After She'd Gone

AFTER

SHE’D

GONE

Also by Alex Dahl

The Boy at the Door

The Heart Keeper

Playdate

Cabin Fever

AFTER

SHE’D

GONE

Alex Dahl

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,

part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © Alex Dahl, 2022

The moral right of Alex Dahl to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB): 9781801108263

ISBN (XTPB): 9781801108270

ISBN (E): 9781801108294

Head of Zeus Ltd

First Floor East

5–8 Hardwick Street

London

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For the fiercest women I’ve known – Marianne, Fevziye, Emmanuelle, Silje Birgitte and Anastasia

Contents

Also by Alex Dahl

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

1. Adrian

2. Liv, two days later

3. Adrian

4. Anastasia

5. Adrian

6. Selma

7. Adrian

8. Selma

9. Anastasia

10. Selma

11. Liv

Part Two

12. Adrian

13. Anastasia

14. Selma

15. Liv

16. Adrian

17. Anastasia

18. Selma

19. Adrian

20. Anastasia

21. Selma

22. Adrian

23. Anastasia

24. Adrian

25. Selma

26. Liv

27. Adrian

28. Anastasia

29. Selma

Part Three

30. Liv

31. Adrian

32. Anastasia

33. Selma

34. Liv

35. Adrian

36. Anastasia

37. Selma

38. Adrian

39. Liv

40. Anastasia

41. Selma

42. Anastasia

43. Anastasia, now

44. Selma

45. Adrian

46. Selma

Epilogue: Anastasia, five months later

Acknowledgements

About the Author

An Invitation from the Publisher

Part One

1

Adrian

Before the bell sounds and the children surge toward the brightly lit building, he hides among the trees at the edge of the schoolyard. He knows them well, these trees, and can easily tell one trunk from another by touch. He especially likes a trio of tall pine trees that marks the end of the school grounds; if he pushes his way through their low, dense branches that touch at the tips, there is a cozy, silent space in the middle. He waits quietly until the last child has disappeared through the sliding doors, then he slips out from his hiding place and runs quickly across the empty playground. He usually manages to take his seat in the classroom at the exact moment the teacher walks in and presses the door shut behind herself. He sits right at the front, by the window; they decided it was best that way. He likes it there; he can watch the black winter sky weaken into a misty gray, and the barely moving lights of the cars that crawl up toward the motorway.

Sometimes, the flight path is directed over the town, and he gets to see the planes just after takeoff from Torp, the roar of the engines momentarily drowning out the teacher’s monotonous voice. In his mind, he places himself inside the plane as he watches it rise upward, and instead of gazing out the classroom window, he is looking out of the plane’s plastic one, down at the school. He knows where each plane that takes off from Torp is going to: he memorized the schedule long ago, so quite often he’s already looking out the window by the time the plane appears, anticipating the 0820 KLM City Hopper to Amsterdam, or the 0905 Widerøe Fokker X to Bergen. From his window seat he can see the big, ugly school nestled in between the paint factories by the water, and the patch of trees at the edge of the playground. He can even see the boy among the trees, waiting for playtime to be over, revealed from the aerial vantage point.

The teacher knows that he needs these interludes, these moments of losing himself in thought and gazing out of the window, so she doesn’t say anything, just keeps talking and lets him be. The other kids sometimes make a mean comment or emulate the sound of a plane when they see him looking out the window. One boy, Steffen, frequently throws little rolled-up scraps of paper at the back of Adrian’s head, but Adrian makes a point out of never responding, never turning around. His mother says that bullies are actually just weak people who try to zap some of the strength out of those they sense are stronger and better than themselves, but Adrian doesn’t quite believe her – it sounds like something adults say to make kids feel better.

The teacher talks about different kinds of grain and how they are grown. She draws a rudimentary illustration of various grains on the whiteboard: wheat, barley, rye, corn. Adrian pays careful attention and copies the drawing into his notebook, but he doesn’t feel quite right today and his hand trembles as he moves the pencil across the page. It’s Wednesday, and he always finds the first day of the week back at school difficult after a peaceful weekend at home with Mama. Yesterday they baked cinnamon buns together, his favorites, and the delicious scent of them lingered in the house this morning when he’d sat at the kitchen table chewing his breakfast, dreading the moment it would be time to go off to school. He watched the crawl of the long hand on the clock on the wall; when it touched the 5 it was time to leave. Mama had already left and he’d have to set off on the twenty-minute walk to school in the dark and bitter cold. These things didn’t bother him much; it was more the fact that he’d end up at the school when it was finished.

