‘Morfar?’ she asked, starting to shake. ‘Please, stop it – stop it, you’re hurting yourself! I’m sorry you’re so upset!’
‘Get out!’ he cried, picking up her knitted bag and throwing it on the other side of the cabin. ‘Get out, get out of my house, now!’
Tears slipped out of her eyes. ‘Please, Morfar – can’t we just—?’
He actually growled, and Ingrid took a wary step back.
Seeing her fear, his face crumpled. He rubbed both hands across his cheeks. He looked like he was ready to cry.
Ingrid felt as if she were standing on quicksand.
‘Please just… go, Ingrid,’ he said.
When she made no move to go, he hunched his shoulders. ‘Fine, I’ll leave,’ he said softly, then made his way slowly up the stairs to the small room at the top of the cabin, and closed the door.
Ingrid and Narfi watched him go. Even the dog looked sad.
She had so much to think about as she made her way back to her cabin, through the snowy woods. She switched on her headlamp as she trudged laboriously through the thick snow. In the distance, she heard a lonely owl. Was it night-time already?
She pressed her mittened thumb into the top of her thigh, where the muscle was burning from taking steps in her heavy snow boots. She had city legs still, and they would need to toughen up. She sighed. It wasn’t just her body that would need to toughen up if she were to survive here.
She had all these plans, before she moved here, of spending her time wisely, getting time to write stories – finally finish the novel she’d started writing twelve years before, but the strange thing was, the only story she was interested in thinking about was Morfar’s.
How could he not have told her that he had a twin sister? Did her mother know – surely, she must? And if so why never mention her at all? A sibling was an important part of a life, but a twin – wasn’t that even more special? It was all caught up together, somehow – his aversion to speaking German, this twin – something happened to him, to them, she was sure of it.
When she got back to the cabin she phoned her mother to ask about it all, pouring herself a glass of wine, as she sat in front of the telephone, twisting the cord in her fingers. Her mother picked up on the third ring and Ingrid launched into telling her everything that happened.
‘No, that can’t be right,’ Jonna breathed when she mentioned a twin called Asta. ‘He told me he was an only child.’
Ingrid blinked. Her wine glass poised at her lips. ‘He did?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it seemed so certain – the way he was speaking, it was like he was a little boy again, and talking to her – it was just… so surreal, and afterwards when he was lucid again, well, I asked him—’
Jonna gasped. ‘You asked him?’
‘Course I did! I want to know – we have a right, don’t we? Well, he just got so upset. At first he was in a rage and then, well, it just looked like he was about to cry.’
Ingrid blinked; it had been torture seeing him like that.
There was silence at the other end, but Ingrid felt a jolt of pain travel from the other end of the line towards her.
Jonna was still searching for some kind of logical explanation. ‘Maybe it was because he’d got so confused…’
‘No, I don’t think so – I think she was real, I don’t think you could make up something like that.’
Jonna let out a heavy breath. ‘No, maybe not. Do you want me to come – try to get to the bottom of this? Maybe this is too much, my darling.’
‘No – no, I’ll be fine,’ Ingrid refused. She thought it wise not to mention the part where Morfar had thrown her out.
She knew what her mother would do – she would push him too hard, ask too many questions. It would be her right, of course, but it would only make him clam up even more. Ingrid felt that on some level, her own way – responding to his own rhythms – might be the best way to coax it out, gently. She hoped so, anyway.
She thought about the story of the dinghy and a smile flitted about her lips. She wanted to know more. What had happened to them? Why wouldn’t he tell her? And why was it that when Ingrid had said Asta’s name, he’d almost fallen apart?
Ingrid sat up thinking for hours, watching the play of lights of the aurora borealis from her kitchen window: the deep blanket of stars above the canopy of tall, snow-capped birches in the distance. She stroked Narfi’s long soft fur, while he gently snored beside her. ‘He’s going to be impossible when we go there tomorrow, you know that, right?’
The dog sighed in his sleep.
She took that as a yes.
It was even worse than she’d feared. She was expecting to find him in a similar state to the first few occasions that she’d visited. Swearing and surly. Mean and impossible. Instead she found him, upstairs, crying.
It broke her heart to see it.
‘Morfar?’ she whispered in horror.
‘No, Inge, don’t come up here,’ he called, stifling his sobs.
She rushed forward, and put her arms around him.
He sat up, slowly. ‘Oh, Inge,’ he said, looking ashamed.
‘What is it?’ she asked, sitting with him on the bed. He sat up and put his head in his hands for a moment, desperately looking for a way to make light of something they both knew he couldn’t. ‘It’s nothing, just an old man with some regrets, that’s all.’
‘Regrets?’ she breathed.
‘You know they say you should never die with them, but that’s life, you’re always going to have some.’
She blinked. Her heart started to thud, knowing that she was pushing him by asking, risking having him throw her out of his cabin again, but perhaps now was the time for it, when he was so raw, so exposed. Perhaps he needed a little push? And if not now, when?
‘Is this about – Asta, your sister?’
He blew out his cheeks; tears rolled down his face, which he wiped quickly away. ‘Inge – please, just don’t start this again—’
Suddenly all her promises to tread gently, to go with his rhythms, to not be like her mother, forever questioning, were abandoned, as she pushed hard and fast, the words slipping out in a tumble, to be regretted almost instantly.
‘Why? Why have you never spoken about her before? Why didn’t you tell us about her – about your life from back then, we have a right to know!’
‘För fan i helvete! You are as bad as your mother. I said I don’t want to speak about it, now drop it!’ He was angry, but his lips were trembling, and fresh tears coursed down his old cheeks; the sight was like a blade twisting in her heart.
Ingrid hadn’t meant to pry, but this wasn’t usual – to have the old man crying like this – she couldn’t just let that go. So she swore back.
He looked surprised.
‘Yes, I can swear too, I’m not some little child anymore, Morfar – you can speak to me. You can tell me what happened.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘We were close once, you and I. Can’t we be that again? Can’t you tell me what’s making you so upset? Just tell me, I won’t break.’
Morfar stared at her for some time. His lips shook again. ‘You won’t, but I might.’