I knocked on the door and heard yelling from behind the door. The door was opened and a small face peeked out.
"Who is it?" I could hear Sophia yell in the background.
The young face had ketchup on his nose and was smiling. "Mommy is coming now," he said with a mischievous grin.
"Now that's a nice surprise," Sophia said when she saw me. I lifted the bottle of wine in the air and Sophia smiled.
"Now that's an even better surprise. Come on in."
The house was a mess, but it had a nice atmosphere to it. It was small and cozy. Sophia removed some clothes from a chair and told me to sit down. A clatter sounded from elsewhere in the house and she sighed. "Give me a minute and I'll get these kids to bed, then we can talk properly," she said.
It took an hour. Several times one of them jumped out of bed and ran around, screaming, yelling, teasing the others making them laugh. I couldn't help but chuckle. Five kids. It was quite the handful. I found two glasses in the cupboard, then noticed the sink packed with dirty dishes. I started washing them up and putting them back in the cupboards. When Sophia finally came back she took one glance at the clean kitchen.
"Wow, I really should have you over a little more often. Thanks."
I shrugged. "I'm not much if a cleaner myself, but you looked like you could need a hand."
Sophia sighed and threw herself heavily in the chair. "Let's pop this baby open," she said and looked at the bottle.
"So how're you enjoying your new house?" she asked after we had been chatting for a few minutes about this and that.
"I love it. Victor, my seven-year-old especially loves it, Maya not so much, but she'll get there. At least I hope." I sipped the wine and looked at the woman I hoped to make my new friend. I had been a little lonely in the big house alone with no other grown people to talk to. She seemed worn out, but who could blame her with that many kids and being all alone with them.
"It's a nice house you got there. I wouldn't mind having it. Might even be able to give my kiddos a room each. How many rooms does it have again?" she asked.
"Eight bedrooms," I chuckled. "I seriously don't know what to do with that many rooms. Me and the kids only need three. I think I've been inside all of them but I could be wrong. I swear sometimes I'm afraid to get lost. I haven't even seen the cellar yet. I'm afraid to get locked in or something. Saw it in a movie once. Some woman moved into a new house then was stuck in the basement because a door jammed or something and then she starved to death."
"Sounds like a boring movie," Sophia said.
I laughed. "It was actually. But seriously it's too big a house for just us. I often wonder how my grandmother managed to not get lost."
"I heard she only used the downstairs the last few years. Slept in a chair in the living room. I think she even died in it," Sophia said. "At least that's what I heard. Maybe it’s just rumors. I wasn't here. I had met a guy and we were on a trip to Skagen when it happened. We broke up while we were there. A little too overwhelming with five kids on a road trip, if you know what I mean. Anyway when we got back she had died. I never heard what killed her. Was a heart attack or something?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. She was old. I never knew her though. My dad never talked about her. I always got the feeling that he resented her for some reason. But he never told me why."
"Well a lot of people end up hating their parents. Me, I love my mother. She's the one who comes to my rescue whenever things get too bad around here. She lives all the way up in Aalborg, but every now and then she comes down and saves me from killing my kids. I owe her a lot. Without her I wouldn't have made it."
"So what about all the fathers? Aren't they around?" I asked and poured us both a little more wine.
"Well I get alimony from all of them, not every month since there is always one of them trying to avoid having to pay. But then I threaten to call the police and they always pay. It helps me a lot financially. I work as a teacher at the school on the side. Yeah, more children. Who would have figured huh? You'd think I had enough at home."
"No. I bet you're great at it," I said.
"Well it pays the bills. The days are short plus I have vacation whenever my kids have it. But it also means I have to deal with them even if I'm at work," she said and laughed.
I nodded and drank some more. It felt great to finally talk to a grown up again. The wind made the old house creak. I could feel the cold from the window. Sophia saw it on my face.
"These houses are old," she said. "The ones on our side of the road aren't as fancy as yours. Used to be old summer cabins but later they were rebuilt and it was allowed for people to live in them all year around. But they are badly insulated. Can't keep the cold wind out at winter. I bet your mansion doesn't have those kinds of problems?"
"I haven't lived in it long enough to know, but until now there haven’t been any problems, no," I answered, feeling a little guilty for living in this big house all alone with my two kids.
"I thought not. Well I made my bed and now I have to lie in it, right?" She lifted the bottle. "More?"
"Just a last one. Then I have to get going."
"So what do you figure of that whole Mrs. Heinrichsen thing?" I asked while she was pouring the rest of the bottle into our glasses.
"What do you mean?" she asked and put the empty bottle down.
"Did you know her?"
"No one knew Mrs. Heinrichsen. She was an old bitter lady who was angry at everybody apparently because she didn't have anything better to do. That's all I know," Sophia said. "We never saw her much. She stayed in that big mansion of hers and looked down at us all when she drove out of her gate in her old Mercedes. Like she was better than all of us. " Sophia paused then drank. She looked at me once she had put the glass down. "Why are you interested in her?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Just curious I guess. They say she was murdered."
