A Modern Family E-Book

Helga Flatland

• Herausgeber: Orenda Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 436

Beschreibung

A family holiday creates unexpected drama when Liv, Ellen and Håkon's elderly parents announce their decision to divorce. The Norwegian Anne Tyler makes her English debut in a beautiful, insightful and perceptive novel. ***Winner of the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize*** ___________________ 'The most beautiful, elegant writing I've read in a long time. If you love Anne Tyler, you will ADORE this' Joanna Cannon 'A thoughtful and reflective novel about parents, siblings and the complex – and often challenging – ties that bind them' Hannah Beckerman, Observer 'I absolutely loved its quiet, insightful generosity' Claire King ___________________ When Liv, Ellen and Håkon, along with their partners and children, arrive in Rome to celebrate their father's seventieth birthday, a quiet earthquake occurs: their parents have decided to divorce. Shocked and disbelieving, the siblings try to come to terms with their parents' decision as it echoes through the homes they have built for themselves, and forces them to reconstruct the shared narrative of their childhood and family history. A bittersweet novel of regret, relationships and rare insights, A Modern Family encourages us to look at the people closest to us a little more carefully, and ultimately reveals that it's never too late for change… ___________________ 'The author has been dubbed the Norwegian Anne Tyler and for good reason. Three generations of a family head on a holiday to Italy to celebrate patriarch Sverre's 70th birthday – but he and his wife have life-changing news to share. If you love books about dysfunctional families, you'll love this' Good Housekeeping 'As they rebuild their childhood memories, it's telling that their perceptions of themselves and their family relationships are so dramatically different. In quiet prose, Helga Flatland writes with elegance and subtle humour to produce a shrewd and insightful examination of the psychology of family and of loss' Daily Express 'I love the sophistication, directness and tenderness of this book' Claire Dyer 'So perceptive and clever' Rónán Hession 'This is a super exploration of families that I'd urge you to read for the subtle prose, with well defined characters and a strong storyline' Sheila O'Reilly 'It is the most satisfying book that I've read in a long time, and the most clear-eyed, honest, yet sympathetic examination of relationships that I have ever read. The subtlety with which she portrays the inconsistencies between how the characters see each other versus how they see themselves is masterful' Sara Taylor 'Reading Helga Flatland's A Modern Family is like watching the sun rise on a cloudy horizon; light whispers and dances and breaks over the clouds. Layers of deliciously cumulative insight – a moving and exquisite read' Shelan Rodger 'A beautifully written novel, bittersweet, moving and poignant … a wise novel of great insight' New Books Magazine 'Flatland has the gift that I most often covert in the work of other writers: the ability to make everyday events compelling … an utterly compelling and satisfying read. It reminds us how full and rich life is, how the quietest existence can brim with urgency and drama' Ann Morgan 'A novel that prods and provokes … fascinating, incredibly profound, yet somehow tender, this really does encourage an exploration of a modern family' LoveReading

Leseprobe

A Modern Family

Helga Flatland

Translated from the Norwegian by Rosie Hedger

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE LIVELLENLIVELLENHÅKON ABOUT THE AUTHORABOUT THE TRANSLATORCOPYRIGHT

LIV

The Alpine peaks resemble sharks’ teeth, jutting upwards through the dense layer of cloud that enshrouds Central Europe as if the creature’s jaws are eternally prepared to clamp down. The mountaintops force the wind in various directions, pulling at the plane from all angles, and we’re so small here, all in a row, the backs of the heads in front of me shuddering in unison.

More than half the population on the ground below us believes it’s OK to raise a hand to their children, I think to myself, and for a moment my eyes seek out my own children; but they’re hidden from view, seated four rows in front of me. Beside them, Olaf rests his head against the cabin wall. In front of him I spy Ellen’s blonde hair, and between the seats I can see that Mum is sleeping, her head resting on Ellen’s shoulder. Dad wanders along the aisle between the rows of seats, wearing his new Bose headphones around his neck. Did he wear them to the toilet? I feel a warm flicker of affection and smile at him, but I fail to catch his eye. He sits down beside Håkon, and I catch only glimpses of Dad’s face, his high cheekbones and the tip of his nose, which has a faint blue hue about it from the glow of the laptop in front of him.

They could be anyone. We could be anyone.

It’s raining in Rome. Everyone is prepared for it; we’ve been checking the forecast every day for the past three weeks, and we’ve discussed it on the phone and via text message and in our family Facebook group, reassuring ourselves that it doesn’t matter, that it’s April, and April brings unpredictable weather, plus it’s bound to be warmer than it is in Norway, and we’re not going for the weather, anyway. Even so, the mood at Gardermoen Airport, which was bathed in spring sunshine and close to a balmy 20°C, was noticeably better than it is at Fiumicino Airport, where it is 13°C and raining. The mood may also have something to do with a sense of anticlimax, an acknowledgement that the tension and goodwill with which we greeted one another at Gardermoen has dwindled over the course of the flight; the first leg now over and done with, everybody’s shoulders have relaxed ever so slightly.

Having the others here, even at the airport, makes me feel intruded upon. I try to catch Olaf’s eye, to seek some confirmation that he feels the same; Rome and all that surrounds it, everything that belongs to it, is ours. Walking through the arrivals hall feels different this time; I don’t exhale in the same way I do when Olaf and I are here by ourselves, I don’t feel that same frisson of excitement. But Olaf is busy buying train tickets for everyone, and I lament my own ingratitude, my self-absorption. I make up for it by picking up Hedda, kissing her nose and asking if the plane’s shaking scared her. She squirms free, no doubt hyper after munching her way through the biscuits and chocolate that Olaf wasn’t supposed to deploy in anything other than an absolute emergency.