‘Do you know how cross-germination works?’ asks Marie, the teacher. Adrian likes her; she’s kind to him and makes every effort to make him comfortable. Once, at the beginning of the year, she’d pulled him aside at the end of a particularly bad day, and said softly – You know, Adrian, it’s a good thing to be like you. He wants to put his hand up and speak, because he does indeed know how cross-germination works, but he knows that it would be impossible. The words wouldn’t come. His voice wouldn’t be able to carry them. He feels Marie looking at him, and he knows that she knows that he would be able to answer the question, that he is perhaps the only one in the class who could, but he’s careful to avoid her gaze. To Adrian it feels difficult and often impossible, to meet the eyes of other people. It’s as though the act of sharing a gaze is just too much; it leaves him with the sensation of a burn. Sometimes he can bear to look into Mama’s eyes, the eyes that are so like his own that he has the sensation of looking in the mirror, but even then, he has to work up to it, to consciously steel himself for the moment when they fully look at each other.

The bell sounds and he’s filled with an instant, visceral dread. It’s too soon. He’s barely gotten used to being inside the warm, lit-up building after the long walk in the dark and the silent moments between the trees, and now it’s time for the first break. The children lurch to their feet and rush from the room. Adrian stands up too, slowly, and shuffles toward the door; as much as he doesn’t want to go outside, risking being left alone with the boys in the class, he also can’t bear Marie’s pity if he stays behind at his desk. If he’s lucky, he might be able to slip out from the school’s less-used side entrance; it’s closer to the far end of the playground and the trees. He turns the corner, avoiding the glances of the other kids, keeping his eyes firmly on the linoleum floor, then on the rectangular window inset into the door at the far end of the corridor. It’s just gone nine thirty and there is a beautiful, deep-blue light outside, giving Adrian the sensation of looking into water from the windows of a submerged ship.

‘Hey there,’ says a voice, close to his ear. He freezes in his tracks, one hand on the door handle.

‘He can’t hear you,’ says another voice, this one ice cold and cruel: Steffen. ‘He’s deaf, remember?’ Adrian moves swiftly forward, using all his force to shove the door open so he can run outside into the freezing blue air, away from them, but he is jerked back hard, by a hand grabbing the hair at the back of his head. It hurts terribly and Adrian crumples to the ground, breathless. He makes himself stay completely still, focusing on stopping the tears that pool in his eyes.

‘He’s not deaf,’ says the first voice, belonging to a boy called Josef, Steffen’s henchman, a burly and dumb kid Adrian recognizes by his shoes. ‘He’s just a mute.’ The black, scuffed sneaker in front of Adrian’s face suddenly leaps into action and delivers a swift kick into his shoulder. He sits up and tries to get his bearings. If only he could get to the door…

‘Fucking weirdo,’ says Steffen, laughing. He grabs him by the hood of his parka and drags him back up to his feet. Adrian’s knees are trembling and he feels as though he’ll fall back down if Steffen releases his vice-like grip. ‘Can you imagine being that fucking weird?’ The two boys laugh. ‘Hit him,’ says Steffen, so Josef does, very hard, in the soft pit of his stomach.

‘If you tell him to stop, he’ll stop,’ says Steffen.

‘Yeah,’ says Josef. ‘Just say stop.’ Adrian pushes his tongue against his teeth, mouth clamped shut. All he has to do is find the word, that one word, stop. But he can’t. Josef hits him again, in the face, so hard he topples over and strikes his cheekbone on the window ledge as he falls. They both laugh.

‘Why don’t you just tell him to stop?’ says Steffen, pushing his wide, red face close to Adrian’s, his sour breath making Adrian’s stomach lurch. ‘Look at me. I said, look at me!’

‘Hey! Stop! Let him go!’ a voice hollers down the corridor. Steffen’s grip is instantly released. The two boys shoot out the door, leaving it swinging on its hinges, icy air being sucked into the building. Adrian collapses back on the floor but is picked back up again, very gently this time. ‘Oh no. Oh, sweetie,’ says Marie, touching a patch of broken skin on his cheek with her fingertip. ‘I’m so sorry.’

*

They can’t get hold of his mother, but after the school nurse has disinfected the cut on his cheek and pressed a plaster across it, he’s allowed to sit out the rest of the morning in a corner of the teacher’s room, doing exercises in a physics book. Steffen and Josef are sent home, not for the first time. At lunchtime, he tries to eat his lunch, but feels violently nauseous and needs to lie down in the nurse’s office. They still can’t get hold of his mother.

He must have fallen asleep for a moment because when he opens his eyes again, someone is sitting beside him on the sofa – it’s Marie.