Sophia exhaled. "Why anyone would want to kill an old lady, I don't know. I mean why not wait till nature kills her on its own? But on the other hand I think a lot of people would like to see her dead. That's just my opinion."
"Like who?" I asked.
"I don't know. But ask down at the church. She practically ran that place. I heard rumors she even controlled the pastor's speeches and corrected them before he did his sermons. She used to be the chairman of the parish council, but it wasn't a democracy as far as I know. Ran it like a dictator. Nothing was decided unless it came from her. So I guess she could have gotten a lot of enemies down there."
"Do you go to that church?" I asked.
Sophia burst into a loud laughter. "Me? You have got to be kidding. They would probably never even let me in. An unmarried single mom with five kids all from different fathers. No way they would ever let me in."
"It sounds pretty old fashioned. Don't you think these things have changed, that they could be different?" I asked.
Sophia smiled compassionately. "You really are from the big city, aren't you? Out here these things don't change. Especially not when it comes to the Home Missions society. They are kings out here. Me I'm not from around here, I just moved here with one of my boyfriends and then stayed when he moved away, so I don't care, but those people, they're like a closed society where you can't get access unless you are born here or you become just like them. And that means forgetting all about who you are, and forget all about having sex or even thinking about it. You keep those hands above the blanket, little missy. Those people still tell their kids that if they masturbate they will wake up blind. I kid you not. That's what they tell them at the church. That God will punish them for every wrong thought they have. I'm just glad my kids weren't born into one of those families."
"So Mrs. Heinrichsen was one of them?"
"She was the one. She was their leader, the boss, the top, their freaking cardinal if they had one. She ran the place and decided who was in and who was out."
"Wow," I muttered under my breath. "It sounds like the dark ages."
"It is the dark ages, my dear. Welcome." Sophia laughed again. "I hope I'm not scaring you away cause I really enjoy having a normal person around for once. These women on this island drive me nuts. No wonder the youngsters get the hell out of here as soon as they're done with school." Sophia paused and drank. "All you have to do is to stay clear of these people, especially the women then you're good. There are many nice people here as well."
"Jack, your neighbor, which category is he in?" I asked.
"Ah Jack. Well he's in a category of his own."
"How so?"
"He got out," she said and became serious. "Not many do. But it cost him dearly. Sophia sighed deeply.
"How so?" I asked.
"I think you'd better ask him that yourself some day."
12
1977
She felt the baby kick one morning when she was still asleep. It woke her up. Astrid started laughing. It felt like it was trying to tickle her from the inside.
I'm not alone after all, she thought. You're really alive!
Next she thought about him. About Christian. Christian should have been here, she thought with great sadness. Been here to experience this wonderful moment when their baby kicked for the first time. No dad should be deprived of that joy of feeling his child for the first time.
Astrid told him she was pregnant a few days before she got stuck in the bunker. He would have been so thrilled to feel it too, she just knew he would. Just like he had been so happy when she told him she was carrying his baby, that they were finally going to be a family. Well, not thrilled at first.
"Mother will kill me," he had answered.
Astrid had shrugged. "So what?"
Christian shook his head. "How did this happen? How?"
"Well you tell me. You were there, remember?" She tried to touch him, to caress his chest the way he used to like it, but he pulled away. They had met on their usual spot in the dunes. It was near the end of summer.
"But I thought we were being careful. I thought you were on the pill?" He said harshly.
"I was. Mother gave me those pills so I wouldn't get myself in trouble. A safety precaution, she called it. And they were supposed to work, they really were Christian. I don't know why they didn't work. But it doesn't matter, does it? Things happen. Life happens."
"This is bad. This is really bad." Christian paused and looked at Astrid. "She's gonna say you did this on purpose. You did it to get me to marry you, to get a hook on me. Did you? Did you do this on purpose?"
Astrid shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand."
"Of course you don't. You're too damn stupid to understand anything."
"What's the matter Christian? Aren't you happy? This is our child. Made from our love?"
Christian smiled. "Of course I'm happy. It's just ..."
"What?"
He put his arm around her neck. "Nothing. You wouldn't understand anyway. I'll take care of Mother. Don't you worry. I'll handle this."
"What is it you'll take care of?" Astrid felt confused. She had been so happy once she found out she was pregnant. She was very young at only sixteen, but it was okay, wasn't it? It was after all everything she had ever dreamed of, to become a mother, to start a family of her own and do it better than her own mother had.
"Don't you worry your pretty little head with that," Christian said and kissed her. It was the first and only time he ever called her pretty.
Then they made love one more time.
He was supposed to talk to his mother about it on the day everything went so terribly wrong for Astrid and she ended up in this strange hole in the ground. Now she wondered if he ever got to do it.