We’re due to spend two days in Rome before leaving for Olaf’s brother’s house, which is located in a small town on the coast. Two days is both far too brief and far too long a stay, I think to myself for the first time, and I see both my own little family – the one I’ve created with Olaf – and the one that I’ve come from, with new eyes.

Dad turns seventy in four days’ time. Last year, during his birthday meal, he called for silence and announced that the following year’s birthday gift to himself and the whole family would be a holiday – his treat. We could go anywhere, he declared, turning to Hedda, who was four years old at the time: ‘We could even go all the way to Africa!’

The idea itself, the manner of its announcement and his almost frenzied disposition in the months leading up to that night were so out of character that Ellen sent me lists of brain-tumour symptoms on a daily basis for quite some time afterwards. It’s probably just a reaction to the fact that he’ll soon be turning seventy, Olaf said. But Ellen and I were having none of it: he’s not the kind to make a fuss about his age. He’s always poked fun at people who create a crisis when their birthday comes around – the kind who compensate with over-the-top reactions. They’re using their age as an excuse, he’s always said. They’re really making a fuss about something else. But Dad didn’t seem ill, and he didn’t seem to be in the midst of any kind of crisis. And our concerns about him weren’t so overwhelming that they outweighed our pleasure at being treated to a holiday, so Ellen and I let it go.

We haven’t been on holiday together for what must be twenty years now, not since the days when the concept of ‘family’ extended no further than Ellen, Håkon, Mum, Dad and myself. Occasionally we’ve ensured that our stays in the family cabin have overlapped, with Mum and Dad and Håkon, and maybe even Ellen, staying on for an extra few days before Olaf, the children and I are given the run of the place, but this kind of trip – an organised pack-your-bags-and-off-we-go kind of trip – we haven’t embarked on since I was in my early twenties, and Ellen and Håkon and I found ourselves piled in the back of a rental car in Provence.

I don’t recall us being quite so distant back then, not like we are now. Moving away from Oslo and out of the house in Tåsen, leaving behind the familiar framework, with its fixed patterns, conversations, gatherings, places at the table, it’s done something to the family dynamic; nobody knows quite how to act, how to adapt, which role is theirs to take. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that we’re three adults on holiday with our parents; we’re half grown, yet still their children.

The Africa idea was quickly vetoed – by everyone but Hedda, that is – and it was actually Olaf who suggested Italy, saying that we could stay in his brother’s house there. Olaf is careful never to find himself in anybody’s debt, and the thought of Dad paying for a holiday for him and his children very quickly became too much to bear. You can’t offer him money, I said when Olaf suggested we pay our own way, it’d be condescending. Liv and I really want to show you the Italy that we’ve come to know, Olaf told Mum and Dad. Perhaps we could combine that with your seventieth birthday celebrations?

We’re far too big for Italy. Big and white and blond, we barely fit around the table at the restaurant that evening. The furniture and interiors have been designed with trim little Italians in mind, not for Dad and Håkon, both almost six feet, four inches tall, not for such long arms and legs; not for us. We cram ourselves into our chairs, all elbows and knees, too many joints jostling for room. Ellen and Håkon squabble over the available space, suddenly teenagers all over again. I recall the way we identified the seams between the seat cushions in the back of the car, treating them as border lines – even the slightest hint of coat flap crossing a seam was forbidden. The air around us was subject to the same restrictions. Håkon was only three at the time, but he grew up with sisters and with clearly defined lines in the car, in the tent and at the dining table – and in life in general, really – lines that laid down the ground rules.

Sitting beside us is an Italian family. There are more of them than there are of us, but, as Håkon points out, they’re seated around a smaller table, all making their way through one dish after another, just like Olaf and I did on our first trip to Rome. We’d told the waiter that we wanted to order the same as the family at the table next to us. I spent the following week gazing at large Italian families sitting down to eat together for several hours every evening – children and grandparents, loud and prone to gesticulation, just like in the films, and I missed my own family, though I knew even then that it wouldn’t be the same if they were there. Here. But now they are here; now we’re here, all of us seated around the same table: Mum, Dad, Ellen, Ellen’s boyfriend Simen, Agnar and Hedda, Olaf and me – and Håkon.

I glance over at Dad sitting at the head of the table, and it strikes me that we’re sitting exactly where we sit when we’re at our parents’ house. Dad always sits at the head of the table, with Mum to his right and me beside her, and Håkon across from Mum with Ellen by his side. Other later additions to the family – partners, Agnar, Hedda – have had to organise themselves around us; I don’t think we’ve even given it a single thought. The only person ever to initiate any kind of silent protest is Simen; on the few occasions he’s joined us for family gatherings, he’s practically launched himself at the seat beside Ellen – Håkon’s place at the table – draping an arm across the back of her chair and firmly clinging to his spot until everyone else has taken a seat.

Dad has thick grey hair, and even though pictures from when I was little show him with the dark hair he once had, I can only just recall it – in my memories, he always has the same grey hair he has now. He locks eyes with me and smiles, and I wonder what he’s thinking about, if he’s happy, if things are how he imagined they would be. Perhaps he hasn’t imagined them at all. He tends not to predict whether things will be one way or the other, but he’s always commented on my own tendency to do so: You have to try to accept things as they are, Liv, he would tell me when I was young and shedding anguished tears over holidays, handball matches or school assignments that hadn’t gone as I’d expected, finding it impossible to explain to Dad just how critical it was that they should unfold exactly as I’d anticipated; any action or accomplishment, great or small, had to follow a predictable course to prevent things from becoming chaotic and intangible. But you can’t plan life in that kind of detail, Dad said, you need to accept that you can’t always control things.

