Читать книгу Will and Testament - Vigdis Hjorth - Страница 7

Dad died five months ago, which was either great timing or terrible, depending on your point of view. Personally, I don’t think he would have minded going unexpectedly; I was even tempted when I first heard to think that he might have fallen on purpose, before I knew the full story. It was too much like a plot twist in a novel for it to be just an accident.

In the weeks leading up to his death, my siblings had become embroiled in a heated argument about how to share the family estate, the holiday cabins on Hvaler. And just two days before Dad’s fall, I had joined in, siding with my older brother against my two younger sisters.

I learned about the row in a roundabout way. One Saturday morning, which I had been looking forward to, when all I had to do was prepare a contribution to a contemporary drama seminar in Fredrikstad that same day, my sister Astrid called. It was a bright and beautiful late November morning, the sun was shining, I might have mistaken it for spring if it wasn’t for the leafless trees reaching for the sky and the leaves covering the ground. I was in a good mood, I had made coffee and I was excited about going to Fredrikstad, pottering around the old city centre when the seminar was over, walking on the ramparts with my dog and gazing at the river. After my shower, I saw that Astrid had called several times. I assumed it was about a collection of articles that I had been helping her edit.

She answered her mobile in a hushed voice. Hang on, she said, I could hear beeping in the background as if she were in a room with electrical equipment. Hang on, she said again, still whispering. I waited. I’m at Diakonhjemmet Hospital, she said, her voice louder now, the beeping had gone. It’s Mum, she said. But it’s all right. She’ll be fine.

An overdose, she then said, Mum took an overdose last night, but she’ll be fine, she’s just very tired.

It wasn’t Mum’s first attempt, but in the past there had been such a build-up each time that I hadn’t been surprised. Astrid reiterated that everything was fine, that Mum would recover, but that it had been dramatic. Mum had called her at four thirty in the morning to tell her that she had taken an overdose: I’ve taken an overdose. Astrid and her husband had been to a party that night, they had only just got home and weren’t in a fit state to drive; Astrid rang Dad who found Mum on the kitchen floor and called their neighbour, a doctor, and he had come over; he wasn’t sure that an ambulance was necessary, but had called one anyway, just to be on the safe side, and the ambulance had come and taken Mum to the hospital where she was now on the mend, but very, very tired.

Why, I asked, and Astrid became vague and incoherent, but at length I gathered that ownership of our parents’ much-loved cabins on Hvaler had been transferred to my two sisters, Astrid and Åsa, without our brother, Bård, being told, and when he did find out he thought the notional value was way too low. As Astrid put it, he had kicked off and raised hell. She had been in touch with Bård recently because Mum would be turning eighty soon and Dad eighty-five, which was cause for celebration; she had written to invite him and his family to the party and he had replied that he didn’t want to see her, that she had wheedled a cabin on Hvaler, that this was the final straw in a long line of financial favouritism going back years, and that she was only ever looking out for herself—as usual.

Astrid had been shocked at his words and accusations, and would appear to have told everything to Mum who in turn became so distraught that she took an overdose and had now been admitted to hospital, so ultimately it was really all Bård’s fault.

However, when Astrid had called Bård to tell him about the overdose, he had replied that she only had herself to blame. He’s so heartless, she said to me. He uses the most devastating of all weapons, his children. Bård’s children had unfriended Astrid and Åsa on Facebook and written to Mum and Dad how upset they were at the loss of the cabins. Mum had always been terrified of losing contact with Bård’s children.

I asked her to wish Mum a speedy recovery, what else could I do? She’ll be pleased to hear that, Astrid said.

Funny how random it seems, our meeting people who later prove pivotal to our lives, who will affect or directly influence decisions that will cause our lives to change direction. Or perhaps it’s not random at all. Can we sense that certain people might nudge us onto a path we consciously or subconsciously would have taken anyway? And so we stay in touch with them. Or do we have a hunch that some people might challenge us or force us off a path we want to take, and so we decide not to see them again? It’s remarkable how important just one person can become in determining how we act in critical situations, just because we happened to consult that individual in the past.

I didn’t drink my coffee, I was troubled so I got dressed and went outside to feel the wind on my face, to clear my head. I wasn’t handling this well, I thought, and called Søren, who of all my children knew our family best. He was surprised about the overdose, of course, but he knew about past overdoses, and it was always fine in the end, his grandmother invariably called for help in time. When I got to the transfer of the cabins and the low valuation, he grew pensive and said that he could understand why Bård was upset. Bård hadn’t cut contact like I had done; he had always kept in touch, true, he wasn’t as close to my parents as Astrid and Åsa were, but that shouldn’t cause him to be financially penalised, surely?

I rang Klara who was outraged. Playing at suicide was just not on. Giving family cabins to two of your four children on the sly and too cheaply was not on either.

My parents had every right to do what they had done, but in recent years they had frequently declared that they would treat their children equally when it came to inheritance. However, it had now become clear that the amount of money Bård and I would get by way of compensation for the cabins was remarkably low. That was what had upset him, I realised, and the fact that no one had bothered to tell him that the transfer of ownership had already taken place. I hadn’t been told either, but then again I hadn’t spoken to my family for decades. In the last twenty or so years I’d only had contact with my second youngest sister, Astrid, and only with a few phone calls a year. So I had been surprised when, on my birthday some months ago, I’d had a text message from my youngest sister, Åsa, whom I hadn’t heard from in years. She wrote that she had texted me happy birthday before, but must have used the wrong number. And then the penny dropped. Up until now they had been two against one, Astrid and Åsa against Bård, but now that I was involved, everything was up for grabs. I’d always said I didn’t want to inherit anything and I guess my sisters were hoping that was still my position, but they couldn’t be sure. It was what I had said to Astrid every time she wanted me to reconcile with my parents. It felt like Astrid was emotionally blackmailing me; she would tell me how much they suffered as a result of my estrangement, how old they were, how they would die soon, and why couldn’t I just turn up at Christmas or for a big birthday? It was probably Mum putting pressure on her, but I wasn’t moved by Astrid’s talk of old age and death, instead I felt provoked and angry. Didn’t she take me seriously? I had already given her my reasons. Explained that being around Mum and Dad made me ill, that seeing them and pretending that everything was fine would be a betrayal of everything I stood for, it was out of the question, I had already tried! I didn’t relent, but was provoked into growing increasingly angry, not at the time, but later, at night, on email. I wrote to her that I never wanted to see Mum and Dad again, I would never set foot in their house in Bråteveien, and that they should go ahead and disinherit me.

After I had cut off contact, Mum rang me several times; this was before caller ID so I couldn’t tell it was her. She would alternately sob and yell at me, and I felt physically sick, but I had to stick to my guns if I was to survive; in order not to sink or drown I had to keep my distance. She wanted to know why I refused to see her—as if she didn’t know—she asked me impossible questions: Why do you hate me so much when you’re everything to me? I told her countless times that I didn’t hate her, until I did start to hate her, I told her over and over, would I have to explain myself—yet again—only for the next conversation to be as if I had never even tried and I felt rejected, would I be rejected yet again?

The first few years after I cut off contact, these phone calls were deeply distressing. Mum would ring with her accusations and pleas, and I would get angry and lose my temper. Eventually they tailed off, then she gave up all together; I guess that she, too, must have decided that certainty and peace were preferable to the misery caused by these pointless conversations. Better have Astrid give it a try every now and then.

In the last few years, however, Mum had started sending me the occasional text message. Sometimes when she was ill, as most old people are from time to time, she would text me. I’m ill, please can we talk? It would be late at night, she had been drinking for sure, I certainly had, and I would reply that she could call me in the morning. Then I texted Astrid to say that I was willing to talk to Mum about her illness and her care, but if she launched into her usual accusations and histrionics, then I would hang up. I don’t know if Astrid passed this on, but when Mum rang the next morning, she spoke only about her poor health and her care, and perhaps she felt like I did after I had rung off, that it had been a good conversation. At any rate, she stopped dumping her disappointments and unhappiness on me and, I gathered, dumped them on Astrid instead, and it must have been tough on Astrid to handle Mum’s disappointments and unhappiness, so perhaps it was no wonder that she tried to steer me towards a reconciliation.

~

Because of the disappointment and unhappiness I had inflicted on my parents by cutting off contact with them, I was expecting to be disinherited. And, if against all my expectations they didn’t, it would be purely because it wouldn’t look good in the eyes of the world, and they wanted things to look good.

But all this lay far in the future as they were both in rude health.

So I was surprised when, one Christmas three years ago, I received a letter from my parents. My adult children had visited them just before Christmas as they usually did, as they had done since I cut off contact—at my suggestion because Mum and Dad seeing their grandchildren eased the pressure on me. And my children enjoyed seeing their cousins and returning home with presents and money and three years ago, a letter. I opened it while they stood next to me and I read it out loud. My parents wrote that they had made a joint will and that their four children would inherit equal shares. Except for the cabins on Hvaler, which would go to Astrid and Åsa at the current market value. They wrote that they were happy to bequeath their assets to their children. My own children smiled cautiously, they too had expected to be disinherited.

It was a strange letter to get. Very generous, really, given how awful I had supposedly made them feel. I wondered what they expected in return.

Mum rang me a few months after that Christmas. I was in a market in San Sebastian with my children and grandchild; we were celebrating Easter in a flat I had rented there. I didn’t know it was Mum, I hadn’t saved her number. Her voice was trembling, as it always did when she was upset: Bård is raising hell, she said. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Bård is raising hell, she said again, the same expression Astrid would later use, because of the will, she said, because the cabins are going to Astrid and Åsa. But Astrid and Åsa have been so nice, she said, so caring. They’ve been going to the cabins with us all these years, we’ve had such lovely times together that it seems only natural for them to get the cabins. Bård has never used the cabins, nor have you; would you like a cabin on Hvaler?

I would have loved a cabin on Hvaler at the very edge of the rocks with a sea view, except for the constant risk of bumping into Mum and Dad.

