Liv

by Mikaela Bley

  ‘What do you want?’ she shouted. She ducked her head a little so that the mopeds blocked out the sun, and then she saw who it was. It was the girl, Bea. ‘What do you want?’ she said to Bea.

  Bea stared at her, then she looked up and silenced the others.

  Ellen tried to appeal to the girl with pink hair, whom she recognised from the library, but she couldn’t seem to catch her eye. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Ellen made an effort to keep her voice level.

  The girl with the pink hair started shrieking and raising her stick up again in a kind of angry fit.

  ‘Stop. That’s enough, Frida. I think she gets it. Let’s go,’ said Bea on the moped, putting her foot on the accelerator.

  Ellen quickly drew her legs in.

  Bea and the other moped driver took the lead, the others rode off behind them. Still clamouring and yelling.

  Ellen stayed there on the stretch of gravel road, staring after them. For a long time, she could hear the shrieks. After a while they faded away.

  Slowly, she hobbled back towards home. What had just happened? Who was this Bea, and what did she want Ellen to understand?

  In a moment of weakness, she thought about phoning her mother, but quickly dismissed the thought. She felt sick. Her whole body ached, and her knee was covered in blood.

  When she finally got home, she crept into the bathroom and tried to get the gravel out of the wound. She’d forgotten how painful scrapes actually were. The shock started to subside, and she let the tears run. Searched in the drawers for bandages. She found a few, but they were small, so she had to use several and bandage the wound in a kind of patchwork quilt. All the while, her back was pounding with pain.

  There was a knock on the door of the bathroom. ‘What are you doing, Ellen? You’ve been in there a long time now.’

  Ellen looked down at her arms. She had scrapes on her hands and on her arms, too. She shook her head in confusion and considered not answering, but then she unlocked the door and tried not to limp. It felt like she’d broken a rib, but they couldn’t have had that kind of force.

  ‘But, my dear, what has happened?’

  ‘I fell on the gravel while I was out running. It’s nothing serious, my knee just hurts a little.’ She wondered if her mother would be satisfied with that answer.

  She staggered over to her room, but paused before she went in.

  Margareta was still standing outside the bathroom, looking at her. She looked so sad, as if she wanted to say something to her.

  ‘Do any children live on the island these days?’ Ellen asked.

  Margareta shook her head. ‘No, not for a long time. Everyone has moved. Now it’s just us old people left.’

  ‘Do any live in the vicinity, then? Who sometimes come to the island?’

  ‘I’ve heard that beer cans and that sort of thing have been found over by the gravel pit, but I don’t know. I hope they’re not disturbing the gravel. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I was just wondering. I thought I saw a whole lot of kids on bicycles and thought that maybe you’d know who they were.’

  Once again, Margareta shook her head and looked blank. ‘No, I don’t know, but they must have come across the bridge.’

  ‘Yes. That’s the only way to reach the island.’ Thanks for stating the obvious, thought Ellen.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about setting a gate on the bridge …’

  Ellen thought about the ivy. ‘What exactly do you want to keep out, everything terrible has already happened to us …’

  ‘Hush, don’t talk that way, I want …’ It almost sounded as if Margareta was talking in her sleep. Her words dragged. Instead of continuing the sentence, she walked slowly over to Ellen and ran her hand through Ellen’s long hair. Set it behind her ear and then looked at her with a blank expression and without meeting Ellen’s eyes. As if she was looking past her, or right through her.

  Ellen stood completely still, didn’t dare break the enchantment. Afraid of how her mother would react when she realised the bitter truth: that it was Ellen who was standing there, not Elsa.

  FRIDAY, 22 AUGUST

  ELLEN

  1.00 P.M.

  ‘They’re just kids, they don’t know what they’re doing,’ she tried, but it was hard to forget those threatening faces.

  ‘Children can be extremely mean,’ said Dr Hiralgo in his soft voice.

  If Ellen had had her eyes closed, she would have guessed it was a woman talking.

  ‘But they didn’t rob you?’

  She shook her head. ‘The scratches on my arms made me remember things. It was so strange. It felt as if I was being moved backwards in time. As if an old wound was opening up. Does it sound like I’m rambling?’ Ellen felt completely cold inside. She had taken two sleeping pills the night before, and Margareta had had to drag her out of bed so that she’d get to Dr Hiralgo on time.

  ‘Not at all, do continue,’ said Dr Hiralgo.

  ‘No, I can hear it myself. It must have been the pain in my knee that made me confused.’ There was a slight echo in the tiled room, which meant she had to think about everything she said twice.

  She had rescheduled yesterday’s session to today. Even though she’d told herself she wouldn’t go any more, here she was anyway.

  She looked around the room and tried to find something to fix her eyes on. It felt as though Dr Hiralgo could see right through her, and she couldn’t take it. She moved her eyes from the smooth tiles to the black seams. She was cold. Almost shaking.

  ‘It hurt just as much as when I was little. A scrape on the knee and I’m crying? Do grownups do that?’

  ‘If it hurts, yes. But perhaps it wasn’t the pain from the scrape that made you cry.’ He sounded so collected and convincing.

