On one of our present-hunts, I had taken the blue necklace out of its case and gone downstairs with it. Dad was standing over by the bookcase, running his finger along the spines of the books.
‘What about this?’
He turned toward me and smiled when he saw the necklace. ‘I’m saving that one for another time.’
‘It’s so blue and beautiful.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Then why not give it to her?’
‘It’s too beautiful for now. Be a good boy and put it back.’
He pulled open drawers, rummaged around inside, and slid them shut. Pursing his lips, he picked up the framed photograph on the side table and put it down again almost immediately.
I went into the kitchen. The wild flowers in the vase on the table had been dead so long it was impossible to tell what kind of flowers they had once been. They crumbled to the touch. The inside of the vase had turned white, as if someone had drunk buttermilk from it. Karl must have needed a new U-bend, cos it had disappeared from under the sink. The brown gunge at the bottom of the kitchen cupboard had dripped onto the floor.
‘And this?’
I held up a bread knife I’d found in a corner cupboard.
‘That’s a bread knife,’ Dad said.
‘There’s a mixer in here, as well.’
‘I can’t just give her any old thing, Mikael.’
‘But this isn’t any old thing, is it?’
‘I need to find something else for Mum.’
‘Well, what do you need to make up for?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘If only I knew.’
‘I like the knife. It’s shiny and it’s sharp.’
‘A bread knife doesn’t make a good present.’
‘What kind of sorry-present are you looking for?’
‘One I can hang on your big red nose, Mikael Hammermann!’
Dad ended up giving her the bread knife after all. He handed it over while I was still hopping around on the doormat, struggling to pull off my boots.
‘Aw!’ I heard Mum’s surprised voice coming from the kitchen. ‘For me?’
‘For you,’ Dad answered.
‘That’s sweet of you.’
‘Bound to come in handy, I reckoned.’
He didn’t mention it was me who’d found the present. But when I heard the reassuring sound of their kiss, I didn’t mind so much.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Miss Augusta was dead. It was just that, right now, without Dad at my side I couldn’t be sure anymore. I was afraid she’d suddenly appear behind me while I was going through her kitchen cupboards or, worse still, when I was on my knees beside her bed trying to poke something out from under the blanket of dust with one of her knitting needles. I pictured two legs silently appearing in the doorway, stockings pulled up tight over a delta of blue veins.
I was even scared to peek in through the windows in case her face suddenly appeared behind the dull pane, with no specs and sunken cheeks. She died without her teeth in. They were still there in a glass on the washbasin, waiting for her.
Dad had found her at the bottom of the stairs. It had been raining for days, and he had gone over with a pot of soup. They didn’t tell me what had happened till the next morning. ‘Her leg was bent in three places,’ Mum said. Dad used a twig to show me what it looked like. ‘There’s no need for that,’ Mum hissed.
While I slept, Karl had taken Miss Augusta across to town in his boat. When he came back that afternoon, Dad went straight over to see him. He made me stay indoors, so I spied on them from behind the curtain. Karl scratched his head and pointed at his legs. Dad asked him something else. Karl pointed to his boat and flapped his hand about. Dad nodded and patted Karl on the arm.
In the evening, Dad called the hospital on the mainland. Miss Augusta was in their system, but they couldn’t tell him much. The next day we were no wiser. Unfortunately, the patient was unable to come to the phone. Three days later it was the same story. They told us not to keep calling, and said they would contact us.
When we hadn’t heard anything for ten days, Dad called again. At reception it took them a while to remember who Pernille Augusta was. ‘I’ll wait,’ he told the receptionist.
‘They’re looking for her file,’ he whispered to us with his hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Yes, I’m still here… Augusta. That’s right.’
Mum leaned against the doorpost and held me close. Dad repeated some of what they said for our benefit. ‘About two weeks ago, that’s right.’
‘A-U-G-U-S-T-A.’
‘Yes, we’ve called before.’ Dad pulled a funny face. It made me laugh, but Mum’s face didn’t so much as twitch.
‘They’ve found her,’ he whispered to us.
Silence.
‘There’s a cross next to her name. Sadly, that means Miss Augusta has passed away.’ It was only when he repeated the words to us that he realized what he’d said. ‘What did you say?’ He sank slowly into his chair as he asked what had happened and why they hadn’t informed us, even though they’d promised to. He asked where Miss Augusta was now, and why she’d been buried so quickly, and said no, we weren’t family, and yes, he understood that it wasn’t her fault, but they might at least have called us. He didn’t repeat what the receptionist said.
Once he had hung up, he sat motionless in his chair, staring blankly into space. Mum laid a hand against his neck and sighed.
She gave another sigh, deeper this time, and looked at me. She wanted me to make myself scarce. I pretended to go all the way up to my bedroom in the attic, but instead I sat down at the top of the stairs where I could hear everything. Pernille had been buried the day before at some cemetery or other. Dad had forgotten the name. It began with an S. ‘Shu… Sho… Something like that.’ The hospital didn’t know whether anyone had attended the funeral. ‘Seems it’s all done by the council, if there’s no family or next of kin.’
The hospital had said he could call again to ask for more details of the cemetery. Maybe even speak to a doctor to find out exactly what had happened.
Dad kept going on about the stupid cross next to her name, and that she might have lain there at the bottom of the stairs in the cold for days before he’d found her. He said it was all his fault. Mum said it wasn’t, but Dad said yes it was, cos that was how he felt about it.
‘They asked if we knew of any relatives.’
‘Goodness, no.’
‘Me neither.’
‘No one.’
‘Karl!’ Mum blurted out.
‘My God… yes.’
‘He won’t have heard yet, either.’
After hanging around for a while, Dad went over to see him. I sneaked out through the back door and hid among the bushes by the quay.
Karl