No, I said.

That was the answer she wanted to hear, I realised, because she instantly calmed down. And since I hadn’t been in touch with Bård, I didn’t twig what she was really asking me. I reiterated that I didn’t want a cabin on Hvaler, that I thought their will was generous, and that I hadn’t been expecting to get anything.

Astrid would later tell me that there had been a major row about the cabins. When during a visit to Bråteveien, Bård found out that Astrid and Åsa had got them, he had stood up and said that Mum and Dad had already lost one child—he was referring to me—and now they would lose another one, then he had walked out. I could tell that Astrid thought he was being unreasonable. He hadn’t been to the cabins for years, he had a cabin of his own, and his wife had never got on with Mum and Dad back when they still went to the cabins on Hvaler.

I was taken aback by her strength of feeling, but I didn’t say anything. It was a blessing, I thought, not to be involved in the cabin feud.

~

However, now it had escalated. Ownership of the cabins had already been transferred to Astrid and Åsa, Bård was furious and Mum was in hospital after taking an overdose.

The first time I saw Klara Tank she was pushing a pram down the corridor of the Department for Literature. In it sat the son of a famous artist. When Klara attended lectures, she would bring with her the child of this artist, who was said to be in the middle of a divorce. I was a dutiful student who read everything I was supposed to read, but I spent little time at the university as I was pregnant with my second child and busy with my family. As a result I saw Klara only a few times at the Department for Literature, but I took notice of her, the student with the pram. The first time she spoke to me was on the pavement in Hausmanns gate some years later, after a talk on literary criticism. She was now the editor of a literary magazine which had mauled a popular author; she had been defending her criticism, bare-legged and waving her arms around, she had meant to say literary trial, but ended up saying literary toilet, had started to laugh and been unable to stop, then she burst into tears, ran outside and didn’t come back. When I left, she caught up with me on the pavement in Hausmanns gate, still with bare legs, although it was October, unbuttoned my coat, touched my silk blouse and told me how nice it was. I walked away, I didn’t want her eccentricity to rub off on me.

I went for a longer walk than usual although I was due in Fredrikstad that same evening. I headed into the protected forest, which was still quite green, but it didn’t have its usual calming effect on me. Trees that had keeled over during the storms in recent weeks lay with their heavy dark roots exposed and blocked the footpaths. I called both my daughters, but couldn’t get hold of them, I called my boyfriend, but couldn’t get hold of him, I had an overwhelming urge to share my news and I wondered why that was, after all nothing terrible had happened, in fact things were fine.

I thought about my earlier conversation with Astrid only a few days ago. I’d had more contact with her these last six months than I’d had for years. She was writing a collection of articles about human rights education and wanted my opinion on the layout and division into chapters which I, in my role as a magazine editor, understood. I read and commented, we talked about format and angles, and in our last conversation, only days previously, we had discussed final tweaks and publishers. That had also taken place while I was out walking; I remember shifting my mobile from one hand to the other because the phone was so cold when held without mittens. When we had finished talking about her book, I asked, as I usually did, how the family was. Well, there’s this business with Bård and the cabins, she replied, I thought she was referring to the will.

~

I went to Fredrikstad and it wasn’t until I drove into the dark, practically deserted, old part of the city that I started to calm down. I found a place to park near the B&B where I would be staying, I had stayed there before, I walked the dog along the ramparts by the river, which glowed copper red in the rays of the setting sun, I tried to focus on the seminar about the lack of contemporary Norwegian drama, but found it difficult to concentrate. I called Tale and Ebba again, but they didn’t pick up, I called Lars, but he didn’t pick up either, then I called Bo before I remembered that he was in Israel. I asked myself why it was so imperative for me to tell my daughters, my boyfriend and Bo about Mum, her overdose and the two cabins. I called my oldest friend, who was driving and so had to be quick. She had heard about Mum overdosing before, but she was interested in the inheritance dispute, she had experience of such things. They’re perfectly entitled to do what they’ve done, she said, they can dispose of their property in any way they like, but they don’t come across as generous as they did in their Christmas letter. Besides she had reflected on the issue of inheritance, she said, when her brother had inherited the family cabin because he was their parents’ favourite and she felt that she should have been given it instead as compensation for lack of love and attention.

I left Fido in my room and walked to the ferry which would take me across the river to the centre of Fredrikstad. From there I called Tale and Ebba again, but they still didn’t pick up, I called Klara and asked her why I got so wound up, why I absolutely had to talk about it, given that nothing terrible had happened.

It goes deep, Bergljot, she said. It’s seriously deep.

I got off the ferry and walked up through the streets, it started to rain, I got wet and felt heavy. It was just as Klara had said, it was how I felt, how deep it went, how it pushed me into the abyss, how it weighed me down, how I started to sink.

The debate went well, I did well. Afterwards I stayed in the café telling my fellow participants all about the cabin valuations and Mum’s overdose although I didn’t know them personally and, while I told them about it, I thought to myself that I really ought not to. I was ashamed while I spoke and ashamed when I saw the faces of my listeners and I was ashamed on my way home at having whined about cabin valuations and overdoses like a spoilt brat, in a manner that belonged to childhood and self-centred puberty, I was mired in shame the whole night, I couldn’t sleep because I was so ashamed that I hadn’t grown up, that I couldn’t talk about it in a mature and balanced fashion, that I’d become a child once more.

The day after Klara had unbuttoned my coat in Hausmanns gate and touched my silk blouse, she rang me. I was in the hall of the house where I lived with my husband and children and didn’t recognise the name. She said it again and then I remembered, then I grew scared, she had caught me off guard. She asked if I would be willing to review a book for the literary magazine she edited, I didn’t want to, I didn’t have the courage to take it on, but I didn’t have the courage to say no either. She asked if I could come over to hers tomorrow morning so we could discuss it, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have the courage to say no either. When I arrived the next morning, she was busy trying to put together a bookcase and failing, she wasn’t following the instructions and she was drinking gin. I couldn’t drink, I was driving, so I took over the bookcase. While I worked on it, she said that the review didn’t matter, the magazine was folding, it wasn’t making money for the publishers, how would she pay her rent now? I didn’t know, I shook my head, I didn’t want to get involved with her financial problems. She was in love with a married man, she said, and my heart skipped a beat. She was pregnant by this married man and was having an abortion tomorrow; unless she did so he would refuse to see her again. I couldn’t help her, I wanted to go home, I too wanted to drink gin, I put the bookcase together and I left, I never wanted to see her again.

Sunday in the old city of Fredrikstad. Yellow, red and rotting leaves on the cobblestones, cold rain in the air. I walked along the streets feeling morose. I should never have told total strangers about the cabin valuations and the overdose. I had a compelling urge to talk about it, but I didn’t know how. Then I bumped into someone who had been present in the café last night and who asked me if I was OK, as if I wouldn’t be. She invited me back to her yellow wooden house a short distance up the street and gave me apple cake and coffee, and the tears welled up in my eyes and stories from my childhood poured out of me, and she embraced it all and spoke calmly and dispassionately about her own past. Was it possible for me to ever get to that place?

As I stood in the doorway and was about to leave, she asked me how long it was since I had last spoken to him.

Who?

Your brother.

I couldn’t remember, twenty years or more.

Call him, she said, and I had to smile because she didn’t understand what it was like. But we hugged one another as if we had exchanged presents and as I opened the gate, she called out: I’m on Bård’s side!

~

In the car home I was filled with ambivalence. Shame at yesterday’s confessions in the café, anger at myself for being so easily upset, gratitude for the invitation to coffee and cake, for meeting someone on a day like that who had given me advice. I asked myself whether my parents or Astrid and Åsa ever sought advice from anyone because it didn’t take much insight into human nature to predict that a man who takes exception to being passed over in a will is also likely to take exception to secret transfers at rates well below the market value. If they had taken advice, surely someone would have pointed this out to them. Then again, perhaps they wouldn’t have listened. Perhaps they had already made up their mind to do what they had done, regardless of the consequences.

Once I was safely home in Lier, when it had started to get dark and I was walking across the fields with the dog and it had started to snow, I called Tale and she picked up. I told her about the overdose, about the transfer of ownership and the valuations, and my daughter knew me and understood that I was going off the deep end and said that I mustn’t take it so seriously, that I mustn’t get involved, that it was just my mother creating more drama and casting herself in the leading role as the tragic victim of evil schemes, while her real goal was to silence her critics.

They’ve seen the last of me, she said, I refuse to take part in that charade any longer.

I heard what she said, I understood it at an intellectual level.

I walked for longer than usual to wear myself out, to be able to sleep, even sleep through the night; I walked a long way and then went home and sat in front of the fireplace. Astrid called and said that Mum was doing well, perhaps she thought I had been worried. Mum was still at the hospital and was exhausted, but would be going home the next day, and the birthday party would still go ahead next week as planned, she hoped that Søren and Ebba would come.

I said I hadn’t heard anything to the contrary. Mum will be so pleased, she said, she was worried that Bård’s children wouldn’t show up.

He’s using the children, she said again. It’s the worst thing you can do, using the children! Mum is terrified of losing contact with Bård’s children. Mum has always had such a good relationship with them, and now it might be ruined all because of him.

Cautiously I ventured that they might genuinely be sad that the cabins had been transferred to her and Åsa; it was the first time I hinted that I didn’t buy her version wholeheartedly. She fell silent. Then she said that if this really was just about the valuations, they could always get new ones. Perhaps it was a silly way to have gone about it, she said. Perhaps the valuations were a little low, she said. Perhaps we should have asked for two quotes, but we didn’t think that far ahead.

I opened a bottle of red wine. When I had drunk it, I felt calmer and I took the dog for another walk. It was still snowing, big heavy flakes that melted on my face and soon I was wet through and through. The sky was big and the stars shone with an unreal intensity or maybe it was just the wine. I walked back, I had made up my mind.