‘I’m going to drive you home, okay?’ she says, softly, taking his hand in her own warm one.

In the car, Adrian looks out of the window. It’s just past two o’clock and already the light is reduced to a violet gloom. Marie doesn’t speak, but he can feel her occasionally glancing over at him. She knows where to drop him off, that the road doesn’t go all the way up to the house; it’s not the first time she’s driven him. She pulls over in the lay-by tucked in from the road beneath a rocky outcrop on top of which row upon row of new houses are being built. On his way to school, Adrian sometimes takes the longer route up the hill and past the building site, walking beyond the path, close to the drop, looking out at the harbor basin spreading out far below. More than once, he’s imagined losing his footing and tumbling down the cliffside, his broken body landing messily in the lay-by where Marie has just stopped the car. He can almost see himself out there, in front of the car on the asphalt, dead.

‘Bye, sweetie,’ says Marie. ‘Please tell your mom to call me, or stop in to see me, okay?’ Adrian nods and watches as she pulls away and merges back into the traffic toward the town. He steps onto the steep path that leads from the main road and toward their house nestled high above the western end of the town, on top of the next cliff over from the one where the houses are being built. His mother has told him that the construction company wants to buy their house too, and demolish it to build modern apartments, but that she’ll never sell it. The thing she loves about it, which Adrian loves too, is that it sits entirely on its own, shielded from view by a thick line of trees on one side, and by the massive rocky cliff on the other, below which lies a narrow strip of sand, completely unreachable by car. Once it was a summer cabin and the people who owned it used to moor a little boat down on the beach, accessing the house by a narrow, perilous path. Then the new road was built, bringing the house considerably closer to the town, but to access it, you still have to walk the final stretch, up and down, past the beach, through the last steep thicket.

At home, Adrian closes the door behind him, then he begins to cry, unleashing everything he has held inside. His howls tear through the little house, sounding like wind trapped in the chimney. He paces through the house aimlessly, trying to dissolve the feelings he can’t put into words, throwing things to the floor as he goes. Clothes from hangers, a framed photograph of himself as a much younger child, newspapers left on the table, books from the bookshelves; all indiscriminately flung to the ground. The glass frame shatters and it’s as though its sound brings Adrian back into himself, making him stop in his tracks. He stops crying and stares at the mess he’s made. Slowly, he makes his way back through the rooms, picking up everything he has thrown around, placing everything carefully back in its designated place. He sweeps up the glass shards of the picture frame and places the photograph itself between the pages of an encyclopedia in the bookshelf, hoping Mama won’t immediately notice its absence.

He feels exhausted, and walks over to the bench beneath the window in the kitchen. He sits there for a long while, looking out over the town, and has the strange sensation that though the world is out there, he’s not really a part of it. He can see cars lining up to drive onto the ferry to Sweden, specks of people walking home from work, another plane taking off in the distance, turning east and quickly disappearing into the low gauzy clouds – it’s the 1510 Ryanair flight to London Stansted. The people out there all seem to be going places, meeting family and friends, doing things. Adrian never goes anywhere; he’s never even been on a plane. He doesn’t have family except for Mama. The kids at school are so different to him, even the ones that aren’t mean. It’s like he’s a different species, a strange little bird who should be among other strange little birds in the sky, or sitting in a tree, except he’s never met anyone like himself.

The sun has gone down beyond the hills across the inner harbor, leaving the sky a wistful indigo. Adrian waits and waits, feeling empty inside, unable to motivate himself to get up off the bench and do something, anything, like he normally would. Just after four, when it is completely dark and Adrian struggles to tell the lights from the houses scattered on the hills surrounding Sandefjord from the pinprick stars appearing in the sky, Mama’s key slots into the lock. He waits for her to drop her bag on the ground in the hallway, kick off her shoes, and to make her way into the open-plan kitchen and living area, letting her discover him. At the sight of his bruised face and sad expression, Mama’s expression darkens and she rushes over to him and cups his face in her hands.

‘Who did this to you?’ she whispers. He won’t look at her, but she angles his face so that in the end, he has no choice. ‘Tell me, baby. Please.’ He shakes his head.

‘Let’s have a burgers-and-Boeings kind of afternoon,’ says Mama, knowing it’s the only thing that could make him feel better.

*

They walk slowly together down the ice-encrusted path, then along the wooden walkway that leads from the beach, up the rocky hill to the main road. They don’t have to wait long for the bus, which pulls into the lay-by where Marie dropped Adrian off hours before, but still they’re shivering from the few minutes spent standing still. They sit side by side in silence until they reach the airport.

