Gradually, she noticed how dry and stale the air was in the windowless, enclosed space and wondered if this had been a terrible mistake. The spectre of claustrophobia began to raise its head. Erla had always had to train her mind not to dwell on the feeling of being trapped in winter when the farm was snowed in, but now the feeling of panic rose up to clutch at her throat. It was freezing down here too. She wouldn’t be able to survive long in this temperature, however much tinned food there was.
Her fingers were numb and cramped from hanging on to the door handle in an attempt to master her fear. As long as she knew where the door was, she reassured herself, she could get out again any time she wanted to. What terrified her almost more than anything else was the thought of getting confused and lost in the lightless cellar.
But these fears were foolish, she reminded herself, as long as Leó was still out there, hunting for her. He was the real threat. She must hold on to that thought. What would she do if he knocked on this door? If he tried to break in? She wondered how long she was prepared to wait down there. Until he left, she supposed. But where was he supposed to go? He was a prisoner of the snow too, no more able to leave than she was.
The more she thought about it, the more inevitable the outcome seemed: sooner or later she would have to face a reckoning with Leó.
But she was going to do everything in her power to avoid it.
XXVI
Erla was sitting in a huddle now, her back pressed against the door, arms hugging her knees in a futile attempt to keep warm as she stared unseeingly into the blackness. She was losing track of how long she had been down there. It was as if time itself had got lost in the dark.
She couldn’t hear the wind any more. Perhaps the storm was subsiding. All she knew was that she was safe for now. She was alone down here, Leó was nowhere near and he didn’t know where she was. Unless, of course, he saw her footprints leading from the back door to the cellar steps, but hopefully they would have been blurred over by the blowing snow.
When she had made the snap decision to take refuge in the cellar, she’d been thinking of the cans of food stored down there, but now she’d realized that she hadn’t even thought to bring a tin opener with her. So much for a long-term solution. Sooner or later she would have to go outside and confront not only Leó but her husband’s death; the knowledge that he was lying in a pool of his own blood in the attic.
The thought came to her like a vague echo of something disturbing, horrifying. But she felt bizarrely detached. It seemed so unreal. Her mind couldn’t comprehend it.
Had Leó killed Einar?
Had she really seen his body?
She remembered their first meeting so well. She had been nineteen, no more than a child, but her future had been decided then and there. He had been so handsome – he still was, to be fair, though in a different way. A charmingly innocent, mild-mannered country boy in the city. She had fallen head over heels for him that first night, at the dance at Reykjavík’s famous Hótel Borg. They had spent all evening dancing with each other, while he told her about life in the countryside, painting a beguiling picture of the moors and mountains, the birds and sheep, and in those days she’d still had a romantic streak, though that had disappeared long ago. Even at twenty he had talked seriously about the importance of keeping the remote farm going, about his sense of duty to the land. She had listened, entranced, and at once started imagining what it would be like to live out there.
It seemed strange to remember how enthusiastic she had been about the idea of moving to the countryside. She supposed it had been partly from a youthful desire to rebel, to do something that would shock her parents.
They had objected all right. It wasn’t that they had disapproved of Einar; that would have been unthinkable since he had been such a likeable young man. They’d been impressed by his good manners, and he had come across as well read too. Her parents had certainly appreciated that. But they had kept harping on at them both, repeatedly asking Einar if he wouldn’t like to see what it was like to live in the city for a change. Try something different. Erla had known from the first moment, though, that his mind was made up, and she herself had made no attempt to persuade him to change it. Ironic though it seemed now, she had actually been eager to move to the farm.
Since then she had developed a love–hate relationship with this place. However desperate she was to get away, she couldn’t leave Einar and Anna behind. They were all held together by such unbreakable bonds. And she could feel the tug of this lonely spot too; without wanting to, she had put down roots in the soil here. Some things couldn’t be changed. Perhaps the truth was that she would never get away. In fact, she had long ago become resigned to the fact, even as she suffered torments from the solitude.
This was their home; hers, Einar’s and Anna’s. The family belonged here. There was no getting past that fact.
She had closed her eyes. That way she could shut out the darkness and let the scenes play out vividly in her