I couldn’t find Bård’s number online so I called Astrid. She said she didn’t have it either. But you only spoke to him yesterday? Åsa has it, she said, I asked if she would call Åsa and then call me back, it was late, she said reluctantly, and then it turned out that she had it after all.

When I said my name, Bergljot, he fell silent. Then he said that he had thought about me a lot recently, and it was my turn to fall silent. Then I told him about my conversations with Astrid and he told me how he saw the situation. He seemed sad, I thought. He mentioned a dystopian novel I had once sent him about the decline of a family I thought resembled ours, about a childhood that resembled ours.

It had been like that, he said.

My heart was racing as I drove home from Klara’s. Had she told me that she was in love with a married man because she had worked out that I was too? Could she tell from looking? Did anyone else know? I was married to a nice and decent man and I had three young children with him. And yet I was in love with another, a married man. It was monstrous, it was horrible, what should I do, it was impossible, I was impossible. I didn’t have a job, no regular income, but three small children and a nice and affluent man and was passionately in love with another, it was terrible, shameful, unforgivable, how could I, what was wrong with me for me to do something like that?

Klara rang the following week; I wouldn’t have picked up the phone if I had known it was her. She asked if I would visit her again, she had bought another bookcase she couldn’t assemble. I didn’t want to, I went there and assembled the bookcase and told her about the married man. She had sensed as much, she said. She could feel things like that, she said and patted my cheek and I started to cry, what was I going to do?

What I was experiencing, I came to realise once I started to understand my life, was that a moment of insight was approaching like the tremors that precede an earthquake, and like an animal I could sense it before it happened. I was filled with dread and I trembled at the painful dawning of a truth which would rip me to pieces, perhaps I was working subconsciously to advance it, to get it over with, given that it was inevitable.

December and fog right down to the ground. Yesterday’s snow had melted, there was slush and black puddles on lawns and roads, and it was cold both outside and in because my heating was broken.

I should have been editing theatre reviews and writing the editorial for the next issue of On Stage, but I didn’t. Instead I made a Thermos flask of tea, got dressed in woollens and wellies and my heavy parka with the hood, it’s always a good idea to be dressed properly. I went to the forest where no one ever came at this time of the day, sat down on a fallen tree trunk and let the dog run free. Sometimes I would see deer here, in the spring and summer, and birds and squirrels and frogs, but today it was just us. Fido sniffed and wagged her tail, jumped over branches and stones, blissfully ignorant of inheritance and childhood. Should I write in an ironic style about The Journey to the Christmas Star and The Nutcracker, about the lovely family shows that theatres staged at Christmas? No, that would be facile; I could feel a lump in my throat.

It grew dark so we went home, I lit a fire, opened a bottle of red wine and took out my editorial notes. I had only just got down to work when Bård emailed me to say that it had been good to talk though the circumstances could have been happier. Would I like to have lunch soon?

I agree and yes, please, I replied.

As soon as I had pressed ‘send’, Astrid called, wondering if I had spoken to Bård. I said I was meeting him next week. I got the impression that that worried her.

I had closed down my Mac and was getting ready to go to bed when Klara rang to tell me that Rolf Sandberg had died.

Rolf Sandberg. Mum’s great extramarital love. A professor at the teacher training college where Mum had been a mature student. The man Mum had fallen head over heels in love with, the man Mum had started an affair with although he also was married. Mum’s passionate love affair with Rolf Sandberg lasted several years until Dad found the beginning of a love letter from Mum under an embroidered cloth on a chest of drawers on Hvaler. Perhaps she intended him to find it. Perhaps Mum wanted Dad to know about the affair, perhaps she thought that if Dad found out, he would divorce her and she could marry Rolf Sandberg. But Dad didn’t react as she had hoped, but as he always did, with rage and violence, and Rolf Sandberg didn’t react as Mum had hoped either. When she told him that Dad had found the letter, he replied that one divorce was better than two. Mum locked herself in a room with pills and alcohol, Dad kicked down the door, called an ambulance and Mum was taken to Fredrikstad Hospital and had her stomach pumped.

Mum tried living on her own, but it wasn’t a success. Dad rented a flat for her, but after a week and a half she was back with him, but on his terms. However, she never stopped seeing Rolf Sandberg, and I guess she never stopped loving him either. She told me this. She didn’t tell Astrid or Åsa because they would have been horrified to discover that she still was in touch with Rolf Sandberg, and they would have told Dad and sided with him against her. Mum knew that I wouldn’t be outraged on Dad’s behalf or tell him anything. That was the difference between Astrid and Åsa and me, our relationship with Dad.

Then I cut all contact with my family and heard nothing more of Rolf Sandberg, but I’m convinced that for years Mum kept hoping that the two of them would end up together. When his wife died, I was almost sure that Mum wanted Dad dead so that she could move in with Rolf Sandberg. Then Rolf Sandberg died and Mum took an overdose when she heard that he was on his deathbed—possibly because she realised that her dream had shattered.

I called Astrid though it was past midnight and told her that Rolf Sandberg had died and that Mum’s overdose probably had nothing to do with Bård’s text message, but everything to do with Rolf Sandberg’s death. She began to get nervous, I could hear it.

I wrote to Bård to tell him that Rolf Sandberg had died, and that Mum’s overdose was probably to do with his death rather than the text message Bård had sent her.

Klara and I both loved married men who wouldn’t get divorced, who didn’t want us, who wanted sex with us in hotel rooms, whom we couldn’t bear to tear ourselves away from, and we were miserable. Klara lived on her own, it had its downsides, I lived with my husband and three children, that too had its downsides. I had married and had children young in order to be a mother and not a daughter any more, I came to realise once I started to understand my life; now I was deceiving my husband and my children, and I was ashamed. Klara was deceiving no one, but had no money and worked night shifts as a waitress at Renna Bar to make ends meet. My husband earned plenty of money so I was able to study without having to take out a student loan, I was a cheat and a parasite. I visited Klara whenever I could and drank with her friends from the bar who were mentally unstable and alcoholic, intelligent, broke and wretched, misfits and outsiders. Strange, marginal existences with no survival skills, always knocking on Klara’s door, as did I, eager to mix with the misfits and the wretched, what was that about? This compelling urge of mine to seek my own downfall, what was wrong with me? I visited Klara and drank in the company of strangers who had failed at life, I spent the night there and woke up the next morning in the bright light of day surrounded by broken, filthy people and I rushed home to hug my children and husband, wanting to live for ever in the big, airy, clean house, I promised myself never to leave it, but I would soon be back at Klara’s, drawn to my destruction.

Four days after the overdose, the same day that Rolf Sandberg’s obituary appeared in the newspaper, Mum and Dad celebrated their big birthdays in Bråteveien. When Tale heard that Søren and Ebba were going, she was outraged. Why were they playing along with it? Putting on a brave face and accepting the Bråteveien version of events, pretending that nothing had happened? That was why the world was going to hell in a handcart, she said, because people didn’t set boundaries, weren’t honest and acted hypocritically in order not to upset anyone, why were Søren and Ebba going to Bråteveien to take part in this appalling performance? She herself would never set foot in Bråteveien again, she would tell her grandparents that immediately.

I advised her against it. If she got involved in the inheritance dispute, they would merely think that she wanted a cabin on Hvaler.

On the day of the birthday party I felt twitchy. I knew I was safe, but it made no difference. My doors were locked, Søren and Ebba were grown-ups and could handle themselves, and yet I was on edge as I always was whenever my children visited Bråteveien. I kept looking at the clock as it got closer to the starting time as though a bomb might go off. I imagined Søren and Ebba crossing the threshold, hugging my parents, whom I hadn’t seen for years and could no longer be sure of recognising, imagined them hugging or shaking hands with Astrid and her husband and their children, Åsa and her husband and their children, imagined Søren and Ebba’s faces and felt sorry for them, or was I projecting and was I really feeling sorry for myself? I wondered what they would say, the usual greetings and congratulations, nothing about the real issues, the inheritance, the overdose, Rolf Sandberg’s obituary or the elephant in the room, those of us who weren’t there, Bård and I, and Bård’s children.

The time passed slowly, I waited impatiently without knowing what for. I knew what my children would say, it had gone well, they had kept to safe topics, updated one another about careers and education, and yet I felt apprehensive. It was just like when my children visited Bråteveien before Christmas and were given presents, and I would be on tenterhooks until they returned. My fear was irrational, it was the non-financial legacy of my upbringing. An irrational sense of guilt because I had opted out, cut contact, because I had done what you weren’t supposed to do, refused to see my ageing parents, because I was like that, vile. The party started at six, it was eight o’clock now and my children hadn’t called and I didn’t want to call them in case they were still there. At eight thirty Søren rang me and said that it had gone well although my Mum had got drunk very quickly and my Dad had just sat brooding in his armchair, more taciturn than usual. Bård and his children hadn’t been there, but Astrid and Åsa had been there with theirs, of course, and Astrid had made a speech saying that she and Åsa were happy to be so close to Mum and Dad, how they always had such nice times together, how they saw one another often, several times a week usually, not to mention all the lovely long summers on Hvaler.

Søren remarked and he sounded rather glum, I thought, that perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Åsa and Astrid would inherit more than ‘us’, given how much time they spent with my Mum and Dad and how fond they were of them.

If I didn’t know that your parents had two other children, he said, I would think it was a normal, happy family.