Outside, it’s minus thirteen degrees Celsius and they walk quickly toward the terminal building, holding hands. There’s a McDonald’s in the arrivals area, with a seating area overlooking the runway. Mama orders the food at the self-serve station, then brings it over to where Adrian is sitting staring out at the flashing red light from the air traffic control tower. He gets to work on his cheeseburger and fries, his eyes not leaving the skies for a moment.

‘Look,’ he says, the word clear and strong. ‘The Amsterdam plane’s early.’ Mama follows his pointed finger to a pinprick light pulsating above the frosty forested hills to the north. They watch as it moves closer, going from a barely discernible speck of light to a nimble white-and-blue Fokker 70 that perfectly touches down on the runway.

There is a lull in the traffic, but Adrian doesn’t tire from staring out the window, waiting. Mama sits quietly, lost in thought. A Boeing 737 from Wizz Air lines up on the runway, its white fuselage twinkling in the glare from the lights at the far end of the runway. Adrian sits rapt, enthralled, entirely still, his fingers hovering above the rest of his fries, careful not to make a sound as the plane revs its engines, sending hot air crumbling from the turbines. It surges toward where they’re sitting in the warm terminal building, strangely slowly, as if it is too heavy to take flight, but as soon as the nose lifts, the plane is in its element and it goes from clunky and earth-bound to something other, a thing of the heavens, a beautiful, roaring bird of prey.

Mama stands and motions for Adrian to follow. She strokes his hair, then places his fleece hat back on his head before they step outside. They don’t speak all the way back to the house, not even on the walk from the lay-by; they just walk quickly beside each other in the icy darkness of the January evening, gloved hands intertwined. Later, when Adrian is in bed, Mama sits by his side.

‘We might go away sometime soon,’ she whispers in their secret language, gently stroking the curve of his brow. Adrian looks at her, and their eyes briefly meet before he feels he has to look away. He realizes she looks different suddenly, but struggles to identify the expression on her face: fear or sadness, or perhaps both?

‘Where?’ he says, his voice unfamiliar and loud in his little room. Mama smiles and kisses the top of his head, her lips lingering on his skin.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘But I know that I love you more than anything and will always keep you safe.’

2

Liv, two days later

Like every day, I arrive before eight, when the sky is still pitch black and studded with pinprick white stars. It’s fifteen below zero outside and my breath emerges in visible bursts as I move around my little office getting set up for the day. I turn the heating on and make coffee, staring out the window at the rolling, snow-covered fields shimmering in the waning moonlight as the water in the kettle rises to a boil. I keep my jacket on while I wait for the heating to kick in, sipping my delicious, hot coffee, my laptop still closed in front of me as I look for the first signs of daybreak outside. For a long while, I sit at my desk, just waiting, allowing whichever thoughts drop into my head, until a deep blush appears on the horizon above the furthermost fields, where the farm borders thick forests. Indigo and red streaks of light reach across the sky and the moon recedes, dropping below the line of trees in the distance. A huge, burning sun bearing the otherworldly pink Arctic light appears, casting the snowy fields in shades of rose and gold.

I should get going, I have a lot to do, but I’m mesmerized and moved by the beauty of the sunrise that is unseen by those still sleeping snug in their beds or sitting at desks with less panoramic views than mine. From here in this ancient barn converted into garages and storage units and a single office – mine – all I can see are fields and trees and a small section of a big lake, now frozen solid. The only sign of human activity I ever see from here is an occasional ice-skater venturing out onto the lake, a black speck of a being moving in slow, wide circles, like a fly. I also see airplanes dropping slowly from the sky down toward the runway at Torp Airport, very close by but entirely concealed by the forest. Because I can’t see any signs of the airport itself, it looks like a scene from a disaster movie – a passenger plane crashing into remote woodland. When I first came here, I’d almost brace myself for the sound of impact, for flames and thick black smoke rising into the air every time a new plane appeared and then disappeared into the clutch of trees. I was on edge back then, always jumping at any unfamiliar sight or sound, constantly on high alert and running on adrenaline. In many ways I still am, but I’ve relaxed into this tiny space where I spend most of my days.

I love this view and have been surprised by how healing I find it, to be in such close proximity to nature. I often imagine that I’m somewhere else; this place bears similarity to many other places. I play a little game with myself, in which I’m not Liv Carlsen on a farm on the outskirts of a little Norwegian town, but a woman in Switzerland, perhaps, or Canada, or the southwest of France. This woman is younger than I am, and for her all the doors are still open, every opportunity and imagined future are still available to her. Unlike me, she can get up from her desk and walk outside into the shockingly cold air, carrying the scent of untouched woods and deep, black lakes, and just set about changing the constructs of her life.

