Fear Not Read Online Free PDF

on television in the apartment below. The remains of the fish made Johanne feel slightly sick as she scraped the plates into the bin.
    As usual she had gone to buy the spare ribs at the last minute. When she got to the butcher’s at ten o’clock that morning, they had already sold out. Nobody had any knowledge of the order she could swear she had phoned through two weeks earlier. The staff were full of apologies and expressed the greatest sympathy for the unfortunate situation that had arisen, but they had sold out of ribs. The owner couldn’t help coming out with a faint reproach: Christmas dinner should be purchased in good time, well before Christmas Eve itself. The thought of serving her mother cheap ribs from Rimi or Maxi on Christmas Eve had seemed even more alien than the idea of serving cod.
    ‘I should have bought that cheap pork from Rimi and sworn blind it came from Strøm-Larsen,’ she whispered to Adam as she put the last plate in the dishwasher. ‘She’s hardly eaten a thing!’
    ‘That’s her loss,’ he whispered back. ‘Calm down.’
    ‘Could we perhaps open a window?’ her mother suddenly said in a loud voice. ‘Of course, I’m not criticising the cod, it’s tasty and nutritious, but, after all, the smell of freshly cooked spare ribs is the smell of Christmas itself.’
    ‘Well, we’ll soon have the smell of coffee,’ Adam said cheerfully. ‘We’ll have coffee with the dessert, shall we?’
    The choir had reached ‘Härlig är jorden’ in the apartment downstairs. Ragnhild joined in, and ran over to the TV to switch it on.
    ‘No TV, Ragnhild!’
    Johanne tried to smile as she looked across from the open-plan kitchen.
    ‘We don’t watch TV on Christmas Eve, you know that. And definitely not while we’re eating.’
    ‘Personally, I think it’s an excellent idea,’ her mother protested. ‘After all, this meal is far too early in any case. It’s so lovely to watch Sølvguttene first. Those wonderful voices bring so much of Christmas. Boy sopranos are the most beautiful sound I can think of. Come along, Ragnhild, Granny will help you find the right channel.’
    A red wine glass fell on the kitchen floor with a crash.
    ‘Nothing to worry about, everything’s fine!’ Adam shouted with a laugh.
    Johanne dashed to the bathroom.
    ‘The soul weighs twenty-one grams,’ Kristiane announced.
    ‘Does it indeed?’
    Her grandfather filled his schnapps glass to the brim for the fifth time.
    ‘Yes,’ Kristiane said seriously. ‘When you die, you become twenty-one grams lighter. You can’t see it. Can’t see can’t be can’t see can’t be.’
    ‘See it?’
    ‘The soul. You can’t see it leaving.’
    ‘Kristiane,’ Adam said from the kitchen. ‘I really mean it this time. Enough. We are not having any more talk about death and destruction. Besides which, that stuff about the weight of the soul is just nonsense. There’s no such thing as a soul in any case. It’s just a religious concept. Would you like some tea and honey with your pudding?’
    ‘Dam-di-rum-ram,’ Kristiane said in a monotone.
    ‘Oh no …’ Johanne was back from the bathroom. She crouched down beside her daughter. ‘Look at me, Kristiane. Look at me.’
    She gently cupped the girl’s chin.
    ‘Adam asked if you wanted tea with honey. Would you like that?’
    ‘Dam-di-rum-ram.’
    ‘I don’t think it’s a very good idea to give the child tea when she’s in that … state. Come to Granny and we’ll listen to those clever boys. Come here, sweetheart.’
    Adam was standing in the kitchen where his mother-in-law couldn’t see him. He waved to Johanne, silently forming words with his lips: ‘Take no notice. Pretend you can’t hear her.’
    ‘Dam-di-rum-ram,’ said Kristiane.
    ‘You can have whatever you want,’ Johanne whispered. ‘You can have the very thing you want most of all.’
    She knew it didn’t help at all. Kristiane made her own decisions about where she was. During the course of