The Mist

to concentrate on her writing and painting. ‘She was very artistic,’ her mother had said during one of Hulda’s visits to the parents’ affluent, middle-class home: ‘Her poems had such a pure, heartfelt simplicity. And she was finally pursuing her dream of writing a novel too.’
The case had been all over the news, as such disappearances were unusual in Iceland’s small, peaceful island community and very rarely the result of murder. But, as time passed, Hulda got the impression that most people had come to the conclusion that the girl must have taken her own life, although the police had no particular reason to believe this.
‘I’ll let you know if there are any developments, Hulda,’ the inspector went on, ‘but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. It must have been some pervert, you know; some sick bastard who conned her into accepting a lift with him and … and, well, assaulted her. We’ve seen that sort of thing before. And it always ends badly. I’m convinced she’s dead, convinced of it. The evidence will turn up sooner or later, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do in the meantime.’
Although Hulda agreed with this, she felt a sense of duty towards the girl. It was her case and she had failed to solve it. And, quite apart from that, she needed something to take her mind off her own problems. Dimma’s constant moodiness was making life increasingly difficult at home.
‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’ she asked. ‘Any leads I could follow up, however minor?’
There was silence at the other end, then her colleague said: ‘Just go home to your family, Hulda. It’s almost Christmas, after all.’
Hulda said a curt goodbye and put down the receiver, seething slightly.
Things were quiet at work; everyone was looking forward to Christmas and there were no major investigations underway, nothing urgent that couldn’t wait until after the holidays. Since Hulda had to take the shift on 25 December, she could have left a bit early today, popped into town and bought some jewellery for her daughter on the way home, as she had planned. But she knew she wouldn’t do it. She had a constant battle to prove herself in the patriarchal world of the police and couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness. She didn’t want to be ‘the mother’ who left work early on St Thorlákur’s Mass, prioritizing her family over her job. She had to be seen to be more dedicated than her male counterparts. It was just a fact of life.
She went back to leafing through the files, but her thoughts were all of Dimma.

VII
Unnur went back into the summer house one last time to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Her stay there had been exceptionally pleasant and peaceful. That summer she had mostly let herself be guided by chance, temporarily free from the fetters of education; freer than ever before. The decision to take a year off had surprised her more than anyone, but it had turned out to be easier than she had anticipated. She had always been among the top in her class at school, and her parents, that conventional Gardabœr couple, had naturally assumed she would go straight to university. To be honest, she had always pictured herself following that path as well, but then a friend of hers had said she was going abroad for a year to ‘find herself’. Unnur had no need to find herself, as she wasn’t lost, but the idea struck her as a good one. To spend a year doing whatever she liked, meeting new people, and maybe writing a bit too. Perhaps that was the real reason, when she thought about it: she wanted to write a book. She’d been constantly scribbling ever since she was a child, and for the last few years she’d been walking around with the germ of an idea for a novel. She had considered going abroad, like her friend, but in the end she had decided to travel around Iceland instead. Leave the whole thing up to fate. She didn’t know where she was going and didn’t have a lot of money, so she would have to be resourceful. Of course, she could have asked her parents for a loan, but she didn’t want to; for the first time in her life she wanted to stand on her own two feet.
She had spent the last few weeks staying in this old summer house, just outside Selfoss. True to her plan, it had been by pure coincidence that she had ended up here, as she had heard via her friend of a house that was lent out to artists. Unnur had got in touch with the owner on the off chance, well aware that she didn’t really qualify as an artist yet, despite her ambition to write a book. The woman who owned it had turned out to be a pensioner. They had drunk coffee together and hit it off immediately. The upshot was that the woman had agreed to lend Unnur the house, ‘for as long as you need it, dear. Just leave the key under the mat when you go.’ And now Unnur felt it was time to move on. The novel was going fairly well; she’d filled one exercise book and was part of the way through a second. She had met nice people too. Although the nearest neighbours lived some way off, Unnur had gone out of her way to be sociable by making frequent trips into Selfoss. It was essential to mix with all types if she was going to be a writer. Unlike her friend, she hadn’t undertaken this journey as a voyage of self-discovery but to learn about other people’s lives, to gain experience and improve her understanding of the world. Then, hopefully, she would be able to get all the thoughts that were whirling around in her head down on paper and turn them into a book.
Having reassured herself that she hadn’t