Only One Life by Sara Blædel

knocked quietly on the door and waited for Dicta to say come in. The room was large and bright with its own French doors opening out onto the yard. Several posters were hanging on the walls, but, considering the girl’s aspirations of becoming a model, Louise was surprised there were no pictures of herself. When Louise asked about that, Dicta pulled a photo album off a shelf and flipped through the last few pages in it. Then she went to the closet and got out a box that was crammed so full, its lid would no longer stay in place without a rubber band.
    “My parents don’t know much about this,” she explained as she opened the box and carefully spread the pictures out on the bed.
    “Surely they can’t help but notice when the pictures are printed in the paper,” Louise said. Dicta laid out the last picture.
    “They do know a little bit about it. Just not that I’m working on becoming a professional model, and that we’ve taken so many pictures.”
    Louise looked at Dicta and thought she had a curiously grownup way of relating to this modeling career that she hadn’t even really embarked on yet. They must be the photographer’s words she was using.
    “Who took the pictures?” Louise asked, contemplating one where Dicta was sitting on the deck of a sailboat with her long blonde hair fluttering in the breeze and her feet hanging over the edge. She turned the photo over to see if there was a copyright notice on the back, but there was nothing.
    “His name’s Michael Mogensen, and he’s the best in town,” Dicta said, sitting up straight. “We’ve spent a lot of time taking the pictures that are going into my portfolio. Now I’m just waiting for him to finish them. There’s something about the background he needs to correct in Photoshop; but once that’s all set, the portfolio will be ready to be submitted to the major modeling agencies.”
    Louise smiled at her. Dicta had a youthful joy and exuberance when she talked about her dreams, and at the moment it was just sweet—but it didn’t take a professional’s eyes to see that there was something naïve and rigid in Dicta’s poses, which a more talented photographer would probably have done something about.
    “It sounds exciting,” Louise said.
    She fished out a picture in which Dicta was standing between Samra and a man who was in his mid-twenties.
    “That’s Michael,” explained Dicta. “He is a staff photographer at Venstrebladet.” She sounded a little impressed that he had taken on the responsibility for shepherding her to the top.
    Louise looked at the picture for a long time. Samra had a big smile on her face and her hair hung loose. It had been taken on a summer day down by the water. Louise recognized the bridge out to Holbæk’s public beach, and she thought she could just make out the red-painted main building and little changing cabins in the background.
    “He looks nice,” Louise said, examining the very average-looking guy with blonde hair and thick eyebrows.
    “Did Samra have her photos taken too?” Louise continued, asking out of curiosity.
    Dicta shook her head. “She just came with me a couple of times. Her father would totally flip out if he knew.”
    Dicta stacked up the pictures and put them back into the box before carefully hiding it away again and making sure it was hidden by other boxes and a bag in the bottom of her closet.
    “Was she seeing any boys?” Louise asked once Dicta emerged again.
    It took a while before she answered.
    “What do you mean by seeing?”
    Louise was angling again to find out whether Samra had a boyfriend, or whether there was a boy she had had an especially big crush on.
    “She wasn’t allowed to do that stuff,” Dicta continued.
    “Not being allowed to do something is not necessarily the same as not doing it,” Louise tried to say in a way that would not force Dicta to snitch on her friend for breaking her family’s rules. Dicta herself obviously felt other people didn’t necessarily