The lemonade from the minibar was expensive, but to Thóra it was worth every penny. She put down the can and wrapped the thick white dressing gown more closely around her. She went to the window of her room, opened the curtains a crack, and looked out over Austurvöllur Square. Not many people were around, and the few who were up and about seemed to be the last few stragglers from the previous night’s revelry. Thóra smiled. She let go of the curtain and walked back over to the bed, where Matthew lay asleep. Now that she had finally met someone who was neither divorced nor alcoholic, neither megalomaniac nor sports fanatic, just her luck that he had to be a foreigner who was hardly likely to want to move to Iceland.
Perhaps that was exactly why she liked him.
She heard a faint ringing somewhere in the room and listened carefully to identify where her phone was. Finally she located it in her bag. She answered quickly. “Hello,” she whispered, taking the phone into the bathroom so as not to wake Matthew.
“Mum,” shouted Gylfi, “Sigga’s dying!”
Thóra shut her eyes and put her head in one hand. She had left Sóley with Gylfi and Sigga—mainly so that she could be with Matthew for his last night in Iceland. They would soon be taking care of a baby, so they ought to be able to babysit a six-year-old for one night, and Sigga had hitherto shown no signs of going into labor.
“Gylfi, sweetheart,” she said, “she’s not dying. The baby’s coming.” She heard Sigga moaning in the background. “Is she in a lot of pain?”
“She’s dying, Mum,” said her son. “Really. Listen.” The moans grew louder, then suddenly stopped. “It comes and goes,” he added.
“She’s in labor, darling,” said Thóra, more calmly than she felt. “I’m on my way. Get yourself and your sister dressed. If Sigga feels able to get dressed, that would be good, but otherwise she can go as she is.” Thóra opened the bathroom door and went back into the bedroom. “Has Sigga called her mum? Is she on her way?” she asked as she pulled her clothes on.
“No,” said Gylfi firmly. “Sigga wants me to call, but I won’t. She’s horrible.”
Thóra couldn’t disagree, but she urged him to ring all the same, as Sigga’s parents would certainly want to be there for their daughter. It would be the last straw for Sigga’s mum and dad if Gylfi failed to let them know.
“I’m coming, anyway,” she said. “You make sure you’re ready. If they want to pick Sigga up, they can. It’s up to you whether you go with them or come with me and Sóley.” She hung up and zipped up her skirt. Uncharacteristically, she had dressed up for the occasion—high heels and everything. She’d wanted to celebrate the end of the case and enjoy her time with Matthew before he left. She looked at her tights, draped over the TV. She grimaced, but decided she would rather put them back on than expose her pasty white legs.
“Matthew,” said Thóra, nudging him gently, “I’ve got to go. Sigga’s in labor.”
Matthew, who lay facedown, lifted his head from the pillow and blinked groggily at her. “What?”
“I’ve got to go to the hospital,” she repeated, “Sigga’s screaming blue murder, so it shouldn’t be long. I’ll ring and let you know.”
Thóra drove home faster than usual. She smiled to herself as she turned into her road, remembering how Gylfi and Sigga had betrayed their ignorance when they had talked about the birth. Sigga had at various times expressed a desire to give birth underwater, or standing up outside surrounded by nature, or silently, like Tom Cruise’s wife, all depending on what she had been reading on the Internet that day. All these idyllic births took place without any pain medication, but Thóra suspected that would change when the girl was faced with reality. After the first session of a course for expectant parents, both had refused to return. Sigga had scandalized the midwife by asking whether there was MTV in the delivery room.
“I’m here,” called Thóra as she entered, but she could not be heard over Sigga’s howling. She wouldn’t be welcome in a Scientologist delivery room.
“There’s something wrong,” shouted Gylfi when he spotted his mother. “I think the baby’s trying to come out sideways.”
“No it isn’t,” said Thóra. “Unfortunately this is just what it’s like.” She went over to Sigga, who was sitting in the dining room with her head in her hands.
“It’s because she’s got such narrow hips,” said Gylfi anxiously. “Everybody says that makes it really hard to give birth.”
