Without another thought I pulled her inside with me. Into our cubicle. Where Lou was fast asleep.

We sat down on my bed. She lay down. I lay down with her.

She had this thinness about her, I could feel it when I lay my body against hers. I was lying close to her.

There’s something wrong, I thought. There’s something wrong with me, if I can do this. If I can lie here and feel her, feel the differences between her and Anna. All the ways they are different, all the ways they are similar. There is something wrong with me. I have to stop now.

I kept going.

It was like the fight—I stopped thinking. Thought about everything—skin under my hands, another body against my own.

I didn’t want it to stop. Didn’t want anything else except that it would stop. That somebody would stop it for me.

We didn’t make a sound. Lou was sleeping. They were still at it out there, but it was far away—the noises rose and fell. They made sounds for us. Their sounds became ours.

Her body was taut and thin, only her abdomen was different, scarred. There were marks from her navel to her pubic bone, where the skin had been stretched.

Somebody had been inside her, somebody she no longer had with her.

I ran my fingers over the stretch marks, wanting to ask but unable to do so. Hoped she could say something.

I stroked the stretch marks. And that was the only time she took my hand away.

Chapter Twenty-One: Signe

Chapter Twenty-One

Signe

Do you remember, Magnus, when you found out that I was pregnant? We were in Bergen again, living our lives as usual. A few weeks passed. It was summertime, we were working, getting up early, living a nine-to-four life and talking about how we were looking forward to the autumn and student life. At the same time, plans were being made back home in Ringfjorden. I spoke with Daddy almost every day. “It’s getting there,” he said. It was growing, two national organizations had become involved, and this time we would mobilize. People were on their way from Bergen, from Oslo. All over the country nature conservationists were talking about Ringfjorden.

I had just come home from my summer job in a cafeteria the first time I noticed it. I was on my way up the stairs and suddenly felt a heaviness in my breasts. With every step I took I could feel them, the tenderness, as if I was about to get my period, but more extreme—and how long had it been since my last period? Four weeks, no, five. I should have had my period the week before.

I let myself into the bedsit, which was silent and dark. I didn’t turn on the light but went straight into the bathroom without taking off my shoes.