A House Without Mirrors (2 page)

W
e didn’t say anything else as we walked down the stairs to the ground floor, passing through the parlours, lounges, the dining room and into the pantry. I smelt the pizza even before I heard the voices from the kitchen. Up until then I had been quite hungry, but as usual it didn’t last. Before we came to Henrietta’s house I sometimes craved pizza. I didn’t think I’d ever crave pizza again. When it was their turn to make dinner, both Kajsa and Daniel bought pizza one, if not two, evenings each week. Sometimes we ended up having pizza four times a week.

Erland, who was already sitting at the table, must have come down the back stairs from the second floor. Uncle Daniel was sitting next to him, reading a paper, and Kajsa was standing up, unpacking the pizzas from a paper bag. Kajsa was still wearing her 
coat, and even from a distance you could see how grumpy she was.

“Typical, they’re ice-cold again,” she snarled, poking in one of the pizza cartons. “It’s so bloody annoying never getting home while they’re still warm! Surely there’s a pizzeria somewhere closer?”

Uncle Daniel looked up and scratched the stubble on his chin.

“Never mind,” he said. “We can eat them cold, can’t we?”

While Wilma and I sat down, Kajsa walked over to the ancient Husqvarna stove.

“You can sit there and eat cold pizza if you like,” she said, turning on the oven. “But I’m not going to.”

Dad came down the back stairs and went straight to the cupboard to measure out Henrietta’s medicine. He hardly lifted his head while he moved through the room. It was as if we weren’t there.

Kajsa and Dad had the same colour eyes, and before Dad grew a beard there was a certain similarity between him and Uncle Daniel too. But now they were no more alike than strangers sitting beside each other on the bus. You’d never have guessed that they were brothers and sister. 

Suddenly Dad looked up.

“Where is Signe?”

Signe. A cold wave of shame and anxiety started at my scalp and ran down my back. No one had told Signe that our game of hide-and-seek was over. Fear prickling my skin, I stood up and walked towards the door.

“I’ll let her know.”

Climbing the stairs, I tried to calm down in the way I always do. It was going to be all right. Wilma and I had only been back down in the kitchen for a couple of minutes. There was nothing dangerous on the second floor, and Signe was not lost. As far as she knew, we were still playing the game. There hadn’t even been time for her to get scared.

I told myself all that, but it didn’t help. The old fear never went away; it just lurked beneath the surface, and anything could arouse it. As soon as I reached the corridor I started calling her.

“Signe? Signe, sweetie, you can come out now!”

No answer, and as I stopped in the doorway I could see that the room where I had left her was empty.

“Signe? Supper is ready.” 

The octagonal room with its narrow wardrobe doors was silent. There was nothing that scared me as much as that heavy, empty silence. I looked behind the boxes and rubbish bags, although I knew no one could be hiding there. Not even skinny little Signe.

“You can come out now, Signe. You’ve won!”

I tried to sound cheerful, but that only made things worse. The silence could tell that I was lying, and it twisted my voice into something horrible and evil. My fingers sweaty, I started prying open the wardrobe doors, one after the other. I called Signe’s name into the darkness, and each time silence shouted back at me.

Finally, the only door remaining was the locked one in the middle. Could she have got in there? No, I had checked, hadn’t I? That wardrobe had been locked and there had been no key in the lock. I knocked anyway.

“Signe?” I whispered through the keyhole. “Please, Signe, come out. You’re the winner!”

A cool breath of wind seeped out of the keyhole and brushed my lips. It felt like a kiss.

I carried on calling her while I searched all the bedrooms on the second floor, as well as my own 
room and the one used by Dad. Fear had taken hold of me for so long now that I began to feel numb. Dad says you can’t carry on being really afraid for more than a short period at a time, and he’s right.

“I’ll have to get Wilma,” I muttered while I walked towards the stairs. “I’ll fetch Wilma, and then we’ll search—”

“I’m here, Thomasine.”

The voice behind me brought to mind the angel chimes that Mum used to light on the dinner table at Christmas. I could almost see the little ornament before me: the flames that pushed the wheel with the angels around and around and the silver bells that chimed lightly and delicately.

But as I turned around it was not an angel standing there. It was Signe.

“Signe, where have you been?”

Signe smiled at me as I reached out my hand to her. She seemed completely unharmed.

“I met someone,” she said, taking my hand. “We played for a while.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but I was mainly thinking how strange it was to hear her voice. Of course I’d heard Signe speak before,
but not that often, and hardly ever in complete sentences.

“Okay,” I said. “Great. Shall we go and eat?”

I thought to myself that my voice sounded hoarse and frightened, but Signe didn’t seem to notice. She simply held her little hand around my finger and skipped down the stairs. She was just the same as ever, or even a bit cheerful in fact, and I started feeling better.

Nothing had happened. Signe was unharmed and seemed to have enjoyed playing hide-and-seek. I had not been looking after her, but this time everything had been fine.