Now he’s leaning over to Mum. The hearing in his right ear – the ear that’s always on Mum’s side at the dinner table – isn’t what it once was, and she lifts a hand to create a buffer between her words and the clamour of the restaurant. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Dad doesn’t look at her; he smiles and nods slightly.

‘So, have you made up your minds?’ he asks loudly, looking out across the table before Mum has lowered her hand. He brandishes the menu.

Scarcely two minutes have gone by since the menus were handed out to us, and he hasn’t yet opened his own.

‘We should probably start by ordering some wine,’ Mum says.

Dad doesn’t respond to this. He studies his menu carefully. She leans over to his hard-of-hearing side and repeats herself, and he nods yet again without saying a word, just looking down. Mum smiles, but not at him, not at any of us. She opens the wine list.

We don’t have to spend every waking moment together, Mum said as we planned our two-day stay in Rome, and Håkon pointed out that nobody else felt the need to visit the MAXXI Museum. The need, Mum repeated. It’s hardly a need. You’re making it out to be as fundamental as eating. It’s not a need, but a desire, and I think it’s worth making time for. And even though Håkon and Ellen were both there too, as usual I felt that her words were aimed at me, that there was an underlying message that was somehow critical, in this case a dig at the fact that Olaf and I had holidayed in Rome on several occasions without ever having visited a single art gallery. In truth, it was an attack on our entire approach to going on holiday, to raising our children, to living our lives – an attack of the kind that hits me just the same each and every time, the kind I’m so used to that I’m incapable of forming concrete thoughts about it; there is only a stab of emotion that is preserved in my memory, telling me there’s something I need to protect myself against. Rome itself is a museum, I replied hastily. There’s so much else to see, it seems a bit unnecessary to me. She smiled condescendingly, as she always does whenever she sees through my argument or when I do something she describes as precocious, even to this day. Don’t be so precocious, she says, and I forget every single time that I’m a grown woman in my forties.

Of course, we don’t have to spend every waking moment together, she repeated, then looked at us to assess the impact of her words, and now, as we stand trapped in a throng of Japanese tourists milling around outside the Colosseum, I feel certain that Ellen and Håkon share my regret at having passed up going to the art gallery with Mum.

Dad has gone to the Vatican by himself. He didn’t ask if anyone wanted to join him, instead simply announcing over breakfast that it was what he planned to do today. There’s something not quite right about it all, I said to Olaf after breakfast. Something isn’t quite right between them. You can see it too, I insisted, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it was that I was seeing. On the one hand they were being nicer to one another than they had been in a long time – teasing one another, laughing emphatically at one another’s anecdotes and engaging in topics of conversation brought up by the other as if their take on things was original and fresh, or as if they were seeing their arguments in a new light, perhaps. On the other hand, there was a noticeable distance between them, a lack of intimacy.

Olaf told me not to spend so much time focusing on them. We’re on holiday too, you know, he said. And anyway, scrutinising their every move isn’t likely to change anything. That’s hardly what I’m doing, I replied, and Olaf laughed.

Agnar insists on queuing to enter the Colosseum. We can’t see where the queue begins or ends; it’ll take several hours. Ellen and Håkon laugh and shake their heads, saying they’d rather sit in the café we walked past just across the way. I look at Olaf, who shrugs wearily.

‘I can go on my own,’ Agnar says.

‘Are you mad? I don’t think so,’ I reply, almost without thinking.

Agnar looks at Olaf.

‘It’s not that bad an idea, surely,’ Olaf says.

‘It’s a terrible idea, Olaf,’ I tell him.

Agnar has only just turned fourteen, and I think he’s a little immature for his age. Olaf doesn’t think we have anything to worry about, but Agnar still looks upon most situations with the childish expectation that everything will naturally work out just as it should, giving no thought to the consequences, driven only by impulse. He always regrets things afterwards, and is wracked with anguish when he realises how worried Olaf and I have been when he’s come home an hour later than planned without ever picking up his phone, for example – but then the entire situation plays out in exactly the same way just a few days later. We’ve told him it’s self-centred, that he needs to buck up his ideas, that we need to be able to trust him. But at the same time, I know it’s nothing to do with trust – he doesn’t do it on purpose, as he himself points out. When I’m in the middle of something, I just forget, he tells us. He forgets absolutely everything else too. I know that and I understand it, but Olaf and I are at a loss as to how we should handle the situation. Olaf sees a little too much of himself in Agnar, and is convinced that the best course of action is for us to give him more freedom, not less. Back at the kitchen table in Oslo, four days before leaving, sitting across from ‘Angst-ridden Agnar’, as Olaf has taken to calling him on the days following our confrontations, those days when Agnar can’t do enough for us – making coffee and breakfast and offering to look after Hedda and do any number of other lovely favours – I was open to testing this approach.

But not here, not in Rome. Come on, Olaf, I try to convey with a look in his direction.

‘I’ve got my phone,’ Agnar says.

‘Which you only ever answer when it suits you,’ I say. ‘Better that I come with you instead.’ I can’t deny him the chance to go inside the Colosseum when he’s showing such enthusiasm. Over the past few years he’s developed an interest in history and architecture that has taken us by surprise, and when I told him we’d be going to Rome, his eyes shone.

