THE BOY AT THE DOOR:
Everyone has secrets. Even those who seem to be perfect...
On a rainy October evening, Cecilia Wilborg – loving wife, devoted mother, tennis club regular – is waiting for her kids to finish their swimming lesson. It's been a long day. She can almost taste the crisp, cold glass of Chablis she'll pour for herself once the girls are tucked up in bed.
But what Cecilia doesn't know, is that this is the last time life will feel normal. Tonight she'll be asked to drop a little boy home, a simple favour that will threaten to expose her deepest, darkest secret...
EXCERPT
ALEX DAHL:
If
my life were a Hollywood movie, then Johan would be the one-dimensional,
classic male lead of the high-school movie genre; the wealthy, good-looking,
sporty guy who also loves puppies. He just can’t help it; he’s inherently
decent. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he was raised in this
sweet and safe little town by wealthy, good-looking, sporty parents who love
puppies and who donate substantial amounts to charity and are still happily
married forty years later. He’s by no means perfect, but his imperfections are
of the rather innocent type; toilet seat up, cycling shorts flung on the floor,
an occasional belch in my presence, insisting on a couple of drunken weekends a
year away with his buddies, too many evenings spent at the gym, not liking
oysters and whistling in the car.
We’ve known each other since childhood, and I remember him as the older,
floppy-haired boy up the road who was always nice to us little rope-skipping
girls. He used to play football on the street with his brother and friends and
sometimes we little girls would be allowed to join in. Once, I tripped over and
grazed my knee, and Johan scooped me up rather graciously and carried me all
the way into my house, delivering me onto the sofa and into the care of my impressed
mother. It can’t have been more than a minute, but I never forgot that episode;
the feeling of complete security as he carried me, the taste of tears at the
back of my throat, his face worried, sweaty at the hairline, my throbbing knee
and the scent of freshly shorn grass on the evening air.
When he became a father, Johan continued in the same vein, not afraid to
adopt all the Scandinavian stereotypes for modern fatherhood; he practically
breastfed. He strolled around Sandefjord proudly with Nicoline, and then
Hermine, in their pink strollers, expertly feeding and burping and changing
them. He got up in the night and walked around the dark house in circles,
holding a little girl carefully, his lower arm pressing gently against a sore
tummy, while Mommy slept, night after night. He complimented me and made me
feel loved when I hated myself and my crumbling, chubby, post-baby body. He
came to prenatal couples’ yoga and sat there straight-faced and serious while
the other dads-to-be stared awkwardly down at their meaty hands and hairy
winter legs bared to the world.
All in all, Johan is a pretty okay man. That doesn’t mean I don’t get
angry with him sometimes. Some people might even say I get disproportionately
angry with him a disproportionate amount, but I genuinely believe men need to
meet some resistance, or they get bored. They need to not entirely know where
they’ve got you, even whether they’ve truly got you at all. Build them up and
shower them with so much sex and affection that they become completely obsessed
with you, and then tear them down. Boom. Hooked. Repeat. This strategy has
certainly worked for me – I have been married to the most desirable man in
Sandefjord for twelve years now, and he could have had anybody.
I’ve been angry with Johan so many times and for so many different
reasons, but I haven’t ever been angry like this before; not with
him nor with anybody else, ever. In the car on the way home, nobody speaks.
We’ve left my car at the school and are returning home in Johan’s Tesla
together, which Johan insisted on as a display of unity. Tobias is in the back
seat. I clench and unclench my fists so hard I leave vivid red marks on my
skin. This isn’t normal anger, I recognize that; it is true fury, the kind when
you might actually murder someone. Images flit through my mind of clawing at
eyes, ripping hair from skulls, sinking knives into soft bellies, kicking faces
to a pulp. I want to kill Johan. I want to scream, but I know that if I open my
mouth, not a sound will come. He stops at a red light, smiles reassuringly at
Tobias in the rearview mirror, and I want to bolt from the car, running down
the near-empty streets, shrieking and howling.
‘We believe the best thing to do would be to take Tobias home with you
now,’ said Vera Jensrud in her pedagogical, soothing voice, after Johan had
thanked them (thanked them!) for asking us to take this kid in. ‘And then this
afternoon, Laila and a colleague will come to your house and you can work out a
plan together. They will have a quick chat with Tobias as well, and then in the
next few days we’ll schedule in some in-depth assessments.’
‘Should he be in school?’ asked Johan, his face still bright with the
prospect of lending himself to such a good cause as a lost, poor little boy.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Laila Fucking Engebretsen. ‘But as he’ll be
registered on your address in the short term, he will no longer be in the
catchment area of this particular school, so he’ll attend your local school.
I’m thinking that Monday would be a good day to start for him, that way he has
a couple of days and a weekend to acclimatize to his new surroundings.’
‘Oh, good. Our daughters will be able to help him settle in, and they
can all walk to school together. They’ll be delighted that we are going to host
Tobias,’ said Johan, and I shot him an ice-cold glance, but modified it a
little when I realized Vera and Laila were both looking at me carefully.
‘Of course, we can give you some time to discuss this between
yourselves...’ Laila said. ‘It is a big decision, and it’s really important
that you are both on board. It would be traumatizing for Tobias to have to move
twice while we attempt to solve his long-term plan.’
‘Yes,’ I
said, at the exact same time as Johan said, ‘No, I think we agree on this,
Cecilia?’
ALEX DAHL:
Alex Dahl is a half-American, half-Norwegian author. Born in Oslo, she wrote The Boy at the Door while living in Sandefjord.
PRAISE FOR THE BOY AT THE DOOR:
"Unsettling, layered, bold, unpredictable, dark. EXCELLENT." Will Dean, author of Dark Pines
"Remarkable... Dahl is able to ring satisfying changes on the familiar ingredients, and her heroine Cecilia, in particular, is one of the most distinctive that readers will have encountered in recent years." Crime Time
"Stunning... an extraordinary plot; intricate and twisted with dark secrets emerging at every turn. An engaging mystery with an ending you won't see coming." Alexandra Burt
“Heartbreaking and HEAD-SPINNING." Mary Torjussen, author of Gone Without a Trace
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