The Girl by the Bridge by Arnaldur Indridason

Author:Arnaldur Indridason [Indridason, Arnaldur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529194715
Published: 2023-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

32

The room was spacious. Eygló’s friend shared it with her little brother, Ebbi, who followed her like a shadow and didn’t want to be left out. Eygló went to play at their house sometimes after school; she enjoyed their company and the siblings’ mother always welcomed her warmly, gave them bread with butter and cheese or jam, milk to drink and biscuits, which she always had in plenty.

Unlike Eygló’s mother, she was a homemaker, and her home was always clean and tidy. Sometimes when Eygló entered the flat, she caught a whiff of cleaning solutions. She liked going there with her friend after school, when no one was home at her own place. She didn’t like being alone. Her father was always running around town and sometimes didn’t come back for days. Her mother slaved away at the fish factory, and returned home exhausted in the evenings. Eygló would help with the housework before her mother fell asleep on the couch.

Her friend’s flat was on the ground floor of a new block and was lovely and elegant, with paintings on the walls and something that her friend called ‘parquet’ on the floor. The three children drank fresh orange juice, which Eygló had never tasted before, and stirred chocolate powder into their milk.

‘What’s that you’re wearing?’ her friend’s mum asked, noticing the string that Eygló wore around her neck.

‘It’s my house key,’ said Eygló, showing it to her.

‘Your house key? No one’s at home to let you in after school?’ the woman said in surprise. Eygló noticed how she stood there sometimes, cigarette in hand, staring longingly out the living-room window at the life beyond it. Later, when Eygló joined the women’s movement, the melancholy memory of that woman standing at her window often came to mind.

But that wasn’t the only reason she sometimes thought back with sadness to her visits to that block of flats. Once when she was over at her friend’s they’d lost track of time and the winter darkness had settled over the city. Her friend’s father had come home, dinner was on the table, and the mother asked if it was time for her to go home – unless she wanted to eat with them. She was welcome to do so. They didn’t know that Eygló had fled to their kitchen from her friend’s bedroom and didn’t dare for the life of her return there to get her school bag and go home. She was rarely afraid of what she saw, even if it did happen sometimes.

‘Is something wrong, dear?’ asked the mum.

‘Yes,’ Eygló replied. ‘I’m just waiting.’

‘Fine, dear, but what are you waiting for?’

‘For the woman,’ said Eygló.

‘What woman?’

‘The woman in the black dress,’ said Eygló.

The mum looked from her to her husband and back. The husband shrugged as if this was something that didn’t concern him. The mum tried reasoning with the child.

‘There’s no woman here but me,’ she said. ‘What woman are you talking about?’

‘In the bedroom,’ said Eygló. ‘The woman in the black dress.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.