The first time I met Bo Schjerven was a Sunday, on Book Day at the Norwegian Theatre. The event included readings from that autumn’s new publications in the theatre’s several auditoria, and various arts and literature magazines had stands in the foyer including the latest arrival, Incomprehensible Publications, founded and developed in the early morning hours in Klara’s flat by one of her friends from Renna Bar who had literary ambitions. Klara was staffing the stand between one and three in the afternoon, and I had promised to stop by. When I arrived, I spotted her under a parasol with Incomprehensible Publications printed on it and stuck into one of the theatre’s big plant pots. She looked uncomfortable, she had had several hostile encounters with authors whose work had been criticized in the magazine, a crime writer had even threatened her with a knife. Writing the reviews had been more fun than publishing them, she acknowledged, she needed a beer. She went to the café and I had taken her place under the parasol when a man came towards me, snatched a copy of the magazine, sat down on the stairs, started reading it and let out a loud sigh, please come back soon, Klara. The man got up, came over to me and informed me that he had translated the poetry anthology which Incomprehensible Publications had described as a particularly incomprehensible publication. I said that I had nothing to do with the magazine. The small, bespectacled man looked at me over the rim of his glasses and asked if the editor of Incomprehensible Publications knew anything about the political situation in Russia in the 1920s. I said that I didn’t know and reiterated that I had nothing to do with Incomprehensible Publications, so he asked why I was then staffing the stand of this ridiculous magazine. He asked me if the editor knew anything about the revolutionary ideas popular with literary circles in 1920s St Petersburg; I said I didn’t know, that I suspected that she didn’t. The pale, stern man then asked if the editor had ever heard of Ivan Yegoryev, the essayist. I didn’t know, please come back soon, Klara. He asked if the editor of Incomprehensible Publications had read any Russian history or Russian poets, if she knew of the tradition of which the poetry anthology Autumn Apples was a part. I didn’t know, I suspected that she didn’t, please come back soon, Klara. The serious man leaned forwards and declared that the lines which the moronic reviewer in Incomprehensible Publications had found particularly incomprehensible were absolutely crucial because they paraphrased the politician V. G. Korolenko’s speech at the Communist Party’s Fourth Party Congress. The small man, who by now had become quite loud, said that if one was to review a poetry anthology like the one he had translated, one had a duty to familiarise oneself with one’s subject, it was the critic’s responsibility because if the critic didn’t take poetry seriously, who would? He said that if the presumably young and hopelessly arrogant woman who had reviewed Autumn Apples in Incomprehensible Publications had bothered to get to know her subject, she would have got so much more out of the anthology to the point where it might have changed her life. He studied my face. Changed your life, he said, and my heart sank. Fortunately someone he knew turned up at that point, he put down the magazine and left. I looked around for Klara, I didn’t want to sit there any longer. Then the man suddenly came back and asked me to lend him a hundred kroner. His brother had turned up and wanted to have coffee with him in the café, but he had no money and didn’t want to say so because he didn’t want to worry his brother. I gave him a hundred kroner and he insisted on getting my bank details. The following week one hundred and ten kroner were paid into my bank account, the extra ten kroner being interest.

We had arranged to meet at the Grand Hotel. It was my idea. I went out so rarely that I simply blurted out the name. I texted Bård, please would he book the table?

On my way there I suddenly remembered that Mum always used to meet her friends at the Grand in the old days when they went out shopping and were ladies who lunched. I myself had been out shopping with Mum a couple of times, was it the memory of Mum that had made me pick the Grand? I hoped my childhood wasn’t coming back, I hoped I wasn’t going back to my childhood, and that that explained why I was shaking. I opened the door, there was a queue to get into the restaurant, the pre-Christmas rush, and many smartly dressed older people, I shouldn’t have picked the Grand. I might bump into Mum and her friends, surely there was a woman who looked like Mum, like I remembered her, in the corner, I turned away, I wanted to leave, then I saw someone who looked like him, like I remembered him, his back and the back of his head, Bård, I said, and he turned around and it was him, twenty years older. He recognised me, also twenty years older, we hugged one another like you do when you’re brother and sister and there are no inheritance disputes separating you—as far as we knew. A woman who knew him came over, they said hello and hugged one another, and he introduced me as his younger sister, my oldest younger sister, he said. Then we fell silent. We couldn’t very well start our conversation while we were queuing, we hadn’t spoken for over twenty-three years. The last time we saw one another was when his older daughter was confirmed. That had been ten years after the previous time I’d seen him, I’d worked out on my way here, and both times had been formal events in public venues, restaurants not unlike the Grand. We hadn’t, I’d realised, had a private conversation since we left school, and hardly ever even then. We had both distanced ourselves from our family, but not together, not in unison, we had distanced ourselves individually and separately. I heard news of Bård from Astrid on the two occasions every year that I spoke to her, but there was little to report was my impression, his children did well at school. I didn’t know that he no longer lived in a house in Nordstrand but had moved to a flat in Fagerborg. Astrid hadn’t said anything about that, I learned about the move at the Grand after I had taken our coats to the cloakroom while Bård found the table he had booked for us. He trusted me with his coat because we had once been squashed into the back of a car with our sisters. I hung up our coats in the cloakroom and found him seated at the table, he looked like Dad as he had once looked, Dad had aged a lot, Bård said. We ordered coffee, he had come here on the tram, he said, when I asked if he had driven here by car, and that was when he told me that he no longer lived in Nordstrand, but in Fagerborg, and he was surprised, such was my impression, that I didn’t know that, the move was eight years ago, that Astrid—with whom he knew I was in touch—hadn’t mentioned it. He served himself first, went up to the buffet with a gait I didn’t remember and came back with an open sandwich. I went to the buffet and came back with an open sandwich. So there we were together, at the Grand.

It turned out that the cabin dispute had gone on for much longer than I had assumed. Mum and Dad had decided that Astrid and Åsa would inherit the cabins several years ago. Bård had learned this from his daughter. She had been visiting her grandparents who told her that Astrid and Åsa would inherit the cabins on Hvaler. Bård’s daughter had been taken aback, what should she say, a granddaughter who had been going to Hvaler since she was yea high, but who was too young and shy to voice her embarrassment and disappointment. Was that why they had told her, a young and polite grandchild who wouldn’t argue with them, so that they could later say that she hadn’t objected? Bård’s daughter went home and told her father what his parents had said, and Bård went to see Mum and Dad who confirmed that Astrid and Åsa would indeed inherit the cabins. Did they realise the magnitude of what they were saying? How shocking it was to say this to their only son, who had spent every summer on Hvaler since he was a child and later brought his own family there every summer until his relationship with Mum and Dad became too strained, who had imagined and hoped that when Mum and Dad were gone, he and his siblings might grow close again. He had asked them to reconsider; they had replied that they had made up their minds. Some weeks later he received a copy of their will in the post which made it clear that Astrid and Åsa would inherit the cabins, and if they—contrary to expectations—didn’t want to inherit the cabins, they would be sold to the highest bidder. Bård and I would not inherit them.

They don’t want us there, he said.

We had probably picked up on that and it explained why we hadn’t gone there.

A year later he had written a letter to Mum and Dad, he placed a copy of it in front of me, he had brought all the paperwork, a friendly letter where he argued that all four children should share the two cabins. Because everyone had strong links to Hvaler, because we could then share the maintenance work and the costs, because more people would thus benefit from the cabins, the plots were large, new cabins could be built in the future.

They replied that they had made up their minds.

He had then written to Astrid and Åsa, making the same points, they had replied that it was for Mum and Dad to decide how they wanted to dispose of their property. In the last email Bård had sent on the matter, he wrote that Hvaler was the place that held the happiest memories for him. Why couldn’t the four siblings own half a cabin each? It needn’t be complicated, he wrote. Several of his friends had inherited cabins jointly with their siblings, and it usually worked out fine. I ask you to reconsider please. It would mean a lot to me and my children to own half of one of the cabins when one day you’re no longer here. He concluded by writing that he didn’t understand why Mum and Dad would rather see their sons-in-law on Hvaler than their own son and his children.

He got no reply. And there was nothing he could do about it. They were perfectly entitled to do what they had done. But did they know what they were doing? The hurt they were inflicting, how they were twisting the knife in the wound? Did Astrid and Åsa understand the consequences of Mum and Dad doing what they were doing with their blessing, didn’t they realise that it would impact on their relationship with Bård? Did Mum and Dad think the relationship between the four siblings would remain unchanged? Did Mum and Dad want Bård and his children or me and my children not to own half a cabin each on Hvaler? Bård had asked politely and argued his case without knowing that it was already a done deal. Mum and Dad would rather holiday with their sons-in-law than their own son and his family. They didn’t want us on Hvaler. They were happy to see Bård and his children, me and my children at Christmas, Easter and big family birthdays, but they didn’t want us on Hvaler. They liked having Astrid and Åsa with their husbands and children with them on Hvaler and everywhere else because there was no history with Astrid and Åsa.

Mum and Dad and Astrid and Åsa had decided that the cabins would go to Astrid and Åsa and carried out their plan. They were complicit. Bård had believed that the decision could be changed and had pleaded with them in vain. Some people knew what was really going on, others didn’t. It was clearly unfair, but Mum and Dad and Astrid and Åsa continued to act as if everything was just fine, which made it odd that Astrid had never mentioned the matter to me, didn’t it?

A catastrophe was looming, didn’t they understand or did they understand and not give a damn and were hoping to ride out the storm?

Bård wouldn’t be getting a cabin on Hvaler, he would have to learn to live with that, and he did, but the damage had been done.

Bård had popped by in August to see Mum and Dad in Bråteveien to say hi after the summer, and Mum had said that Dad had grown too old to do the things he used to, maintenance work on the cabins, cutting the grass and weeding, and so they had transferred ownership of the old cabin to Astrid and the new cabin to Åsa. Bård, who had accepted that he wasn’t going to get a cabin, asked at what price. When Mum told him, he got up and walked out. It was the final straw. The ridiculously low price. The preferential treatment was deliberate. They wanted Bård and me to receive as little recompense as legally possible. It was intentional, and Astrid and Åsa had gone along with it. How would they have felt if it had been the other way round? And would they one day do the same to their children, they had two each. Give the cabins that they now owned to just one of them? No. Of course not. Because it would be awful for the one who didn’t get a cabin, they would feel like their parents loved them the least.

As Bård left, Mum called out to him that he should count himself lucky to be getting anything at all.

