TE22 Potpourri

Lilja Sigurðardóttir

Cold as Hell

MONDAY 91

flown to Iceland the last time Ísafold had asked her for help. Why hadn’t she come here when her mother had asked her to go out and help her sister? Now, as the appeal from the police played out on the screen, her fatigue adn despair seemed so little in comparison to what could have happened to Ísafold. Her chagrin over Ísafold repeatedly returning to Björn now seemed uncharitable. If shehadbeentough, takenaflighttoIcelandanddonewhatshe could to support her sister, then Ísafold wouldn’t have blocked her on Facebook, wouldn’t have stopped calling, would have carried on sending her YouTube clips of puppies and kittens. She hadn’t realised until now that by not responding when Ísafold had been looking for help, she had been confirming the image that Björn had been creaing of her in Ísafold’s mind— that she wasn’t a good sister, that she had a fondness for her, that she couldn’t care less about her. Not responding then had nullified all the occasions when she had. It made no difference that she had flown in from another country many times to support Ísafold and help her out. It didn’t matter that she had comforted and assisted her since Ísafold had been a teenager, because deep down Ísafold had held on to her childhood resentment and feeling that Áróra was just a ‘lousy kid.’ All the little acorns that Björn had sown to poison Ísafold’s thoughts had fallen on fertile ground.

It was around seven in the morning when Grímur stopped the car in the lay-by not far from the fissure in the lava. The low sun, which had been in his eyes, forcing him to drive at a snail’s pace to keep the car on the narrowdirt road, had now vanished behind a heavy mist, rendering the green moss cloaking the lava almost colourless. He could barely understand how he made it through the night’s adventures. Hewas still numbwith terror, but also proud of himself, that he had been able to hold it together well enough to chat about this and that with the police officers and the nurse who had come to take the blood sample, managing to come across as more or less normal. At least, he had been normal enough for them to release himonce they’d parked his car in the long-term car park at the airport, handing him the key with a few wise words about not driving after even a single drink. The policeman who had driven his car to the airport appeared not to have paid enough attention to teh suitcase to notice that it bulged oddly. The terror that had screeched inside him ever since he had set off in themiddle of the night and the loud howls of desperation that had taken over when the police had pulled him over had now both fallen silent, replaced by a deep, dark sadness that chimed with his soul. The sadness spoke to him with his own voice. He got out of the car and looked around. There was open ground all around him and no traffic as far as the eye could see. The lava field looked to be perfectly flat, but it deceived 69

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