‘Are you sure you don’t want to wait for him?’
‘It would be a disaster.’
Mark found the solution immediately:
‘I’ll book you a hotel room. Order a cab. I’ll call you back with the details. Are you okay? Is your mum okay?’
‘We’re okay.’
‘Leave the hotel to me. I’ll call you back.’
He hung up.
In contrast to my mum’s speed, I moved like a man who’d had one too many drinks. Was I making the right decision or should I delay and allow my dad to catch up with us? After speaking to Mark my doubts resurfaced that I was the person to be in charge. I hadn’t come up with the idea of a hotel room, an obvious solution to our problem. Even if I had, I didn’t have the money to pay for it. My dad could be useful. If my mum was ill he knew more about her illness than anyone. On the other hand, a fleeting glance at the article offered no conclusive proof that my mum was delusional. Furthermore, it was hard to understand why my dad hadn’t phoned when he arrived at the airport. The prospect of a violent confrontation was only minutes away. Allowing Dad to catch up with us would be an act of betrayal, a rejection of everything I’d been told. Whether I wanted the responsibility or not, it was mine. Without any evidence that her account was untrue, I’d take my mum’s word on faith. Earlier she’d said that we have a duty to believe the people we love. In this case, she was asking for the space and time to finish telling me what had happened to Mia. I couldn’t refuse her that.
I caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs:
‘Wait.’
She stopped. I made a call to a local cab company. Without the name of a hotel I told them we were heading into the centre of London. They dispatched a car immediately. Meanwhile my mum stood on tiptoes, peering through the small glass panel into the communal space. Seeing it empty, she declared:
‘We’ll stay here until the cab rings. I don’t want to wait on the street.’
The cab driver called a few minutes later and we edged forward into the communal areas, furtively skulking out of the building. There was a stretch of open ground between my apartment block and the main gates. With nowhere to hide we were exposed, unable to take any precautions against a chance encounter with my dad. I could feel the enormous strain even that short distance placed on my mum. Both of us were relieved to make it to the cab, but before I could suggest a plan, my mum leaned forward, addressing the driver:
‘Drive to the end of this street and stop.’
The driver looked at me for confirmation. I was surprised by the request but I nodded. My mum whispered to me:
‘Why did he need to check with you? Not because he knows there are allegations against my state of mind, he can’t possibly know that. Why then? I’ll tell you why. Because I’m a woman.’
The driver parked at the top of the narrow side street that ran between my apartment building and the main road. I suggested to my mum that the reason the driver had looked at me was because he found her instructions odd. My mum dismissed this:
‘It’s not odd. I want you to see him arrive.’
‘Who?’
‘Your father.’
‘You want to wait here until Dad turns up?’
‘It’s important you see him for yourself. You’re clinging on to a memory of Chris as an ordinary man. It’s holding you back. But he’s not the same man. You’ll see that clearly from here. We can’t risk being any closer. Once you see him you’ll understand.’
I explained, in couched terms, our peculiar requirements to the now uneasy driver. We were buying his time. We’d wait at this spot for a while then we’d leave. My mum added:
‘On our signal.’
The driver studied us carefully. No doubt he’d experienced plenty of bizarre and sketchy passenger requests. He phoned the cab company, who vouched for me. With the price agreed, he began to read his newspaper.
Outside my apartment, in the open, my mum’s character radically changed. She wouldn’t speak other than to utter a command or direction. She didn’t relax, not for a second, her body twisted around, staring out of the rear window towards the main gates where a taxi would invariably pull up. I couldn’t engage her in conversation. We waited in near silence, staking out my apartment building.
My phone rang. It was Mark. He gave me the address of an expensive hotel in Canary Wharf. He’d prepaid for the room and any incidentals. I wouldn’t need a credit card upon checking in. He suggested waiting at the hotel, in the foyer, or the restaurant, to be on hand. I said:
‘That sounds like a good idea.’