When the last trace of the night is gone from the sky, I open my laptop and enter the long series of passwords and disablers on the systems. I wait as my various inboxes scan for new emails and retrieve the two phones from where I’ve taped them under the first drawer in the desk. I make another coffee and force myself to wait until it is finished before glancing at the screens. Nothing. Usually, nothing is good, but at the moment, I’m waiting for something and for every day that passes without contact, I get increasingly anxious.

I scan the markets from Nikkei to London Stock Exchange to Nasdaq, all looking good. At noon I eat two boiled eggs and two slices of ham I brought with me from home, then I put my jacket on and head for the door. I don’t often leave my space in the barn during the day; I make every effort to minimize the chance of bumping into Kai, the farmer I rent the space from. He seems like a nice enough guy, but the less contact we have, the better. I push the wide old wooden door open and it creaks loudly, but when I step out into the farmyard, there is no sign of anybody. The animals are shut inside because of the ongoing extreme cold spell and Kai and his wife are probably running errands; both their cars are gone.

I loop around the back of the barn and walk briskly alongside the field, heading toward the woods. I didn’t bring gloves and even though I’m clenching and unclenching my hands in the pockets of my down jacket, they quickly grow numb with cold. I turn around and look back at the red barn with its little grid windows, sills painted white. I imagine myself as I usually am, sitting at my desk, staring out at this woman half walking, half running toward the woods. A loud rumble stirs the air and I follow its direction upward, to a blue-and-yellow jet on final approach, flaps fully extended, wings visibly trembling on the wind, dragging a gray shadow fast across the fields. If Adrian knew that I came here every day, to this place with unrivaled views of his beloved planes, he’d beg me to take him here. I turn back toward the barn and try to picture my son looking back at me from the office window beneath the eaves, but find it difficult to build the image; for his own safety he’ll never come here and he’ll never know about this place or what I do here.

My face stings with cold and I pick up my pace into a light run; I want a few moments in the woods before I head back to the office. In spite of everything, in these moments, running as fast as I can bear on the hard, ice-crusted snow, taking shallow breaths of pure, icy air, I feel young again. I reach the forest and slip into its hushed, cathedral silence. This place reminds me of home and though I try to banish those thoughts, I can’t and I allow the tears that spring to my eyes to run warmly down my face and drop off my chin. As a child I used to spend a lot of my time in the woods, it was my safe space. It still is. I focus on deep breaths and the sense of calm I only ever feel down here, among the tall, snow-laden pines. Adrian is the same; he feels the trees the way I do, and sometimes, in the summers, we pull mattresses out into the clearing by the house and sleep surrounded by trees. I run my fingertips down a gnarled tree trunk, picking at a frozen trail of sap. I pocket a couple of pinecones for the office and, clutching them in my hands, I slip out of the forest and begin the dash back across the fields.

The farmer’s car is back in the farmyard, and I slip quickly into the red barn across from the farmhouse. Upstairs, I flick the switch on the kettle and rub my arms hard to regain warmth. I feel much calmer than I did. I’m about to pour myself a cup of peppermint tea when I happen to glance at one of the phones, which, unusually, I left out on the desk. There’s a new message from an unstored number, but I recognize it instantly.

Poppy down, it reads.

I sit down heavily in the chair, a surge of adrenaline rushing through me. I immediately stand back up again, scanning the tiny, sparsely furnished office as if for a clue for what to do next. Poppy down.

‘No,’ I whisper out loud. Please, no. Not now.

Lilia thrives in warm weather, I write back, then I switch off the phone.

I open the drawer and find a needle kept there for this purpose, and insert it into the side panel of the phone, an older Samsung Galaxy. The panel slips open and I retrieve the SIM card. I cut it into pieces, as tiny as I can manage, before carefully scooping up the debris and depositing it into a clear plastic bag, the kind used for cosmetics at airport security. I open the laptop and reenter the long series of passwords on the various systems. I set up the emergency transfers to the remote servers like I’ve practiced before, and watch the rainbow wheel spinning as the systems get underway. Everything needs to be off this laptop, now.

I sit down on the floor as the computer works; I need to focus on not panicking. It’s okay, I tell myself. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. But it does. I know it does. And either way, I can’t take any chances. I think of my son, my sweet, vulnerable little Adrian, who in this exact moment will be walking home from school in that slow, thoughtful way of his. It’s a long walk home for him, but he never complains, not even now in the depths of winter. He likes to stop and consider his surroundings as he walks and in the evening he’ll tell me about what he’s discovered: a tree ripped from the ground by the recent storms,