Marcus Koll pulled out a chair, sat down and took his glasses out of his breast pocket. The boy sat down beside him, keen to help. The blonde, curly hair tickled Marcus’s face as his son leaned over the manual. A faint smell of soap and ginger biscuits made him smile, and he had to stop himself from hugging the boy, holding him close, feeling the glorious warmth of the son he had managed to have in spite of everything and everyone.
‘You’re the best thing in my life,’ he said slowly.
‘Yeah, yeah. What does this mean?
The December sun filled the room with a calm, white light. Outside it was cold and clear. The trees were completely covered with crystals of rime frost, as if they had been sprayed for Christmas. Through the white branches beyond the window he could see the Oslo fjord far below, grey-blue and still, with no sign of life. The crackling of the open fire blended with the snores of two English setters, curled up together in a big basket by the door. The smell of turkey was beginning to drift in from the kitchen, a tradition Rolf had insisted on when he eventually allowed himself to be persuaded to move in five years ago.
Marcus Koll Junior lived his life in a cliche, and he loved it.
When his father died nine years ago, just before Marcus Junior turned thirty-five, he had at first refused to accept his inheritance. Georg Koll had given his son nothing but a good name. That name was his grandfather’s, and it had enabled him to pretend that his father didn’t exist when he was a boy and couldn’t understand why Daddy couldn’t come and see him at the weekend now and again. When he was just twelve years old he began to realize that his mother didn’t even receive the maintenance to which she was entitled for him and his two younger siblings. When he turned fifteen he resolved never again to speak to the man responsible for his existence. His father had wasted his opportunity. That was the year Marcus received 100 kroner in a card on his birthday, sent through the post and with five words in handwriting he knew wasn’t his father’s. He became a grown man when he put the money in the envelope and sent the whole lot back.
Severing all contact was surprisingly easy. They saw each other so rarely that the two or three visits per year were easy to avoid. Emotionally, he had chosen a different father: Marcus Koll Senior. When he was able to grasp the fact that his real father simply didn’t want to be a father and would never change, he felt relieved. Liberated. Free to move on to something better.
And he didn’t want his inheritance. Which was considerable.
Georg Koll had made a lot of money in property in the sixties and seventies. The majority of his fortune had been moved to other, much safer arenas in plenty of time before the crash in the housing market during the last financial crisis of the twentieth century. When it came to looking after his money he more than made up for his great inadequacies as a father and provider. Unlike others, he had used the yuppie era to secure his investments rather than risking them for short-term gain.
When Georg Koll died he left behind a medium-sized cruise-ship company, six centrally located and extremely well-maintained properties, plus a skilfully compiled share portfolio which had provided the majority of his very respectable income for the past five years. Death had obviously surprised him. He was only fifty-eight years old, slim and apparently fit when he had a massive heart attack on his way home from the office one day in late August. Since he hadn’t remarried, and no will was found, his entire estate went to Marcus Koll, his sister Anine and his younger brother Mathias.
Marcus wanted no part of it.
When he was fifteen years old he had returned his father’s blood money, and when he was twenty he had received a reply. His father had heard that his son was a homosexual. Marcus had glanced through the letter and realized all too quickly what his father wanted. For one thing, he expressly dissociated himself from Marcus’s lifestyle, which was a not uncommon attitude in 1984. What was worse was that his father, who had never been well in with any God, went on to paint a picture of Marcus’s future along the lines of the blackest descriptions of Sodom and Gomorrah. He also reminded him of a new and dangerous plague from America, which affected only homosexual men. It led to an agonizing death, complete with boils, like the Black Death itself. Of course, Georg Koll didn’t believe this was a punishment from any higher power. No, this was Nature herself taking revenge. This fatal disease was a manifestation of natural selection; in a couple of generations people like him would have been eradicated. Unless he changed his ways. Life as a homosexual meant a life without a family, without security, without ties, obligations and the happiness that came with being a good member of society and someone who made a real contribution. Until his son realized this and could guarantee that he had seen the error of his ways, he was disinherited.
Since the obligatory bequest to his own children was a mere bagatelle in comparison to Georg Koll’s entire fortune, there was a reality behind this threat. It made no difference whatsoever to Marcus. He burned the letter and tried to forget the whole thing. And when the estate was divided up fifteen years later, in 1999, it turned out that his father, convinced of his own immortality, had omitted to make a will.
Marcus stuck stubbornly to his guns. He still wanted nothing to do with his father’s money.
He gave in only when his grandfather, who never mentioned Georg either, managed to convince Marcus that he was the only one of the three siblings capable of managing the family fortune in a professional way. His brother was a teacher, his sister an assistant in a bookshop. Marcus himself was an economist, and when both siblings insisted that the best thing would be to set up a new company with the combined assets of their father’s estate, with all three of them as joint owners and Marcus as director and administrator, he allowed himself to be persuaded.
‘Just look at it as a bloody good joke,’ Mathias had said with a grin. ‘The bastard did Mum and us out of money all his life, and now we can live very well on the proceeds he worked so hard to keep from us.’
It was ironic, Marcus had gradually come to accept. A splendid irony.
‘Dad,’ little Marcus said impatiently. ‘What does that say? What does it mean?’
His father smiled absently and dragged his gaze away from the ridge, the fjord and the white sky. He was feeling hungry.
‘Right,’ he said, fixing a tiny screw in place. ‘There, that’s the rotor finished. Then we do this… Do you want to do it?’
The boy nodded, and slotted in the four blades.
‘We did it, Dad! We did it! Can we go outside and fly it? Can we do it now?’
He picked up the remote control in one hand and the finished helicopter in the other, tentatively, as if he didn’t quite trust it not to fall apart.
‘It’s too cold. Much too cold. As I said yesterday, it could be weeks before we can take it outside.’
‘But Dad…’
‘You promised, Marcus. You promised not to go on about it. Why don’t you ring Rolf instead and ask if he’s coming home for our special lunch?’
The boy hesitated for a moment before putting everything down without a word. Suddenly he brightened up with a smile.
‘Granny and the others are here!’ he shouted, running out of the room.
The door slammed behind him. The sound rang in Marcus’s ears until once again only the faint snoring of the oblivious dogs and the crackling of the fire filled the enormous room. Marcus’s gaze rested on the fire, then swept around the room.
He really did live in a cliche.
The house in Asen.
It was large, but set back from the road so that only the top floor was visible to passers-by. When he bought the house he had decided to remove the ridiculous wooden panelling on the outside, along with the turf roof and the portico in front of the garage, which bore the legend
‘We’re an extended family with a twist,’ Rolf would laugh.
A little bit richer than most, Marcus thought, but he said nothing.
Rolf wasn’t thinking about the money. He was thinking about their family life, with little Marcus and a wide
