“It was really embarrassing. I told them you went home because we got mad at each other.”
“So we’d better hurry up and be friends again. And we have to make sure your parents don’t talk to my mom for a few days. Do you think we can do that?”
Joanna shrugged. Just then her father came around the corner with a wheelbarrow. He had a pair of coveralls on and was busy clearing up last year’s leaves and twigs.
“Aha—so you’re friends again, I see. Well, there’s not so much as a single leaf left on the basement steps now.”
“Fine,” said Sophie. “So perhaps we can have our hot chocolate there instead of in bed.”
Joanna’s dad gave a forced laugh, but Joanna gasped. Verbal exchanges had always been more robust in Sophie’s family than at the more well-to-do home of Mr. Ingebrigtsen, the financial adviser, and his wife.
“I’m sorry, Joanna, but I felt I ought to take part in this cover-up operation as well.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?”
“Sure, if you walk home with me. Because it’s not for the ears of financial advisers or overgrown Barbie dolls.”
“That’s a rotten thing to say! I suppose you think a rocky marriage that drives one of the partners away to sea is better?”
“Probably not. But I hardly slept last night. And another thing, I’ve begun to wonder whether Hilde can see everything we do.”
They began to walk toward Clover Close.
“You mean she might have second sight?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Joanna was clearly not enthusiastic about all this secrecy.
“But that doesn’t explain why her father sent a lot of crazy postcards to an empty cabin in the woods.”
“I admit that is a weak spot.”
“Do you want to tell me where you have been?”
So she did. Sophie told her everything, about the mysterious philosophy course as well. She made Joanna swear to keep everything secret.
They walked for a long time without speaking. As they approached Clover Close, Joanna said, “I don’t like it.”
She stopped at Sophie’s gate and turned to go home again.
“Nobody asked you to like it. But philosophy is not a harmless party game. It’s about who we are and where we come from. Do you think we learn enough about that at school?”
“Nobody can answer questions like that anyway.”
“Yes, but we don’t even learn to ask them!”
Lunch was on the table when Sophie walked into the kitchen. Nothing was said about her not having called from Joanna’s.
After lunch Sophie announced that she was going to take a nap. She admitted she had hardly slept at Joanna’s house, which was not at all unusual at a sleepover.
Before getting into bed she stood in front of the big brass mirror which now hung on her wall. At first she only saw her own white and exhausted face. But then— behind her own face, the faintest suggestion of another face seemed to appear. Sophie took one or two deep breaths. It was no good starting to imagine things.
She studied the sharp contours of her own pale face framed by that impossible hair which defied any style but nature’s own. But beyond that face was the apparition of another girl. Suddenly the other girl began to wink frantically with both eyes, as if to signal that she was really in there on the other side. The apparition lasted only a few seconds. Then she was gone.
Sophie sat down on the edge of the bed. She had absolutely no doubt that it was Hilde she had seen in the mirror. She had caught a glimpse of her picture on a school I.D. in the major’s cabin. It must have been the same girl she had seen in the mirror.
Wasn’t it odd, how she always experienced mysterious things like this when she was dead tired. It meant that afterward she always had to ask herself whether it really had happened.
Sophie laid her clothes on the chair and crawled into bed. She fell asleep at once and had a strangely vivid dream.
She dreamed she was standing in a large garden that sloped down to a red boathouse. On the dock behind it sat a young fair-haired girl gazing out over the water. Sophie walked down and sat beside her. But the girl seemed not to notice her. Sophie introduced herself. “I’m Sophie,” she said. But the other girl could apparently neither see nor hear her. Suddenly Sophie heard a voice calling, “Hilde!” At once the girl jumped up from where she was sitting and ran as fast as she could up to the house. She couldn’t have been deaf or blind after all. A middle-aged man came striding from the house toward her. He was wearing a khaki uniform and a blue beret. The girl threw her arms around his neck and he swung her around a few times. Sophie noticed a little gold crucifix on a chain lying on the dock where the girl had been sitting. She picked it up and held it in her hand. Then she woke up.
Sophie looked at the clock. She had been asleep for two hours. She sat up in bed, thinking about the strange dream. It was so real that she felt as if she had actually lived the experience. She was equally sure that the house and the dock really existed somewhere. Surely it resembled the picture she had seen hanging in the major’s cabin? Anyway, there was no doubt at all that the girl in her dream was Hilde Moller Knag and that the man was her father, home from Lebanon. In her dream he had looked a lot like Alberto Knox ...
As Sophie stood up and began to tidy her bed, she found a gold crucifix on a chain under her pillow. On the back of the crucifix there were three letters engraved: HMK.
This was not the first time Sophie had dreamed she found a treasure. But this was definitely the first time she had brought it back from the dream.
“Damn!” she said aloud.
She was so mad that she opened the closet door and hurled the delicate crucifix up onto the top shelf with the silk scarf, the white stocking, and the postcards from Lebanon.
The next morning Sophie woke up to a big breakfast of hot rolls, orange juice, eggs, and vegetable salad. It was not often that her mother was up before Sophie on a Sunday morning. When she was, she liked to fix a solid meal for Sophie.
While they were eating, Mom said, “There’s a strange dog in the garden. It’s been sniffing round the old hedge all morning. I can’t imagine what it’s doing here, can you?”
“Yes!” Sophie burst out, and at once regretted it.
“Has it been here before?”
Sophie had already left the table and gone into the living room to look out of the window facing the large garden. It was just as she thought.
Hermes was lying in front of the secret entrance to her den.
What should she say? She had no time to think of anything before her mother came and stood beside her.
“Did you say it had been here before?” she asked.
“I expect it buried a bone there and now it’s come to fetch its treasure. Dogs have memories too ...”
“Maybe you’re right, Sophie. You’re the animal psychologist in the family.”
Sophie thought feverishly.
“I’ll take it home,” she said.
“You know where it lives, then?”
Sophie shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s probably got an address on its collar.”
A couple of minutes later Sophie was on her way down the garden. When Hermes caught sight of her he came lolloping toward her, wagging his tail and jumping up to her.
“Good boy, Hermes!” said Sophie.
She knew her mother was watching from the window. She prayed he would not go through the hedge. But the dog dashed toward the gravel path in front of the house, streaked across the front yard, and jumped up to the gate.
When they had shut the gate behind them, Hermes continued to run a few yards in front of Sophie. It was a
