Monday, December 21, and Tuesday, December 22, 2020
There was no sign of Christmas cheer in the van Bierbek family home. The oldest daughter in the family, who was fifteen years old, had been shouting and complaining all day, getting herself into a state that revealed the worst in her, and all because the best shops in the capital were now closed, so she would not be able to get what she wanted.
That was just how Laura van Bierbek was when she wanted something. She had always been a spoiled brat without any boundaries who only needed to look imploringly with her blue eyes at her father to twist him around her little finger into getting his wallet out. And now that he was not here, now that she was forced to be in the house all day, now that she could not go to school and flirt with the boys in the year above, and now that she could not even count on Christmas presents and the New Year’s Eve party she and Søsser had been talking about for months, she could no longer control her temper and gave her tantrum full rein.
“Give it a rest, Laura,” said her mother in an effort to get her to stop her antics.
Who wanted to listen to that woman? thought Laura. She only bothered to get dressed properly if they had guests; otherwise she just sat there all day long in her slightly too flimsy nightgown with a cigarette in her mouth and a glass in one hand. It was disgusting!
“We’ll get Roxan to fix us something delicious. What would you like, darling?” her mother said in an attempt to appease her, but Laura slammed her bedroom door and sat down in front of her laptop. If it had not been for Zoom, she would have gone completely crazy.
Her friend Søsser was especially good company. She knew risqué stories and told her all about what you should do with boys in your bedroom when nobody was looking.
“Hi, Søs. What’s up? Are you also dying of boredom?”
Her friend looked at the screen with tired eyes that said it all. “I take it you’ve heard everything is closed right up until the middle of January?” she said.
Laura nodded.
“What’s your dad got to say about all this shit?” asked Søsser.
“No idea, he isn’t back yet.”
“Where is he? He’s been gone for ages now. Is he not even coming home for Christmas?”
“No, it’s so fucking annoying. Mom says he won’t be home until Boxing Day or the day after. It’s all these COVID tests and quarantine that are holding him up.”
“Well, at least he’ll have presents with him.”
“He’d better have!”
“Where is he exactly? Do you still not know?”
“We think he’s in California, but Mom’s not sure.”
Søsser tilted her head a little. She normally had no idea how to look serious, but now it seemed like she had discovered how to do it.
“What’s up, Søs? You look weird.”
“I’m not sure, but I said to my dad yesterday that he shouldn’t expect to play golf with your dad anytime soon because he still hadn’t come home. And guess what he said to my mom later that night when they thought I wasn’t listening?”
Laura doubted whether she wanted to hear it. She had eavesdropped on their dads when they talked out on the terrace. And she did not like what she had heard.
“He said that he was sure that your dad was messing around with another lady again, and that it was wrong that he didn’t just come clean.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. My mom says he’s closing a deal that will make us unbelievably rich.”
“Well, then my mom replied that it was all a bit weird because she had seen a policeman on the TV saying they were looking for someone whose name they did not know but who had disappeared. And something about how the family probably didn’t know they were missing either. She came and told me afterward that I should probably mention it to you.”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
“Don’t you lot ever read the papers?”
Laura laughed. What a stupid question. Søsser knew full well that they did not.
“What, and you don’t watch the TV either?”
“Of course, all the time. Netflix, HBO, Amazon, you know all this.”
“No, I mean regular TV. The news and that sort of thing.”
“Are you crazy? My mom doesn’t watch stuff like that. She just chain-smokes and watches TV series.”
“Try and tell her, okay?”
The living room was in its usual state of chaos, which the au pair could not manage to bring to any semblance of order. That was why Laura and her little sister had no desire to be in there. It reeked of smoke, and if Roxan was not quick enough, the room was also littered with half-empty glasses and dirty dishes.
Laura could not figure out her mom, but she also had no desire to know too much about her. Some of the boys in her class had seen a few of the old reality TV programs her mom had been in without much in the way of clothes, and it had embarrassed Laura. Episodes from exotic places where she had been with several guys, and when she talked about them, it almost sounded as if she was proud to have participated, which did not exactly endear her to Laura. Quite the opposite.
But she decided that she would confront her mom with what Søsser had said about her dad, even if just to shake her from her stupor—which it did to some degree. She certainly woke up a little and fastened her kimono.
“Where did Søsser say she’d seen the report, Laura?” She sniffled and wrinkled her brow, causing the thick layer of yesterday’s makeup to crack.
Laura opened the terrace door, letting in the freezing-cold air that had spread across the country over the last day, as it tended to help her mom get going.
“Ask Søsser’s mom, ‘cuz I don’t know,” she said and disappeared without shutting the terrace door behind her.
A new atmosphere descended on the house a little later, bringing winter closer with it. Her mom whispered into her phone, and over the course of the evening she wrote texts—and the tapping of her long nails could be heard all the way up on the second floor.
“What’s she doing?” asked her little sister.
“I think she’s trying to get Dad home.”
The next morning, their mom looked haggard, with black circles around her eyes and puffy cheeks, just like the time she took hydrocortisone after a breast enlargement that had not quite gone as planned.
But she was at least sober and seemed to be levelheaded.
She had already installed a couple of apps for streaming news and TV reports and was sitting glued to the screen.
“Be quiet for a second, Laura,” she said when Laura came into the living room to watch along with her.
The policeman on the screen was a mess, looking almost as disheveled as the wino who sat on the bench in front of the supermarket in the city center, swinging his arms about. A little shabby and unshaven. It was not a good look.
Laura watched her mom fumbling in vain for her cigarettes because she was unable to look away from the man with the stubble.
Then she wrote down a telephone number on the edge of the cigarette packet and called as soon as the press conference was finished.
Only a few minutes later she was saying “yes” and “no,” sounding distant, as her eyes began to well up and black mascara slowly started to run down her cheeks.