We should count ourselves lucky to be getting anything at all. The will we had been told about at Christmas three years ago, and which Bård had asked to be sent to him so he could read it, could be changed at any time, presumably it had already been changed, if indeed it still existed, perhaps there was no valid will, in which case the old cabin would be treated as a gift to Astrid and the new cabin as a gift to Åsa and we, Bård and Bergljot, which rolled off the tongue so easily, risked getting nothing at all.

It had rattled him, I could tell, that Mum and Dad had shown such blatant favouritism, that Astrid and Åsa had accepted the injustice apparently without a moment’s hesitation, hadn’t tried to talk Mum and Dad out of it so that the relationship between the siblings wouldn’t be ruined, so that Bård wouldn’t feel overlooked and ignored, so that Bård wouldn’t be upset as he had been, as he was, because they so very clearly didn’t care about his feelings, didn’t care enough about him to treat him decently. Bård had had a few knocks along the way and had now been dealt the final blow, he was beaten, I realised. I, too, had received some knocks along the way and was dealt the final blow fifteen years ago when I decided to end all contact.

It happened in the Narvesen kiosk in Bogstadveien on 13 March 1999.

In the years leading up to that date I had tried to have some contact with my family for the sake of my children because they were young and depended on me for seeing their grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins; so that Mum wouldn’t nag, push or tug at my conscience, but it was exhausting to act politely towards people who presented themselves as loving me. If I wrote Mum a simple postcard from Rome, I would immediately get a letter saying how much she was looking forward to seeing me at Christmas and to celebrate Christmas like a normal family. I would then be unable to control my emotions, I would get affronted, hysterical and feel taken for granted because things could never be normal again, they weren’t normal, I had explained this to them over and over, but they refused to listen, they didn’t want to listen, and how could they celebrate Christmas like a normal family? The mere thought made me want to throw up, I rang them and when they didn’t pick up the phone, I left a vicious message saying I did not look forward to Christmas, that I did not look forward to seeing them, that the thought of seeing them filled me with horror and revulsion, that it was physically impossible for me to be in the same room as them. And yet the next morning I was ashamed of my anger, my aggression, my excessive, uncontrollable, juvenile emotions, so I called Astrid and begged her go to Bråteveien and delete the angry message, but they had already heard it, she said, her voice trembling, so I realised that Mum and Dad were upset and distraught and that Astrid thought I was a terrible person for upsetting and distressing my aged parents. And I did feel bad, but I was upset too because I wanted Astrid to care about my feelings as well, but she didn’t.

When I met Klara by the Narvesen kiosk later the same day and poured out my heart to her, she said I had to cut contact for good. You must stop seeing them.

Are you allowed to do that, I sobbed. Yes, she said, many people do so. And the thought of never having to see them again gave me instant relief. Not having to deal with them, to be free from tears and recriminations and threats, not having to make up excuses, not having to constantly defend and explain myself and yet never be understood, to sever all contact, was that even an option? Yes, she said. I didn’t have to say or write anything, just make up my mind and I already had, I’ll stop seeing them, I decided outside the Narvesen kiosk in Bogstadveien, and it was done.

Mum tried. Astrid tried, but I stayed silent. Eventually they gave up, the years passed, then Astrid started trying on special occasions. When Mum had surgery. Mum is having surgery, I just thought you ought to know. As if that changed everything. As if it meant that now I had to call them. As if I would change my stance in the light of illness, in the light of death. Would I? It would appear not because I soon forgot about her text message. When I happened to see it again the next day, I was pleased that I had forgotten it, but my reaction also caused me to wonder: Had a part of me always feared that such a message would make me doubt myself? If so that hadn’t happened and I was pleased about that, I had succeeded in my efforts to cut the cord, I had silenced their reproachful, threatening, disappointed voices which had existed so powerfully inside me for over forty years. I texted her back saying I was sorry to hear that, that I hoped the operation would go well and that I wished Mum a speedy recovery. I soon gathered from Astrid that she didn’t think that was enough, but what more could I do? Call and say what? Go to the hospital and throw my arms around Mum? I imagined myself driving to the hospital, entering the side ward where she lay, and everything in me rebelled. I imagined it again in order to relive the emotion, how everything inside me protested. It was impossible. I had no face with which I could meet her undoubtedly pitiful demeanour. I couldn’t sit by her bedside, take her hand in mine and say that I loved her because I didn’t. I had loved her once, I’d been incredibly close to her and dependent on her once, she was my mum, but that emotion belonged to the past and couldn’t be resurrected because of the impact of what happened later. I felt no love and no longing for Mum and this lack of love and longing for Mum was, I knew, regarded by my family as a character defect in me, something I had to justify and defend. And I justified it and defended myself every time Astrid sent me messages along the lines of ‘I just thought you ought to know.’ Sometimes I had sent furious replies to such messages because Astrid treated me as though it were a matter of will, as though I could simply decide to turn up, to be nice, to make conversation. But Astrid deleted my furious emails unread, she wrote to me when I apologised for them the next morning, when filled with shame I wrote to her to apologise for my furious emails. Astrid had deleted my furious emails without reading them, she wrote, and that was her right, it was understandable, but it didn’t stop me from feeling rejected and disappointed that Astrid didn’t deal with their contents, never commented at all on the reasons I gave, didn’t seem to reflect on where that enormous rage of mine came from. I just thought you ought to know. So that it would be on my mind or I would call or turn up at the hospital. And so I didn’t call, I didn’t turn up and thus confirmed yet again that I was who they had decided I was, the heartless daughter, selfish and destructive. I just thought you ought to know and realise how bad you are. Forcing me into the role of the black sheep yet again and I was distraught because I just couldn’t do it! My legs refuse to carry me! I jumped whenever the phone rang with an unknown number in case it was Mum. I looked her number up and stored it so that I would be able to see if it was her and not pick up. She might well decide to call me when she was ill because surely I wasn’t so cruel that I would ignore a sick, possibly dying person?

And, besides, even if I’d managed to get myself to the hospital, even if my legs would have carried me there, then everything I said at her hospital bed—unless it was something furious which it would be inappropriate to say at a sickbed—would be interpreted as remorse and an admission on my part that their demands had been reasonable and my conduct unreasonable, evil, so it was impossible, why go there simply to betray myself?

But if I had truly succeeded in silencing their voices inside me, if their voices genuinely had no power over me now, surely I could go to the hospital and tell white lies? Make hospital small talk with Mum and get it over with. Why did it matter if Mum no longer mattered, why the need for honesty towards someone so irrelevant to me? Why couldn’t I just give Mum what she wanted, give the family what it wanted, let Mum think that I repented, let the family think that I repented, perjure myself on this one occasion and be done with it, why was I so stubborn towards someone who no longer mattered. There were so many other lies in my life, what difference would one more make? Why couldn’t I just go to the hospital and reel off stock phrases, then leave and be done with my quandary. So I was in a quandary, was I? No! There was no alternative, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. How weak I was, how trapped.

Could I instead go to the hospital and speak my mind, was that an option? Go there and say that I stood my ground, that I repented nothing, that I had come to say goodbye. No! Impossible! Why? I couldn’t work it out! Philosophers, where are you in my hour of need? In my mind I tried to cut contact again by making a decision like the one I’d taken at the Narvesen kiosk in Bogstadveien about not seeing them again, not allowing myself to be emotionally blackmailed, but I didn’t experience the relief and comfort I had felt when I made my decisive break at the Narvesen kiosk in Bogstadveien in 1999.

Had it been merely a postponement, a brief respite from an insoluble problem? Because even if Mum didn’t express a wish to see me before she died, Astrid would still call me when she died, and I would have to see them at the funeral or before. Surely I couldn’t not go—or could I? And their behaviour towards me would be dismissive and disapproving because of my long absence. And Dad, whom I hadn’t seen for years, a man I might no longer recognise, who had been poorly for reasons I was unaware of, he would be there, grieving, and I couldn’t comfort him, I couldn’t take part, but would remain only an outsider. That had been my choice, although I hadn’t had a real choice, and now I would suffer the consequences of that choice. But it would also be uncomfortable for them, wouldn’t it? So why did they continue to nag me, why was my presence so important to them? Because although it would be uncomfortable also for them, it would be worse for me, was that what they were hoping for? The chance to watch me isolated and squirming, the chance to express their pent-up aggression towards me because I had upset my parents and they had had to pick up the pieces?

Or were my siblings angry with me and did they hate me because, consciously or subconsciously, they had wanted to do what I had done, break free, get away, did they resent me as one who had escaped the parental regime and thus made it more difficult for them to do likewise?

I should have emigrated to America, I thought, I should have sailed around the world and been somewhere on the ocean when it happened, then I would get an email in some port when it was all over, and the ocean would put our little lives, our little deaths into perspective.

But what opportunities for growth and resolution would I then have fled from? What if I was close to an epiphany, I asked myself, perhaps this was the moment, perhaps this was the challenge. And if I failed to meet it, I would never learn the most important lesson of all, but have made only half-hearted attempts and settled for easy answers.

But it hasn’t been easy, I protested, it has been a struggle, an ordeal! But what if it’s not over yet, I wondered to myself, perhaps this is the last leg of the race and I mustn’t give up now.

