‘I’m familiar with your work. I really wanted to speak with you. My name is Ella Victor, I’m a journalist at Dagbladet.’ Elisabeth shakes the woman’s hand and lets herself be gently led by the elbow back through the throng of people to her canvases in the next room.

‘Your work is fantastic,’ says Ella Victor, looking past Elisabeth and gazing to the pieces strung from the ceiling, focusing intently on each one in turn. ‘You’ve really captured the essence of something quite frightening here.’

‘Thank you,’ Elisabeth replies, blushing slightly at the praise. Sometimes she thinks her work is so dark that nobody could ever see past the darkness and see beauty there, too. She looks at Ella again and there is something about the way she stares at her that makes her suddenly afraid – it’s not Kristina she reminds her of now, but one of the animals circling her in her dreams. She takes a big sip from her glass of orange juice and feels like laughing out loud at her own ridiculousness.

‘Shall I tell you about this one?’ she says, pointing to the middle canvas and Ella nods enthusiastically, any trace of imagined threat gone from her eyes.

55

Supernova

You moved on. You healed. I get it. It’s what people do. You did your own long years in therapy and it made you reflective and aware of your own reactions and contributions – I suppose those are the things we all hope for when coming to therapy. Your training taught you real insight into yourself, I imagine, to the point where your inner life became subject to understanding and empathy, and perhaps this was one of the things I sensed and which so drew me to you. You know how to forgive yourself. You believe that you deserve it. I want that for myself. Especially now, as you will come to understand.

Let’s move on, so much ground to cover. Another thing that impressed me about you was your obvious ability to maintain, and thrive in, a long-term partnership. As you know, this isn’t an ability we share. It feels as though whatever I do and whomever I do it with, I leave nothing but pain and destruction in my wake. Take Emil, for example, that guy I dated last year; you might remember him. A good man, and someone who was endlessly patient with all my whims and insecurities and issues. I dropped him over and over, until he was so bruised by me that he’d lost all sense of himself. Still, he’d come back for more. Like a dog.

I guess it was just me replicating the behavior I’d learned from Anton, and even earlier, from my father, hooked on the emotional rollercoaster ride of loving men who have nothing to give you except rejection and abandonment.