The Creak on the Stairs

Some people are just born weaker than others.’ Sólveig didn’t explain, b

‘The darkness can be beautiful too,’ Sæ

‘I don’t have time to read.’

‘Nonsense, there’s always time to read. I read every evening before I go to sleep. I can’t drop off without a book.’

furniture was shabby and the place was full of the kind of creepy silence that you only got in old houses. A silence that seemed impossible to fill, as if words were unwelcome and fell, muffled, into the deadening hush.

She’d been so preoccupied with her own problems that it hadn’t occurred to her she might not be the only one suffering.

She was aware of mixed feelings when she thought about the library. It had been a refuge of sorts; a place she went to forget herself, to wander from shelf to shelf, searching for exciting-sounding titles. It was somewhere to go when she was unhappy. She used to cycle there after school and often spent the whole day there at the weekend. Perhaps that was why the thought of it made her feel so melancholy now. Had she really been that unhappy as a child? She had never stopped to consider it at the time or to analyse her feelings. She had simply escaped into the world of books.