The Girl Who Died, Ragnar Jonasson [small books to read .TXT] 📗

‘Yes, I know,’ Una replied, and was about to add that Thór had taken her up there and shown her round but then suddenly changed her mind, reluctant to draw attention to the fact she had gone to see him. ‘I’ve read about it,’ she said instead.

‘First there were some British soldiers here, then the Americans took over. They called it Camp Greely. Apparently, they stayed here right to the end of the war. The army built the road up here and a radar station to monitor air traffic. I gather they were going to construct an air strip here too but then the war ended. Still, imagine how great it would have been to have an airport in our back yard. Perhaps there would be a few more people living here now if we had. There were army huts up on the hill, though they’ve all long since vanished, but you can still see the layout of the roads in the camp, or what remains of them – tarmac too. What a luxury.’

‘Should we, er, maybe ring Hjördís and check?’ Una asked, cutting short Salka’s description. She was motivated more by curiosity than concern for Hjördís, and would have liked to go over and see for herself. She had an ulterior motive too, as it would give her an excuse to say hello to Thór, since she never ran into him in the village. But if, as she’d been assured, the Christmas carol concert was an event nobody missed, he was bound to show his face there. Una was determined to seize the chance to talk to him then and see if it led to anything.

‘No, I don’t think it would be a good idea to ring now,’ Salka said. ‘We’ll see her tomorrow and hear the whole story then.’

‘Yes, I assume she’ll come along to church,’ Una said, then added, unable to resist the temptation of saying his name: ‘With Thór.’

Salka nodded, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. ‘You asked about the girl upstairs,’ she said eventually. ‘No, she’s never harmed anyone. So you needn’t worry about that.’

‘Have you seen her yourself?’

Salka smiled. ‘Only in a picture.’

‘A picture? What do you mean?’

‘There’s a photo of her. It’s not dated but was probably taken the year she died. Would you like to see it?’

Una answered without stopping to think: ‘Definitely.’ Then immediately regretted it. It might be better not to give her imagination too much material to work with.

Salka got up and walked unhurriedly to the bookcase. Una admired the size of her library once again. There had been nothing like it in her own childhood home. Her parents had shown no interest in literature or culture of any kind, and the only books in the house had been on a shelf in her father’s study. She remembered the room so well that when she closed her eyes she could still picture it in detail: the black office chair, the worn desk made of dark wood, the old radio set on which she used to listen to pop music from the American naval base at Keflavík. She used to shut herself in the study and turn on the radio, careful to keep the volume low. The soft lighting lent the room an air of enchantment and the black leather chair was so comfortable that Una used to sink into it and close her eyes, vanishing into a world of foreign music. The only illumination in the room had come from an old, green desk lamp that her father had been given by his father. In her memory, it had given the study a greenish glow. That’s how it had looked the last time Una had seen it and that’s how it would always remain in her memory, which was why there was no colour she now loathed more than green. None of her clothes were green and she had even gone so far as to throw away the only green jumper she had owned, unable to bear the thought of wearing it again.

‘Here’s the book,’ Salka said casually, and Una snapped back to the present. ‘And the photo. It’s been kept in this book, always in the same place, for so many years that I hardly dare move it.’ She opened the book, laid it on a side table and carefully picked up the photo, then came over to the dining table, where she handed it to Una.

The picture was clearly very old, worn and yellowing, dog-eared at the edges. There was the house – the photo had been taken from the road outside – and you could even see the light on in the window of the dining room, where they were sitting now. Upstairs, the dormer windows showed that the attic was there, just the same; in fact, the house didn’t look as if it had changed at all in the intervening half-century. And there she was, the girl, standing on the steps up to the front door, wearing a dress that was white or at any rate a pale colour – it was impossible to tell since the picture was in black and white. She had pale hair and was staring straight into the camera lens, as if she were looking straight at Una and Salka.

Was this the girl she’d seen in her dream the other night? Even as she thought it, she smiled at her own foolishness.

The photograph was so old and the quality so poor that it was easy to imagine anything you liked. A faded image of a girl in a white dress. It was so indistinct that it could just as well be a picture of Edda.

And, quite apart from that, it had been a dream, that was all.

Nothing but a dream.

XIX

The old church was aglow with candles when Una walked in out of the cold.

This year, the last Sunday before Christmas fell on 22 December, only two days before Christmas Eve, which was the high point of the Icelandic celebrations. It was