Minus Me Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ingelin Røssland is an award-winning Norwegian author and journalist. Her books have won numerous awards and been translated into several languages. Her fourth book, Handgranateple, was listed in the 2008 IBBY Honours List. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

  A Rock the Boat Book

  First published in North America, Great Britain & Australia by Rock the Boat, an imprint of Oneworld Publications, 2015

  This ebook edition published in 2015

  Originally published in Norwegian as Minus meg by CAPPELEN DAMM in 2011

  Copyright © CAPPELEN DAMM AS 2011

  Translation © Deborah Dawkin, 2015

  The moral right of Ingelin Røssland to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78074-694-4

  ISBN 978-1-78074-695-1 (ebook)

  This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Oneworld Publications

  10 Bloomsbury Street

  London WC1B 3SR

  England

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 1

  The tram rattles along through the snowy streets. The window vibrates icily against Linda’s forehead, stopping her from falling asleep. She tries pulling her woolly hat down between her face and the window, but it doesn’t help. She sits up straight and looks out over the tram. It’s almost empty. A teenage girl sits with her knees jammed up against the seat in front of her, purple tights showing through a rip in her jeans. She’s using her scarf as a cushion to lean her head against the window. Linda doesn’t have a scarf. But she’s wearing a thick pair of orange mittens that her grandmother knitted for her. Extra big, so she’d have growing-room. Linda stretches her fingers. The middle one almost reaches the end now. She takes the mittens off, and is about to put them against the window, like the girl with the scarf, when a figure catches her eye. A boy, slightly older than Linda, is leaning against a lamp post. The whole of him, but especially his face, is softly but clearly lit. And he’s gazing straight at her. It’s as if he wants something. As if he’s saying come here.

  Just at that moment Linda feels a clamping sensation around her heart. She gasps for air, and just as the pain forces her to double up and close her eyes, she catches a last glimpse of the boy, running out into the road and towards the tram. There’s a thud and the tram jolts on its way, and as it does the pain in her chest melts away as abruptly as it came. Her mittens tumble to the floor. One into a brownish pool of melted snow and grit. She’s too weak to bend down for them. A scream rises inside her, but comes out like a silent breath. Her heart swells, then contracts, setting her blood in motion pounding round her ears.

  What on earth happened? Linda looks around to see if anybody else has seen anything, but they obviously haven’t. The girl nearer the front of the tram is still sitting as she was, knees tucked up, cheek resting against her scarf. The other passengers too are still rocking drowsily to the rhythm of the tram. Linda presses her face up to the window.

  Where’s the boy? What happened to the boy? Did he run into the side of the tram?

  She gets up, grabs her sports bag and rushes to the back window to look. But there’s nobody there, just the snow whirling up from the tramlines and the lights of a taxi following close behind. The taxi flashes to overtake, as the tram pulls up at a stop. Linda has to hold tight to prevent herself falling over. The doors open, sucking cold air into the tram. She feels a chill at the back of her neck. Turns. And there he is, standing right behind her. The boy. Eyes as blue as a husky’s, frost on his long eyelashes melting and turning into pearls. The ceiling lights make tiny rainbows in the droplets. She catches herself staring at him, looks down and bites her bottom lip.

  ‘Are these yours?’ asks the boy, holding out her orange mittens.

  ‘How . . . ?’

  ‘You’ll still need them.’

  She takes them. Shakes the one that fell into the muddy water.

  She wants to thank him, but the words won’t come out of her mouth. He answers her anyway:

  ‘No problem,’ he says.

  He turns away from her to look out of the window and then presses the bell. Ducking to see under his arm, Linda realizes she’s almost home.

  ‘This is your stop,’ he says, stepping aside for her.

  ‘But how did you . . . ?’

  ‘Shhhh . . .’ he says, smiling with a finger to his lips. Again she feels the gust of cold wind from outside. She jumps out onto the pavement. She looks back to see if the boy is following her. But as the tram moves off, he’s still standing there behind the closed doors.

  Why had he spoken to her as though he knew her? As though he’d only got on the tram for her sake? Linda racks her brain, but can’t recall ever having seen him before. Surely she would have remembered him; those intense eyes, the way he looked at her. Linda lifts her hand to wave to him. He shakes his head slowly but looks into her eyes, until the distance between them breaks their contact.

  Linda breathes out. The white cloud that fills the air proves how cold it is. It’s been minus twenty in the mornings recently. She breathes in. The frosty air feels like a metal rasp in her lungs. Her heart tightens again, before setting into action once more, pumping warm blood round her body. Linda rolls the collar of her knitted pullover up over her mouth. It helps against the cold, but not the aching sensation she’s had in her joints recently. She’d been relieved that Maria had arranged to meet her mum in town today, and couldn’t walk home with her. Then Linda could sneak on the tram. Maria never has the guts to get on without paying. She’s frightened that God can see her. Linda doesn’t think God bothers himself over such details.

