PART ONE
AN OLD HOUSE BY THE SEA
Chapter 1
Last time it was different, she thought.
Deserted houses stood along the road beside rugged, moss-covered crags that jutted steeply from the landscape like pale bones. Sailboats under their winter covers drew past her windscreen, followed by a bed and breakfast with a Vacancies sign swinging in the wind. A boy and girl were selling vegetables from a stall at the end of a track that led to a farmyard. Jasmin Hansen waved at them as she passed, but they didn’t wave back. A breath of cold air from the nearby Norwegian Sea penetrated the narrow gap in the car window.
Her fingers drummed nervously on the wheel. The radio was playing an old song by the Rolling Stones about a traveller seeking shelter from the storm. Seems apt, she thought. Always on the run from a lowering sky – except you brought your own dark clouds with you. She had hired the Volvo in Oslo and driven up along the coast. Although she’d set off under late-summer sunshine, slate-grey clouds now covered the sun.
‘Everything is OK,’ she’d said to Jørgen when he called her for the first time, only three hours into her journey. ‘Everything is OK.’ Her overprotective Jørgen . . . and yet she’d felt like she was lying to him.
Her eyes flickered up to the rear-view mirror. Paul had fallen asleep, his mouth half-open, his chest rising and falling in a gentle, even rhythm. His Nintendo 3DS was still lying beside him, quietly playing a tune. Paulie, as Jørgen sometimes called him – though Jasmin didn’t particularly like the nickname. Beyond him, in the boot, Bonnie, their three-year-old Labrador, was also asleep.
Jasmin stopped at an old, storm-battered and somewhat rusty petrol station at the entrance to the village and refuelled her Volvo XC60. She could smell the sea and the endless pine and spruce forests. Paul didn’t stir as Jasmin gazed at him lovingly and opened a door to let cool, fresh air into the car. Her son sighed quietly in his sleep. He was tall for a five-year-old; she’d had to buy him new clothes just a few weeks ago. He kept growing and growing – he’d be taller than her before long.
We can do this. Together. And when we get back, everything will be OK again, she told herself. That thought was what kept her going.
‘The next ferry might be the last one today,’ said the old woman behind the counter as Jasmin paid for her petrol and three pre-packaged sandwiches. ‘There’s a storm brewing, I can feel it in my bones. And you’re new here, young lady, aren’t you?’
‘My son and I are on our way to Minsøy.’
The old woman opened her near-toothless mouth and laughed. ‘Then I’ll wish you good luck.’ Jasmin was already at the door when she heard the woman add, ‘The island isn’t what you think it is.’
After that, the forest.
Densely clustered pines, silver birches and beech trees reared up against the blue-grey backdrop of the overcast sky. Their leaves had begun to change colour here and there, sprinkling the thick greenery with spots of yellow and orange. At one point, Jasmin thought she saw an elk peering out from among the tree trunks – its mighty antlers covered in moss and lichen it had picked up from the undergrowth, its fur damp with dew.
There was a child standing in the road.
Jasmin wrenched the steering wheel to the side. The tyres screeched as the car swerved, skidding along the road. Then it came to a stop, pitching Jasmin forward into her seatbelt.
‘Hey!’ she yelled out of her hastily wound-down window. ‘What the hell are you doing? You should be more careful!’
The child was wearing a yellow raincoat with a pointed hood that concealed its face. Slowly, it walked down the road towards the car.
‘Where are your parents, kid?’ she asked more gently.
The child looked up at her and Jasmin found herself staring into the impassive face of a young boy, who returned her gaze with his ice-blue eyes before walking past her in silence and stepping into the forest. The yellow of his coat disappeared amid the foliage.
‘Mummy?’
Jasmin whirled round in shock. Paul was staring at her wide-eyed, rubbing the sleep from the corners of his eyes. ‘What . . . what’s happening?’
Jasmin swallowed to dispel the strange, bitter taste in her mouth. ‘Nothing, honey.’
‘Are we there yet?’
‘Not yet. But we don’t have far to go, and then we’ll be on the ferry.’
‘On the sea?’
‘Yes. On the sea.’
‘How far is not far?’
Jasmin reached back and stroked his corn-blond hair, which was so similar to her own. ‘Just to the end of the road.’
The ferry emitted a long, drawn-out blast on its foghorn and puffed grey clouds of exhaust into the air, which spread out over the dock like dark wafts of mist. Jasmin took Paul by the hand and together they stood by the railing, looking down at the boiling spray while the cold wind blew fine droplets of water onto their cheeks. Seagulls accompanied them for the first hundred yards before turning back towards the mainland, leaving them to sail out alone into the fog, which enveloped them within a few minutes and smothered every sound beyond the crash of the waves against the ship’s hull and the rumble of the engines.
‘I’m cold,’ said Paul, tugging on the sleeve of Jasmin’s coat. She bought him a hot chocolate from the on-board cafe and they sat down to drink it together. Jasmin picked up a newspaper someone had left on their table and, her fingers clenched round her cup, she searched through the pages for the words Unknown victim, unidentified body discovered. But of course there was nothing. She exhaled in relief, like every time, but she still couldn’t shake off the vague feeling of tension that dogged her wherever she went. One day you’ll find it. One day it’ll all catch up with you. She felt certain of that.
A man in his sixties in a moss-green raincoat that dripped water onto the floor sat down with them and warmed his gnarled fingers against a large mug of coffee. He looked across at them both with a cheerful smile on his weather-beaten face.
‘I see somebody’s thirsty,’ he rumbled. ‘My daughter always used to like a hot chocolate too when we took the ferry to the mainland each week.’
‘There’s nothing better to warm you up in this weather,’ Jasmin replied, dabbing her lips with a serviette. She always found it oddly uncomfortable when strangers struck up conversation with her like this, and each time it took her some effort to respond.
‘Minsøy is hiding in the mist,’ the old man continued after scanning the horizon through the porthole. ‘She always does that. The island is like an old lady – she has her secrets. Secrets she wants to keep, at all costs.’
‘Do you know Minsøy well?’ Jasmin’s thoughts turned to the only large settlement on the island: the village of Skårsteinen, with its two thousand inhabitants, where she and Jørgen had spent the night when they viewed the old sea captain’s house for the first time. It had been a mild spring day; she recalled the gentle breeze that had blown in from the sea. They had bought it a few months later. It was our little refuge, she thought. Up until that day.
‘I run the grocery shop on the main street together with my wife, and she’d worry about me if I missed the ferry. The summer is coming to an end and the sea is getting more treacherous by the day. The tides are changing, and when the wind finally shifts to the north, the last residents will take to their heels, leaving only the people who’ve always been here and those who can’t get away.’ He gave her a scrutinising look. ‘Or those who deliberately choose to arrive now.’