She felt the baby kick again and laughed, but soon the laughter became tears, tears of sadness and despair when it suddenly struck her. What if she lived long enough to give birth? Was she going to do it on her own? Was she going to give birth to her baby down here in this hole in the ground? Or was she going to die trying?
13
2012
The Queen of Fitness was what they called her. Irene Justesen was her real name but no one ever called her that anymore. Not after she became famous in Denmark for her fitness videos back in the early nineties and wrote herself into the history books as the first real fitness guru. There had been many others since trying to accomplish what she had, but none as successful as her.
Even as she was approaching seventy she still looked as fit as ever and she still told people they could also get those iron buns if only they worked on it.
In many ways Irene Justesen was a success story, one that many people admired and tried to emulate. She had made millions during the nineties. People bought her videos, her books and she even had her own show on TV. Iron buttocks in fifteen minutes quickly became one of the most popular TV shows in the history of television in Denmark. People everywhere in the country, tall or small, old or young watched as Irene Justesen showed them how to work those abs or get rid of the cellulite in only fourteen days. The key to her success was being at the right place at the right time. She started making her videos just as the health and fitness wave swept across the country and everybody had to start working out. Plus she was the first one. The first to make it easy for people to get in shape, to Shape It Up like the title on her first video. For the first time people didn't have to go all the way down to the fitness center (of which there were very few back then) they didn't have to join some aerobics class and sweat on a floor among twenty other people (who were always more fit and better looking then yourself) while looking at how ridiculous you looked in the body sized wall to wall mirrors. No, with these new videos they could stay at home and work out. They could do it in the private, where no one was looking. And that suited the Danes very well. Everybody had to have a video at home and often people would make sure to have the cover lying out somewhere in the living room when they had guests, just to be able so remove it blushing slightly with a excuse me, I was just working out earlier today. It was a prestige, a symbol of status, of being a person who had things under control and it made a great party subject for a change (instead of the weather that seemed to have been debated for ages).
The success lasted all through the nineties when suddenly people began to find it embarrassing to have the videos and stopped watching the show on TV. Other fitness gurus came along and tried to do what The Queen of Fitness had done, but they never had the same kind of success she had.
But Irene never seemed to make peace with the fact that she was no longer popular. She still lived on Fanoe island, where she had grown up, but now bought a huge mansion much to the island-people's discussion. She knew she was the talk of the town and she knew what they said behind her back, but she no longer cared. She had put the old lifestyle behind her and broken into a new life and she had done it on her own. Irene didn't need those people anymore, not after ... well not after what they did to her. She still thought she was famous and she did occasionally have a tourist or two come up to her in the street and ask her if she wasn't the Queen of Fitness.
Now she decided to revive her career. Before it was too late. At sixty-nine years of age she made a new video, targeting the older audience of course and she was about to release it on DVD. It had been a long time since Irene Justesen had last felt this excited about anything.
After her downturn she turned to drinking and when that didn't help anymore she started popping pills. Years of abuse made her realize she had been lonely for most of her life and the only time she could remember being really happy was back in the days when she had been at the top of her career. Now years later and recently out of the latest rehab, she was ready for a re-launch of her career. After all people were fatter than ever out there. They needed her advice more than they ever had.
Now she was sitting with one of her DVDs in her hand and couldn't help but shed a small tear. She had to pay for it herself, the making, the distribution, everything, and it had cost her far more than what she could afford.
/> The front cover showed her in a sports bra, leggings and her trademark, the pink legwarmers, pink sweat band and pink lipstick.
"Still looking great," she mumbled to herself and considered celebrating with a glass of cherry wine, that she had always enjoyed drinking. She poured herself a glass and looked in the mirror.
"You still got it, old girl."
14
2012
Irene Justesen was finishing her workout with a team of Nordby's old ladies who had stuck with her for the last ten months in spite of the general opinion of Irene on the island and despite the long break while Irene was in rehab.
Not that they had become any thinner during those months, on the contrary, but they liked coming there and it kept them from the pastries for at least the hour the workout lasted in Irene Justesen's private gym at her property on the North-West side of the island.
Most of them thanked her before they went towards the showers. Irene nodded and thanked them back. They all thought she did this class out of a loving heart, but the fact was she was almost broke. She had spent a huge amount of money on rehab the last years and on her latest DVD. She was in desperate need of money. Her lawyer had told her just last week that if she didn't start making some money instead of just spending it, she would lose her estate and the house within a month. Irene assured him her next DVD would bring all the money she needed, sounding reassuring and certain in her voice, but feeling the insecure beating of her worried heart underneath the sweatshirt.
She was considering opening up for more classes but wasn't sure there was enough interest on the island for that. Maybe she could do something for the tourists? Lord knew there were enough of those to keep her going for years. And they needed exercise while eating all that fried fish down at the harbor. Maybe they would buy her DVD as well.
Irene drank from her water bottle. She was out of breath after the workout.
Or maybe because you ended up drinking that entire bottle of cherry wine last night.