The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [60]
The girl’s lips were moving silently, as though she was practicing the name before she said it out loud.
“Sacred Heart,” she finally said.
T-shirt man stopped. He seized the girl’s upper arm in a no-nonsense grip, and jerked her along the sidewalk, not even glancing at Nina. A few paces further on, the sound of the first slap rang across the street. The ponytail leaped and fell as the girl’s head snapped back. He hit her three times, all of them hard, flat blows. Then he let go of her.
Nina snatched the boy onto her arm and stalked off in the direction of Istedgade. Anger pounded through her body in a hot red pulse, but there was nothing she could do now. Not while she had the boy with her. Hell, she probably couldn’t have done much even if she had been alone. The thought did not lessen her fury.
Just before she turned the corner, she looked down Helgolandsgade again. The man was already gone, possibly lost somewhere in the shadow of a doorway or a service entrance. The ponytail girl was heading back towards the black motor scooter. She was hunched forward as she walked, her long gangling arms wrapped around her upper body.
One of the other girls touched her shoulder briefly as she rejoined the group, and as Nina turned away, she could hear their high clear voices behind her, already laughing again in a flat, harsh, defiant way. They had another bet going, and the girl with the ponytail was laughing louder than any of them.
NINA CARRIED THE boy all the way back to the car. He was awake, but the small firm will that she had noticed when they were getting out of the car in Reventlowsgade had left him again. His legs dangled in a ragdoll fashion against her thighs and belly with every step she took. When she reached the car, he wouldn’t even stand on his own while she unlocked the car. She covered the dark, soursmelling stain on the backseat with the checkered blanket, and let the boy slide out of her grasp and onto the seat. Then she got into the back beside him and simply sat there, staring into the neon dark. She was exhausted. It was exactly 11:00, she noted. For some reason, it pleased her when she caught the hour on the hour; perhaps it was the flat precision of the double zeros.
Traffic up on Tietgensgade had become more scattered. In the old Vesterbro apartment buildings on the other side of the street, she could see into the still-lit kitchens. On the ground floor, a young man was making coffee in a bistro coffeepot, calling back his half of a conversation to someone behind him. He put the coffeepot on a tray with a collection of cups and turned away from the window with a smile on his face. Nina couldn’t help wondering if the lives of other people were really as simple as they looked. As simple, and as happy.
Probably not, she thought drily. It was a distortion of a kind she was an expert at providing for herself, or so her therapist had informed her. She was always busy telling herself that she was the only one who didn’t fit in, while everyone else was one big happy community. And she was also an expert at making herself believe that she was the only one who could save the world and put things right, while others were too busy buying flat-screen televisions and redecorating their kitchens and making bistro coffee and being happy. It was this distorted view that had sent her on several panicked flights from Morten and Ida, back before Anton was born, and for some years now, she had actually believed Olav when he told her that she was mistaken, and that such distortions were bad for her and the people around her.
Now, with the boy next to her, it didn’t seem so easy and clear-cut.
Nina leaned her head back against the upholstery and felt her own tiredness beating against the inside of her eyelids.
She wished she could call Morten. Not to talk to him, because that would do no good. But just so that she could hear his voice, and the television news in the background, and remind herself that there was