‘No, you don’t have to do that, I want to go by myself,’ Agnar says, fidgeting with impatience, nervously playing with his left ear, just like Håkon does in stressful situations.

‘It’s not about what you want, it’s about what you’re capable of,’ I tell him.

Hedda tugs at my hand – she wants to sit down on the filthy tarmac. I pull her up again and she starts to whinge, hanging from my arm like a monkey, my shoulder aching.

‘He’s capable. Look, this is what we’ll do,’ Olaf says, and takes both of Agnar’s shoulders in his hands, looking him directly in the eye. ‘You’ve got two hours. That gives you until three o’clock. That means if you haven’t made it in by then, you have to leave the queue. At three o’clock, we’ll meet at the café just up there,’ Olaf says, pointing at the café towards which Håkon and Ellen are headed.

Agnar nods, almost paralysed, not daring to look at me for fear that I’ll ruin things with my objections. But Olaf and I have made a virtually unbreakable pact not to disagree with one another in front of the children, to take a consistent and coordinated approach to their upbringing, to rules and boundaries, so I can do nothing but nod. I’m proud of him, too – the fact that he’s so persistent in his interest in things to which other fourteen-year-olds wouldn’t give a second thought – and I wish that Mum were here to see it.

Olaf checks that Agnar’s phone is fully charged, gives him money to keep in his pocket, with instructions not to retrieve it until it’s time to pay, and tells him that he has to check the time every ten minutes, that this is a test, the kind he needs to pass if he really wants the freedom he’s been craving all this time. Has Agnar understood?

‘Every ten minutes. Three o’clock. Money. Café. Message received!’ Agnar says, and smiles his lovely smile, the one that lights up his soft, innocent face – the kind of face that would be a dream for any child kidnapper or paedophile. I feel sick and anxious as I watch him disappear into the crowd.

Olaf takes Hedda to a playpark and I make my way to the café, looking back over my shoulder every ten steps to see if I can spot Agnar in the queue. I can’t remember what I was like at fourteen but feel fairly certain that I’d never have suggested going off on my own in a foreign city.

Håkon and Ellen are sitting at the edge of a terrace with a view of the Colosseum. Simen has decided to have a lie-in and meet us for lunch instead. His approach to holidays is unthinkable in our family – the idea of not getting out and about, not doing something. Holidays are about sleeping late for me, Simen warned us at dinner the previous night. Dad’s smile was strained. I imagine that Simen is also the type to park himself in front of the television on a Friday night when the weather is nice, something which is physically impossible for myself and Håkon and Ellen. Even now, as an adult, I feel guilty about doing anything other than making the most of any good weather we get, something that Dad established as a rule and imprinted upon us every sunny Saturday and Sunday from the day we were born.

Håkon has ordered a bottle of red wine; I ask the waiter to bring me a glass. Ellen covers her glass with her hand when he comes to pour some for her.

‘I’m halfway through another course of antibiotics,’ she says; she’s been plagued by recurring urinary tract infections.

‘You must be contributing more than your fair share to global antibiotic resistance, the way you get through those things,’ Håkon says. ‘Maybe you should try drinking more cranberry juice.’

‘It’s interesting to hear that you know so much about urinary tract infections, Håkon. Is there any subject you’re not an expert on? Anything you don’t have an opinion on?’ Ellen retorts with a smile, rolling her eyes.

Their bickering makes me feel calmer, but I’m aware of my heart hammering inside my chest. My gaze is locked on the crowds of tourists, Agnar no doubt milling among them, unable to find his way. I take a large sip of wine, close my eyes and swallow. For a moment I envy Ellen and Håkon, sitting there entirely devoid of responsibility, free, seeking nothing but the sun, which peeks through the thin layer of cloud that lingers above us.

It’s not often we’re together, just the three of us. It’s only since Håkon got older that we occasionally meet up for a beer or dinner, Ellen and I always taking the initiative. Ellen is two years younger than I am, and Håkon is eight years younger than Ellen – he turned thirty just a few weeks ago. It’s only in the past few years that he’s started getting in touch with us, that the distance between us has felt less stark than it did when he was ten and I was twenty, and we’ve come to know one another in a different way, as adults – even though the sense of hierarchy is still tangible. I feel like he and Ellen have a very different relationship; they spend more time together and are in touch with one another more often than with me. I have the sense that they feel they’ve got more in common, and in fact there’s something in that: they both look like Mum, they have her blonde hair and big eyes. Ellen shares Mum’s curvaceous figure too – she’s soft and plump in a graceful, attractive way, unlike me. My body has always been thin, almost angular.

I’d love to have swapped places with her; I’d love to have Ellen’s body. I still remember how awful it was when she had more shape about her at fourteen than I did at sixteen – bigger boobs, the works. I recall the way the boys in my class would ring the house to speak to her. I was furious with her, wrote in my diaries that I hated her and listed a hundred reasons why: that she whined, that she was clingy, a brat. When she had a boyfriend before me – a boy who used to sit with us at the dinner table and play with her hair – I told Mum that I wanted to move out. I made every argument possible, without mentioning Ellen, but I realised afterwards that Mum must have seen through it all. I wrote in my diary that Mum took me out to various places, that the two of us went to see Grandma and Grandad, had dinner out, went to the cinema, that she spent a lot of time with me without inviting Ellen. I only ever seemed to mention all this in passing, though, perhaps alongside a comment or short review of the film we went to see. I didn’t seem to be reflecting on or appreciating Mum’s obvious efforts at the time, or perhaps it was just too embarrassing, even in my own diary, to seek sympathy for the fact that I had a younger sister who was much more successful than I was in every single way.

