The Doll Read online

  Her laptop was still busy alerting her to comments and likes when she put it down on the coffee table without bothering to close the lid and went to bed.

  Dísa awoke with a jerk. As she sat up, she registered through her disorientation that she’d been disturbed by a strange noise, a loud crash that was totally out of keeping with the quiet of their home at night. Sleepily, she pushed back the duvet and got up to see what was going on.

  As her head cleared, Dísa remembered the empty tins she had piled up behind the curtain on the windowsill in the little dining area that she rarely used. The window faced onto the back garden. The Greater Reykjavík area had recently suffered a spate of burglaries and Dísa had thought this the most likely place for thieves to try to get in. The noise of the falling tins was supposed to frighten them away – to some other house.

  If the news was to be believed, the crime wave was over, but Dísa had left the tins there, though she didn’t always check any more that the window was closed. Had it been open when she went to bed? She couldn’t remember, and her suspicion now grew that the noise had come from the tins. What else could it have been? She paused, frozen in her bedroom doorway, trying to come up with a less alarming explanation than a burglary. A cat had got in. A glass vase had fallen on the floor in the neighbours’ flat upstairs. There had been a collision in the street outside the house. A large bird had flown into the windowpane. The TV had switched itself on of its own accord. There had been an earthquake. There were any number of harmless possibilities.

  Dísa relaxed a little. As she did so, she realised she was desperate for a pee.

  She decided to buy herself a little time by going to the loo first to relieve her bladder. She wasn’t exactly keen to undertake a patrol of the flat, convinced she would have a heart attack if she so much as bumped into a cat. And yet it struck her that, considering the circumstances, she was peculiarly calm. Normally she was a bag of nerves over nothing more alarming than a gale forecast, even though they didn’t have a trampoline in the garden or loose tiles on the roof. She sat on the loo, feeling rather pleased with herself for keeping her cool. But the feeling didn’t last long. From the sitting room came the familiar sound of the laptop starting up. Her heart lurched, until she remembered that the computer had a habit of restarting once its automatic updates had finished. That must be it. After all, what kind of burglar would sit down to surf the web in the middle of a break-in?

  That monstrous doll was watching her from the bathtub. Dísa averted her eyes and concentrated on peeing, but her gaze was drawn back irresistibly to the doll. She stared, mesmerised, at the plastic eye that seemed to be following her movements as she reached for the loo paper. It was an optical illusion, of course, like one of those portraits whose eyes seem to be watching you. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  Another noise drove the doll from Dísa’s mind. It wasn’t the clatter of tins. Or a cat. Or a collision. Or a vase smashing to smithereens. And it certainly wasn’t an earthquake. It was a familiar, everyday sound.

  It was the loose block of parquet creaking in the hallway just outside the bathroom.

  Dísa stood up, her pyjama bottoms round her ankles, and took a step towards the door that she had closed from habit. Before she could reach the lock, the handle was turned from the other side. The door opened slowly inwards and, as she saw the person standing there, Dísa could have sworn that the doll in the bathtub grinned.

  The present

  May

  Chapter 2

  The zip tore into the quiet of the night as Abby opened the tent flap. Earlier that day, the silence had seemed pleasant, with only the birdsong to remind her that she and her boyfriend weren’t completely alone in this unfamiliar land. But now it felt oppressive. The birds had stopped singing and were no doubt asleep somewhere among the tussocks or in the knee-high birch scrub next to the tent. Ever since she and Lenny had left the city, it was as if nature had been given a crew-cut: nothing grew higher than a foot or so off the ground. It had taken a bit of getting used to, but before long she had come to appreciate the landscape. You could see for miles in every direction and she soon found that she didn’t miss trees one bit. She had always been a little afraid of woods after all the fairytales she had grown up with about children losing their way among the endless, identical trees, never to be seen again in some cases. Mind you, the tourist website she had read before the trip had made it abundantly clear that you could also get lost in a country with no forests. And, as in the tales from her childhood, you might never be seen again.

