One day she can hear Daniel crying inside as she pulls out her key. She tries to hurry and the key slips between her eager fingers. When she finally manages to fit it into the lock and can open the door she runs down the hall towards the nursery. But the crying hasn’t come from the nursery. She turns the other way and runs to the living room.
There they are, Daniel and Mother, on the floor by the fireplace. Mother is holding Daniel on her lap. No, she is not holding him – he is just lying on his front across her outstretched legs. His cry sounds more like a whimper now, as if he has been crying for a very long time. And Mother is crying too.
There is blood on Daniel’s singlet, and on Mother’s dressing gown.
‘I only left him for a minute,’ Mother sobs. ‘Just a minute.’
Marianne drops to her knees. She lifts Daniel and holds him. His face is all wet and he sobs and hiccups into her chest.
‘He was on the floor …’ Mother says, looking at Marianne. ‘I just went to the bathroom.’ She opens her arms and it looks as if she would like Marianne to hug her.
But now Marianne is crying too, and holding on to Daniel as tightly as she can.
‘He fell on the poker-holder by the fireplace. And he cut himself.’
Mother lets her arms fall and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
Marianne closes her eyes. She can’t look at Mother.
‘I did put away the pokers so he wouldn’t hurt himself,’ Mother says, ‘but the holder was so heavy. I didn’t think it could do any harm.’
Marianne gently sets Daniel down on the floor, stands, and then lifts him up into her arms. As she turns to leave, Mother slowly falls over on her side with her hands between her knees and she weeps even louder. Marianne crosses the floor with Daniel in her arms.
She goes to the nursery and puts him in the cot. Then she climbs in too. She lies down behind Daniel and now she can see the cut. It is an open gash, running from the base of the shoulderblade to the armpit. Blood is still oozing from it. But Daniel has quietened. The odd hiccup rocks him now and then.
Slowly, Marianne bends forwards and puts her lips on the wound. She sticks out her tongue and begins to lick. Her mouth tastes of salt and metal. Daniel falls asleep almost immediately. His pants are wet but the smell is warm and comforting. She pulls the blanket over them both and keeps licking the wound until it is clean and no more blood comes through.
Then she falls asleep, too.
The wound heals but it leaves a half-moon-shaped pink scar. Every night when they are in bed Marianne lets her fingers run over it.
It is even harder to leave for school now that Daniel is big enough to move around the apartment on his own. There are dangers lurking everywhere. New kinds of danger.
Sometimes Hans comes home before they are asleep. He bangs the front door shut and stamps along the hall. He never enters the nursery. Usually he goes straight to the living room and pours himself a drink. Then he turns on the TV. And often he goes out again later.
They don’t have guests any more. And Mother almost never leaves the apartment.
Hans never tells Mother that she is beautiful. He says she is fucking ugly.
‘Pull yourself together, for fuck’s sake,’ he says.
Mother says nothing. She doesn’t cry. She just slowly walks away. Sometimes you wonder if she really hears what Hans is saying, or if she is really awake. Her eyes are open but it doesn’t seem as if she is actually seeing anything.
Most evenings they are asleep when Hans comes home. He bangs and stomps even harder then, or that’s how it feels. Marianne never knows when he will come. Sometimes he doesn’t come home at all. But you never know, so Marianne sleeps with her ears open. It works. She opens her eyes the instant she hears the elevator. When it is late at night you just know it is him. The elevator door clatters and slams as it is opened, then closed. Then the front door opens with a bang. Hans stumbles and swears. Sometimes he slips and falls. Once or twice he has vomited in the hall. But it doesn’t matter. Not as long as it happens out there in the hall. Or in the living room. But you can never be sure where he will go or what will happen. So you have to be alert.
Usually it is all right. Everything goes quiet eventually. But sometimes Hans goes into the bedroom and wakes up Mother. Marianne doesn’t want to hear the things he shouts at Mother. And she doesn’t want to hear the sounds Mother makes. She doesn’t want to hear any of that. So she pulls the blanket over her head and puts her hands over her ears. Sometimes it is a very long time before it is finally over. When all is quiet Marianne can finally lift the blanket from her face. Then she is sweaty and needs to pee. But she doesn’t get out of bed. The silence is too important. You mustn’t disturb it.