I still feel tiny glimmers of that shameful, overwhelming envy. It flares up in me when I see the looks she attracts as we walk down the street or sit together in a café, when I see pictures of us in our younger years, or worst of all, when I see the way she talks to Olaf sometimes – no, in fact, it’s the other way around: the way he talks to her. I’ve never asked him about it, even though the most banal questions hound me with a childish intensity: Do you think she’s prettier than I am? Would you choose her if you could? Even during our most serious arguments, when I almost lose control over what I’m doing or saying, still I keep these questions to myself. I’ve longed to scream them at him, particularly during our early days together, but I’ve always caught myself in time, instead singling out a colleague or friend of his: Don’t think I can’t see the way you look at her, I’ve shouted, the way you light up around her. Do you really think you’ve got a chance? Do you really think she’d be interested in you? It’s so petty and so shameful, but it beats the alternative.

Ellen and I became good friends in our early twenties. When I met Olaf, I found that Ellen filled a new role in my life. All of a sudden, she was someone I could confide in – she became a person, a sister, someone close to me, not simply a manifestation of everything I envied and could never be. I had been studying journalism and living in Majorstua with a friend while Ellen had continued to live at home. The year after I moved out, I don’t think we saw each other at all, beyond the usual family get-togethers. All I remember is how lovely it was to be away from her, not to see myself reflected in Ellen every morning, to make friends who didn’t know her. Then I met Olaf, and my ambivalent feelings towards her suddenly seemed excessive and childish, and she and I grew closer. When Agnar and Hedda were born, those old feelings became nothing but the faintest of flickers, reminding me of how things used to be.

After two and a half glasses of wine and enough time in the sun to leave the tip of my nose tingling with sunburn, I feel more relaxed. I’m pleased that Olaf took control of the situation, pleased that Agnar got to see the Colosseum, that he has parents who give him the space he needs to learn that freedom comes with responsibility. I feel pleased to be sitting with my brother and sister in a tourist café in Rome as our mother peruses Italian contemporary art and our father wanders around the Vatican.

I don’t dare mention my concern for Agnar again, not after Ellen and Håkon had looked so perplexed when I’d told them how stressed I was feeling before I’d even sat down. We’ve had long discussions about this in the past and I know that Håkon thinks I’m overprotective, that the children are subjected to too many rules and that I have too many anxieties as a result of it all. Ellen is fascinated by the way we give our children so much support, as she’s commented somewhat sarcastically several times, though she’s not even bothered to state her feelings outright this past year – she’s simply withdrawn from the conversation whenever we’ve started talking about bringing up children. And even though I understand what she’s saying, that we’re part of a bigger trend, I don’t know how I could possibly do things any differently. If I refuse to do all of those things that are expected of parents these days, it would only harm Agnar and Hedda, they’d find themselves outsiders.

‘It’s almost half two,’ Ellen says, interrupting Håkon’s reflections on the fact that we perceive Italian families to be large, when in fact families here now have just over one child on average.

‘Beyond the fact that it says something about recession and family policies that aren’t fit for purpose, it’s not all that catastrophic in itself. Having lots of children shouldn’t be something to aim for. Quite the opposite, in fact,’ he says. ‘The world is overpopulated as things are.’

Ellen talks over him as he utters the last few words, loudly parodying Mum, who, regardless of whether anyone has asked, has a habit of checking the time before announcing it to all and sundry.

We’ve teased her incessantly about it and it’s become an inside joke between Håkon, Ellen and me, and even with Olaf, Agnar and myself. All the same, her declarations have a steadfast quality about them, neutral and informative. Even though we imitate Mum’s tone in jest, Håkon, Ellen and I have started declaring the time to one another and to others outside of the family, giving us something to say when things go quiet, providing a neat way of bringing social gatherings to a close, or simply taking the form of a snippet of information to share.

I laugh at Ellen. Her impersonations are better than anyone else’s I know; there’s something about her ability to observe and imitate the tiniest of gestures, her mimicry; the slightest toss of the head or change to her expression and suddenly she is transformed into Mum, Grandma, a friend or some well-known politician or actor.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘God, relax will you, he’s fourteen,’ Håkon says.

We suddenly become aware that Ellen’s reminder of the time was an attempt to put my mind at ease, a point in common, a shared reference. I wonder how much of it is genetic, if we’re programmed in the same way, if that’s why we share this intuitive understanding of and for one another, or if it’s simply a learned behaviour, a way of thinking, speaking, making associations, concluding matters. Either way, Ellen, Håkon and I share these connections, unspoken and unceasing, irrespective of time or place.

Back when I was a journalist, recently graduated and working freelance for a women’s magazine, I researched and wrote a piece on twins separated at birth. However, unlike the usual tales of such cases, my article focused on a pair of identical twins who looked the same, sounded the same when they spoke and had the same mannerisms, but who lived entirely different lives, making entirely different decisions and holding very different values – one voted for left-wing parties while the other held right-wing beliefs, they had no common interests and they didn’t share one another’s taste in food, music or films; when it came down to it, there were no similarities between them beyond their physical appearance. Neither of them felt like half of one whole, they’d never felt as if they were missing a brother they’d had no idea existed throughout childhood, as I had so often read in stories of this nature, and they were completely unable to guess what the other might be thinking or to complete one another’s sentences.