  The wind changed, carrying the smell of ashes over to Abby. They had built a small, round hearth of stones next to the tent. There may have been no trees here but you certainly couldn’t complain of a shortage of rocks. For kindling they had used some dry sticks that Lenny had gathered among the scrub. These had burnt up so fast that the sausages had been charred on the outside and cold in the middle, but they had eaten them anyway. In fact, they had both been secretly relieved that the fire had died down so quickly. The moment the twigs caught, it had dawned on them that if the flames escaped from the rough stone circle they could set fire to the pasture, taking their tent and the two of them with it. This wasn’t the first time they had belatedly become aware of their own foolishness. The trip itself was the best evidence of that. If they had only stopped to think beforehand, Abby wouldn’t have been about to crawl into a cold, dank tent on a chilly spring night in a country that made up for its lack of trees with an overabundance of rocks and gusts of wind. Abby forced her mind back to the unbearable heat of Spain; to their fiery red shoulders, peeling from the merciless sun, and the sweat that had poured off them after any exertion greater than reaching for a water bottle. To be fair, Lenny had tolerated the heat better than she had as his skin wasn’t as pale and he’d found it easier to ignore the discomfort. He had even managed to venture out from under the sunshade. Their budget hotel had so few intact sun loungers or umbrellas that they’d had to wake up at the crack of dawn if they wanted to secure both. While Abby languished in the shade beside the swimming pool, trying not to pass out, Lenny had chatted a bit to the other guests or brought her food and drinks. She hadn’t been able to move an inch until evening. Even then it had been unbearably hot, but at least she’d been spared the cruel sun.

  When Lenny, returning from a stroll, had perched on her sun lounger and suggested giving up on Spain as a bad job and going to Iceland instead, she had almost burst into tears with relief. The very name had sounded like a cooling lotion. She had only just noticed that her toes had been poking out from under the towel that she had draped over her legs, and now they resembled angry little cocktail sausages.

  Once evening came and the sun had gone down, the idea lost some of its appeal. All sorts of practical considerations reared their heads but like cheap fireworks, they appeared with a crack but fizzled out almost immediately as she chose to ignore them. If she and Lenny had stopped to give it a moment’s proper thought, the idea would have been nipped in the bud. Initially she had been a bit worried about where they were going to stay and how they were supposed to get around, as hotels and travel in Iceland were bound to be way over their budget. Even Spain had been a luxury they couldn’t really afford. They could pay their rent at the beginning of every month, but the further they got from pay-day, the more pinched their circumstances became. Their credit cards were already way over the limit and their debit cards nothing more than a gateway to their overdrafts. The supply of euros they had brought along as travel money was fast being depleted. All of this made a trip to Iceland an absurd proposition. But they had gone for it anyway; Lenny had talked her into it.

  He’d said he could sort them a couple of free airline tickets from a man he had got chatting to at the swimming-pool bar. The man couldn’t use the tickets himself and had told Lenny they were his if he wanted. It would cost them a small fee to change the names on the tickets, if they really felt that was necessary, but that was all. The man added that he’d
rented two bicycles as well and couldn’t get a refund on those, so he’d throw them in too if they liked.

  It was a pity he hadn’t booked non-refundable accommodation as well. Instead, he had given Lenny a tent and two sleeping bags he had bought for the trip. It was only later, when they got the camping gear out and saw what cheap tat it was, that they realised the gesture hadn’t been as generous as it sounded.

  Who needs hotels? Camping’s way cooler and you’re allowed to pitch your tent anywhere in Iceland. We can just head off wherever we like on the bikes. Iceland’s so awesome that I’m sure we won’t have to go far to see something amazing. We’ll just bring food with us. After all, we’d have to buy it anyway if we stayed in Spain.

