The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [24]
“No,” said Morten without putting down the phone, “No ice cream. It’s Monday, and you know the rules.” In the background Nina could hear Anton’s voice rising, getting ready for the full campaign. Which might be her good luck.
“Okay,” said Morten. “But I didn’t think the two of you were that close anymore?”
He didn’t sound angry anymore, just a little tired.
“I’ve known her for fifteen years. With history like that, you don’t just turn your back on people.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “But perhaps you might have called me, instead of leaving that to the staff here.”
Damn. Nina shrunk a little. It had been her turn, had to have been, and somehow she would have felt better about it, more secure, if Morten had thrown a fit. Now there was just the unrythmic rattle of the receiver and the indistinct snatches of a new heated argument between Morten and Anton. Morten had already forgotten she was there.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, trying to press her ear more closely to the phone. “I just forgot.”
“Yes, I suppose you did,” he said, his voice cold and weary. “I thought things were better. I thought you were going to stop forgetting your own family. Any idea when you will be home?”
Nina swallowed. The boy had turned slightly, and one small hand opened and then closed around her arm. His eyes were still closed.
“Oh, I suppose I can leave here around eight,” she said, trying to sound carefree and unworried. “It won’t be very late, I promise.”
Again the static hiss of wind and a connection on the point of breaking up.
“I’ll see you when I see you,” said Morten, the last few words nearly lost in the roar of the wind and the sound of Anton’s eager pestering. “Or not. It’s up to you.”
Morten’s voice had gone dark and distant. Then there was just silence, real silence, as the connection was finally severed.
Nina exhaled soundlessly and let the phone slip back into her bag on the floor. Then she eased herself away from the boy and stood up. Her heart beat a hard, cantering rhythm, and she needed to move, as if the disquiet she felt could be dispelled by mere motion. She stooped to snatch up the phone once more and pressed a new number while pacing up and down, imposing her own restlessness on the whole room.
He was listed merely as “Peter” in her phone book, and actually that was almost as much as she knew about him, except that he lived somewhere in Vanløse. He was the only contact in the network whose number she had. Normally it was the other way around—they called her. The people the network looked after could not saunter into the office of their local GP, or take their children to the emergency room if they were ill. Could not, in fact, approach authority in any form. So when there was need, Nina was sent for, or Allan. Or so it had been. Might she perhaps ask Magnus to step in, if Allan was serious about quitting? Unfortunately, though, Magnus did not have access to a handily secluded private practice in Vedbæk.
“Hi, this is Peter,” announced a happy-sounding voice, and Nina nearly said “Hi” herself when the voice went on without pausing: “I am on holiday from the fifteenth of August to the twenty-ninth, so you’ll just have to do without me!”
Bloody hell. Nina rested her forehead against the wall, closing her eyes for a minute. She had never done this bit before. Not with an unaccompanied child. The network would sometimes find some basement room or empty summerhouse for a family to stay in, or help them across to Sweden—that wasn’t too complicated. Such people could, after all, look after themselves in most respects. But was there anyone out there who would take on an abandoned three-year-old? And if there was, how would she find them?
Nina opened her eyes, examining the boy in a slightly different way. He could come from anywhere, she thought. Anywhere in Northern or Eastern Europe. Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany. She drew a hand through her own short, dark hair, which felt sticky and damp in the humid air. She would be wiser once the boy woke up, she supposed;