  Ellen looked down at her knee. The bandages had come loose: she had to go to the pharmacy and buy bigger ones. Her eyes grew wet and her vision became blurry. ‘I remember that I had sores on my arms.’

  ‘When was that?’

  She didn’t answer. ‘Can I have some water?’

  Dr Hiralgo stood up and went out. After a while, he came back with a glass, which he handed to Ellen.

  She took a gulp. It was lukewarm and had a metallic taste. Her fingers started tingling. She took another gulp and tried to take a deep breath.

  ‘Why are you so afraid of remembering?’

  ‘Because it hurts.’

  ‘What hurts?’

  ‘Everything. I feel so guilty about every single thing to do with Elsa. If I’d told someone that she was gone, maybe she’d still be alive today. I don’t really remember …’ Her palms were starting to get sweaty, and she was afraid that Dr Hiralgo could hear her heart beating. ‘Death, death, death,’ she whispered, not caring that he was watching her with big eyes.

  ‘What did you say?’

  It was hard to tell how old he was. His skin was as smooth on his forehead as it was on the top of his head, where the hair was almost non-existent. He had some black strands of hair in a well-groomed braid at the back of his neck.

  ‘Nothing.’ She swallowed a few times.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  She hesitated first. ‘Death, death, death. It was suggested to me, by one of the many psychologists I’ve gone to see, that I could say something out loud when I feel that the memories are getting too strong. Sometimes, it’s as if the faucet opens, and I can’t get any air. As if I’m drowning. I try to stop it.’

  Dr Hiralgo drummed his index fingers together and moved them up to his mouth. Now he looked right at her. ‘You’re trying to stop a panic attack. Does it work?’

  ‘Sometimes. I read somewhere that Astrid Lindgren started all her phone calls with her sisters that way. They dealt with all the dark stuff in one go, so they could forget about it later and just talk about light-hearted things.’

 
; ‘Interesting.’ He broke into a smile.

  She was starting to like him. He was so strangely unpredictable. When she thought he was going to say something instructive, challenging, or judgemental, quite often something else entirely and not at all academic came out of his little mouth, hidden behind its black moustache. He wasn’t trying to diagnose her: he saw her. Ellen.

  ‘I’ve written down some dreams.’ She took the pad out of her bag, which was on the floor beside the chair she was sitting in. ‘I’m sure they won’t mean anything, they’re just a jumble of strange thoughts.’

  ‘Tell me, what kind of dreams are these?’

  She paged nervously through the pad. ‘Last night, for example, I dreamt about water and there were a lot of people swimming in it.’

  ‘Were they having fun?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders so that her ribs hurt.

  ‘Did you feel you wanted to join in and swim, but you weren’t allowed to?’

  ‘I don’t know. In between, the water was black and very murky. As if my focus was shifting between the people who were swimming and water completely filled with algae, or whatever it was.’ She shrugged, trying to make it all seem normal, and handed over the pad. ‘I don’t know. It was strange, but it’s not the first time I’ve dreamt about it.’

  ‘If we were to try to apply this to reality, is there anywhere you feel that you are not included?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘You know, I always feel like I’m on the periphery of my own context.’ Ellen felt how hard it was to say that out loud, and had a sudden urge to start crying.

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘You think so? I don’t fit in anywhere. It’s more like awful.’ She stared down at the tiled floor to try to conceal the feelings that were suddenly washing over her.

  Dr Hiralgo continued. ‘Is it you who thinks that, or is it your surroundings? Your context?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’re not right for each other. Is there any context you would like to be part of?’

  She thought for a while before answering. ‘My family, I assume. Or a family. I don’t know. Wise people. Nice ones.’ She sniffled and felt ashamed that she was exposing herself like this to him, but it wasn’t possible to hold back. She didn’t know where all these emotions came from. They just bubbled up, and she couldn’t stop them.

  ‘Is there any context you don’t want to be part of, but that you are a part of?’

  Once again, she had to think about it. The first thing she thought of she didn’t want to say out loud, but it was the only thing coming up.

  ‘Raise the lid, Ellen. Raise it.’

  ‘Elsa’s,’ she whispered, and her stomach knotted up.

  Then came the tears, and soon she was crying so that her whole body was shaking.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She pulled her feet up onto the chair, hugged her legs, and began to bang her head against her thighs. She didn’t even notice that Dr Hiralgo went out to get tissues for her until he was back and handing her the box.

  ‘Thanks. Sorry. I just feel so guilty when I say that. She was my sister, and it’s really not her fault that I feel like this. It’s everyone else’s.’ She took a deep breath and sat up straight in the chair. ‘I don’t want to be compared with her all the time. I can’t stand it. It’s impossible to compete with someone who’s dead!’ The tears continued to run down her cheeks, but she didn’t even bother to wipe them away.

  ‘What was it like before Elsa died?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sitting on her hands.

  ‘Was it the same sense of competition? Can you remember if you already had a feeling then that you didn’t want to be in Elsa’s context?’

