‘But Hanne, dear,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t talk like that. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.’ And her father released her suddenly, as if he had burned himself. For a moment he stood there alone, not knowing what to do with his hands or his eyes. Then her new father took her hand and started leading her up the stairs, while the silence behind them hurt just as much as his hard, unfamiliar grasp. She didn’t want to cry before she was in bed. No, she wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t even going to bed. She was going on a trip and she was going to sit on her father’s lap the whole way.

‘Let me go!’ she yelled, twisting her hand out of the man’s grip and running back into the sharp light, where her mother sat, looking pitiful, and where there was a father too many. Something unmerciful, a totally new anxiety, kept her from seeking the most comforting shelter she knew. She stood hanging her head in front of her father, who had put on his hat, as if his work here was finished. She felt cold and shrugged her spindly shoulders and stepped hard on her own toes, as she gazed helplessly and imploringly at her mother, who was looking up at the man on the stairway with an anxious, pleading expression, as if it were she who had said something wrong.

He walked down the stairs with hard, deliberate steps. ‘Let’s get this over with right now,’ he said tersely. ‘Are you coming or not, Hanne?’

She looked down at her father’s feet. Her forehead was burning with confusion, shame, and defiance. She took the difficult steps toward him, but he didn’t touch her. His clothes smelled of distant, lost things. The whole way she could sit and sleep with her nose buried in his smell with her back to Grete-mom.

‘I – want to come,’ she begged, humbled with defeat.

When the girl went upstairs to get dressed, three people watched her lonely little figure. None of them could help her, and they didn’t dare look at one another.

Depression

Lulu stacked the dirty dishes on top of one another in the nearly scalding water, so parsley sprigs, wilted lettuce leaves, and radish tops released and floated on top in a sad, greasy stew, which she appraised, disgusted for a moment, before she could bring herself to plunge her hands down into it and bring the porcelain back out. First the plates, then the forks, knives, and glasses. She used a lot of water. Behind her, the dented kettle was boiling dry, because she kept forgetting to fill it.