  Chapter 2

  The rambling old house where Linda lives is on the outskirts of Trondheim but it’s only a few hundred met
res from the tram stop. Linda walks between the school and St Elizabeth’s Hospital before she turns into her street. She’s surprised to see that the ground-floor light is on. The flat, where her grandmother used to live, has stood empty since she died last year. As Linda approaches she sees two figures moving around inside. Mum and Dad.

  Her parents stop in the doorway, looking into the front room, which Granny used to call the library. Linda’s father is standing behind her mother. He puts his arms around her waist and rests his chin on her shoulder, and then her mother leans her head back, lifts one arm and places her hand on his neck. She sees her father stroke her mother’s stomach, and then slip his hand under her jumper. Linda takes a look around; imagine if a stranger or someone came along and saw. Her cheeks burn.

  She takes off one of her mittens to fish her keys out of her pocket, and walks to the front door. She puts her key in the lock and gives it a tug; it’s always extra stiff in the winter. Linda slips inside quickly and kicks the door to, giving it an extra shove with her shoulder to make sure it locks properly. Her mittens tumble to the floor in the hallway, and as she bends down to pick them up she can feel her heart distinctly. She remembers the boy, his gaze when he picked up her mittens, ice-cold, yet so intense and alive.

  Was she feeling her heartbeat so clearly because she would soon be a teenager? Were boys beginning to give her weird feelings? They’d only ever irritated her before now. Axel, at least, only ever irritated her. He’d certainly never made her heart like this. But, then again, perhaps things would be different this summer. She’d be thirteen next time they saw each other. They’d both be teenagers. Perhaps Axel is online. It’s a while since she heard from him. She almost misses his constant pestering. But why is she suddenly thinking about Axel? Linda looks at her watch, it’s almost half past seven. She takes the stairs to the first floor in five long strides. Then she puts her key in the lock, only to find that the door is open.

  The TV stands prattling to itself in one corner of the room, while the woodburner crackles in the other. Linda stretches out her fingers to get some warmth in them, then hurries to put her feet in the slippers that stand waiting for her by the woodburner. Looking down at her feet, she realizes her boots will never dry out there in the freezing cold hallway. Linda runs out into the hall, grabs them, and comes back in, shutting the door tight behind her. She goes over to woodburner and takes an old newspaper from the pile next to the log basket. She spreads it on the floor to stop the snow and dirt from her boots going onto the carpet. A headline catches her eye: girl drops dead after her first kiss. Wow, that’s so romantic, in a kind of sad and dramatic way, thinks Linda. The article is about a couple of kids in America. Further down it says that after the kiss, the girl sat down on the sofa in his flat, and that was where she died. Not from the kiss, but from a rare heart condition. Well, it was almost perfect, thinks Linda, putting her boots on the paper. Imagine if the girl had died in the boy’s arms? That would have been far more romantic, if you were going to die at all.

  Linda gets up to throw some more wood into the burner. The log basket is almost empty, so she decides to be helpful and fill it up. But first she wants to check if Axel is online. She grabs the tatty carrier bag from behind the log basket, and goes into her room. She flips her laptop open. The screen immediately springs to life, and with just a glimpse at the right-hand side, she sees he isn’t there. She feels irritated at him again now. What can he be so busy with? Mia is online, however, and messages her. Linda bends forward to look at Mia’s new profile picture then slams down the lid. What is it with Mia? Does Mia really think she’d waste her time on a brainless Barbie girl? As if! They hadn’t been friends in the summer and she wasn’t about to change that now.

  Taking the shortcut through the apartment, she opens the door onto the backstairs.

  Linda slips some clogs on before opening the door out to the little wooden bridge that crosses over the backyard to the outhouse. She holds the rail, since both the bridge and her clogs are slippery. On the other side of the bridge she lifts the latch on the outhouse door. A black cat streaks out from the darkness and runs down the steps into the backyard. It turns to look up at her, hissing quietly, before pissing on the corner of the house, and then leaping over the fence to disappear into the neighbour’s backyard.

  ‘What a nice guy,’ mumbles Linda to herself, pressing the light switch just inside the door. She sniffs the air to see if the little beast has left its calling card in here too, but it hasn’t. Linda fills the carrier bag with logs and hurries back into the flat. She hears her parents coming upstairs, and waits for the front door to open before tipping the logs into the basket.

  ‘Ah, thank you, darling!’ says her mother. ‘That’s wonderful.’ Her voice is almost lost in the noise of the logs tumbling into the basket.

  Linda tucks the bag back behind the woodburner. ‘What were you doing in Granny’s flat? I hope you’re not thinking of having students down there too?’