But if she hears even the slightest sound from the nursery, well, then she jumps out of bed and tiptoes there as quickly as she can. She knows how to comfort Daniel when he has bad dreams. She climbs into the cot and lies down, closely pressed against him. She holds him tightly and puts a finger in his mouth. Then he stretches out his hand and gently plays with her hair until he falls back asleep. Marianne stays, sometimes until morning.
But then things change. It is as if a new time has started. A worse time.
When Hans is at home it is almost never quiet any more. Sometimes the police come because the neighbours complain about the noise. The police always leave again after Mother and Hans have talked to them. They never talk to Marianne.
Late one evening Hans shouts so loudly it echoes right through the whole apartment, perhaps the whole building.
‘You fucking whore!’ he shouts. ‘You’ve ruined everything!’
Marianne has heard this many times before. But then he says, not at all loudly, but very slowly, with a pause between each word: ‘I. Will. Kill. You.’
Then it is silent for a moment.
Marianne holds Daniel hard against her and his warm body is all that she can smell.
And then, not loud at all, yet even more terrifying, ‘I will kill you both, you and the bloody bastard.’
After that there is no more sound. It is so quiet it feels as if the whole world has come to a stop.
From then on Marianne sleeps in the nursery every night. She waits till she knows Mother has gone to bed. This is always late, for most evenings Mother sits in the kitchen. She doesn’t do anything, she just sits there. Sometimes she forgets to turn the light on when it gets dark. But eventually she goes to bed and Marianne tiptoes into the nursery and climbs into the cot.
Sometimes she wakes up because one of her legs gets stuck between the bars. Sometimes because Daniel moves. But she never forgets to keep her ears open. Even when she naps.
She is tired at school.
But school means nothing. She doesn’t belong there.
It is here, at home, that she is needed.
17.
When I woke it took me a moment to realise where I was. But as I looked at the light outside the window I quickly realised it was still early morning. When I stopped working on a regular basis it had been as if dates, days of the week and even which year it was had become irrelevant. I no longer had much that required me to keep track of time. It was not until Ika came to live with me that I started using my watch again. Before, I had had days when I could allow myself to be guided by daylight only. I became good at sensing the time of day by just a quick look at the sky. Now, when I checked my watch I saw that I had been dozing for less than an hour. I felt stiff and sore when I stood up – my body reflected my state of mind. Slow and disjointed.
It might be hours before Lola turned up, and I had to stay in the house.
I felt restless, but there was nothing to do but wait. I fetched my book from my bedside table, but it was one that had failed to attract my full attention earlier, and did so even more now. I sat down at my computer and checked my email. A quick process – my correspondence was minimal. For the sake of something to do, I decided to write down what I needed to tell the person I was meeting the follow
ing day. Very soon the work absorbed me completely. I remembered incidents I hadn’t given a thought to for a long time. The very first lunches. The early beach walks. The start of our project. When Ika had allowed me to plaster a cut in his foot, touch him for the very first time. I wrote it all down. Then I went to find my camera.
The pictures were awful. Worse here on the big screen. In close-up he looked dead. His eyes were closed, his face void of expression. It was like watching a body on an autopsy slab. I was unable to stop my tears.
I added the pictures to my text and printed the document. Scanned a letter from Ika’s teacher telling me about his promising advances at school and pasted that into the document too.
As I was finishing assembling the papers from the printer I heard a car drive up. I froze and my heart skipped a beat. I dropped what I was doing and ran out onto the deck.
But it wasn’t Lola, it was George.
‘I’ve just come to see how it’s going,’ he said as he appeared around the corner. ‘Have you heard from Lola?’
I shook my head and invited him in but he sat down in one of the rattan chairs on the deck. I offered him tea or coffee. Or lunch – it was lunchtime, I realised. He accepted and I went to the kitchen to see what I had to offer. Not much. My fridge only held some leftovers of the soup and a piece of cheese, and I had some stale bread. I heated the soup, just enough for two servings, and toasted the bread, and carried it all outside.
