It was some time before they finally arrived home, cold and exhausted – but not long after that, Ingrid fell asleep on the sofa, though sleep didn’t last long. Her dreams were full of the events of the day, which quickly turned to nightmares, and she tossed and turned. Dreaming of children and parents forced to wear yellow-starred badges. Twins. Trains. Lists of names of people destined for concentration camps. She woke up in a sweat, heart pounding. Her grandfather’s tear-streaked face filled her thoughts. It took some time before her heart rate slowed to normal. She spent the rest of the night awake and staring at the ceiling.
Thinking. Thinking of Morfar hiding this secret from them for so long. Why? Why hadn’t he shared it with them – it was so much to bear alone – too much to try and take in, too, even now. How could he have borne it all alone?
Inge woke in the morning to find thick new layers of snow had fallen overnight.
There were deep shadows beneath her eyes from her restless night. She took her time on her walk through the woods towards the small cabin, all the while trying to summon her courage for when she saw him. But when she got there he wasn’t home. His snow boots were gone, as well as his binoculars.
She paced up and down his tiny cabin, filled with fear. There was over fifty hectares of forest bordering the cabin. Until recently, the person who’d known every inch of it better than anyone was Morfar, but now one wrong turn and he could be lost, without food or water and prey for animals. She ran outside, eyes wild.
The sound of a snow plough over the road made her pause.
She waved her arms to get the driver’s attention. It was a neighbour who worked for the forestry department. He was a short man in his late fifties with a stocky build, grey eyes, and a serious expression, named Martin.
‘Martin, please help!’ she called. ‘Morfar’s gone into the woods. His binoculars are missing!’
Martin frowned, and looked at her like she was mad. He knew her, of course – she’d been coming to the hamlet every summer since she was a child. ‘Jürgen will be fine – no need to worry, he knows these woods like the back of his hand.’
Ingrid frowned – was everyone in denial about him?
She shook her head briskly. ‘Not anymore. He’s getting old – he gets confused now; it’s early dementia. He might not realise where he is and I’m really worried.’
He nodded. ‘I heard about that but every time I see him, he seems fine.’
Ingrid just stared at him, fighting her annoyance. ‘Well, it’s when you spend a long time with him that you can see he’s not himself – he gets muddled.’
He nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll put a call through on the radio – we can get a lookout going for him. We have a system in place in case children or animals get lost.’
She remembered. There had been a time some years ago when another of their neighbours’ visiting relatives had got lost; it had taken several hours, but they’d found her, thankfully. ‘Thank you. Should I come with you?’
‘No, don’t worry. Besides, with these drifts he couldn’t have got very far – and since it’s stopped snowing we should be able to track him fairly quickly.’
She felt relief flood her senses. ‘You think so?’
He nodded. ‘Though there’s the—’ He broke off, then shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll come by as soon as I know. You’ll wait here in his cabin?’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
She knew what he was going to say – if Morfar had tripped or fallen the risk of dying from exposure in these freezing cold conditions was strong. She couldn’t think of that.
She went back inside the cabin, and felt lost. It felt wrong to be here without Morfar, like she was intruding, which in a way, she was. She knew it couldn’t be easy for him, such a private soul, to suddenly have people barging in, prying into his personal affairs, forcing him to do things against his will. Growing up, there were times when they wouldn’t see him for a couple of weeks straight. He liked his own space. It was why he’d never remarried. Her grandmother had died just after her mother was born, so he’d raised her mother by himself. Jonna always said it was strange – in a way, it was as if he had never been married at all…
She made a cup of coffee and tried to calm her nerves. It didn’t work.
‘He’ll be fine,’ she told herself. ‘They will find him. Besides, Morfar knows these woods.’
Narfi raised himself off the wooden floor to look at her, his head cocked to the side in concern. She blew out her cheeks. ‘I know, boy. I’m sorry.’
Her eyes fell on the mounds of scattered clutter.
Well, there was something she could do to take her mind off things. She tied her hair up with a band on her wrist and got to work. The cabin was a museum of old things. Magazines, article clippings, sketches and hundreds of copies of newspapers. And everywhere there were stacks of unframed paintings. Forest scenes, animals, but landscapes, mostly. Some were unfinished, as if he couldn’t quite capture what he wanted to. She put these to one side. She turned to stack some of the newspapers and magazines together, bumping over an old box that was covered in dust at the bottom of a massive pile of clutter. She opened it and frowned. Inside was a hefty stack of sketchbooks. She knelt down on her haunches and opened one. There were beautiful pencil drawings and watercolours. Some were of her as a child, in the forest and her mother. Many of these went back years.
She sat and looked through all of them. It took hours. He’d kept a kind of illustrated diary over many years. She remembered him sketching when she was a child; he always had a notebook in one of his jackets, and a chewed pencil. Though she also remembered that he never showed anyone his sketchbooks, whipping them away when someone asked for a closer look. There were ones that showed the changing landscape of their village, Stjärna, over the years. Others were just of the wildlife – but when she picked up a handsome leather book, her heart skipped a beat. It had gold initials etched into the leather. J.S. She frowned, wondering what the S stood for. A middle name she didn’t know about, perhaps?
Inside, the sketches showcased an entirely different landscape, full of canals and city life. And as she flicked through the pages, she gasped aloud, as she found a watercolour sketch of a young girl who looked almost uncannily like Ingrid, except her eyes were slightly bigger, and violet. She was lying on her stomach, staring intently at a large textbook, her blonde hair parted in the middle like curtains around her face.
Beneath the sketch, it said simply: Asta.
This was Asta.
Ingrid sat down on her haunches and stared. No wonder he got them confused.
There was a sound from behind, and she turned to see Morfar standing in the kitchen. His binoculars in his hands.
‘Morfar!’ she cried, standing up quickly, the sketchbook clutched to her chest. ‘Oh, thank God, I was so worried!’
He looked furious. ‘What am I to do with you? I can’t believe you sent out a search party for me, like some lost child, för fan i helvete. It’s not like I haven’t lived here for over forty years – I could find my way back to this cabin in my sleep!’
‘Yes, but, Morfar, you know that you have a… condition.’