Ashes to Dust (5 page)

She walked up to the garage that connected
Alda’s terrace house to the next one and peered in through a gap in the
brown-lacquered door. She thought she saw a reflection from Alda’s new
green Toyota, but could not see it clearly enough to be sure. Nevertheless,
this was a bad omen. Alda could hardly have got very far without her car, and
if she was at home it was extremely odd that she hadn’t contacted anyone.
Dís went to the front door of the house. The sound of the doorbell came
from within as she rang it repeatedly. She stopped pushing it and put her ear
to the door in the hope of hearing Alda, but could not make out any audible
sign of human activity. Still, she was fairly certain that she could hear a
radio. She pressed her ear even closer to the door and covered the other one.
Yes, yes. She could even hear the tune. It was an old cheesy pop song, about a
boy calling out to his father. Dís straightened up and knitted her brow.
It occurred to her how strange it was that even after working with Alda for
seven years, she had no clue as to what sort of music she liked. Somehow it had
never come up in conversation. She grabbed the doorknob and tried the door. It
was unlocked.

Alda
!‘
she
called through the doorway. No answer - only the melancholy voice of the
now-forgotten singer, asking his father to wait for him. Dís pushed on
the door until it opened fully. She went in and called out again: Alda! Are you
home?’ No answer. The song finished, but started again several seconds
later. It must have been on a CD, with the CD player set to repeat. Radio
stations hadn’t yet stooped to
playing
the same
song over and over again. Dís walked slowly up the stairs to the first
floor. If Alda had been taken ill, she was most likely to be in her bedroom
upstairs. Dís had only been to the house once, when Alda had invited her
and Agúst, along with their spouses, to dinner earlier in the year, and
then they hadn’t left the ground floor. The dinner had been impeccable,
as expected: good food and delicious wine, everything very tastefully
presented. Dís recalled how amazed she’d been that Alda
hadn’t been in a steady relationship since her divorce, which had
actually been over and done with by the time she’d started working at the
plastic surgeon’s office. She was a particularly pleasant woman,
approaching fifty; she had kept herself in good shape and was warm, cheerful
and courteous. Dís called Alda’s name one more time before
climbing the stairs. No answer. The music, on the other hand, became clearer
with every step. She walked as quietly as she could, hoping that Alda would be
lying there asleep with the melancholy music playing.

The singer’s emotional voice came
through the half-open door. Dís repeated Alda’s name, more softly.
She didn’t want to startle the woman if she was simply sleeping, or even
getting dressed. Through the gap in the doorway she could see the sun shining
on a corner of the embroidered bedspread. Dís pushed the door with one
foot and put her hand over her mouth as she looked into the master bedroom. The
music was coming from the CD player on the bedside table, and next to it was an
empty wine bottle, an open prescription bottle and a syringe. In the middle of
the bed lay Alda. Dís didn’t need her medical degree to realize
that there was little use in trying to resuscitate her.

Tuesday 10 July
2007

Thóra leaned back in her chair and
sighed, trying to decide who to ask to pick up her daughter Sóley - for
the second day in a row. Her mother was out of the question. She had helped out
the previous evening when Thóra had been delayed in the Westmann
Islands, and besides that, her parents were on their way to the theatre. She
would never hear the end of it if her mother missed the play she’d been
looking forward to for months. It was some sort of dramatized documentary about
the injustices women suffer in the modern world. Thóra smiled to
herself. Her father would be eternally grateful if she rescued him from this
theatre trip, but she decided not to ruin their plans. Her mother’s
disappointment would last far longer than her father’s gratitude.

She decided to call her ex-husband. Hannes
would not be best pleased. The work of an emergency physician was no less
demanding than that of a lawyer, and the days were longer and harder. He took
the kids every other weekend and sometimes asked to have more time with them
when it was convenient, but in general he was not receptive to taking them at
short notice. Hannes had a new wife, and his life now revolved mainly around
the two of them and their needs. Thóra’s, on the other hand,
revolved around everyone but herself; lately all of her time had been going
into her work, her two children and her grandson, who had recently turned one.
The grandchild actually
came
part and parcel with a
fourth child - her daughter- in law. Sigga was seventeen, a year younger than
Thóra’s son Gylfi, but there was not much difference between them
in terms of maturity. Somehow the young parents had managed to keep their
relationship going despite their belly flop into the deep end of adulthood.
They stayed with Thóra every other week, and in between the girl went
home to her parents with the little boy - without Gylfi. The relationship
between Gylfi and Sigga’s parents was a chilly one; they seemed unable to
forgive him for their daughter’s untimely pregnancy. This was no secret to
anyone, least of all Gylfi, so Thóra was happy when he decided to stay
at home whilst Sigga was with them. In this way she managed to keep her son to
herself a little longer and continue with his upbringing, which had been cut
short when he had accidentally increased the human population.

Thóra put the receiver under her chin
and adjusted a framed photograph of her grandson as she selected the number.
The little boy had been christened Orri, after countless other proposals by the
young parents that still made Thóra shudder. He was irresistible; blond
and big-eyed, and still with round, chubby cheeks even though he had long since
stopped bottle- feeding. It warmed Thóra’s heart to see him, and
she was looking forward to taking care of him next week even though the
household’s stress levels increased perceptibly when mother and son were
around. She smiled at the little boy in the photo and crossed her fingers when
the phone was finally answered. ‘Hello, Hannes. Could you do me a small
favour? I won’t be able to pick up
Sóley .
.