I saw that George was holding one of Ika’s shells in his hands. At least it looked like one of them. He was fingering it and looking at it intently. I put the tray down on the table and he looked up.
‘He gave me this. As if he wanted to pay me,’ he said. ‘At first I wasn’t sure if I should accept it, but then I felt that was the best thing to do. That perhaps it would help to make him trust me. Make our agreement into a proper binding business arrangement.’
I served the soup and toast and poured tea.
The wind had died down and the sun was no longer directly overhead. The slightly oblique light enhanced the colours and created shades that gave new depth to all shapes. Suddenly the beach was no longer a flat stretch, but an undulating canvas of all shades of brown and grey, with soft hollows and rises.
‘She might not come, you know. But that doesn’t solve the problem, does it?’ He looked at me.
‘You can’t just let it be. It needs to be resolved once and for all.’
I looked at him and nodded.
‘It’s hard to understand now how I could have been so stupid. So … Well, I should have known better, shouldn’t I? After all, I’m a doctor. I know what to do in these situations. I knew. Of course I did. And yet …’
‘But we’re only human, Marion. Sometimes we do what our heart tells us. And sometimes that is the right thing to do, but sometimes it’s not. Our emotions can take us down the wrong track and we end up making things worse, for all the very best reasons.’
He fell silent and again stared out over the sea.
‘It’s when you’re alone in your decisions that you run the greatest risk of getting it wrong.’
We finished the food and sat in comfortable silence for a while. We both leaned back in our chairs and closed our eyes.
‘I never showed you the pictures,’ I said. ‘And I never really told you, did I? Why I felt I had to do what I did.’
When he didn’t reply I opened my eyes.
He sat looking at me.
‘I sort of knew anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s a strange community, this, with its own logic. Isolated and introverted, but with strong solidarity and fierce loyalty. If you belong. People here know each other. Most have lived here all their lives, and many are related. And even if they’re not, I suspect they somehow still consider themselves as family. And they look after each other, in their own way. But then there are people like you and me. We’ll never belong, however much we might try, and however much we might want to. But we are respected. It’s taken me a long time. You too. But we do have a place here now, and people respect us. Then there are people like Lola. She will never belong either. Or be respected. In their eyes she doesn’t exist.’
‘Why?’
‘Well … she’s made some fundamental mistakes. When you come here you have to obey the unwritten laws of this community. I think every society has its own. If you don’t pick them up, or if you ignore them, you’ll never be included.’
‘And what did Lola do – or not do?’
George looked at me as if he was trying to work out how much I already knew. Or how much he should tell.
‘Lola lies,’ he said finally.
I wasn’t able to stop an involuntary laugh.
‘Lies?’ I repeated.
George shook his head.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Lola is a compulsive liar. She can’t distinguish between truth and lies. And if you can’t, well, then you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. And then it follows that you can’t follow any laws, written or unwritten.’
He looked at me again.
‘I can assure you that whatever she told you, none of it is true. Or the vital bits aren’t.’
I was still incredulous. There had been moments during my conversation with Lola when I had felt that we understood each other. When I had empathised with her, even felt tenderness for this vulnerable woman. It was my turn to shake my head. I just couldn’t believe it.
I began to tell George what Lola had said.
When I finished he shook his head again and smiled a crooked little smile.
‘Lola did have twin girls, but they were fostered out when they were babies and later adopted. Lola hasn’t seen them since they were taken from her. They’re adults now. Her son died in a car accident three years ago. Her youngest daughter, Lizzie, died from an overdose shortly after Ika was born. Well, there you are …’ George finished with a sigh.
I was speechless. I couldn’t stop seeing the image of Lola’s hands on the table. Hard hands, I had reflected.