  This is what they had told themselves, but many of their assumptions had turned out to be doubtful, if not wholly misinformed. For example, before making up their minds, they had read online that according to ancient laws, you were free to camp almost anywhere in Iceland. This had turned out to be only partly true. In practice, as references to these old laws were laughed off by angry landowners, they realised that the internet had interpreted them rather loosely. That first evening it had taken them hours to find a spot to pitch their tent. They had eventually opted for some mossy moorland on the outskirts of the city, only to be chased off at the crack of dawn the following morning. Hopefully things would improve now that they had crossed the mountains east of the capital and descended to the lowlands again. No one had objected to their new campsite yet.

  Lenny had been insistent that they should get out beyond the city limits and wouldn’t hear of taking things easy and spending the first night in Reykjavík as they had originally discussed. The plan had been to stay at the campsite in Laugardalur, to give them a chance to try out the famous open-air geothermal swimming pool. But Lenny had changed his mind and was adamant that they should get straight out of the city. This surprised her, since he’d never given the impression of being a nature lover before. Not until the built-up area was left behind did he relax and start to enjoy himself. She didn’t comment on this about-face, just felt grateful that he was himself again. She had been afraid the trip would be ruined by his having second thoughts. To be fair, he had tried to hide his worries from her, but she knew him too well.

  Abby crawled into the tent and zipped the flap shut behind her. They had eventually turned off the road and hunkered down among the absurdly large tussocks of a rough, dun-coloured pasture, beside some low birch scrub. Behind them rose a mountain that hadn’t initially appeared that high or that steep, but had turned out to be a much tougher climb than they’d anticipated.

  It was unlikely that anyone would chase them off this patch, in spite of the sign on the fence they had clambered over, which had warned that it was private property and camping was forbidden. They had decided to risk it anyway, as there seemed to be so few locals around. Apart from in the small town they had cycled past, most of the other people they had seen were tourists like them. It was almost as though the roads were reserved for the use of tour buses and rental cars. It appeared that none of the locals and hardly any of the other tourists were crazy enough to try and get around by bike, apart from one couple who had overtaken them without so much as a glance.

  It was even colder inside the tent, if such a thing were possible. Although the weather was dry down here in the lowlands, it had rained while they were crossing the mountains and there was a strong smell emanating from the wet waterproofs that they had hung up on the poles inside. Abby was sure the clothes were just as wet now as when they had taken them off. The smell didn’t improve when she removed her shoes, but she didn’t care. Her aching body had been crying out for a rest all day and now at last she could lie down. Putting in her little Bluetooth earbuds, she selected her favourite song on her phone. She ought to be saving the battery but one more track wouldn’t hurt.

  With the poignant melody playing in her ears, Abby reached for the lantern at the foot of her sleeping bag and switched it on. It was shoddily made and she had to bang it several times before it would cast a weak glow over the chaos inside the tent. She frowned as she contemplated the mess. It looked somehow different from when she and Lenny had set out earlier that evening. But perhaps it was just the effect of the peculiar semi-darkness of the Arctic night.

  Abby exhaled, her breath forming white clouds that disappeared almost immediately, unlike the thick, fragrant smoke of her Vape, which was buried somewhere under the mound of clothes and empty food packaging. She had a sour taste in her mouth but was too tired to root around for her toothbrush and water bottle. She’d make it her first task when she woke up in the morning.

  Abby braced herself, then quickly pulled off her coat and began to undress. She had discovered the previous evening that the sleeping bag was more effective if you were almost naked. Her thighs and calves felt as if they were on fire once she had taken off her trousers. She couldn’t bring herself to remove her socks as well, since her toes were still sore from the sunburn, so she would just have to sleep in them. The hard day’s ride, topped off with a spot of impromptu mountaineering that evening, had just about finished her off. She was no cyclist – neither was Lenny, for that matter. They didn’t even have a gym membership between them at home. It’ll only take us a day to break ourselves in, he had said with unfounded optimism. How wrong he had been. She felt worse now than she had this morning.