  She bit her lip. ‘It was the same. My parents always had stronger feelings for Elsa, favoured her.’ Ellen felt completely cold inside. As soon as she said it out loud, it became so real. It didn’t matter how many times she talked about it and hashed it out. It hurt just as much every time.

  ‘Was it definitely like that?’

  ‘Yes. She was better at everything. I was, and I guess I still am, the angry one, who screams and misbehaves and disappoints everyone.’

  ‘We all have someone who’s better than us. If it’s not a physical person, then we create someone in our subconscious, I think it’s in our nature. You can always find someone to compare yourself with who is better than you. It could be the case that your guilt has been worse because your parents, according to you, preferred Elsa. It could also be a simple construction after the fact to add to the guilt you already feel and have to process.’ He looked at her with what she felt was empathy.

  She was trying hard to understand what he meant, but everything was whirling around in her head, and she was having a hard time piecing it together. ‘I’ve done everything. I’ve gone to therapists, psychologists, I’ve read books. Every morning I wake up with her face in my mind. I can’t get rid of her. Wherever I turn, she’s there. Everyone compares us constantly. Everyone wishes she had lived, not me.’ She stood up. ‘I’ve dyed my hair, my eyebrows, gained weight, lost weight, but she follows me everywhere!’

  ‘Perhaps you could have surgery? Or tattoo your face?’

  ‘Huh?’ She stopped and looked at the man with the moustache and the smooth forehead.

  ‘I know why you’re looking at me like that. You think I’ve said something completely off the wall. I said it to help you to understand that you’re focusing on the wrong things. Which is quite natural. But you’re contradicting yourself. You’re attacking the problem from the wrong direction. You think I’m crazy for saying what I said, even though that’s exactly what you yourself just said, only you’re not prepared to drastically change your appearance. And of course, you shouldn’t. But you have to accept your context. You can’t change who you are, but you can look at it differently. Some things are impossible to change.’

  Ellen stared at him.

  ‘Have you slept with my mother?’

  ‘Ha ha. No. But she is an attractive lady,’ he said, smiling.

  She sat down on the chair again and stared at the black seam behind Dr Hiralgo.

  ‘I’m thinking about the day when Elsa disappeared. I can only remember my mum. Not my dad.’

  ELLEN

  3.00 P.M.

  Ellen was completely rattled after the day’s conversation with Dr Hiralgo. He had been right about so much — but that was only a feeling, because she couldn’t really remember what he’d actually said, now, when she was trying to remember the meeting.

  Just as she had after the last conversation, she drove up to Östra Villastaden. But this time, it wasn’t only to linger in the corridor of anxiety that she so often experienced around her father. This time, it was to try to solve some of the many question marks around Bea. It was here, after all, that Ellen had seen her for the first time, and it was partly from here that the complaints against Ellen had come. The mere thought that someone had reported her made her furious.

  Ellen parked the car a little further down the street and sat there awhile to try to collect herself. As usual, she took out her phone and went online. There weren’t any news sites reporting on the child line of inquiry. After yesterday’s incident on Örelo, she no longer felt as convinced that the children didn’t have anything to do with the murder, but she still questioned it. The thing was, she still didn’t understand why they’d attacked her the night before. It couldn’t just be down to evil. No one was one hundred per cent good or bad. But she’d been truly terrified by the hateful atmosphere that had prevailed over the group. The power. Again and again, she found herself back in the middle of the circle, surrounded by the screaming children and teens, and it gave her goosebumps. How far had they been prepared to go?

  Ellen hadn’t mentioned the attack to Carola, whom she’d spoken
to on the way to Dr Hiralgo. She would find out herself what it was about. If she reported the incident, she would be cut off and wouldn’t be allowed to work any more.

  According to Carola, who seemed to be back in the game again, the police were working in part according to the theory that one or more children could be involved, or that they might have seen something that was of interest, but she made it clear that they were also working on other leads, which she couldn’t talk about.

  ‘Are there any suspects?’ Ellen had asked.

  ‘Not at the present time.’

  ‘What was it that actually put you onto the child angle?’

  ‘Between us, they’ve found traces at the crime scene that indicate that young people have been there. I can’t say more than that.’

  ‘Can you confirm a main theory?’

  Carola hadn’t replied.

  So, they were fumbling blindly. But it was hard to draw any connections to Bea and her gang.

  When it got so hot in the car that Ellen could hardly breathe, she got out and decided to walk up the street, even though she was limping, and her knee ached.

  At each house she passed she tried to look into the garden, despite the high hedges that stood like walls around the villas. She walked past a woman who was watering her flowerbeds in a bikini.

  At one of the gates she walked up to, she caught sight of something that looked familiar. She stopped and looked into the perfect garden. Parked on the gravel path in front of the house was a moped, with several bikes overturned beside it.

  Before opening the gate, she considered briefly whether it was really that smart an idea to go in, but before she could think any more about it, she pushed at the gate. It creaked, and she stopped, but no one seemed to have heard her, because no one came out.

  She went all the way up to the house and rang the doorbell. She had no idea what she ought to say, but she would try to pound a little sense into them. They were just kids, after all. Innocent kids. Or were they?

  No one answered.

  They must be home, she thought, going around to the back of the house.