I shiver violently and my pulse is so high I keep bringing my hand to my throat to feel it. I feel strangely light-headed. A part of me wants to try to get to the kitchen nook and drink the bottle of wine in the fridge. I’m desperate to numb my mind but I equally know I need to stay sharp to get out of here alive.

I reread the last few sentences over and over again. I almost want to laugh. She committed suicide because of you. Elisabeth died trying to protect you.

For a moment there, I was getting worried about where she was going with all this. Now, it’s merely laughable. Oh, Leah, how could you have got it so wrong?

57

Elisabeth, July

She loves many things about being here and this surprises her every day because she hadn’t anticipated relaxing into her surroundings or feeling at home. She can’t recall summer ever being more beautiful than here – the vast neon-green lawns rolling down toward the steely water of Drøbaksundet, which in turn leads to the inner Oslofjord. So close to the capital, but light-years away. The incredible orange and pink roses growing on scraggly bushes alongside the path leading to the beach. The emerald forests climbing the hills behind Villa Vinternatt, unmistakably stern and Nordic, nothing at all like the dense, humid jungles that haunt her.

In the afternoons, after lunch, she likes to sit out in the garden, sketching, even when it is chilly like today. Just basic charcoal sketches on plain notepaper, depictions that don’t need to carry any meaning at all. She especially likes to capture the elegant line of a bird wing caught in flight, or held close to a little bony body, or touching its tips against the surface of the sea. Today, she is drawing a small sparrow perched on a bird feeder hanging from one of Villa Vinternatt’s enormous oak trees. It twitches its wings, draws them close around a fat, fluffy belly, stares at her with its black pinprick eyes. She spends a long time on the texture of the feathers; it’s hard to capture their lightness and near-translucency in contrast to the sturdier, coarse feathers underneath.

When she moves her gaze from the bird to the path running from the terrace at the back of the house through the garden toward the beach, she notices that a woman is walking to her. There is something familiar about her, and Elisabeth narrows her eyes trying to place her. One of the new members of the rehabilitation team? The woman stops in front of Elisabeth and she turns the drawing over: she’s self-conscious about her work until it has matured. The bird scrambles up into the upper branches of the tree.