The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann Read Free Book Online Page A

impressed, or intrigued, by the fact that Milla’s mother, Amanda Browne, was a famous, or relatively famous, American photographer living in Norway. Siri remembered browsing in a bookstore and stumbling upon a book of photography by Amanda Browne—this was nine years ago, maybe even ten—and being struck by the stark beauty of the black-and-white images. Amanda Browne had, according to the book’s introduction, photographed everything that was precious to her. Most of the photographs were of her young daughter, lovingly observed, intimately portrayed—playing, sleeping, eating breakfast and getting chocolate milk all over her face, running through tall, sun-scorched grass. The girl’s name was Mildred. There were photographs of other people too. Amanda Browne’s husband, her aging parents, an old aunt with illness written all over her face. And there were several photographs of the flat, blistering summer landscape surrounding Amanda Browne’s house on the outskirts of Oslo.But it was the photographs of the child that moved Siri. She remembered standing in the bookstore, looking at the pictures, and thinking of her own child, of Alma, just a toddler then. She remembered placing the book back on its shelf, jumping on a tram, and going directly to the day-care center where Alma spent a few hours every day. Looking at those photographs, Siri urgently felt the need to find her daughter, to hold her in her arms, touch her face, inhale the warmth of her skin.
    And so here she was. Mildred. Or Milla, as she was called now. Nothing like the strong-willed, suntanned child in the book. Siri had offered her the job. And now she was regretting everything.
    She smiled.
    “My husband is a writer,” she said. “He has a book to finish. I have a small seafood restaurant five minutes from Mailund, as well as a restaurant in Oslo. The seafood restaurant, Gloucester it’s called, after a little fishing port outside of Boston, is only open during the summer months and I’ll be spending most of my time there. It’s a lot of work. I—”
    Siri broke off. There was no point in trying to explain to Milla the amount of work involved in running two restaurants.
    “Also, we like the house to be kept neat and tidy,” she continued. “So it would be good if you could lend a hand with that too. It’s best if everybody in the family helps out, that way it’s easily done and takes little time. And while you’re staying with us you’ll be sort of like one of the family.”
    “Oh, yes,” Milla said, looking bewildered. “It’ll be great. I’m really looking forward to it.”
    She put a hand to her face, stroked her cheek. Her bracelets jingled. She had a whole lot of them on her wrist. (Fine. Silver.) And every time Milla moved her hand, as when she stroked her own cheek—why did she do that?—they jingled.
    “And I’m throwing a party for my mother this summer,” Siri said. “For her seventy-fifth birthday. I’m probably going to need some help with that too.”
    Milla nodded uncertainly.
    Siri never wore jewelry. No bracelets, no earrings, nothing around her neck, only her wedding ring, which she removed every night.
    The sound of Milla’s bracelets reminded her of when she was a little girl, sitting opposite her mother at the kitchen table. There was always complete silence when they sat together like that, except when Jenny turned a page of the book she was reading and her bracelets jingled.
    “We spend all our summers at Mailund,” Siri said, again regretting everything. Surely she and Jon could have split the days between them? They’d done it before. She could have taken Liv in the mornings and he could have taken her in the afternoons when Siri was at the restaurant. Yes, that’s how they had done it in the past. But that hadn’t really worked out, had it? They always ended up fighting about who did what and who didn’t.
    “A big old house,” she said, interrupting her own train of thought. “Oh, and we have