I didn’t sleep the night I had reread the I-just-thought-you-ought-to-know message from Astrid. To be reconciled, to forgive? But surely you can’t forgive what people refuse to admit? Did I think they were capable of owning up to it? To finally admit the truth about the very thing they had devoted so much energy to repress and deny? Did I really think they would risk public censure in order to be reconciled with me? No, I wasn’t worth that much, they had made that crystal clear to me on several occasions. But what if they admitted it just to me? If I wrote to Mum and Dad that they could admit it just to me, and that I would promise never to tell anyone. No, that wouldn’t happen either, I was sure of it, because it didn’t even exist between the two of them, they never talked about it, they had entered into a conspiracy to save their reputation, to maintain a level of self-respect; they had entered into an unspoken, unbreakable pact a long time ago in which they were the victims of their oldest daughter’s mendacity and callousness, and as long as that version was believed, they remained on the receiving end of compassion, pity and care, and they couldn’t manage without that, they fed on it, and it would be harder for them to get it if they ever admitted the truth to me, even if it stayed just between the three of us, harder to keep up their public image of them as the victims. They must be pitied. And there were times when I did pity them because of the mess they had created for themselves, because they were ill and old and would probably die soon, while I was in good health, touch wood, touch more wood, and only halfway through my life. You, too, are going to die, I told myself, by way of consolation. You might die tomorrow, I said, in order to strengthen my resolve. Why do they care, I called out to the sky, what do they want from me, I called out into the darkness. But they didn’t care, not really, they hadn’t cared for years.

Two days later I got a text message from Astrid saying all Mum’s tests were fine. She would make a full recovery and was already feeling much better. As was Dad. I wrote that that was nice and asked her to say hi. I resumed my own life.

~

A month later Astrid called. She would be turning fifty soon and was having a party with lots of guests, people she thought I would enjoy meeting. She told me the date and I was free, she was pleased about that, she said, and then she paused and said that Mum and Dad would be there too. They so love a big party, she said, and didn’t say ‘one final’ but it was in the air.

She would appear to think that something had changed. That although I hadn’t turned up at the hospital when Mum had her operation, I had wished Mum a speedy recovery and probably realised that Mum could be gone for ever at any moment, and that I’d subsequently had a change of heart. It’s merely abstract to her, I thought. But all too real to me. Having to enter a room where my parents were and shake hands? Hug them? Say what? The others had met up regularly during all these years, they were at ease in one another’s company, I had chosen to distance myself and be the black sheep. Would I turn up, smiling, with a ‘hiya’? As though we didn’t see the world differently, in mutually exclusive terms, as though they weren’t denying the very fabric from which I was made. Had Astrid no understanding of the reason why I had done what I had done, how deep it went? She talked to me as if it had been a whim, a fad, the result of a childish, rebellious urge which I could put aside when something really important happened. That I could ‘pull myself together’, make an intellectual decision to change my point of view, did she not understand the physical terror I felt at the thought of entering her house where I hadn’t been for years, where Mum and Dad came all the time, and seeing them, my parents. To Astrid and to most other people, they probably came across as two harmless, fragile, old folks, but to me they were giants whose grip it had taken years of therapy to shake off, was that the problem? Astrid didn’t understand how I could be scared of two stooping, grey, old creatures, but I couldn’t go to an airport without quaking with fear of accidentally bumping into them. What are you scared of, I would ask myself on the airport train. I forced myself to imagine seeing them, confronting them like you do to cure yourself of a phobia. What would happen if I reached the airport and they were in the check-in queue? Fear rippled through me! Well, so what? Would I walk straight past them? No. Too stupid, too immature for a woman over fifty to dodge them, to be unable to greet her own parents in a check-in queue. I hoped that I would stop and ask where they were going and they would tell me and then ask me where I was going and I would tell them and smile stiffly and add have a safe flight. A straightforward exchange, perhaps it would be easy to behave like an almost ‘normal family’, but no! Because afterwards I would have gone to the lavatory and locked myself in a cubicle and sat trembling on the loo seat and waited until they would surely have taken off, even if it meant missing my own flight. It was depressing that I had made so little progress, that it could catch up with me at any time because I didn’t want it to catch up with me, I didn’t want to be back there again, and yet here I was! I so wanted to be adult and calm and composed. I decided not to go to Astrid’s birthday party, I would invent an excuse and forget all about it. But I couldn’t do it. Because if my parents hadn’t been invited, I would have gone to my sister’s fiftieth birthday party to meet the people she worked with, who were likely to be exciting and interesting and possibly useful to me. That was my loss. That I was so inhibited and traumatised that I had to stay away from something that might have been good for me. All because of my stupid childhood. That should be my epitaph: All because of my stupid childhood. Over fifty, but still suffering from that fear of parental authority, which all children have. Except my siblings appeared to have grown out of it. Perhaps Astrid had invited us all because she thought I was free of my childhood, that I had worked through my traumas and my fear of my parents? Perhaps she thought the only reason I hadn’t turned up at the hospital was habit, and decided that it was time for a change. So the invitation could also be regarded as a compliment from Astrid, who thought I had made more progress than I had. Astrid, who believed that I was capable of turning up, all smiles, unaffected by my parents’ presence, that I no longer cared about what they thought of me.

I said that I would think about it. I thought of nothing else. I went for long walks in the empty void of the forest and imagined that I was on another continent where no one could reach me. No one can reach you, I told myself, if you make yourself unreachable. Who are you, I asked myself, and who do you want to be and what yardstick do you measure yourself by.

The biggest?

I imagined myself walking through the once familiar streets on my way to Astrid’s birthday party, a quiet Saturday afternoon in bright autumn light. Apples hanging ripe on the branches, heavy redcurrant bushes over the fences, bumblebees buzzing, and the smell of freshly cut grass. I inhale it gratefully, the bounty of the earth. Calmly I ring the doorbell and enter my sister’s house.

Would I ever get there? No. I so badly wanted to be free, but I was trapped. I so badly wanted to be strong, but I was weak. My heart was pounding and I didn’t know how to calm it. I knelt on the ground, pressed my face against my knees and sobbed.

~

That was three years ago.

It was such a long road.

I wondered where Bård was on his journey, and how different it was from mine.

I couldn’t ask him that as we sat silent and awkward in the old-fashioned restaurant.

So instead I told him about the time Klara and I went to the old cabin on Hvaler with Tale and her friends, it was many years ago, back when I still had a small amount of contact with my family for the sake of my children. We had been playing music and dancing when Mum appeared in the doorway and asked if I had given the girls ecstasy.

Bård laughed, and I laughed with him, but I hadn’t laughed then. Did Mum really think that I would give the girls drugs? I was speechless with shock, but Klara read the situation correctly and offered Mum a chair and a glass of wine. Klara had realised that Mum simply wanted to feel included. Mum had been sitting in the new cabin and could hear that we were having fun and had come up to join in. She probably didn’t understand it herself, but that was what she wanted. Klara offered Mum a chair and a glass of wine, and Mum sat there for some minutes before she staggered drunkenly back down to the new cabin in the darkness. Poor Mum. Trapped in the new cabin with Dad. She had heard the sounds of good times coming from the old cabin and had come up to join us, but didn’t understand it herself and turned her desire for company into a rebuke: Did you give the girls ecstasy?

Only I hadn’t realised it because I was on the defensive.

I asked Bård if he had gone to Astrid’s fiftieth birthday party. He hadn’t. He had been invited, but he had been abroad at the time. I said that I had been invited but hadn’t gone because Mum and Dad would be there. I’m scared of them, I said, I told him that the thought of Mum and Dad terrified me. It doesn’t terrify you, Bård said, but you feel a strong dislike.

Terror and a strong dislike, I said, and we smiled.

I told him that Tale no longer wanted to see the family in Bråteveien, that she refused to keep up appearances. I told him about a time when she and her family spent a summer weekend in the old cabin on Hvaler with another couple. The men went out in the boat and Mum and Dad came up to say hello and asked where the men were. They’ve gone out in the boat, Tale said, and Mum got hysterical because it was raining and the sea was choppy and it was late in the day and foggy and the water was cold, if they fell overboard they would drown, perhaps they were already dead. And Tale got nervous and didn’t know what to do, Mum’s anxiety, Mum’s catastrophizing histrionics were starting to rub off on her. Dad was upset for different reasons, the men had taken the boat without first asking him, after all he owned the boat and the cabins, because the men had helped themselves and not shown him any respect. Tale stood mute in front of the upset owners through whose generosity she was there. Mum ordered her to come with her down to the jetty, a prisoner of her own anxiety, controlled by her overwhelming fear, which rubbed off on her surroundings, which had rubbed off on me my whole childhood, which had made me just as fearful towards the things that made her fearful such as alcohol and rock music. Tale stood with Mum at the end of the jetty, staring across the sea. I’ve stood here many times, Mum said. I’ve stood here many evenings and nights, looking across the sea as I prayed, she said, I’ve saved lives here!

I mimicked Mum’s melodramatic style and Bård laughed. Mum was like that. I mimicked Dad’s chastising style, Bård laughed. Dad was like that.

But that wasn’t the real reason why Tale went home a day early and found it difficult to be on Hvaler and in Bråteveien. It was because later that evening when the men were safely back from their boat trip, her friend asked her why I, her mother, wasn’t in touch with my parents, and Tale had to explain why and saw her friend’s reaction. And because the next morning Mum came up to the cabin to ask Tale if she took good care of her child. She had had such bad dreams that night about how Tale wasn’t taking proper care of her daughter: I had a terrible dream that you didn’t take care of Emma. You do take good care of Emma, don’t you?

Mum had had nightmares about Tale not looking after her daughter and had dumped her anxiety on Tale without any sense of shame because she lacked the ability or she was too scared to examine her bad dreams about Tale being a bad mother. Because who was it who had really failed to care for her own daughter, why did Mum have nightmares about a mother who neglected her daughter? She lacked the insight or she was too frightened to ask herself hard questions because then a void would have opened up.

It was Bo Schjerven who reminded me of that story when I was in turmoil once, weighed down by guilt because I had cut contact with Mum and Dad and was refusing to see them.

But they’re going to die soon, I cried.

As are you one day, he said.

I had forgotten that.

As I left the Grand and walked up Karl Johans gate towards the metro station, I felt lighter than when I had arrived. It had been good to laugh about Mum with someone who knew her, to joke about our family with someone who knew it. I never laughed about Mum and the family when I spoke to Astrid. Whenever I had contact with her, I was always heavily burdened, I always felt very alone.

I called Klara and told her how we had laughed about Mum and Dad at the Grand. She asked: If you had the choice, which would you pick? A cabin on Hvaler and your parents or nothing?

