Death In Oslo

‘Yes, I do. It said that they knew. That the Trojans knew. About the child.’

Johanne polished her glasses with a serviette. There was obviously some grease on them, because when she put her them on again, she saw the world through a veiled filter.

‘Helen,’ she tried again, ‘I appreciate that you can’t tell us what all this Trojan stuff is about. I also respect the fact that you want to keep your secret about the child to yourself, the secret that you thought they knew about and that made you… well, panic. But could it… might there…’

She hesitated and pulled a face.

‘You’re getting yourself in a tangle now,’ Hanne said.

‘Yes.’

Johanne looked at the President. ‘Could it be that you automatically thought about your secret?’ She was talking quickly now so that she wouldn’t lose her thread. ‘You thought about that one because it’s the worst. The most shameful.’

‘I’m really not following you here,’ Helen Bentley said.

Johanne got up and went over to the sink. She put a drop of washing-up liquid on her glasses and let the hot water run while she rubbed the lenses with her thumb.

‘I have a daughter who’s nearly eleven,’ she said, drying her glasses meticulously. ‘She’s mentally handicapped, but we don’t know what it is. She’s my… she’s my Achilles heel. I feel that I never understand her well enough. That I’m not good enough for her, good enough with her. She makes me so incredibly vulnerable. She makes me so… deluded. If I overhear a conversation about poor parenting or neglect, I automatically think that they’re talking about me. If I see a TV programme about some miracle cure for autism in the US, I feel like I’m a bad mother because I haven’t looked for anything like that. The programme becomes an accusation against me personally, and I lie awake at night and feel terrible.’

Both Helen Bentley and Hanne were smiling now. Johanne sat down at the table again.

‘There you go,’ she said, returning their smiles. ‘You recognise yourselves in that. That’s what we’re like, all of us. To a greater or lesser extent. And basically, Helen, I think that you thought of your secret because it’s your Achilles heel. But that’s not what the letter was referring to. It was something else. Another secret, maybe. Or another child.’

‘Another child,’ the President repeated, nonplussed.

‘Yes. You insist that no one, absolutely no one, can know about… about this incident in the distant past. Not even your husband. So then it’s logical that…’

Johanne leant forward over the table.

‘Hanne, you were a detective for many years. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that when something is impossible… well… it is in fact impossible! And then you have to look for another explanation.’

‘The abortion!’ Helen Bentley exclaimed.

The angel that passed through the room took its time. Helen Bentley stared into space. Her mouth was open and her frown was deep. She didn’t seem to be in anyway frightened or ashamed, or, for that matter, embarrassed.

She was concentrating, hard.

‘You’ve had an abortion,’ Johanne said eventually, very slowly, after what felt like minutes of silence. ‘That’s never come out. Not that I’m aware of. And I keep my eyes and ears open, to be honest.’

There was a light chiming sound. Someone was ringing the front door bell.

‘What should we do?’ Johanne whispered.

Helen Bentley froze.

‘Wait,’ Hanne said. ‘Mary, you open the door. It’ll be fine.’

All three held their breath, partly due to the suspense and partly because they wanted to hear the conversation between Mary and whoever it was who had rung the bell. None of them could make out the words.

About half a minute later the door closed. A second later, Mary was in the kitchen, holding Ragnhild on her hip.

‘Who was it?’ Hanne asked.

‘One of the neighbours.’ Mary sniffed and picked up a glass of water from the worktop.

‘And what did one of the neighbours want?’

‘To tell us our storeroom was open. Bugger. Forgot to go back down last night. Lordy, couldn’t just drop the lady for something as mosaic as locking the storeroom, could I?’

‘And what did you say to the neighbour?’

‘Thanks for the information. And when he started going on about one of the doors down there having been busted, and did I know anything about it, I told him to mind his own business. That’s all.’

Then she put down her glass and disappeared.

‘What? What was all that about?’ Helen Bentley asked eagerly.

‘Nothing,’ Hanne said, waving her hand. ‘Just something about a cellar door being open. Forget it.’

‘There was another secret,’ Johanne pressed.

‘I’ve never thought of it as a secret,’ Helen Bentley said in a calm voice. The idea seemed to surprise her. ‘Just something that was no one else’s business. It was a long time ago. Summer 1971. When I was twenty-one, a student. It was long before I met Christopher. He knows about it, of course. So it’s not really a… secret. Not in the truest sense.’

‘But an abortion…’ Johanne ran her finger across the table and repeated: ‘An abortion! Wouldn’t that have been disastrous for your campaign if it got out? And couldn’t it still make life very uncomfortable for you? The abortion issue creates a great and virulent divide in the States, to put it mildly…’

‘I actually don’t think it does,’ Helen Bentley said firmly. ‘And in any case, I’ve always been prepared for it. Everyone knows that I’m pro-choice. It’s true that my position did almost cost me the election…’

‘That’s the understatement of the day,’ Johanne said. ‘Bush did what he could to knock you on that one.’

‘Yes, it’s true. But it all turned out well, mainly because I managed to win lots of votes from women who are… how should I put it, less fortunate. Surveys show that in fact I had support from an impressive number of women who weren’t even registered as voters before. And I made a point of the fact that I’m strongly against late abortions, which made it more palatable for even the anti-abortionists. But I was always quite clear that there was a possibility that my own abortion would become public knowledge. It was a risk I had to take. I’m not ashamed of it. I was far too young to have a child. I was in my second year at college. I didn’t love the father. The abortion was carried out legally; I was seven weeks pregnant and I went to New York. I was and am a supporter of a woman’s right to have an abortion within the first trimester, and can stand up for what I did.’

She took a deep breath, and Johanne noticed a tiny tremble in Helen Bentley’s voice as she continued.

‘But I paid a high price. It made me sterile. As you know, my daughter Billie is adopted. There’s no discrepancy here between words and reality, and at the end of the day, that’s what counts for us politicians.’

‘But I’m sure there are some people who would think it was dynamite,’ Johanne said.

‘Definitely,’ Helen Bentley agreed. ‘Plenty, I’m sure. As you said, abortion is something that splits the US in two, and it’s an incredibly sensitive issue that will never be resolved. If it did become known that I’d had an abortion, I would certainly have to work for my money. Like I said, I-’

‘Who knows about it?’

‘Who…’

She thought about it, furrowed her brow.

‘No one,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Well, Christopher, of course. I told him before we got married. And my best friend at the time, Karen, she knew. She was fantastic and a great support. She died a year later in a car accident. When I was in Vietnam and… I can’t imagine that Karen would have told anyone. She was…’

‘What about the hospital? There must be records somewhere.’

‘The hospital burnt down in 1972 or ’73. Pro-life activists went a bit far during a demonstration. It was before the technology revolution, so I assume…’

‘The records aren’t there,’ Johanne said. ‘Your friend’s no longer here.’

She ticked them off on her fingers and paused before daring to ask her next question. ‘What about the father? Did he know?’

‘Yes, of course. He…’

She broke off. There was an unfamiliar gentleness about her, a softness to her mouth, and her eyes narrowed,