“It’s not the hips that are the bottleneck in this process, sweetheart. That comes a bit farther down.” She leaned over Sigga. “Just breathe deeply, Sigga,” she said. “Okay, let’s go out to the car. Have your waters broken?”
Sigga looked at Thóra blankly. “Waters?”
“Come on,” said Thóra, clapping her hands briskly, “you’ll find out soon enough.” She helped Sigga out of the house, while Gylfi hurried ahead to open the car door. Sóley followed sleepily, unclear what was happening. “Just say yes, Sigga, if they offer you an epidural. It’s the fashion,” said Thóra, helping Sigga lie down in the rear seat of the SUV. She had decided to sell it, and the caravan, in order to clear her debts, but the SUV was bigger than her old banger and had room for all of them.
Thóra sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Just as she backed out of the drive, Sigga shouted out and she slammed on the brakes. Gylfi and Thóra looked into the back. She sighed. She would have to knock something off the price of the SUV, now that the rear seat was awash with amniotic fluid.
Sóley sat swinging her legs. She had nothing else to do in the waiting area. Thóra was impressed by how good she was being, especially since they’d been waiting in the little room for nearly three hours. Their time there wasn’t made any more enjoyable by the presence of Sigga’s father, who barely spoke, just sent Thóra an impressive range of contemptuous looks, so Thóra was relieved when her phone rang, breaking the oppressive silence. She answered and took the call in the corridor.
“Hello, Thóra, this is Lára on Snæfellsnes, Sóldís’s grandmother,” said the old lady’s pleasantly modulated voice. “I hope I haven’t rung at a bad time.”
“No, not at all,” replied Thóra. “I’m so pleased to hear from you. I was going to call you myself, as I didn’t manage to see you before I left.” Five days had passed since Berta and Steini were arrested by the police, and Thóra had been busy tying up the case and working off the backlog that had accumulated at the office. Jónas had fortunately decided not to take legal action against Elín and Börkur, after it transpired that the “ghost” had been Berta all along. “You know they found Kristín, of course.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m ringing,” said Lára. “There are actually two things I wanted to mention. I’m arranging to have her buried next to her mother, and I was hoping you’d come to the service. It was thanks to you that she was found. I don’t suppose her relatives will be attending en masse, and I feel it’s important that it shouldn’t just be me and the priest.”
“I’d be honored,” said Thóra warmly.
“Good,” said Lára. “I’ll let you know as soon as the date is fixed.” She cleared her throat delicately. “Then there’s the other matter. The policeman who handled the case came to see me earlier.”
“Thórólfur?” said Thóra, surprised. “What did he want?”
“He brought me a letter, or to be more precise, a copy of a letter,” replied Lára. “A letter that’s taken sixty years to reach me. It’s from Gudný.”
“Where was it found?” asked Thóra. She was astonished. “Was it in the coal bunker?”
“It was in Kristín’s coat pocket,” said Lára. It seemed to Thóra that her voice might break, but when she spoke again, she sounded strong and steady. “Most of what’s in the letter is my private business, but I wanted to share one thing with you.”
“Of course,” said Thóra. “I think it must explain quite a lot.”
“When Gudný wrote the letter, she knew she was dying. She realized it was her last chance to tell her story. She starts by apologizing for not telling me the truth in her previous letters. She says she didn’t feel able to as she was afraid I would come to visit her, and she or her father would infect me. I’d started a new life in Reykjavík and she didn’t want to unsettle me by complaining about her own problems.”
“Presumably she meant the tuberculosis,” said Thóra. “It can’t have been the child that she saw as a problem.”
“No,” Lára replied. “She loved her daughter more than life itself. She calls her ‘a light in the darkness.’ She says she’s such a good little girl, sweet-natured in spite of her unusual upbringing, cut off from everyone except her mother and grandfather. I can’t deny that Gudný seemed terribly ashamed of having had an illegitimate child, but it didn’t affect her love for Kristín.”
“Children are incredibly adaptable,” said Thóra, thinking of her own little grandchild starting his or her life, possibly by coming out sideways.
