. ‘No?’ And raised the bottle to her lips.
‘I think it’s your job that’s making you ill.’
She felt the warmth spread down her throat.
‘What do you mean?’
The feeling took her close to the dream. To Sigrid.
‘You’re not like other police officers.’
Mia took a swig of the bottle and felt the warmth disperse through her body.
‘How is that?’
She could barely feel the cold now.
‘You care too much. I think it’s killing you.’
Mia tightened the duvet around her, anyway. It felt comforting and soothing.
‘Why, Mattias?’
Five jars of white pills.
‘All the evil. Everything you have to see. Everything you have to feel. For other people, it’s just a job. For you, it’s, well, I don’t know … As if it’s happening to you, as if you’re the victim of all these cruelties – or do you think I’m being too dramatic?’
Mia raised the bottle to her mouth again.
‘I think you’re wrong.’
Five lids to open.
‘Obviously, we haven’t had many sessions – I can’t claim to know you, or know anything at all – but that was my – how can I put it? – my first impression of who you are.’
This time, Mia let the bottle rest against her lips for a long time.
‘Shall we carry on next week?’
No.
‘I think we can find a way out, don’t you, Mia?’
No.
Mia Krüger put down the bottle and calmly stroked the little silver bracelet around her wrist.
No. I don’t think so.
And she carefully started unscrewing the lids on the pill jars standing on the cold linoleum floor.