I ended the call and outlined the plan to my mum. We’d drive to the hotel, where she could finish her story without fear of being found. Canary Wharf was sufficiently far away. It was an unusual choice. My dad wouldn’t expect us to go there, a usefully anonymous location, an area of London with no memories for us. My mum kept her eyes fixed on the main gate. As I pressed her for an answer, she suddenly grabbed my arm, pulling me below the window. A taxi passed by. With my face close to my mum’s, we crouched in the nook between the seats. My mum held her breath. The other car’s engine grew fainter. Slowly, she allowed us to rise up. We peered out of the rear window as if peering over the top of a trench. A black cab pulled over by the main gates. My dad stepped out.
It was my first sight of him since April. His body had changed. He’d lost weight. His appearance was ragged, paralleling many of the changes to my mum. Standing on the street, he lit a cigarette and inhaled as if his whole existence depended upon that intake of smoke. It was good to see him, I loved him very much, that emotion was strong, my instinct was to trust him, to leave my hiding place and call his name.
A second man stepped out of the cab. My mum exclaimed:
‘Not him!’
The man put a hand on my dad’s shoulder. I was so surprised I sat up, clearly visible until my mum pulled me down, hissing:
‘They’ll see you!’
The second man was of similar age to my dad but formally dressed. He wasn’t a man I’d seen in any of the photographs or newspaper clippings. My dad hadn’t mentioned that he’d be travelling with anyone, an omission so glaring I wondered if I’d failed to listen to his voicemail message properly. This unknown man paid for the black cab, putting his sleek leather wallet into his pocket. I felt my mum’s fingers tighten on my arm. She was afraid.
‘Who is he, Mum?’
She spun around, touching the driver on the shoulder, imploring him:
‘Go! Go! Go!’
Unaccustomed to playing the part of a getaway driver, the man took his time folding up his paper, much to the consternation of my mum, who appeared to want to scramble over the seat and take the wheel. I looked back to see my dad and his unidentified companion at the gates, in discussion. As our driver started the engine my dad looked up, in our direction, and my mum sank down again, out of sight.
‘He’s seen us!’
My mum refused to surface until I assured her, several minutes later, that we weren’t being followed. Gently easing her into her seat, I asked:
‘Who was that man?’
She shook her head, refusing to answer, putting a finger against her lips, just as she’d done on the train from Heathrow, just as she’d claimed Håkan had done when he’d visited. I found myself wanting to mimic the gesture, to explore it for myself. There was something about it I didn’t understand.
My mum remained facing rearward for the journey, checking every car weaving through the traffic. The driver threw me a glance in the mirror, his eyes angled to ask if my mum was okay. I looked away. I didn’t know – one moment I was sure she was sick with paranoia and fear. In the next moment her paranoia and fear seemed justified, and I found myself feeling it too, still wondering why my dad hadn’t informed me there’d be someone with him when he arrived – a well-dressed stranger.
My phone rang. It was my dad. I looked at my mum.
‘He’ll be wondering where we are.’
‘Don�
�t answer.’
‘I should tell him that we’re okay.’
‘Don’t tell him anything about our plans!’
‘I have to explain what we’re doing.’
‘Without any specific details.’
I answered the call. My dad was angry:
‘The concierge said you just left.’
My mum’s face was close to mine, listening to the conversation. I replied:
‘Mum didn’t feel comfortable talking there. We’re going somewhere else.’
‘Where?’
With urgency my mum waved at me not to tell him. I said:
‘She wants to talk to me alone. I’ll call you once we’re done.’
‘You’re indulging her, Daniel. You’re making a mistake. The more she convinces you, the more she convinces herself. You’re making things much worse.’
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could be aggravating my mum’s condition. My confidence was faltering.
‘Dad, I’ll call you later.’
‘Daniel—’
I hung up. He rang again. I didn’t answer. He didn’t leave a message. My mum was satisfied with my handling of the call. She said:
‘It was nasty of him to suggest you’re making me worse. He knows how to play people.’
