Safe as Houses by Kelly Creighton

Author:Kelly Creighton [Creighton, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Torill clutched the pencils tighter and tried not to cry. She used to cry frequently but learned it did no good. She would have to be brave instead. Torill could do that. She’d already been through so much. She was different to the kids at school. Had to be. She had had very different experiences, and what was happening now was just another one of them.

Torill was exceptional. Could she kid herself that she was special and that was why she had been taken, had been chosen? She was different on the outside. Torill was half Norwegian and half Chinese, and sometimes she asked herself if this was why she felt different on the inside. She was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian like a lot of her friends. But who was she kidding? The girl moved around so much that she did not have proper friends.

Would anyone care if she didn’t live till dinner time? Would her classmates?

Torill remembered their vigil for a boy who died in her last school in the north of Norway. It was a drowning. They remembered him in class and made artwork for his parents. Torill expected they would make artwork for her soon, and she was sad she would not be around to see it. She should like to see the art. If she could choose, she would prefer that they all draw horses. But horses are hard to get right. Jostein Blom could do it. Jostein was good at art. Torill pondered what he might draw, but would there be any point in making the effort? They would not be able to give the artwork to her mother. Torill’s mother did not love Torill. Did not care about her or think about her.

That was sad, too.

Torill did not want to think about her mother, not about any member of her family, when these might be her last moments and final thoughts. She kept that aperture closed.

The car took a corner and she landed on her side, her face against the fluffy side. It smelled of a wet dog. It stunk of urine. She turned her face away and filled her lungs, felt herself losing air. She needed the boot to open and her legs to stretch out. Just when she was thinking this, the car stopped. Torill held her breath and felt herself go lightheaded.

Per Myklebust got a gun from his briefcase, he got out of the vehicle, walked to the back and held a gun to the car’s boot. When he opened it, she was lying looking at him, an angry, shadowy look on her face. Her arms cupped her knees.

He got her by the elbow.

‘Good girl, good Torill,’ he said. ‘I have some people I want you to meet.’

She had no interest in who they were. She knew of children taken to other countries, turned into enslaved people and made to do awful things. She felt sick, and even more lightheaded.

‘Come,’ he said, pushing her in the direction of a car parked there on the coastline.

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