 ‘The girl watched from the
playground as the ambulance drove up to the house. She twisted in the swing and
let it turn her back in a semi-circle. She was happy that the sirens
weren’t on because if they were, that meant it was serious. Maybe the
lady
had just fallen down and broken her foot? Once her
friend broke her foot and then an ambulance came to get her. Tinna puffed up
her cheeks then let the air leak out while she thought about all of this.
Fat cheeks.
Skinny cheeks.
Fat cheeks.
Skinny cheeks.
She
stopped playing bellows with her cheeks and sat deep in thought. Here was proof
that you didn’t need to eat to become fat. Air could make you fat. She
stiffened. Everything was full of air. It was everywhere, and there was nowhere
to hide. She would have to try to breathe less.

A dull thud came from the ambulance and Tinna
directed her attention back there. She was hoping that someone would come out
of the house so that she could find out what had happened, but the bustle
around the ambulance was better than nothing. The house was more interesting
— maybe they’d arrested a criminal inside, but the walls blocked
her view. If they were thin walls maybe she could see through them, just as it
would be possible one day to see through her. She squinted in the hope of
seeing better, but it didn’t help. Yet something was going on: the first
police car to arrive had had its sirens on. No police car had come when her
friend broke her foot in the school playground, so it was unlikely that they’d
come to the
lady’s
house because of an accident.
If it was a robbery, then Tinna hoped that the police would put the robber in
jail. She was a nice
lady
who didn’t deserve
anything bad to happen to her. The swing creaked. The girl watched as two men
stepped out of the ambulance and took a stretcher from the back. She sighed.
This wasn’t good. When was she going to meet the
lady
now? Maybe she’d be in the hospital for a long time. Last time Tinna went
to the hospital she didn’t get to go home for forty days. But that
didn’t change anything. This could always wait. She’d often waited
longer than a few months for something. For things that were really important.

Tinna stood up on her swing to get a better
view. She held on tight, dizzy from standing up so quickly. When she closed her
eyes the unpleasant feeling passed, as always. She reminded herself that it was
a good sign to get dizzy, it was almost equal to passing out and that meant the
body was burning fat. When Tinna opened her eyes again the men with the stretcher
had gone into the house and there was no movement to be seen outside it.
The ambulance was parked right in front of the house, blocking her view of the
door. She stretched herself as high as she could, trying to see if the door was
open, but with no luck. Should she go home or wait for the
lady
to be carried out? She was in no rush to go home; no one was there, her mother
worked until five and didn’t get any break even though it was a staff day
at Tinna’s school. There was nothing waiting for her at home.

She bent her knees and swung standing up,
without particularly intending to do so. It was good to feel the air
playing through her hair and she sped up a bit, only to slow down immediately
when she remembered that the air was not her friend. Her heart pounded in her
chest as she tried to settle the swing. As soon as it stopped she felt
immediately better, and wondered what she should say to the
lady
,
how she could put into words that she knew who she was for real. Tinna smiled
to herself. The
lady
would be surprised and was sure
to be happy, too. It was still stuck in her memory how sad I he
lady
had been when her father had reacted so terribly to
what she was trying to tell him. Her dad was a real idiot. A grumpy, drunken
idiot who didn’t understand Tinna, any more than her mother did. She was
a lot worse, talking constantly about food, food, food and how Tinna had to
eat, and sometimes she even cried. So Tinna always preferred to go to her
father’s every other weekend because he didn’t expect anything from
her. He told her she ought to eat but then didn’t pay any more attention
to whether she did or not, unlike her mother. That was fine by her. Her dad was
so uninterested in Tinna that he hadn’t even caught on that
she’d heard everything that had passed between him and the
lady
the night she came to visit. Tinna had let herself in
without her father or the visitor being aware of it, and the anger in her
dad’s voice made her even keener not to draw attention to herself. She
knew how to make herself inconspicuous, especially since that was her goal: in
the end, she would become invisible. If she had already reached that goal she
would have been able to step between them and watch the lines on their faces
and their body language as they argued. ‘But she wasn’t quite that
good yet, so she settled for sneaking to the sitting-room door and listening in
on their conversation. When they finished she went out again and pretended to
be arriving just as the
lady
was leaving the house.
Her father was unusually sulky when he let her in, but she acted as if nothing
were wrong and in the end he returned to normal, not caring about anything but
the game on television.

The
lady
had no more
idea than her father that Tinna had listened in; perhaps she had no idea at all
that she even existed. Unlike Tinna’s father, however, she would be happy
to discover that Tinna had heard what had passed between them and would no
doubt want to get to know her better. Tinna had got her name and telephone
number from a note that she’d left behind on the table for Tinna’s
father, so that he could contact her later. That had turned out to be a work of
patience since her dad had torn the paper to pieces and thrown them on the
floor, so Tinna had to piece together the tatters just to be able to read what
was written there. Once she had the woman’s name and telephone number it
was easy to find her address. Tinna had sometimes come here just to watch the
house without particularly knowing why or what she was hoping to find. The
evening before, things had finally been different, and Tinna had watched with
great interest. In fact little had actually happened, but maybe all would be
explained later. She thought about the note that had blown away on the wind and
got stuck in the shrubbery. Tinna had taken it and hidden it at home. It
mattered. She knew that for sure - just not why or how. But it would come to
light someday.

She sat back down in the swing and hooked her
delicate elbows around the brown chains. The smell of iron on her palms
reminded her of last summer, when she had tried to swing right over the bar,
certain that by doing so she would burn a thousand calories. She still had an
ugly scar on her right foot after the attempt failed miserably. The air then
hadn’t made her fatter, but thinner. It made it all so difficult the
rules kept changing, and Tinna had to be constantly on the look-out if she
didn’t want to become fat, fatter,
fattest
.