What My Body Remembers by Agnete Friis

Author:Agnete Friis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2017-03-02T02:32:53+00:00

22

“Food?”

I was lying on the sofa, staring up at the dirty, ash-grey ceiling with its fat cracks in the cement and spider webs in the corners. Barbara had already placed a glass of water in front of me on the coffee table. She put a cool hand on my forehead. Her bangles clashed in my eardrums. Indeed, everything about Barbara was loud. Her hair—newly-dyed in the interim—her eyebrows painted in brown earth tones, and her necklace of polished wooden pearls that rattled like an irate snake.

But I was no longer high.

The walk from Thisted to Klitmøller had burnt off the last of the chemical reserves in my system. The only thing I felt by the time I got home was a profound exhaustion in my bones. I was too tired to eat.

“No, thanks.”

Barbara nodded, sat down in the easy chair in the corner, and tucked her thin brown legs in under her. Her feet looked like the claws of a crow. Two thin, tattooed snakes entwined around each other on her right ankle.

“Where were you?”

“I went for a walk.”

“You’ve been gone for almost five hours.”

I didn’t budge. The visit to my grandmother’s wasn’t something I could put into words just yet, and I was still furious. Because Bæk-Nielsen had forced me to talk to her. But mostly because I kept thinking about what she’d said. About my father. That he claimed he was innocent. It wasn’t as if I felt I owed him any loyalty—there was nothing to be loyal to—but that his treachery ran so deep . . . I had always thought he would have the decency to admit his guilt.

“Would you like me to sing for you?”

I turned my head to meet Barbara’s radiant gaze.

“You’re nuts,” I mumbled. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

“I guess because I like you,” she said. “A clever man once told me that we don’t always choose the people we have in our lives. Sometimes life, or circumstances, can bring us together, and sometimes we are deliberately chosen by others—and I have chosen you, sweetheart.”

Her singing voice was off-key and smoky, and the tones became twisted on their way out of her brain and into the world via her vocal cords. Her song sounded like an echo from a different world. Peace reigns in country and town . . .

I closed my eyes, felt a ripple run through my body. I was no longer lying on my grandmother’s sofa, I was in my own room, the attic walls were painted golden yellow, a poster of Emil from Lönneberga was stuck on the wall above my bed. My mother was bent over me, I could smell her. A mixture of soap and something honey-sweet on her breath.

I remembered her. I remembered her, and the sleep that followed in the wake of her memory was deep, and peaceful.

When I woke up again it was getting dark, and there was a knocking at the door. Barbara was nowhere to be seen, but Lupo growled softly at the entrance as I walked down the stairs to open the door.

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