Afraid I’d made a mistake, I said:
‘No more personal attacks. Let’s stick to facts. I’d say the same to him if he spoke that way about you.’
‘Just the facts then. Why didn’t he tell you he was with someone?’
I looked at her:
‘Who was that man?’
My mum shook her head and once again put a finger to her lips.
Arriving at the hotel, I paid the driver. We stepped out, surrounded by the steel and glass lines of Canary Wharf. I escorted my mother into the reception, passing opulent flower arrangements. Members of the hotel staff were dressed in starched white shirts. I rushed through the paperwork, my mum beside me, her back pressed against the front desk, eyes on the main doors, expecting the conspirators to follow us. She took hold of my arm, apparently oblivious to the other people around, and asked:
‘What if he phones the cab company to find out where they took us?’
‘He doesn’t know which cab company we used. Even if he did, or guessed, they won’t give out that information.’
My mum shook her head at my naïveté:
‘They can be bought like anyone else.’
‘If he does come here, he couldn’t find our room, the hotel won’t tell him.’
‘We should take another cab, a different taxi company, give them a false name, and ask them to drive us near another hotel, but not to the actual door, we can walk the rest of the way. This would make us impossible to find.’
‘The hotel is paid for.’
Money seemed to make an impression. I added:
‘Dad has been ringing and ringing. He wouldn’t be doing that if he knew where we were.’
My mum considered the situation and with reluctance nodded. The staff had been pretending not to listen. I refused the offer of being shown to our rooms, taking the card key, explaining we had no luggage.
I knew better than to talk until we were safely in the room with the door locked. My mum would need to approve the new location. We were on the sixth floor. The room was modern, comfortable, and my mother was briefly distracted by the fact that it must have been expensive. She walked to the sofa seat set up in the window alcove, filled with soft bright cushions, offering a view upriver, towards the centre of town. Any pleasure was short-lived. She began making an examination of the room, lifting up the telephone receiver, opening every drawer and cupboard. I sat in the alcove and phoned Mark. He was already in the lobby. Unsure how to express my gratitude, I said:
‘I’ll pay you back.’
He didn’t reply. The truth was that I had no idea how much it cost and couldn’t afford to pay him back. Meanwhile, my mum moved from the bedroom to the bathroom, finally checking the hallway, looking at the map of the other rooms, the fire escape – the exit routes. Finished, she placed her satchel of evidence on the coffee table, beside the fruit plate and fashionable bottle of spring water that had been left in the room.
I walked to the minibar, choosing a sugary caffeinated energy drink, pouring it over ice and sipping at it.
‘Do you want anything, Mum?’
She shook her head.
‘Why don’t you take some fruit?’
She examined the bowl, selecting a banana. We sat in the window seat, more like picnic-goers than hotel guests, as she peeled and sliced the banana, sharing it between us.
‘Mum, who was that man?’
• • •
MY MUM OPENED HER SATCHEL, taking out the journal and removing a handwritten list of names. At a glance I counted six.
The man is on this list of suspects. I would’ve shown it to you earlier but I was sure you’d dismiss it as fantasy. However, this list is now coming to life. One of these people has followed me here, prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to stop me.
At the top, there’s Håkan and Chris. Your father is a suspect. I’m sorry, but he is.
There’s Ulf Lund, the hermit in the field.
There’s the two-faced town mayor, Kristofer Dalgaard, I told you about him already – he betrayed my story about the elk to Håkan.
By the way, every name on this list, even Ulf, was at the midsommar celebration where Mia was drunk and the last place she was seen alive in public. These six men were standing in the crowd when she threw her flowers in the air. Reviewing the memory, I’ve tried to calculate where the flowers would’ve landed if they hadn’t broken apart, if the string hadn’t come undone, whose feet they would have dropped at. Though I can’t be sure, I believe Mia was aiming at the next name on the list.
