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Checking the cellar calmed her. She sat down on the stairs even though the bad air made her feel sick. It was laden with memories. On the worn concrete in front of her was where her mother had lain in a crumpled position, her arms outstretched as if she had thrown herself from the top step in order to fly but had never gained air under her wings and had crashed to the floor.

Laura made herself stay put and she felt as if she was paying a vague debt, unsure of to whom, and that with each payment she was lifting a portion of the suffering from her shoulders.

She wished she could get up, leave the cellar, and emerge as a new person, clean and brave in the way the world demanded.

“I want to be normal,” she muttered. Many times she had cursed her life as the daughter of a man who saw the ordinary as a weakness, a sickly defect.

Now she was paying back but she knew deep inside she would never be debt-free.

A memory from Italy surfaced in her mind. It was early spring, the cherry trees in the mountains above Verona had just blossomed. Ulrik and she winding along the hairpin roads. He was driving jerkily, unused to the rental car, sweaty and stressed because they might have taken a wrong turn.

Laura didn’t care. She admired the view and the trees, with shiny trunks as if they had been polished with rags, and the intense flowering that was flooding the valleys and hillsides, and Laura thought it looked as if God had laid out all his bedclothes for airing.

In a little village that only consisted of six or so stone houses, above Negrar, Ulrik stopped to ask for directions. Laura also got out, a little dizzy from the hairpin curves and walked into an orchard, sitting down on a low wall whose stones could hardly be seen because of wild cascades of yellow-flowering runners. Bees were buzzing in the trees. In the background she heard Ulrik’s voice. She got up and started to walk down the hillside between rows of trees. The buzz became louder and created a sound weave of low, contended activity.

Laura turned and looked back. The houses of the village could no longer be seen. A valley that cut down between the steep hillsides reminded her of a fruit, whereas the occasional house resembled dark seeds in the green-white flesh. She paused and experienced a couple of seconds of absolute silence before a dog started to bark somewhere in the valley. Angry, aggressive. She turned around but caught sight of movement between the trees. It was a woman and a man. No longer young, perhaps in their forties, they sat leaning against a tree, talking eagerly. The man laughed and the woman joined in, bopping him lovingly on the head. He grasped her arms, sort of winding himself around her and they rolled onto the ground, tightly entwined.

Laura looked away and started to walk back to the village but then stopped and looked back at the couple. They did not seem to have noticed her presence. The woman’s pale shoulder stood out. The man kissed her neck. Her hands moved under his shirt, pulled it out of his pants, and exposed his back.

Laura curled up. She was perhaps twenty meters away from the couple. Their excitement, accompanied by the bees’ zealous industry, was carried through the air by a warm, sweet breeze. Laughter, a few words, but above all the passion in the lovers’ movements. Enchanted by the timeless scene she watched them take each other’s clothes off, how the man with a few quick moves arranged their clothes into a kind of bed for their lovemaking.

When he entered her she cried out. Laura ran off, tripping between the same trees where she had experienced such peace and tranquility only a few minutes ago.

Ulrik was standing by the car looking displeased. He complained about the farmers and the fact that she had disappeared. Now they would definitely arrive late to the Allegrini family.

Laura stared into space, panting after the quick run, indifferent to her father’s reproaches and exhausted by what she had seen. She felt as if she was bursting