“Absolutely,” said Lára. “Kristín was lucky to have such a loving mother, and she didn’t need anyone else.” Lára hesitated, presumably scanning the letter for something specific. “Gudný states quite clearly that Magnús Baldvinsson is the father,” she said eventually. “They were intimate only once, when he came to meet her father on Nationalist Party business and she became pregnant. She says she has never slept with any other man, neither before nor since, and jokes that there are unlikely to be any more men in her life now.”
“Does she says whether he knew about the child?” asked Thóra. Even if he did, he could hardly lay claim to inherit from her.
“She says he went to Reykjavík to study before she was aware of her condition, but she wrote him a letter after Kristín was born. He never replied.” Lára sighed. “It’s clear from her letter that she was very hurt, particularly on her daughter’s behalf. If she had ever loved him, that put an end to it, understandably.”
“Yes, there are things you can never put right in relationships,” agreed Thóra, “and refusing to acknowledge your own child is one of the worst.”
“Gudný wrote me the letter to ask me to take her daughter in,” said Lára. “Her father was already dead, and she and her daughter were living with her uncle Grímur. Gudný says she doesn’t trust him, that he’s deranged. She says he looks at her and her daughter with such hatred that she finds it quite frightening, and that she definitely doesn’t want to leave her daughter in his care. She even asks me to find out whether anything can be done for his daughter, Málfrídur, as she’s also concerned about her, although she’s older and more capable of looking after herself.”
“Well, well,” said Thóra. “Do you suppose he knew Gudný wanted you to be Kristín’s guardian?” asked Thóra. “If Kristín went, he’d lose all his property along with her.”
“I don’t know,” said Lára. “She doesn’t say so, just that she doesn’t know when the letter will reach me as she doesn’t trust Grímur to post it. She says she’s going to give it to her little girl in the hope that she can pass it to someone. She says she’s talked to Kristín and told her about me, how kind I am, and that maybe she’ll be able to see me soon. Then she adds that she can trust the child to take good care of the letter, although she’s young. She’s so conscientious and good.”
“She managed to keep the letter a secret, at any rate,” said Thóra.
“Yes,” said a faint voice at the other end of the line. The old lady was obviously weeping now. “No doubt I’ll speak to you about it again after the funeral,” said Lára through her tears. “I think I should go now.”
“No problem,” said Thóra. “I’ll be there. You can rely on me.” She said goodbye and hung up.
She had been pacing up and down the short corridor as she spoke on the phone, without paying much attention to her surroundings. Suddenly she realized that behind most of the doors along the corridor women were busy bringing children into the world. The shouts from Delivery Room C sounded familiar, and she listened, hoping to hear a baby cry. She couldn’t make anything out, and anyway it was unlikely that its little lungs would be any match for the noise coming from its mother. Thóra distinguished a sentence between the howls: “It wasn’t meant to hurt this much!” Mentally agreeing with Sigga, Thóra smiled to herself. The baby was clearly about to arrive.
She listened at the door, and after a few more groans and shouts the forlorn crying of a baby was heard. Her eyes filled with tears, and she moved away from the door. She hoped that the fact that she hadn’t heard Gylfi’s voice didn’t mean he’d fainted, but then she heard him say, “Ugh, take that horrible thing away!”
Thóra was taken aback, but Sigga’s mother snapped, “Don’t be silly, boy! She’s only showing you the placenta and caul. Some people dry them to make lampshades.” Thóra could only hope that there wouldn’t be a nasty surprise among her Christmas presents this year.
The door opened and Gylfi emerged. He hugged his mother, his face glowing. “It was pretty disgusting, but I’m a dad! It’s a boy.”
Thóra kissed him over and over again on both cheeks. “Oh, Gylfi!” she said between kisses. “Congratulations, my darling boy. Is he adorable?”
“He’s all, like, covered in white stuff,” answered Gylfi with a little shudder. “And the umbilical cord’s a bit …” Instead of finishing the sentence, he opened the delivery-room door. “See for yourself,” he said, going in.
Thóra didn’t want to intrude, so contented herself with peeking around the door. She had a vague impression of Sigga’s mother and the midwife at the other end of the delivery table, but the baby in the arms of the new mother captured all her attention.
She entered the room in a trance. She was a grandmother. She was surprised to realize that once she had seen her grandson, she longed above all else to hurry back to Matthew.