PA PE RB AC K O R I G I N A L | £9.99 | ORE N DA B OO KS
It started with a lie…
Married couple Karin and Kai are looking for a pleasant escape from their busy lives, and reluctantly accept an offer to stay in a luxurious holiday home in the Norwegian fjords.
Instead of finding a relaxing retreat, however, their trip becomes a reminder of everything lacking in their own lives, and in a less-than-friendly meeting with their new neighbours, Karin tells a little white lie…
Against the backdrop of the glistening water and within the claustrophobic walls of the ultra-modern house, Karin’s insecurities blossom, and her lie grows ever bigger, entangling her and her husband in a nightmare spiral of deceits with absolutely no means of escape…
Extract
After breakfast the following day, having pulled on my trainers and stepped out onto the smooth, grey coastal rocks with their stripes of pink, I pondered the reactions that had been awakened deep within me by this recent, involuntary contact with Iris Vilden and/or this insight into her life. Not envy, I thought to myself, I felt absolutely no envy whatsoever. I didn’t want to know anything about them, not really, not about their lives, not about the industries they worked in or the business models they ascribed to, and definitely not about who they associated with, which restaurants they liked, who visited them out here, who slept in their four spacious guest rooms or who used the two guest bathrooms.
The dissatisfaction that comes from comparing myself with others was more my cup of tea. Relative deprivation – having very little while living among others with a great deal. I was constantly on the lookout for it, it was something of a proactive relationship, in truth. Fifteen years ago, I’d decided never to engage with social media to prevent it playing havoc with my psyche. But even so, it was always there.
I had slept badly; I hadn’t been able to shake the thought of all the nights Iris and Mikkel Wexøe had lain there in bedsheets as white as the driven snow, brushed cotton, a different world altogether from our crepe bedsheets back at home. The duvet was thick and stiff, it felt heavy yet soft. And even the loo roll was soft and thick.
I waved at Kai down below, who had now dismantled the old jetty. He was on his knees with a drill in one hand, screwing together new joists, he nodded in my direction. More than anything, I wanted to see Mikkel Wexøe languish in prison for his quasi-fascistic search engine. Imagine starting off with solar panels and ending up pushing segregation.
As I walked in the sunshine, I tried once again to shake it off, I was on holiday, I told myself, just on holiday, and a free holiday at that, amazing… That was Kai’s uncomplicated approach to the matter, and now it was mine too.
I walked what must have been north along the coastline, there were smooth rocks as far as the eye could see, interspersed with the odd sad-looking pine tree, and I was genuinely curious about how far away the nearest neighbour might be. Had Mikkel Wexøe bought up the entire area? I was sure I’d seen a whole row of rooftops when I checked the map on my phone, but the distances had to be greater than they’d appeared on the map.
I thought about making my way around the peninsula, but there were deep chasms in the rock where the waves crashed in, filling them with water, and in other spots I found myself suddenly on a rocky precipice, forced to turn away from the water’s edge and back inland. Rocks always appeared so easily traversable in satellite images, but the reality was very different.
I clambered up a slope, green vegetation clinging to the hillside, wiry, yellow clumps of grass and windswept mini pine trees, then hauled myself up with the help of slender branches that felt as if they’d give way at any moment.
When I eventually climbed back onto my feet and looked around me, I found that I was up by the cabins I’d seen on the map. They basked in the warmth of the sun, lined up along the
west coast. I had assumed that the location of Iris’s cabin had been selected for its secluded majesty, nestled in a special spot of its own, but perhaps the site they’d ended up in was simply beneath the dignity of other wealthy folks?
Feeling slightly ashamed at how pleased this new insight made me feel, yet uplifted by my discovery all the same, I followed a trail – the pathways crisscrossed here, the unassuming vegetation well trodden by earnest, well-to-do ramblers – and I made my way down a gentle, green section of meadowland as a mild breeze tickled my face, towards the much more human side of the headland, and after a while arrived back down by the water with a never-ending view of the rocky shoreline.
I followed the water’s edge, rounded a small peninsula and instinctively jumped, stopped in my tracks by the sudden sight of a man standing just fifteen metres away from me. He was out on a small rock, gently swinging a fishing rod back and forth. I’d grown so used to being on my own, it was like he’d come out of the blue. I carried on walking. He must have caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye, because he stopped swinging his rod for a moment and turned his head just far enough to register my presence before turning back to the water once again.
My instinct was to leave, to vanish, but that would have been odd, so I kept going, onwards over the rocks in the same direction, in his direction.
ABOUT AGNES RAVATN
Agnes Ravatn is a Norwegian author and columnist. She made her literary début with the novel Week 53 in 2007. Since then she has written a number of critically acclaimed and award-winning essay collections, including Standing, Popular Reading and Operation Self-discipline, in which she recounts her experience with social-media addiction. Her debut thriller, The Bird Tribunal, won the cultural radio P2’s listener’s prize in addition to The Youth’s Critic’s Prize, and was made into a successful play in Oslo in 2015. The English translation, published by Orenda Books in 2016, was a WHSmith Fresh Talent Pick, winner of a PEN Translation Award, a BBC Radio Four ‘Book at Bedtime’ and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the 2017 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. Critically acclaimed The Seven Doors was published in 2020.
Agnes lives with her family in the Norwegian countryside.