  ‘Not at all. We’ve got very different plans,’ says her father grinning.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘Linda, have you been out with wet hair again?’

  Linda’s mother crosses the room and feels her hair. Linda pulls away.

  ‘I’ve been wearing my woollen hat.’

  ‘You must dry it properly before you go out in the snow, or you’ll be ill,’ says her mother in a worried voice, reaching out to touch her hair again. Linda dodges away.

  ‘There was a queue at the hairdryer. If I had my own – one of those mini ones that fit in your sports bag – it would have been dry.’

  ‘Are we off again? I want this and want that,’ says her father.

  ‘I didn’t say I wanted a hairdryer. I was simply stating a fact.’

  ‘Simply stating a fact, eh?’ says her father, laughing.

  ‘We’ll see. It’s your birthday soon. Thirteen!’ says her mother. ‘I remember when you were born. You lay in my arms, so pink and little. It was . . .’

  ‘. . . love at first sight,’ says her father, finishing her mother’s sentence and putting his arm around her.

  ‘Hmm . . . what is it with you two?’ Linda snaps.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks her mother.

  ‘You’re always hugging each other lately.’

  ‘Isn’t it good that we love each other?’ asks her father.

  ‘I suppose. Just don’t carry on like that when my friends are round. It’s weird. Okay?’

  Her father lets go of her mother, and stretches his arms out to Linda. She knows what’s next and lets out a squeal before he grabs her and swings her over his head.

  ‘Careful with your back, Erik.’

  ‘I’m as a strong as an ox and it takes nothing to throw this little thing up to the ceiling,’ he answers.

  Linda stretches and reaches out to touch the ceiling. As she does so, she sees a shadow out of the corner of her eye. There’s a figure in the window of St Elizabeth’s Hospital on the other side of the road. And like a flash, she knows it’s the boy from the tram. She can feel his gaze and that weird sensation in her body again. Her fingers don’t reach the ceiling, and instead she collapses onto her father’s shoulder. Before she knows it, she’s lying on the sofa by the woodburner.

  ‘What did I say about that game, Erik? Linda’s far too big for that now,’ grumbles her mother.

  ‘Are you alright, Linda?’ says her father, stroking her cheek. ‘You seem rather hot to me. You feel her, Ellen.’

  Linda feels the touch of her mother’s hand on her cheek, then her forehead, before hearing her worried voice saying Linda doesn’t seem well. Her father lifts her up to take her into the bedroom.

  ‘Do you want to lie in our bed?’ he asks, hesitating at the doorway to her parents’ room.

  Linda shakes her head.

  Her mother is a few steps ahead. She lifts the duvet to one side and tucks Linda in. Linda now has two pairs of worried eyes sta
ring down at her. Whenever she’s shown the least sign of getting ill, they’ve always wrapped her in cotton wool, taking time off work to make her warm milk and honey, or just to read aloud to her and stroke her hair. It’s lovely, but you can have too much of a good thing. If Linda had siblings her parents would have had to share all this attention out between them. It’s a bit much for one person to carry on their own. Linda sighs, and the lines on her parents’ faces grow even deeper.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m just a bit tired,’ says Linda, smiling and trying to be reassuring.

  Behind her parents, on the other side of the street, the shadow has moved to another window. Linda’s smile freezes. She feels sure the shadow is going to lift its hand and wave at her now, and she doesn’t want to see it, so she closes her eyes.

  ‘Can you switch the light off, please? I think I need to sleep a bit,’ says Linda, with eyes tight shut.

  ‘Let me help you off with your clothes, sweetie,’ says her mother. Linda lets her. Layer after layer. Mummy’s precious little doll.

  Chapter 3

  Linda is taking a shower. She woke up before everyone else, feeling completely better after yesterday’s events. She probably just needed a proper night’s sleep. Linda laughs at herself for this thought, it’s so boringly grown-up. Linda turns up the temperature of the water, and stands there enjoying the steam as it fills the shower cabinet. But she listens out carefully for her parents, in case they wake up; they get cross when she uses too much hot water. She closes her eyes and feels the gushing water drum against her skin, and the warmth creep down over her stomach. Scenes from the summer roll across her mind; she sees herself fighting with Axel in the lake, she sees him stopping suddenly, his face close to hers, his hand reaching up to her cheek to brush away a strand of hair. She brings her own hand up to her cheek.

  ‘Linda!’

  There’s a bang on the bathroom door and Linda turns off the water hurriedly.

  ‘Yes!’ she shouts.

  She opens the shower door, grabs her bathrobe from the hook and wraps herself in it before unbolting the bathroom door, almost stumbling on the slippery floor. Her mum rushes in, but instead of shouting at Linda, she apologizes and immediately crouches down in front of the lavatory.