Nothing.

That afternoon Bård texted me to say that every cloud has a silver lining. Love, your brother.

The silver lining being that he and I had found one another again.

December in Lars’s cabin in the woods near the river, which was partly frozen and thus strangely quiet. Usually it would babble to anyone who listened carefully. Dark and cold and quiet, the trees black and mourning the summer, which had been taken from them, their branches spiky against the sky, yearning for snow, to be dressed in snow. I tended to work well when I was there, far from the city and the people, where Fido could run free.

December darkness with snow in the air that evening, but the next morning the grass lay green and the sun was strong as though we weren’t in December. Then raw December, sudden darkness and red wine in the evening, bad dreams at night, low-lying fog in the morning only for the next moment to be bright and sunny as if it were spring, it didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t concentrate. I was restless, unedited theatre reviews were piling up. I had intended to write about the risks of dramatizing popular novels, but struggled for hours to find an angle, then I had an email from Bård, who had had an email from Åsa. She wrote that they would obtain new valuations. That the previous ones might have been rather low. However, it was up to the testator to decide how much money should be deducted for presents given as an advance of an inheritance, but by obtaining more quotes and valuations, Mum and Dad would have a basis for a fair estimate. If we were able to agree on a method of calculation, she thought that Mum and Dad would accept it.

It was up to Mum and Dad to decide, but if we could reach an agreement, she thought they would accept the new valuations. The implication being that if Bård continued to object, they would ignore them.

An hour later I received a copy of an email he had sent to Dad, Bård had gone off the deep end now, I recognised the deep end. He reminded Dad how he had always said that he would treat his children equally when it came to inheritance. So how was it fair to give two of his children the cabins on Hvaler as an advance of their inheritance without first having them valued? And presumably many years before the other two, Bergljot and I, he mentioned me by name, would inherit anything at all?

I’ve never caused you any trouble, he wrote, he was referring to me, who had caused them trouble and grief. You tell me how much you love me and my children, to that he would reply: Actions speak louder than words.

I sat in the forest with no peace. I imagined them gathering in Bråteveien to continue the myth of Bård as a troublemaker and Bård’s wife as a warmonger, she had been allocated the role of the woman who had seduced Bård away from his family. I knew exactly how it would play out; once I had contributed to it myself, I had been so completely enmeshed in the family’s version of its own story. It wasn’t until I became estranged myself, until I had distanced myself, that I started to look at things differently, but still slowly, taking baby steps, such is the power parental stories have over a child’s concept of reality that it’s almost impossible to free yourself.

And had I managed to free myself? Or was I still stuck, and had the name of the villain merely changed?

I closed the Mac, got dressed, took the dog down to the river and let her off the leash. She didn’t run away, she was loyal. I counted the rocks in the river, you couldn’t see them in the spring and summer, in my mind I traced the river backwards, to the spring it had come from, its source, I walked along the bank for about an hour and then back in the darkness, alone on the path, as far as it was possible to go without being in another country. I went inside and turned on the Mac, and there was another email from Bård, he was well into it now, he was also tracing the river back to its source. He had received an email from Åsa, who assured him that there was a will which stated that Bård and I would be recompensed for the cabins, that new valuations would be obtained. Some blank spaces followed, then she wrote that it would have been easier to communicate with him if his tone had been less hostile: It’s almost scary to receive an email from you.

He replied that she shouldn’t forget that his original wish had been for the four of us siblings to share the cabins. We would then have had a natural place to meet with our children. It was sad, he wrote, that Astrid and she were opposed to that solution. He wrote that if she thought it scary to receive emails from him, it must be because she found it uncomfortable to read about how she and Astrid had behaved towards us. He would never understand why they refused him and his children half a cabin on Hvaler.

Lars turned up at the house in the woods. We cooked, we drank wine, I told him about Bård’s emails. We went to bed together and afterwards, as we lay close, I told him what Åsa had written to Bård and what Bård had written to Åsa. Lars heaved a sigh and turned over to go to sleep saying that as far as he was aware then I had never shown any interest in getting a cabin on Hvaler. I don’t want a cabin on Hvaler, I exclaimed, but I can understand why Bård objects! Don’t you see why Bård objects, why he’s upset? Lars looked at me, stunned, and sighed wearily: Yes, of course.

What was it like to be a normal human being?

I didn’t know what it was like to be a normal human being, an undamaged human being, I had no experience other than my own. When distressing dreams woke me up at night, I would snuggle up to Lars, slip my right arm around his back and try to take over his dreams, which were undoubtedly peaceful. I tried to open my mind towards Lars so that his harmless dreams could flow into mine, I tried to suck the dreams out of his sleeping body, but it didn’t work, there was no way in, I was trapped inside myself.

The next day, just after noon, as I tried to write about the risks of making plays based on novels, while Lars sat in the conservatory with coffee and newspapers, I got an email with an attachment from Bård. He had lain awake all night, he wrote, but now felt he had got everything out of his system by writing it down. It was wonderful to have articulated it and sent it, he wrote, he called it the last act in our little family drama.

To Dad

I want to tell you what kind of father I would have been, if I had had a son.

I would have tried to develop a close and strong relationship with my son.

I would have tried to steer him towards activities which he and I could enjoy doing together, both when he was young and also later.

I would have shown an interest in and got involved with his activities.

I would have supported him in these activities even if they didn’t interest me to begin with, simply because they mattered to my son.

I would have felt true joy, delight and pride on seeing my son’s happiness when he was doing those things I had supported him in, and which I knew he had worked hard to learn. I would have felt and expressed the same sentiments when it came to his education and career.

Once he had grown up and got himself a good education as well as professional experience, I would have asked his advice when it came to business matters where he had more competence than me.

I would have enjoyed some of my finest moments as a father and a human being by sharing experiences with my son.

You and I both know that you haven’t behaved like that towards your only son.

I played hundreds of hockey and handball matches. You turned up to watch only one of these matches.

You never introduced me to activities that could have turned into something the two of us could have enjoyed doing together.

I know several of my friends’ fathers better than I know you. I have been skiing more often with Trond’s and Helge’s fathers than I have with you.

I have three qualifications, and I have achieved a great deal in my professional life. Yet you have never said or indicated that you are proud of me or pleased on my behalf.

I have done very well in several types of sport throughout my life, but you have never shown any interest or support.

We can’t live our lives over and we all have to live with our choices.

I have never asked much of you as a father, but I demand that you treat the four of us fairly when it comes to inheritance. You and I both know that it hasn’t been like that so far, not even close.

Bård

I went to the conservatory. Lars was sitting in his thick, quilted jacket in a chair facing the lawn, the forest and the river, he wasn’t reading the newspapers nor was he smoking, he was gazing at the lawn and the forest and the river, and I thought that he felt proud to own it, you can feel joy at ownership, a strange joy, a good and heart-warming if not a politically correct emotion, like the Maasai in Kenya or the Inuit in Greenland probably feel when they gaze across a landscape they regard as theirs although legally it isn’t. Like I used to do a long time ago when I was alone on Hvaler as a young woman, alone with my children when they were small, in early autumn or in March, off season when most cabins were closed up and empty, when I would look across the archipelago, the sea and the rocks I knew so well, and feel a sense of belonging and something which could be called pride. Not being able to be on Hvaler had been a great loss, a consequence of my estrangement, but I’d had no choice, and compared to what I had gained in terms of peace of mind by my estrangement, Hvaler meant little.

I tapped Lars on the shoulder and asked if I could read something to him. He looked at me, hoping it didn’t have anything to do with inheritance. I sat down and it started to snow. Look, he said. Big flakes whirled in the air, unwilling to settle, like blossom falling from the apple and cherry trees in June. We each chose a snowflake and followed it until it landed and melted. It’ll be Christmas soon, he said. I looked at my watch, December 10. Fido chased after the flakes trying to catch them, childhood was unreal. Ice hockey matches and piano lessons unreal. I was loath to look back. I remember thinking on my way to school, in Year Three, when I was wearing a new orange dress which I was so proud of, that I would have been happy if it hadn’t been for that.

Perhaps Dad was reading Bård’s email right now, it had been sent seven minutes ago. I tried to imagine him, but it was so long since I had seen him and I had never seen him in front of a computer, I had no idea what kind of computer he had, where he kept it, in his study, in the living room or in the kitchen. It must be horrible for a father to receive such a message from his son, his only one, his firstborn. Poor old Dad, grey-haired and stooping, his glasses perched on his nose, I’m guessing now, peering at the screen while he clicked on the inbox. To Dad from Bård. A huge amount of compassion welled up in me. The old man who couldn’t escape his past, who was forced to carry his past mistakes with him for the rest of his life, and I was overcome with guilt for what I had done by becoming estranged from that poor old man.

Then I reminded myself that the father I pitied wasn’t my dad, but an imaginary dad, the archetypal father, the mythical father, my lost father. I reminded myself that my actual father, the person I knew, wouldn’t be moved by Bård’s letter, but would instinctively go on the offensive. Dad’s final words to me, the last time I spoke to him on the telephone seven years ago were: If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror.

It was a sunny Saturday morning at the start of June, I was sitting on the windowsill in a function room after an end-of-year party with a man from the events committee. We had finished clearing up and were enjoying a beer.

