Sentrum (English)

The bus comes at 21:47. Hege Lunde knows this as surely as she knows that it is fifty-four steps down from her third-floor flat, and that there is less left in her account until the twentieth than there ought to be.

First she puts Sander to bed. He is three and will only fall asleep if she keeps her palm on his back until his breathing slows. Then Thea, seven, who wants the door left open exactly a hand’s width, no more and no less. Emil is ten and reads under the duvet with a torch. Hege pretends not to see, because at least one thing in that flat should belong to him alone.

Then she does the washing-up and makes three packed lunches for school and kindergarten: bread with liver pâté, bread with brown cheese, and for Emil no butter, because he doesn’t want butter anymore. She hangs the wet jackets over the radiator. She looks at the clock.

At 21:40 she puts on her windbreaker, slips the baby monitor into her pocket (she has left its transmitter by Sander’s cot in her bedroom) and locks the door.

The building stands in Tunga, between a tyre warehouse and a garage called Bilsenter, though only two people work there. A four-storey block from the sixties, built for workers from factories that no longer exist. Now it houses those who didn’t make it anywhere else. Outside it smells of wet asphalt and rubber. Freight trains pass behind the warehouses on the Meråker Line, and on Saturday evenings the floodlights of the trotting track at Leangen come on above the rooftops.

The Tungasletta stop is across the road. From the bench she can see the window of the children’s room, where Emil and Thea sleep. She would never sit anywhere she couldn’t see it from.

There is an advertisement for Gran Canaria in the shelter. A woman in a white hat laughs into the sun. The poster has hung there since August, and in one corner the rain is peeling the film away.

Hege sits and thinks of nothing in particular. In the beginning she would sometimes imagine what she would do in the city centre: change at the central station for the night train to Oslo, which leaves around eleven, or walk to Brattøra, where the Hurtigruten docks. But over time those images faded. She no longer thinks of a place. She thinks only of the sound that would mean the doors had closed behind her.

Rune lives in Stavanger and works on a platform. He pays child support through NAV and has the children twice a year. Last week she texted him to ask whether he might come to one of Emil’s matches. He replied three days later: “Send me the schedule.” Nothing more. When he calls, he speaks to her kindly, the way you would to a nurse who once looked after your broken leg.

At 21:47 lights appear around the bend. The display reads SENTRUM.

Hege raises her hand.

She does it every time. If she didn’t raise her hand, the bus would drive past, and that would be something else. A woman sitting at a bus stop in the rain. A raised hand is a question, and she has to ask it again every evening.

The doors open with a hiss. Warm air rolls out, and the smell of wet jackets. At the back sit two lads in work trousers and an older woman with a Rema 1000 bag, chewing gum. The driver is always the same one, on weekdays at least: a man of about sixty, with grey stubble and reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. The first week he asked her, “Skal du med?” Coming? She shook her head. The second week he no longer asked. Now he just waits. Five seconds, sometimes six. He looks at her and she looks at him, and in that look there is neither pity nor impatience.

She doesn’t know his name.

The doors close. The bus pulls away towards Leangen, and its tail lights stretch out on the wet road like two red ribbons.

After it has gone, she looks up. The curtain in the children’s room has been pulled aside. A small figure in panda pyjamas stands at the window.

Thea.

Hege doesn’t know how long she has been standing there. The baby monitor is silent; Thea isn’t on it. Hege raises her hand halfway, the same movement she uses to stop the bus, and falters. Thea doesn’t wave. The curtain falls back into place.

Fifty-four steps. Thea lies facing the wall, breathing too evenly to be asleep. Hege sits on the edge of the bed and for a long time says nothing. Then she gets up and leaves the door open exactly a hand’s width.

In the morning Thea eats her porridge and asks nothing. Emil looks for his other glove. Sander spills his juice. Nobody says anything, and Hege doesn’t know whether it is mercy.

In the evening at 21:40 she puts on her windbreaker. The baby monitor glows green. Behind the warehouses a freight train sounds its horn. On the stairs she counts on her way down, and somewhere between thirty and forty she realises she doesn’t know whether she will raise her hand tonight.

Seven minutes to 21:47.