‘So now there is just the grandchild. And he is only there because nobody sees him either. He is on the outside, just like his grandmother. But if you ask the right people, in the right way, they know what’s going on. People have seen how she behaves. Seen the boy beaten black and blue. Yet not seen him if you see what I mean. He is seen as one with his grandmother, and the loyalty and the solidarity doesn’t include either of them.’
I was close to tears.
‘I just thought you should know before you see CYF tomorrow. They won’t be able to tell you anything, even if they know. And I’m not sure they do.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I am not sure what to do with this information. How it changes things, if it does.’
‘I think it will, but we’re still looking at a long process. It’s the law, and nothing can change that. It will take its time.’
‘I’ll have to talk to Ika,’ I said. ‘But I think it should wait until I know more. And I can’t leave here until I’m sure Lola’s not coming.’
George nodded.
‘I’ll keep him overnight. He’s in the little sleepout behind my house. He came up to my house last night, I think, and I found him on the deck this morning after you rang. But it’s not a long-term solution. Not even a temporary one. CYF will decide where to place him in the interim, while they go through their investigation. But he can stay with me until you’ve had your meeting. Then we’ll see what they decide.’
After George had left I took a short walk on the beach, making sure I had the house in sight all the time. I waited all afternoon. When the sun sank and the wind eased I realised she probably wasn’t coming. I sat on the deck wrapped in a blanket and allowed my eyes to adjust to the falling dusk.
I thought about Ika of course. And I thought about the absolute vulnerability of children. Especially small children, and children lacking the safety net that family and friends should constitute.
I thought about my brother. And I thought about mysel
f.
It is summer and there are weeks when they are by themselves. Those weeks are good weeks. Sometimes they take walks: Mother, Marianne and Daniel. Sometimes they walk to Gärdet and Marianne and Daniel can run forever over the open fields and roll around in the grass. Such days are the very best.
She doesn’t know where Hans is, and she doesn’t ask.
But summer ends and school starts again. And the good days end too. Hans is back and now he sometimes spends the whole day at home. Marianne can’t go to school. She can’t leave Daniel. She says she has a sore stomach – and this is true. Her stomach aches and she feels sick. Sometimes she goes to school in the morning, but runs back home at lunchtime. Because that is when Mrs Andersson leaves.
If Hans is home she closes the door to the nursery and they stay in there all afternoon. Most evenings Hans goes out and then they eat in the kitchen. Mrs Andersson cooks the dinner before she leaves. After dinner Marianne and Daniel have a bath. Sometimes Mother comes and sits on the closed toilet and watches them play in the bath. And then she smiles a little.
It is Daniel’s second birthday and Mrs Andersson has made a small birthday cake. It is covered with light blue marzipan and it has ‘Daniel 2 years’ written in red jelly on it. Two red-and-white-striped candles stand in the centre. It is the best cake Marianne has ever seen. Marianne and Mother have set the table with plates and spoons. Daniel is sitting in his high-chair at the end of the table. Marianne is just about to light the candles on the cake when she hears the front door open. They all freeze, even Daniel. Everything goes silent. Marianne holds the lit match until it burns her fingers. She blows out the flame and sinks down on her chair. They look at each other, Mother and Marianne, but nobody speaks.
Hans doesn’t come into the kitchen; he goes straight to the bedroom and slams the door shut behind him. Mother watches as Marianne lifts Daniel out of his chair and sets him on the floor, but she doesn’t say a word. She sits absolutely still as Marianne takes Daniel’s hand and leads him back to the nursery. She lifts him up and puts him in the cot. Daniel gives a little whimper, but Marianne puts her finger to her lips and whispers ‘Shhh’. Daniel smiles and does the same, and Marianne slips back to the kitchen. Mother is still in her chair and she watches while Marianne cuts three pieces of cake. She tries to get them onto the plates without them tipping over, but one falls over anyway. It means bad luck, Mrs Andersson says. Marianne uses her fingers to stand it up again, and sets the plate in front of Mother. Mother reaches out and slowly strokes Marianne’s hair. Marianne stands holding the two plates for a moment, not sure what to do. In the end she does nothing, just turns around and retreats to the nursery, closing the door behind her.
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