‘So? He’ll never know.’
‘What would your parents do if they found them?’
‘My mom would go way crazier over the cookies, believe me. The gummies are sugar-free.’
‘That’s fucked up.’
‘Yeah. Aren’t most people’s parents fucked up, though?’
‘I guess,’ says Storm, feeling the gentle and almost instant release of the marijuana spread out in his system, loosening him.
‘Yours does seem pretty cool, though.’
‘Bianka’s not my mom,’ he says, his voice suddenly loud in the hushed, cosy space.
‘Oh. I just assumed… I heard your dad say “our son”, like, whatever.’
‘Yeah, they do that.’
‘Do what?’ Madeleine’s pretty, gentle face looks puzzled.
‘Pretend like my mom doesn’t exist.’
‘So… Where is your mom?’
‘She died when I was three.’ Storm realizes he’s never told anyone this before. His friends at home have always just known, and it’s never come up with his new friends at school – when they’re there, it’s as though home and family and everything outside of their bubble just ceases to exist.
‘Woah. That’s fucked up.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Can I ask what happened to her?’
‘She died in a freak accident in the mountains near our cabin in Valdres. Lost her footing and fell down the side of Rasletind mountain.’
‘Oh my God.’
Storm nods. It feels good to talk about what happened to his mother; he never feels like he can bring her up at home and his father and Bianka never mention her at all.
Madeleine picks up his hand from where it lies on the dusty floorboard, then quickly releases it, as though it was a ridiculous impulse. He takes her fingers again and smiles at her. She smiles too, and Storm mentally high-fives himself.
Five
Bianka
The opportunity presents itself in a little lull between dessert and coffee. The kids have disappeared off somewhere and Charlotte has gone into the kitchen, from which Bianka can make out the rise and fall of her voice as she gives instructions to her au pair. Bianka excuses herself and stands up slowly, well aware of her unsteadiness from the amounts of wine consumed at dinner. It felt like every time she’d taken a couple of sips from her glass, it was smoothly topped up, making her lose track of how much she’d actually had.
She steps into the large hallway, where a stunning staircase wraps itself around a central gallery and, after glancing around, makes her way up to the first floor. There is a landing halfway up where the stairs branch out left and right, with large windows looking out over the lawns, and she can hear the men chuckling on the terrace directly below. She imagines observing last weekend’s Streamstar party from up here, a little bird watching the moments unfold as she met Charlotte Vinge for the first time. She could tell immediately that the chemistry she’d hoped for carried through from fantasy into real life, and that Charlotte was immediately taken with her. Or her carefully honed persona, rather. It was working out well so far, this new life.
Upstairs, there is a long corridor carpeted in a plush, thick beige and Bianka wonders how anyone with children could manage to keep it looking pristine. After making sure she’s alone, she moves quickly down the corridor to the master bedroom; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise it’ll be the biggest room at the front of the house. If she’s interrupted by anyone, she’ll say she felt unwell and decided to look for somewhere quiet to lie down for a minute. The room is huge and hushed, decorated in muted, grown-up shades of taupe. Bianka feels a pang of disappointment; she hoped that Charlotte’s bedroom might reveal something surprising about her, something that would penetrate the gilded picture painted of a high-achieving perfectionist. She’d hoped for a daring nude on a wall or an unmade bed or a pile of dirty clothes in a corner, but there is none of that. It looks like a hotel room.
Bianka walks over to the window and peers outside. She can make out Charlotte’s voice outside, too – good. But she doesn’t have long; someone will come looking if she doesn’t return in the next few minutes. There’s a built-in vanity table opposite the bed, with a little dusty-pink silk stool that looks like nobody has ever sat on it, but Bianka sits on it now, feeling a deep thrill spread out in the pit of her stomach at the mischief of it. She opens the three drawers of the table in turn. In the first she finds a few expensive sample-sized face creams. In the second, a ring with a large diamond solitaire, casually deposited in a drawer. In the third, a tangle of slinky necklaces. Bianka glances around again, holds her breath, and separates one, a plain silver chain, from the others. She slips it into the cup of her bra, where it can be hidden, warmed by her breast.
She picks up a photograph of a much-younger and less polished-looking Charlotte and angles it to better catch the sliver of light from the hallway. She closes her eyes and makes sure she retains the image and can still see her beautiful face in her mind. Then she takes a picture of it on her phone, to be sure. The resemblance that initially caught her attention is unnerving, though it’s diluted a little in mannerisms and ways of speech – and it’s at its clearest in photographs.
‘What would you say if you could see me now?’ whispers Bianka into the heavy, discreetly fragrant air of the bedroom, feeling silly for speaking out loud, but continuing nonetheless. ‘Oh, baby… I think you’d laugh, at the absurdity of it all. At me, of all people, in a crowd of bankers and their spoiled wives. Wouldn’t you? I try to remember your laugh, but I can’t.’
Bianka places the picture down in the exact same position it had stood and wipes a single tear meandering down her cheek. Enough. She meets her own eyes in the mirror and has to consciously adjust her expression back to ‘fun, outgoing, centre-of-attention Bianka’. That’s who she is now.
Then she goes back downstairs, the necklace coiled around itself and pressed tight against her breast.
Six
Charlotte
I sit down at my vanity table, wiping my makeup off with micellar water as Andreas steps out of his pants and loosens his tie.
‘I thought that went well,’ I say and smile at him in the mirror.
‘Yeah, definitely. I think everyone enjoyed themselves.’
‘So, what do you think of Emil now he’s been at the office for a couple of weeks?’
‘He’s cool. Definitely knows what he’s doing. He’s a funny guy, though, isn’t he? Hard to read.’