Stellan Nilson is a detective, one of the most senior officers in the region. He’ll become very important to the events that follow. He’s more like a brother to Håkan than a friend. They even look similar – tall, strong, serious. When they’re standing together people often ask if they’re related and they love the idea, they smile and say they should’ve been.
The last name on the list is Olle Norling, television and radio celebrity, a doctor, on paper, but he doesn’t have a practice or any actual patients. He’s a successful showman, an entertainer, and his circus act is soul-enriching wisdom, presenting health segments on popular television programmes, publishing books about losing weight by smiling fifty times a day, or other far-fetched claims about the power of the mind. He’s a make-believe doctor, a snake oil salesman, adored by the public, who’ve fallen for his cultivated image as a gentle, caring wizard. In fact, he’s risen to great heights by guile and shameless self-promotion. Dr Norling was the first to declare me insane:
‘You’re not well, Tilde.’
That’s what he said, in English, shaking his head slowly from side to side, as though he could only possibly want the best for me.
One of these men is in London, right now, with Chris, chasing after me.
• • •
JUDGING FROM THE ENERGY WITH which she described him, I guessed:
‘The doctor?’
Dr Olle Norling. Why is he here? Having failed in Sweden to institutionalise me, their plan is to try again. They haven’t changed strategy; despite my release from the asylum and the real doctors declaring me fit and well, they’re sticking to their approach to have me locked up, numbed by drugs, and my credibility destroyed. They’re too late to stop you hearing the truth. Their only option is to break our relationship and compel you to join their group – to finish me off as a force that can bring them to justice. The conspirators rightly doubt your father’s ability to get the job done. I don’t know whether Norling originally came up with the idea of bringing my sanity into question. Norling was certainly the first to say it aloud, using his reputation and medical knowledge against me. The question of my state of mind was raised only when I refused to accept their expl
anation of what happened to Mia.
After midsommar I hoped to talk to Mia about that disturbing day. But there was no sign of her. I was scared. It was the summer holidays. She should be outside, on the land. I took to walking through the fields in the morning, at night, staring at Håkan’s farm, hoping to see Mia on the veranda or at the bedroom window. But I never did.
A week later the answer finally came. I was awake early, working on our guest lodgings, painting the barn walls on top of a tall ladder, when I saw Håkan’s gleaming silver Saab driving at great speed. Håkan isn’t a brash and dangerous show-off. I’d never witnessed him reckless on the roads before. There had to be an emergency. I was expecting the car to race past our farm, stunned when it swung into our drive and he jumped out, running into our farmhouse, missing me altogether. I tightened my grip on the ladder, fearful I’d fall, because what other explanation could there be other than that something terrible had happened to Mia?
Hastily descending to the ground, I could hear raised voices. Through the window I could see Chris and Håkan in the kitchen. Håkan turned and bolted out of the house, back to his car. I dropped the paint, chasing after him, pressing a hand against the window, leaving yellow fingerprints on the glass. I needed to hear him say it. He lowered the window and said:
‘Mia’s gone!’
My next memory is of lying on the gravel drive looking up at the sky. Chris was supporting my head on his lap. Håkan’s car was no longer in the drive. I’d been unconscious for only a small amount of time. Mia quickly came into my thoughts and I hoped the news had been a nightmare, maybe I’d fallen from the ladder, struck my head, maybe Mia was safe – except I knew the truth, I’d always known the truth. My enemies will tell you that my fainting was a watershed moment. My mind snapped and nothing I subsequently said or thought or claimed can be taken seriously. Sick words from a sick mind. Here’s the truth. Fainting didn’t mean a thing. I accept, it made me seem weak and vulnerable, but the sensation that came over me wasn’t madness, it was an overwhelming sense of failure. I’d spent the past two months aware that Mia was in danger and I’d done nothing to protect her.
The Farm Page 14