My editor didn’t want the story, didn’t think there was anything sensational or fascinating about it; she wanted to hear the opposite, in fact, telling me that it would have been far more interesting if they had made the same decisions, liked the same foods and did finish one another’s sentences. I have a sneaking suspicion she was an only child.

Agnar strolls in our direction at ten past three, and I have to restrain myself from roaring every thought that has run through my mind over the past ten minutes at him, because Olaf puts an arm around him and praises him, hasn’t he done well, Liv? And he seems to have grown a foot taller from the experience, he looks proud and mature, his back as straight as a ruler. So instead I embrace him, kissing his forehead and cupping my hands around his face; he still has such soft, round cheeks. Only a few pimples around his nose testify to the fact that the transition from childhood to adulthood has begun.

‘He has,’ I say, smiling. ‘You’ve done brilliantly. Did you have fun?’

I almost regret asking the question when Agnar regales me with a breakdown of the Colosseum in minute detail, but his talking continues until we reach the hotel, and I’m able to lean my head against the window of the taxi, Olaf squeezing my hand as we drive past the hotel we’ve stayed in on numerous occasions. I squeeze back and stroke the back of his hand with my thumb, suddenly excited about the days to come, leaving Rome, Olaf on a sunbed beside me with a book in his hands, watching Hedda and Agnar swimming in the pool – and the rest of the family buzzing around me, as I’ve pictured it while sitting in my office in Oslo, longing for the holiday to arrive. For once I’ve managed to convince myself that even if only half of what I’m imagining comes to fruition, I’ll be content.

We’ve divided ourselves up between three cars and drive out of Rome in convoy: Olaf, the children and me in the first car, Simen and Ellen in the second, and Mum, Dad and Håkon in the third. Despite the fact that Olaf drives unforgivably slowly in the impatient Italian traffic, Mum still fails to follow us at the roundabout; she takes the wrong exit and I watch as their car disappears in the throng of vehicles behind us.

I tell Olaf we’ll have to stop or turn around, but the road takes us onto a three-lane motorway with cars on all sides and we’re forced to carry on. I call Dad.

‘Hello, Sverre speaking,’ Dad says, as he always does when he answers the phone, even after getting a mobile that allows him to see who’s calling him.

More than once I’ve pointed out the absurdity of answering in the same manner when he can see that it’s me or someone else he knows – certainly when he’s likely to have a fair idea of who’s going to be on the other end of the phone – but he believes that it’s standard etiquette to state one’s name when you pick up the telephone, regardless of the circumstances.

‘Hi, you’ve gone the wrong way,’ I say.

‘Isn’t that you in front of us?’ Dad asks.

‘No, you took the wrong turn-off at the roundabout,’ I tell him.

‘I see, and where are you now?’ Dad asks calmly.

‘Where are we? I don’t know, Dad, we’re on our way out of Rome. You need to tell Mum to turn around and make her way back to the roundabout and then take the third exit. Then you’ll need to follow the satnav.’

‘It’s not working,’ Dad says. ‘Liv says we need to turn around,’ I hear him relay to Mum, and I can’t hear her response.

‘It does, Olaf set it up before we set off,’ I tell him. ‘Can you pass it to Håkon and ask him to sort it out for you?’

‘He’s asleep,’ Dad says, and I hear such a loud hooting sound from outside their car that I’m forced to hold the phone away from my ear. Mum shouts something or other.

‘For heaven’s sake, wake him up,’ I say. ‘You need your satnav, we’ll wait for you along the way once we find somewhere to pull over. Call me when you come off at the big roundabout.’

‘The satnav doesn’t work, as I said, but we’ll manage,’ Dad says, and it’s clear that he’s not going to wake Håkon, both out of a sense of pride – he’s generally unwilling to ask for help, particularly where technology is concerned – and also out of consideration for Håkon; if he’s tired, he should be allowed to sleep.

Both he and Mum lost a little of their hearts to Håkon, as Mum likes to say, as Håkon was born with a heart condition and they were led to believe he wouldn’t survive for more than a few weeks. I remember it well, his tiny body inside the incubator, all of the leads making him look like some sort of extra-terrestrial.

When I was on the maternity ward after Agnar was born, I thought about Mum a lot, what it must have been like for her to lie there as I did then, only without her baby by her side, what it must have felt like to know that he was all alone elsewhere in the large, complex hospital building, a tiny hole in his tiny heart.

Ellen and I stayed with Grandma when Håkon was born, and Dad came the following day. He sat at the kitchen table and cried, almost totally unaware of Ellen and me, both standing there silently and watching him. I didn’t know what to do with myself, he told Grandma, who held his hand as though he were a little child, you can’t imagine what it was like, I spent all night running back and forth between the delivery room and intensive care, he said.

He and Mum took it in turns to stay at the hospital in the months that followed. Håkon had an operation, he changed colour and started squealing, and both Mum and Dad were so grateful for his wails that Ellen and I grew frustrated. Can’t you make him be quiet, I said one night after they’d brought him home – Dad rocked a screaming Håkon in the living room, which was just under my bedroom, all with a blissful look on his face – and I remember him saying that at that moment, Håkon crying was to him the most beautiful sound in the world.

