Hulda nodded.
‘Erla hated the isolation, the winters, the darkness – that was obvious when you met her. She always used to come into the library to stock up on books before winter really set in, and Gerdur, the librarian, remarked to me more than once that it felt like serving someone facing a prison sentence. You’d have thought she was on her way to do a stint in solitary confinement.’ The inspector paused to reflect. ‘I suppose Erla wanted to spare her daughter that kind of existence, but in reality she was trying to save her life, though neither she nor anyone else could have known that then, if you see what I mean?’
Again, Hulda nodded, though of course she didn’t know what Jens was referring to.
‘Was it Einar?’ she blurted out, though she hadn’t meant to say anything.
‘What? Einar?’
‘Was she trying to keep her daughter away from Einar?’
‘You mean…? Good grief, no! Einar wasn’t like that. Absolutely not.’
Hulda lowered her eyes, her thoughts on Jón and Dimma. Perhaps, deep down, she had been hoping that the story of Erla, Einar and Anna was somehow similar. That she wasn’t the only one to have been in this situation.
‘Well, then disaster struck,’ Jens said, lowering his voice, as if reluctant to tell the story. ‘It was winter, of course.’ He sighed. ‘The winters are very long out here, as you can imagine. Not only long, but we get a lot of snow. It happened in December, shortly before Christmas, as a matter of fact. The weather was about as bad as it can get. It had been snowing relentlessly.’
Hulda found it easy to picture the conditions. It would have been enough to take a quick peek outside the front door and imagine a bit more snow on the landscape.
‘Anna was staying with her parents at the time. She’d come over to see them before the weather deteriorated and got stuck here. Anyway, she was going down to the cellar on some errand when she slipped on the ice, fell and hit her head on the edge of one of the concrete steps. Her parents didn’t see the accident, but Erla found her, not long after she’d fallen, apparently. The girl was unconscious but still alive, though she’d lost a lot of blood. Of course, they immediately rang for an ambulance…’
He broke off and Hulda felt it best not to prompt him.
‘I remember…’ he said, his gaze unfocused, ‘I remember so well how Erla described it. They didn’t dare move her, so they crouched out there in the snow beside the girl and basically watched her die. It took a long time. They tried to stop the bleeding – they were given instructions over the phone – and managed to some extent, but it wasn’t enough. Erla said she just sat there for ages, powerless to do anything. The thing was, you see, that –’
Hulda, guessing the rest, finished for him: ‘The ambulance couldn’t get through because the road was blocked.’
‘Exactly. It did get here eventually, but it had to wait for the snow plough first. They even called out a helicopter, but the decision was taken too late. Anna was dead by the time the ambulance finally got here. The tragic part was that it would have been a simple matter to save her life if they could have got her to a doctor sooner.’
‘So it was the isolation that killed her,’ Hulda murmured.
‘Yes. I’m told that’s how Erla always saw it. Like I said, she’d become pretty disenchanted with life out here anyway, even before it happened, so you can just imagine how she felt about it after Anna’s death. But instead of moving away, she stayed. She stuck by Einar. She changed, though, and became a bit peculiar.’
‘In what way?’
‘It was like she refused to accept what had happened. Of course, we don’t know what she was like at home because Einar never spoke about it. He never was much of a talker, anyway. For him, actions spoke louder than words. And he’d never have gossiped about his wife. But she was a frequent visitor to the village and, more often than not, she’d talk about Anna as if she was still alive. I’ve heard stories from various people, in the library, the shop, and so on. Sometimes she’d even talk about how she was expecting Anna to come over later and was doing the shopping ready for her visit, that kind of thing. I don’t suppose many people had the heart to correct her, so I get the impression she convinced herself Anna wasn’t dead. She invented an alternative world in her head and lived in that, alongside the real one.’ After a moment he added: ‘And who can blame her?’
Hulda had tried to listen to the story with professional detachment but, every time he mentioned Anna, she found herself picturing Dimma. And now all she could think of was the frightening possibility that she, Hulda, might unravel in the same way as Erla; that she might retreat into some corner of her mind to escape – if only briefly – the unbearable pain that had been pursuing her like a shadow ever since that terrible moment on Christmas Day.
X
Her memories of Dimma’s funeral were partly shrouded in fog, partly too starkly vivid, as if reflecting her simultaneous desire to remember and to forget. It was one of the hardest days of her life, and the weather, as if in sympathy, had been bitterly cold. There had been intermittent snow flurries and a fierce, blustery wind, as one might expect on the penultimate day of the year. Hulda had met the vicar two days earlier to go over the main points of her daughter’s life with him but the meeting had ended prematurely when she’d broken down, too
