Lily Sundelin

Lily Sundelin’s life is organized around a home and family that once seemed secure, until she finds her baby daughter, Margrete Sundelin, covered in blood. The discovery turns ordinary care into vigilance: Lily cannot return to the ease she had taken for granted, and the fear that settles over the household becomes entangled with the deterioration of her marriage to Karsten Sundelin.

Identity and Family Life

Before the incident, Lily is portrayed in the quiet domestic setting of her home. Margrete is eight months old, asleep in a Brio pram beneath a crocheted blanket, with a matching bonnet tied under her chin. The pram stands in the shade of a maple tree, with the forest beyond it. Lily is in the kitchen, unable to see the pram through the window, but at that point she has no concern that her baby is unsafe.

The household represents an apparent completeness. Lily is described as content, physically light on her feet, and surrounded by the things she values: her husband, her child, and a house and garden filled with flowers. Three photographs on the kitchen wall arrange the family into a small visual story: Lily beneath the maple, Karsten on the porch, and the couple together with Margrete between them. Their arrangement prompts Lily to think of the family as more than the sum of its parts. The images and the garden make her happiness feel settled and visible, which sharpens the contrast with the fear that follows.

Karsten later recalls the beginnings of their relationship from his own perspective. He remembers being drawn to Lily’s French roots and the French she whispered to him, as well as her petite beauty and graceful movement. He also questions whether their marriage and the decision to have a child arose from considered choices or from a natural progression: they had been together a long time, were adults, and marriage seemed the next step. His recollections reveal how differently the same family life can appear from within the marriage; they do not provide Lily’s own account of those decisions.

The Blood in the Pram

When Lily returns to the pram, the blanket is crumpled. At first she tries to account for it as a result of a baby’s ordinary movement. Then she sees the blood. Removing the blanket, she finds Margrete covered in it; the sight leaves Lily frozen before she collapses to the ground, unable to get up. She feels sick and screams. The suddenness of the reversal is central to her experience: moments earlier, the baby’s place beneath the tree was familiar and unthreatening; now that same place has become the scene of a terror she cannot immediately understand.

Karsten runs to them, lifts Margrete against his chest, and orders Lily to get the car. At the hospital, a nurse confirms that Margrete is completely unharmed and that the blood was not hers; the police have been called. The confirmation protects Lily from the worst feared outcome, but it does not restore her former sense of safety. The distinction between the child’s physical condition and Lily’s distress becomes important: Margrete is unharmed, while the sight and uncertainty have already changed how Lily experiences ordinary care.

Vigilance and a Changed Household

Afterward, Lily wants to leave the hospital and retreat to her bedroom with Karsten and Margrete. She imagines staying there together, but the desire for refuge comes with strict resolve: she will never again let Margrete sleep in the pram beneath the maple or sleep without supervision, and she will never again shut the child out of her mind. Her promises turn a frightening episode into new rules for daily life. The pram is no longer simply a place for a sleeping baby; it carries the memory of a danger Lily failed to anticipate.

Weeks later, the consequences are still visible at night. At three thirty in the morning, Karsten wakes to find Lily absent from their bed and Margrete’s cot empty. He locates them in the lounge, where Lily sits holding the sleeping child on the sofa. He knows she has difficulty sleeping, and watches them in the dim room. From his point of view, fear has taken root in Lily and stolen her peace of mind. The scene shows her care becoming a form of watchfulness: rather than leave Margrete in the cot, she keeps her close, even in the middle of the night. Karsten sees the change, but his observation is not the same as Lily’s own explanation of what she feels.

Marriage Under Pressure

The trauma alters the couple’s relationship as well as Lily’s routines. Karsten thinks that something unfamiliar has entered the house and describes a tension between them, as if an outside presence were intruding on their lives. He feels he failed to protect his wife and child, while also resenting the fear and vulnerability he sees in Lily. His thoughts move from self-blame to dislike, and he recognizes that he is no longer in love with her. These are Karsten’s perceptions and judgments; the account does not make Lily responsible for the collapse he describes.

His response often takes the form of physical work. He repairs loose boards in the garden fence, pounds nails, and chops wood until the effort exhausts him. Lily watches through the window, while much of her attention remains absorbed by Margrete. When a visiting nurse remarks that Margrete has gained considerable weight, Lily rises so abruptly that her chair falls and pounds the table. The reaction conveys how sharply she responds to a comment about the child, though the scene does not state exactly what she is thinking.

The distance is clearest in bed. With Margrete between them, Karsten sometimes reaches carefully for Lily’s shoulder or hair, gestures that recall their earlier intimacy. Lily shudders at his touch, as though it irritates her, and gives him no reciprocal sign of affection. The couple now occupy the same bed but no longer share the same understanding of closeness. Karsten calls her changed boundaries a new set of rules, while the scenes of her holding Margrete and recoiling from his touch show how the crisis has reorganized both care and intimacy.

A Private Crisis in a Wider Conflict

Lily’s fear forms part of the book’s wider atmosphere of insecurity, but the evidence does not make her an actor in the later pursuit of revenge. Karsten, one of the few people who believes Bjørn Schillinger’s account, meets Schillinger by chance at a petrol station in Bjerkås. The two men recognize a shared bitterness and desire for revenge. Their alliance marks another development in Karsten’s trajectory, not a decision attributed to Lily. Her importance lies in the intimate cost already visible at home: the original shock has unsettled her care for Margrete and widened the distance between husband and wife. The family photographs that once made their togetherness seem miraculous now stand in contrast to a household where safety must be guarded and affection no longer moves freely between the adults.