‘Yes, three times, to be exact, by my calculation.’
‘What are you telling me? That she’s done this three times before?’
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aníta’s gaze widen in surprise.
‘Yes, or rather no,’ Rut said. ‘You’re assuming the samething has happened this time. But that’s not necessarily true…’
‘Fill me in briefly about what happened, Rut. We can talk about it in more detail tomorrow.’
‘Yes, all right.’ Another pause. ‘The first time was when she dropped out of university, in the middle of winter, in her fourth year, and left town. She didn’t tell anyone what she was doing and was uncontactable for months. She just wrote to us – me, Thor and Lovísa – and her parents – explaining that she was trying to find the right direction in life, or words to that effect. And that we weren’t to worry about her, though of course we were all worried. But I knew she’d manage. She always lands on her feet, she’s the resilient type, though she has that artistic temperament, so you can never really predict what she’s going to do next.’
‘Do we know what she was up to?’
‘Yes, we do now, sort of… She moved to Ísafjördur and took a teaching job. Completely out of the blue. She didn’t have any family there, didn’t know a soul, but got a job teaching young children at the local school. When she came back to Reykjavík, she announced that she was going to become a teacher, that this was where her future lay.’
‘Had something happened, some sort of shock or crisis that might have explained her behaviour at the time?’
‘No, on the contrary. She was studying law, doing well, her life proceeding as normal, then quite without warning she decided the law wasn’t for her. I’ve still got her letters; I was rereading them earlier.Rut, I’ve got to learn how to stand on my own two feet at some point. You, Thor and Lovísa can’t always be there to pick up the pieces.I think she was happyin Ísafjördur, though she never went back there. She has nice things to say about the town, though she’s chosen to live close to Reykjavík ever since.’
‘You said three times? Has she vanished like this three times in the past?’
‘Sorry, perhaps I was putting it a bit over-dramatically, but… yes, it’s happened three times that I’m aware of. We have to bear in mind, though, that she’s always been single, hardly ever had a boyfriend, let alone anything more serious – so perhaps it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to her to go away for a while without alerting her friends. Some people find it easy to be alone; others don’t.’
‘Right,’ Helgi said, taking a deep breath.
‘She has fewer commitments than most people, and maybe she relishes her freedom.’
‘Rut, could you tell me about the other two occasions?’
‘Yes, of course. I remember that it happened again when a childhood friend of hers died very suddenly; I think she needed a bit of time to get over it, understandably. She was away for a week, if my memory’s correct. She’d gone to a holiday cabin belonging to her union, the Teacher’s Union. It was a long time ago, back in the days when it was easier to drop out of circulation for a while. Anyway, you never quite know with these artistic types…’
‘And the third time?’
‘When she wrote her first book,White Calm. Do you remember it?’
‘Yes, I’ve read it. Didn’t it come out in 1984?’
‘Yes, that’s right. We lost her for two weeks – she’d gone to a holiday cabin that time as well, to finish themanuscript. She hadn’t told anyone she was writing a novel; it came out of nowhere. But this was at the height of summer, so we weren’t too worried. I mean, she didn’t have any particular duty to keep us informed of her movements. Then she turned up on my doorstep one morning – I still remember that it was a sunny day and a redwing had made its nest by our front door, it was a beautiful summer… anyway, sorry, I’m digressing, but she was holding the manuscript, a stack of handwritten pages, and presented it to me, saying:Is this the sort of thing you might consider publishing?That’s how she put it.’
‘Do you think that could be the situation now – that she’s just gone on, well, some kind of break?’
‘You know, I really, really hope so. But I’m worried. I don’t know why.’
‘She’s not finishing a book, we can be fairly confident of that,’ Helgi said. ‘And no one has died – have they?’
‘Sorry?’
‘No one’s died recently? A death that could have hit her hard?’
‘Oh. No, I don’t think so. I’d have known. We share most of our friends.’
‘And it’s a long time since it last happened, obviously. Nearly thirty years.’
‘Exactly. I suppose that’s the point. Why on earth would she play that game again now, at seventy? No, it’s incomprehensible.’
Helgi went to the record player and turned over the Chet Baker record, almost without being aware he was doing it.
‘Let’s hope for the best, Rut,’ he said after a moment,glancing at Aníta, who smiled at him again. She was never impatient, not like Bergthóra. ‘Can I talk to you tomorrow, Rut? Let’s sleep on this, and, needless to say, we hope she’ll turn up very soon.’