The fear that Håkon would die turned into certainty that he was a little bit different, a little more fragile, possibly a little more important than everyone else. Mum and Dad dealt with Håkon in a completely different way from how they did things with Ellen and me. They were told by the doctors that he might experience some developmental delays, that he might have learning difficulties or various other behavioural issues, but in spite of the fact that Håkon was a head taller and a shoulder’s width broader than his classmates, even in primary school, or that he was able to read and write and count before he started school, or that he was almost exaggeratedly empathetic where others were concerned, Mum never stopped worrying about him, and almost refused to accept that he was entirely normal.

Instead it was Ellen who turned out to be dyslexic, a discovery that was made too late, something she still blames Mum and Dad for – because they spent all their time worrying about Håkon, she tells anyone who’ll listen, and everyone just thought I was stupid. That’s not true, nobody thought Ellen was stupid, it’s something she’s read about dyslexics somewhere and adopted for her own use to make a point, but it’s true that it took a long time for her to be diagnosed, mostly because Ellen was so bright that she developed her own system for understanding words, managing to read just fine using her own method throughout primary school.

Håkon was also a sincerely longed-for third child. Mum and Dad had been trying for another baby ever since Ellen turned two, and even though both of them assured Ellen and me that they’d be delighted with the outcome regardless of the sex of the baby, I’m convinced they wanted a boy. There’s nothing odd about that, it’s just odd that they both insisted – even to one another, I’m sure – that they’d be just as happy if they were to have another girl.

When I fell pregnant with Hedda, I hoped she’d be a girl, and I was very open about that with everyone I spoke to. You can’t say things like that, Liv, Mum told me. Why not? I replied. Someone would have to be exceedingly simple to fail to grasp the fact that I’ll love my child regardless. But as things stand, I’d be happier with a girl, and I don’t see the issue in saying so. I’m just glad you didn’t end up having a boy who’d have had to go through life hearing about how you’d wished for a different child altogether, Mum said when it turned out I’d been expecting a girl all along. I replied that I hoped I’d never have such insecure, impetuous children, regardless of their sex.

Nobody knows why Mum and Dad had so much difficulty conceiving Håkon, why it took so many years and so many miscarriages, but Mum eventually sought help from a private clinic, where it was suggested that it might have something to do with a birth-related injury from when she’d had Ellen. A terrible delivery, as Mum always says, to Ellen’s great irritation. Do you want me to be grateful or something? Ellen always asks her, followed by a squabble that is almost identical every time; they’re so alike, and both equally stubborn, sometimes it’s as if they’re competing over something that nobody else could ever comprehend.

Håkon was a sorely wanted child, in any case, and remains so. He still acts like a child in the family context, assuming the role of the youngest, a hapless youth, sprawling out on the sofa while the rest of us cook meals, leaving the table without clearing his plate, sitting in company with his headphones on and his laptop out in the middle of the living room, and it wasn’t so long ago that he would still take his washing home to Mum and Dad – and that only stopped after his most recent girlfriend made a point of mentioning it to him. When it’s just Ellen, Håkon and me, he’s totally different, a grown man who participates in adult conversation and has his own adult issues to deal with.

But sitting in the back seat of Mum and Dad’s car as they drive through Italy, as far as Dad is concerned he needs his sleep, in spite of everything going on around him, and I end the conversation without mentioning the satnav or offering to wait for them again.

Olaf’s brother’s house is on a small hill in a medium-sized coastal town on the Riviera. We drive part of the way alongside the Mediterranean Sea, which sparkles turquoise in the sunshine, and part of the way further up in the dry, olive-brown mountains, passing through tiny villages where it seems that time has stood still, even though Olaf thinks I’m narrow-minded to say so.

‘What do you know about it?’ he asks. ‘You don’t know anything about her, or her life,’ he continues, pointing at an old lady dressed in black sitting on a stool outside her home, seemingly doing nothing at all.

I don’t respond. Instead I turn to Hedda and Agnar in the back of the car, each looking out of their own window.

‘Just think, people live out here,’ I say to them.

Mum always used to say that to us if we drove past places that seemed abandoned or uninhabitable in our eyes, whether we were at home in Norway or abroad. I remember one area of Portugal in particular; we’d rented a car and had driven up into the hills by the Algarve. I might have been fourteen at the time. We had driven along endless narrow, winding country roads; it was so hot that the heat flickered in the air just above the surface of the road ahead of us, and Ellen and I were stunned when Dad told us quite seriously that we could have fried an egg on the asphalt. We drove through a small village consisting of ten or twelve houses, a small square and a petrol station where Dad stopped to fill up. The station resembled a little shanty hut more than anything else, the signs and pumps reddish-brown with rust. Outside, a man sat in the patch of shade offered by a small parasol, getting up as we pulled in. He smiled, Ellen said afterwards that he’d only had one tooth, and he filled the car with petrol for Dad even though Dad would have preferred to have done it himself, and when we drove away afterwards, he stood there and watched us go. Ellen and I turned and looked at him through the back window as he grew smaller and smaller. Just think, people live out here, Mum said, as usual, and suddenly I understood what she meant. I felt a surge of overwhelming sympathy for the man who had to remain here, out in the wilderness somewhere in Portugal, outside a petrol station; this was actually his life. I spent the rest of the holiday thinking about him, burdened with a sense of guilt as I went about my daily activities. Back at the hotel a few days later, I asked Mum if she thought he had a family. She couldn’t remember him at first, and I started to cry as I explained who I was talking about, the lonely man with no teeth from the petrol station, who no doubt sat there day in and day out, no family or friends or money, no life at all. Oh, him. My love, Mum said, smiling at me, he’d probably find our life in Oslo unbearably tiresome and hectic. We needn’t pity those who don’t live life exactly the way we do.