  She was aware, suddenly, of a desperate urge to pee. With a groan, Abby reached for the shoes at her feet. If Lenny could walk up the mountain in nothing but a thin pair of shorts, she should be able to survive a quick dash outside in her knickers. She aimed the lantern at the groundsheet in search of the toilet roll. Just then, the track she was listening to finished and she heard something that sounded like a cry. Taking out her earbuds, she listened. ‘Lenny?’ Could he have fallen over and broken his leg and be calling for help? She’d had the music turned up so high, he could have been shouting for a couple of minutes for all she knew.

  She heard rustling outside as if someone was moving quickly through the dry scrub behind the tent. Abby relaxed. It must be Lenny. He had lagged behind on the walk back, having drunk most of the cheap red wine they had carried up the mountain with them. The climb had been his idea, conceived when he was halfway down a flask of the vile local schnapps that they’d picked up in Duty Free. It had tasted like cough mixture to Abby. Thick, dark, heavy, like one of those bitter medicines in which menthol is used to disguise the taste. A single sip had been enough for her, and nothing Lenny could say about schnapps keeping you warm had changed her mind. He’d had the flask to himself; not that he had seemed any warmer than her on the hike. If anything, the opposite appeared to be true. Certainly, red wine didn’t possess any warming properties – after they had finished the bottle on top of the mountain, she had felt as if her whole body was encased in a sheath of ice.

  She should have talked Lenny out of the climb. But, if she was honest, Abby had been tempted by the thought of the spectacular photos they’d get from the top: their feet in battered trainers, plastic cups half full of red wine and the scenery stretching out below. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten about the dusk, which had gradually crept up on them. By the time they were finally perched at the top of the steep slope, the light was too poor and the photos she did take, like most of the others on this trip, weren’t good enough for social media. So far all her efforts had been spoilt by rain or grey skies or strangers blundering into her carefully chosen frame. If things went on like this, she wouldn’t have anything worth posting. She’d be the first visitor to Iceland who hadn’t filled her social media pages with enviable images.

  To make matters worse, they only had one portable charger between them and once that ran out of juice, their phone batteries would die and there would be no more photos. There were no electric sockets out here to plug their phones into. So far, they had saved their batteries by keeping their phones switched to flight mode and turning them off when they weren’t using th
em as cameras. But, even so, every time she switched on her phone, the battery had lost a little more power. Just as well tomorrow was supposed to provide some good opportunities for cool pictures. One of the things that had kept her going was the thought of getting to tell the world about the trip once it was over, by which time it would be too late for her family to be pissed off at their recklessness and extravagance. She had started getting cold feet as soon as the sweltering heat of Spain was behind them and she and Lenny were sitting in the chilly, air-conditioned plane. Mistake. Big mistake. She knew Lenny felt the same. As they took off, he had seemed nervous, as if he too were having regrets. But neither had said anything; they had just exchanged weak smiles, then stared in silence at the seatbacks in front of them.

  In fact, Lenny had started having second thoughts before they’d even boarded the plane. The night before they set off she had woken to see him fiddling with the camping gear. She had raised her head and told him everything would be fine; they’d manage. Apparently embarrassed at being caught red-handed having doubts about their ability to survive a camping trip in Iceland, Lenny had told her he was going out for a vape and would take out their rubbish while he was there. She had fallen asleep again by the time he came back.

  The rustling stopped and she wondered if Lenny had paused to take a leak. She strained her ears but couldn’t hear any sound of trickling. Besides, it was unlikely given how often he’d already had to stop on the way down the mountain. That’s why he had lagged so far behind. She had been too cold to hang around waiting for him.

  Perhaps he was just catching his breath. The rustling had approached the tent fast, as if Lenny had been running. He must be in a hurry to get inside and lie down. She hoped to God he wasn’t in the mood for sex. That definitely wasn’t on the agenda, not after the chafing her inner thighs had suffered from the bike saddle.