K
ajsa was kneeling by the oven door. She was still wearing her coat and wellies, her blonde hair gathered back in a hard, taut ponytail.

“Who ordered a calzone?”

No one replied. No one ever ordered calzone, but Kajsa always bought one in any case, every time.

“Ah well,” she said grumpily. “I suppose I’ll have to eat it myself then.”

She always said that too, every time.

“Is there one with pineapple on it?”

Everyone froze, as if they didn’t understand where the clear, tiny voice was coming from.

Only Dad and I looked at Signe.

“What was that, Signe?” Dad said carefully, as if he didn’t want to frighten her. “Would you like one with pineapple? A Hawaii? 

Signe nodded.

“I like Hawaii,” she said loud and clear. “I like pineapple.”

Kajsa gave a short laugh, but you could tell she was still grumpy.

“Holy Moses, the child speaks!” she said. “Well, well, I suppose she can have some of Thomas’s, then.”

Dad nodded and Signe smiled, showing all her teeth. I don’t think I’d ever seen her do that before.

“Thomas can have some of my pizza,” she said. “We can swap so that it’s all fair.”

She really was completely different. It was strange, but at the same time it felt quite normal. As if something inside Signe had suddenly been turned on.

The mood around the table brightened after she had said that thing about the pizza. Not happier, exactly, but more animated. Uncle Daniel, particularly, looked at Signe more often than he normally would, and he even stroked her cheek once. I was thinking how weird it was that everyone was so surprised, because we all knew that Signe could speak. It was just that she wouldn’t normally do so.

The rare good spirits lasted for at least ten minutes, with no one quarrelling with anyone else. But at 
about the same time that Erland slid off his chair and sneaked out without saying thank you, the conversation slipped back into the same old pattern as always.

“So what’s new, Thomas?” Kajsa said, wiping her mouth roughly with a napkin.

Dad, who was huddled over his pizza with that distant look in his eyes, looked up.

“What?”

“How’s she doing?” Kajsa said again. “Any change?”

Dad looked around as if he couldn’t really be sure who we all were. It occurred to me that he had gone somewhere far inside himself.

“What?” he said again. “Sorry, I was just…”

His voice died out in an apologetic mumble.

“Has the old bag said anything?” Kajsa said slowly and deliberately, as if she was talking to a child. “You are up there twenty hours a day, Thomas. You must have something to tell us.”

But Dad just shook his head.

“She is weak,” he muttered, taking another bite of his cold pizza. “It’s hard to know what she wants. Sometimes you can tell that she wants some water, or—”

“She wants water?” Kajsa was almost yelling. “Well, isn’t that great? It’s bloody perfect!”

As she stood up the legs of the chair screeched against the stone floor. She threw her napkin onto her half-eaten pizza and started folding the pizza cartons with angry, jerky movements.

“But, Kajsa—”

“This won’t do, Thomas!” Kajsa interrupted, staring at Dad. “Can’t you see that I have a business to run? Kjell’s struggling to keep up with the books, and Wilma’s missed almost a month’s worth of riding lessons!”

Dad opened his hands in a helpless gesture. Then he pushed the last bit of pizza into his mouth, and after chewing for a little while his eyes disappeared into the distance again.

“Go home, then,” said Daniel with an annoying little smile. “No one’s forcing you to stay, are they?”

Kajsa turned to him. Her eyes looked as if she were peering at a snake.

“That would suit you just fine, Daniel, wouldn’t it?”

Her voice was quieter now, but just as angry.

Wilma glanced at me and I saw that her throat
and cheeks were flushed. I knew exactly what she was thinking. Nearly every night we had discussed how hard it was when the grown-ups fought. Dad never fought, of course. But that was almost as bad.

“I have to ring Kjell,” Kajsa muttered, taking her squashed-up pizza carton to the sink. “Not that I have a clue what to say to him.”

Wilma rolled her eyes and sort of glanced towards the place in the ceiling where her room was. I nodded carefully, so that only Wilma could see.

She got down from the table first, then Uncle Daniel and Signe. Dad and I stayed in the kitchen to clear up.

There was no washing-up to do, exactly, but I flattened the pizza cartons and placed them on top of the others on the pile by the stove. Dad was rinsing the glasses with his shoulders hunched up; his entire back was tense and stiff.

“Thanks for supper,” I said when I was ready. “I’ll go up and see Wilma for a while before I go to bed.”

Dad turned his head. At first it was as if he couldn’t see me, or didn’t know who I was. Then there was a little smile, like a brief glimpse of sunshine through a cloud.

“Sleep well, sweetheart,” he said, and grew serious again. “Don’t forget to call Mum.”

Sometimes I remembered what Dad’s eyes looked like before Martin died. They were completely different. Rounder, and sort of glossier, and I wondered if they weren’t bluer too. How could eyes change that much?