Neither Agnar nor Hedda appear to have any particular reaction to the same phrase. Agnar is mostly busy explaining to us all about the algae that gives the Mediterranean Sea its azure-blue colour, and Hedda blinks, nodding off. I wonder if it’s worth the effort required to try to keep her awake until bedtime, to avoid her disturbing and delaying the relaxing evening I’ve imagined awaits me, or if I should just let her sleep. She nods off before I make up my mind, and I don’t say anything to Olaf, who is usually more concerned with the children’s sleeping habits than I am.

After four hours in the car, Olaf turns into a flagstone driveway some way up the mountainside, the sun now low in the sky, hovering just above the sea. I can’t see the house for all the vegetation around our parking space, but I catch sight of a small set of steps hidden among the greenery and Hedda and Agnar disappear up them, running off the long car journey. Olaf flashes me an expectant, self-assured smile. I follow them, emerging on a south-facing terrace with a view of the small town in its entirety, and the distant horizon beyond that. Agnar and Hedda shriek with delight at the pool that juts out slightly over the edge, and I feel my own tingle of childish glee at the pale-blue chlorinated water, even though the Mediterranean lies just beneath us, tranquil and inviting.

The others join us up on the terrace. Olaf opens the glass double doors leading into the house, we make our way into a large kitchen with red terracotta tiles and open shelves and everybody goes off in their own direction, exploring the large house that Olaf has never suggested is anything more than a small holiday home he allowed his brother to inherit when their parents died several years ago – I hear Ellen’s shriek of delight and Dad’s murmurs of approval. Mum follows me into the largest bedroom, a southwest-facing room with a fresco painted on the ceiling; it smells of fabric softener and the sea. She stands at the window saying nothing, her hair lustrous in the light of the red sun, and for a moment I find myself worrying that she thinks it’s too garish, too extravagant and vulgar, but then she smiles at me.

‘What a place,’ she says, and I think she means it in a good way, running her hand along the wide windowsill.

‘Yes, I had no idea it was so spacious,’ I say. ‘It almost makes me a little bitter to think that Olaf passed it up.’

‘It didn’t look quite like this when his brother inherited it, though, I was under the impression he’d spent years doing it up,’ Mum says.

I wonder when she and Olaf talked about it, he’s never told me all that much about the place.

‘Yes, well, still,’ I say.

‘I think you ought to be glad you don’t own it; imagine the upkeep,’ Mum says. She sees upkeep everywhere she looks, in every house or cabin Ellen and I have ever considered buying. No, she’d say, just think of the upkeep, her conscience no doubt weighing on her over all the upkeep she neglected to undertake in the cabin in Lillesand that she inherited.

‘I’m just glad that Olaf wanted his brother to have it, to be honest, glad that it didn’t turn into some kind of ugly inheritance fall-out,’ I tell her, and I mean it.

‘Yes, that’s understandable,’ Mum says, and her response harks back to a conversation that’s been had several times now, between her and me but also with the family as a whole, about the incomprehensible nature of fall-outs over inheritance that go on for so long that people stop talking to one another, about the way in which material possessions can tear emotional bonds to shreds, trumping memories and genes and any sense of belonging.

Olaf, who had been in the middle of dividing his parents’ assets when one of these conversations had unfolded, had argued that things weren’t as simple as all that, that material possessions can become metaphors for suppressed emotions, or for fair or unfair treatment, and that these things often only come to light under such circumstances. I don’t know if he felt that way about his own younger brother, I don’t think he did. I think the reason he allowed his brother to have the house in Italy at market value was to do with the fact that he didn’t really want it, but I believe it was also a consequence of his exaggerated and sometimes unnecessary concern for his brother, as well as the fact that Olaf didn’t wish to owe him anything, as was his wont, not even in the long run. Anyway, we’ve got enough money, he said, and he’s right, we do, but so does his brother, I think to myself as I stand here, and I feel embarrassed at the sudden stab of jealousy I feel, just as I always do – our family isn’t preoccupied with material things, and certainly not with money.

I’ve always felt certain that when the day comes to split the inheritance we receive from our parents, Ellen, Håkon and I will agree to divide everything equally between us, and that anything that doesn’t lend itself to being split in such a way will be shared out fairly, that we’ll be generous with one another. Olaf has challenged me on this assumption: What if Håkon wants the cabin in Lillesand? He doesn’t want the cabin in Lillesand, I’ve replied, and I know that’s the case, he’d rather have Grandma and Grandad’s cabin in Vindeggen. But what if, Olaf insists, and I tell him that we’ll find a solution if that’s the case, but I know that the only solution is that it’s passed on to me, it’s quite simply unthinkable that it should go to Håkon or Ellen, and I feel the same way now, as Mum and Dad grow older, it’s unthinkable that Ellen or Håkon should receive any more than me, that they should emerge from things more favourably than I do.

‘I’m so glad we’ve come away like this,’ Mum says all of a sudden on her way out of the room, stopping before she reaches the door, standing in front of me, her expression grave.

I smile at her.

‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘I feel the same.’

She wraps her arms around me and hugs me. We’re exactly the same height, but her body is softer than mine, plumper and warmer, which makes her hugs some of the softest and most soothing I can imagine.

‘You’re not dying, are you?’ I mumble into her hair, as we often say when one of us gets overly sentimental, only ever half-joking.

Mum laughs and lets me go.

‘No, I’m not dying.’