‘What kind of mum would do something like that in front of her kid? She wouldn’t. I don’t buy it.’
‘Storm. You didn’t really know her. She—’ His father stops speaking and his face is etched with raw grief. ‘She really, really suffered in the year leading up to her death. After you were born, she had postnatal depression, very badly. She wasn’t herself for months and months, it was like the light in her had just been switched off and everything was dark. She loved you so much, she was completely besotted with you, and still, she couldn’t take care of you in the way that most mothers do in the first year of a child’s life.
‘Then she got better. So much better that we started talking about having a second child, and about six months before Mia died, we started trying. When it didn’t immediately work, Mia became frustrated and withdrawn and I sometimes felt like she shut down completely from me, preferring to speak to her friends – uh, Bianka, specifically – instead of me.’
‘What about her other friends?’
‘She had a few. Nice people. But she and Bianka were like this.’ Emil holds up his intertwined index and middle finger.
‘But none of what you’ve told me sounds that bad, not bad enough to kill yourself—’
‘Storm, believe me when I say her postnatal depression was bad. She’d lock herself in the bathroom for hours, howling. I’d stand on the outside cradling you while you also howled. You wouldn’t take a bottle and she wouldn’t breastfeed. She’d cut herself on the soles of her feet and when she eventually emerged, she’d walk around the house, leaving a trail of blood—’ Emil stops and wipes at the tears brimming in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Storm. I’m not sure I should be telling you this.’
‘You should absolutely be telling me this. You should have told me everything a long time ago.’
After a while, Emil starts speaking again. ‘She got better and then she got worse. But it was different to the first year after you were born, which literally felt like a profound hormonal breakdown. When you were almost three she became incredibly withdrawn, from both of us. She’d barely engage with you and not at all with me. It was heart-breaking. I tried everything from couples’ therapy to encouraging her to get back on medication, but nothing worked. Of course, in hindsight, I should have had her sectioned. She might still have been with us.’
‘Did she ever speak of being suicidal?’
‘Not to me, no. In fact, I never would have thought she’d do something like that, because no matter how low she’d get, she’d always plan ahead. She’d say things like “In five years, when Storm’s eight, we should get a puppy”. She even instigated us booking a really expensive holiday to Greece. But people are complicated. Sometimes, she’d plan ahead, other times she wouldn’t get out of bed for a week. And she said some very disturbing things to Bianka. She warned her the weekend it happened. She even said she was afraid of what she might do to you. I’m so sorry to even say this. But it’s the truth. And that’s why Bianka headed there that day, to stop her. But it was too late.’
‘Wait, what?’
‘Yes. It was why she went up there. And thank God she did, because she found you, running along the path, hysterical. I’ve thought about that so many times, how incredibly lucky it was that you didn’t fall, trying to help, or—’
‘So she only warned Bianka.’ Storm’s voice is thick with emotion and his heart is thundering in his chest.
‘Well, I don’t know, but—’
‘What about my grandparents?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t stay in touch with them afterward, as you know…’
‘Which in itself is fucked up. As you know.’
‘Storm. It was just so difficult. I didn’t have any answers back then. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight. I barely slept for years, from stress and anxiety and worry for you. I just tried to make things as easy as possible for both of us.’
‘As easy as possible, according to Bianka. Did you tell my grandparents to keep her suicide secret from me?’
Emil hesitates and keeps his eyes trained on the damp dark concrete of the gas station’s forecourt. ‘Yes. It was something we all agreed between us adults. That your life would probably be easier if you could process your mother’s death in the belief that she’d died in an accident rather than a suicide.’
‘I think the truth might have been easier for me.’
‘You’re almost seventeen. It’s different now. It wasn’t a conversation I could have with you when you were five or ten or twelve.’
‘What, the truth?’
Eventually, Emil begins to drive again and less than ten minutes later, they pull up at the house. His father is about to open the door, having snapped his seatbelt off and shut down the engine.
‘Dad. Wait. This can’t be right. I think… I think Bianka did something to my mother.’
Emil looks stricken, and his eyes travel from Storm to the house and back to Storm.
‘I…’
‘Dad, I’m serious. You say Mum mentioned feeling suicidal, but the only person she apparently warned was Bianka. The person who then turns up at the scene and quote unquote saved the little boy. The person who then married the husband left behind. Think about it. It’s so fucked up. Even the stuff I drew was fucked up. Lone agreed. She reported us to Barnevernet based on what I said, talking about a baddy throwing my mom off a mountain. She gave me the drawings. This is too much of a coincidence.’
‘Storm, there was no baddy who threw your mom off a mountain. The psychiatrists all agreed on that.’
‘Dad, I even drew the baddy for all to see.’
‘No, you just drew pictures of Bianka. Holding your hand.’
‘Bianka is the baddy, Dad.’
A stunned and heavy silence fills the air. Father and son look at each other, then outside, as though for clues as to what to do. It’s still raining, though not as heavily as earlier, and the sky is slate grey and gloomy. Tears run down Emil’s face and Storm feels numb and disorientated. What are they supposed to do now? Emil’s phone pings loudly, breaking the tension. They look at each other.
‘Where is Bianka?’ whispers Storm as Emil unlocks the phone.
‘What the… I just had a notification from my bank app that Bianka bought a two-thousand-pound flight on my Amex card this morning.’
‘I don’t understand...’
Emil starts stabbing furiously into his phone and Storm gets out of the car and walks in the direction of Slemdal, calling Madeleine over and over, so that she’ll understand it’s an emergency and he has to speak to her, whether or not the batshit crazy adults that surround them both have forbidden her to. Finally she picks up.
‘Meet me at the lake.’
‘What, now?’