He told me that he had studied with my sister Åsa, in Trondheim. I didn’t know that, how funny, he told funny stories about their university days in Trondheim. I was giddy and laughing as I called Åsa, to whom I hadn’t spoken for years and said: Guess who I’m having a chat and a beer with and handed my phone to the man and he spoke to her, and it was fine, it was good fun. Then I called Bård, to whom I hadn’t spoken for years either and said something similar, and he laughed, it was fine, perhaps a part of me had been missing Bård and Åsa since I had called them now that I was drunk and my defences were down. I called Astrid and said something similar and it was fine, although she was more guarded, she knew me better, she was aware that my moods fluctuated and she could probably hear that I had been drinking, then I called Mum and Dad, seeing as I was on a roll, I can’t have been thinking straight, I acted on impulse, believing perhaps that it would be fine as it had been when I called the others. Mum answered the phone and I was about to say something funny about the man who had studied with Åsa in Trondheim when I heard her whisper and it must have been to Dad: It’s Bergljot. And perhaps she put us on speaker phone, I thought afterwards when the conversation was over and had ended the way it had, she probably put us on speaker to show Dad that she was on his side and wouldn’t whisper with me without him being able to hear what was said, or maybe he demanded that she put it on speaker. Mum refused to let me say a word about the man who had studied with Åsa in Trondheim, she went straight to the point, asking aggressively how I could treat her and Dad so badly, be so ungrateful when they had always done their best for me, helped me in every possible way, what had they ever done to me that made me so horrible to them? I was completely unprepared for her reaction, with hindsight it’s mind-boggling that I could have been so foolish, what had I imagined, that they would chat light-heartedly with the man who had studied with Åsa in Trondheim? I had been naïve and I came crashing down to earth. When Dad dies, I said, then you’ll stop asking those questions, then you’ll come round, I said, but by then it’ll be too late, I said, and Dad then spoke because Mum had probably put the call on speaker: If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror.

I had often thought that if Dad died first, then Mum would start to see things my way, but also that by then it would be too late. Once he had uttered those words, then it was too late. That was who I had become, who I had chosen to become, merciless. If you want to see a psychopath, just look in the mirror! That was who Dad had become, who Dad had chosen to become or he hadn’t had what he regarded as a real choice, he’d had to become merciless. I was convinced that Dad was incapable of feeling what Bård wanted him to feel, and so Bård’s email wouldn’t have the desired effect. To Dad Bård’s email would merely be evidence of his ingratitude, the word he had used about Bård and me. And Mum and Astrid and Åsa would shake their heads at Bård’s email, if they ever got to read it. A grown man, almost sixty years old, chiding his old father over nothing.

The email wouldn’t be shown to anyone but Astrid and Åsa. Should it become necessary to talk about it, to explain the situation to the rest of the family, they would say that Bård at nearly sixty was so juvenile that he was still cross with his father for not going to more of his handball matches when he was a little boy.

The email would be water off a duck’s back, and Bård knew it, he probably had no expectations of ever being understood, but for his own peace of mind he had felt a need have his say as explicitly as he had before it was too late.

I read it aloud to Lars. He listened carefully. Wow, he said when I had finished and then he fell quiet. Lars was a father, Lars had a son. Wow, he said again and grew pensive. The snow fell. We all want our fathers to notice us, he then said. That’s what it’s all about. The snow fell and the dog ran around the snow to catch the flakes. That’s the most important thing for a son, he said, for his father to notice him. That’s why Bård wrote to his father, he said.

We sat in silence for a while. Then he said that his father had also been quite distant. That many fathers of that generation were and that back then it wasn’t like today where fathers often turn up for hockey and handball games. Had my father merely been a little distant? No, I said. Because even distant fathers were proud of their sons when they won sailing competitions and ski races and would boast about their successful sons to other fathers, but Dad was incapable of giving Bård a single word of praise, of uttering one positive adjective about Bård. Dad was scared. If you’re scared, never let them see you tremble, and Dad didn’t dare tremble or show any signs of weakness, which is what he believed a compliment to Bård would represent. Dad’s regime was sustained by fear. His fear that everything might come tumbling down if he showed weakness. Dad could only accept Bård if he was humble and submissive, but Bård didn’t want to be. Dad hated Bård getting rich—although money was Dad’s yardstick—because once Bård grew rich Dad lost that power over him, which money represents.

I’m glad I’m not rich, Lars said.

Dad has probably mellowed over the years, I said, that was my impression, but he has painted himself into a corner as far as Bård is concerned. And he isn’t capable or willing to come out of it.

Bård hasn’t included the worst, I said. He merely lists the symptoms. I’m guessing the worst is too difficult to enter into and express because then he would have to become a little boy again.

December 10 and snow. I gave up doing any work, we went for a silent walk in the snow, the world was quiet and white. Lars left that night in a snowstorm and I was alone once more. The darkness came and with it came more snow. I sat in the conservatory and I smoked, although I don’t smoke. There was no wood burning stove there, so I wrapped up warm, I was completely covered up, I smoked and I drank wine, and I looked at the falling snow. I ought to be writing, editing articles, I smoked and drank in the darkness and looked at the snow, which grew higher.

When I went indoors in just after midnight, I saw that Mum had called. I had stored her number, so I wouldn’t accidentally answer the phone in case she called. She had left another message. She asked me to call her. It was this business with Bård and the cabins. Her voice wobbled as it usually did when she wanted to tug at my heartstrings, like when I was a little girl and she would sit on the edge of my bed and tell me how much it hurt her, how she would get chest pains when I didn’t do what she had told me to, when she doused me with her pain before she left, closing the door behind her, her heart unburdened, I presume, while I lay behind with mine pounding. All the times she had called me, despairing at her relationship with Rolf Sandberg, all the times she had called me to tell me she was going to kill herself and how I would spend hours consoling her and talking her out of it because we loved her so much and needed her so much, she had used me up with that tremble in her voice, which suffered as it expressed her suffering.

She had called because she believed that I would reiterate the statement I had made when she called three years ago not long after I had received the Christmas letter about the will, that I would say what she needed to hear, which was that I didn’t want a cabin on Hvaler, that I thought their will was generous—if their will was still the one referred to in the Christmas letter, that is. Because it might have been changed, but whether or not it had been, the circumstances had and were now different from when she had called me three years ago when I was in San Sebastian. I went to bed and slept badly, Bård’s email was on my mind. The next morning I wrote to ask him if he wanted me to tell the family that I shared his view of the conflict. It took a while before he replied. He wrote that he thought I should either stay silent or declare that I too felt unfairly treated.

I could see what he was saying. What he was pointing out. That I was offering to back him but was unwilling to enter the fray and express my own opinion.

But I didn’t want to argue about cabins and inheritance! I had always said that I didn’t care for any of it. I couldn’t very well join in now and demand something, it was beneath my dignity!

But then again I did share his feeling of having been let down by Dad, and by Mum who was loyal to Dad, I shared his view that the valuations were laughable, I agreed with him that Åsa and Astrid were behaving appallingly. Should I leave him all alone on stage like the villain, then sneak in and hide in his shadow?

I called Klara.

She said that I had failed to rock the boat for far too long, that it was exactly what Mum and Dad had wanted when they told us about their will that Christmas three years ago, for me not to rock the boat. It left them free to tear up the will or write a new one at any time, while all along I did nothing and regarded them as generous.

I wrote to Bård that I would write to Astrid and Åsa.

Incomprehensible Publications closed after one issue, and financial necessity forced Klara to work evenings and nights at Renna. Klara was exhausted and fed up with guests and staff treating her flat as a late-night drinking den and the married man treating her like dirt. The married man finally ended it with Klara, she was devastated and sinking fast. I need a change of air, she gasped.

I worked on the editorial while the email I had promised Bård came together in my head. When I had submitted the editorial late that evening, I opened a new document and poured myself a glass of wine to strengthen my resolve, then suddenly it couldn’t happen soon enough, suddenly it was of the utmost importance to me or perhaps I was scared that I might get cold feet, I wrote as if in a trance and sent it to Bård, although it was late, asking if he thought it was too long.

To Astrid and Åsa

Subject: Cabins on Hvaler

I wrote that, because I had expected no inheritance, I was pleasantly surprised at getting the Christmas letter three years ago which stated that we would all inherit equally. That was why when Mum had called to say that Bård was raising hell because of the cabins, I had said that I thought their will was generous. But that I regretted now, I wrote, that I hadn’t phoned Bård, given that I had later learned that he had merely asked Mum and Dad to consider another and fairer solution, namely that the cabins were shared between us four children so that all the grandchildren could enjoy them. This had been dismissed without explanation, and I didn’t think it was surprising that Bård had got upset at that or that he was upset now when they had been transferred in secret and at such ridiculously low valuations. After all, Bård had never, unlike me, distanced himself from the family, so why should he be treated differently from his younger sisters?

I wrote that now we knew the cabins had already been transferred in secret and at such low valuations, we must assume the intention was to ensure Bård and me would be left as little as possible in the final will. In other words, more would be given to two branches of the family and less to the other two. Of course this was seen as an injustice and a betrayal. And them blaming Bård for Mum’s overdose on top of everything else was particularly nasty, I wrote, making him out to be the bad guy while they themselves looked good and caring at the hospital. I wrote in anger that the responsibility for the current situation really lay with both of them who, if they had wanted to, could have used their influence to dissuade Mum and Dad from doing what they had now done.

I calmed down, poured myself another glass of wine and continued by mentioning that in one of my recent conversations with Astrid she had wondered whether Bård might be jealous of her and Åsa. No, we weren’t jealous, I wrote, but we had had a very different childhood to them, our experience of Mum and Dad was very different to theirs. They both had degrees and worked in professions which emphasised rights and equality before the law, the importance of examining both sides of an issue, and the fact that they showed no willingness to understand how Bård and I viewed the situation was depressing. Then I added: The fact that neither of you has at any point asked me about my side of the story, I’ve experienced and continue to experience as deeply hurtful. It needed to be said, I felt. In conclusion, I wrote that throughout our childhood and adulthood Bård and I had been given less than them, emotionally as well as materially, and the fact that we were now passed over so blatantly was distressing to us and our families, especially the realisation that Astrid and Åsa clearly endorsed such discrimination. Regards, Bergljot

Bård replied immediately that it wasn’t too long, that everything must be included and he pointed out some typos. I would correct them in the morning, I replied, I didn’t want to send it now given how late it was so that Astrid would simply dismiss it as she was wont to do with my angry night-time emails. She deleted them unread, she claimed.