‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’ll come and visit.’
It probably wouldn’t last anyway, once he realised what she was like to live with: the constant smoking, the horrible dinners and her lack of cleaning skills.
‘You can stay in the apartment until the end of the week but then you’re on your own,’ she said.
End of the week? What? ‘On my own? I can’t afford my own place.’
‘Well, what did you expect? That I was going to keep paying rent here while I live in Nevada?’
‘Won’t Elliott pay for your accommodation there?’
‘Yes, but I will have to quit my job, dummy, so how could I afford the rent here?’
‘You’re going to be a housewife?’
‘There’s no harm in letting him take care of me. I have worked hard all my life.’
‘But what about me?’ Who would take care of me?
‘Honey, something’s gonna have to give. I can’t miss this opportunity. Have you seen his car?’ She twirled her hair around her fingers. ‘It’s a convertible.’
She pronounced the last word as if it were something magical, but I could no longer pretend to share her excitement. She was going to throw me out? On the street?
‘Where am I supposed to go?’ I asked, my stomach clenching.
She lit another cigarette and threw the lighter on the table with a clank.
‘Can’t you move in with that rich boyfriend of yours?’
‘He lives at home.’
‘You’re resourceful.’ She flashed a lipsticked grin at me. ‘You’ll figure it out.’
Her chubby fingers flicked through a gossip magazine and rearranged her hair according to the celebrities within its pages. Furious, I stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door, where I let the waterworks out.
‘Fuck!’
I kicked the cupboard doors under the sink and banged my fists on the toilet lid. What the hell was I supposed to do? Could I even keep my job if I didn’t have an address? Maybe my boyfriend would let me use his address until I got sorted? I just didn’t want to ask to move in there. His parents would never agree to that.
But where would I live? I had no friends I could stay with. Maybe I could share a place with someone? But it would mean working more, which would compromise my studies. The rent would be too much.
‘Fuck!’
How could she be so selfish?
My phone pinged with a message from X. He wanted to meet me.
Not a good time.
I replied.
Come over, I’m sorry. I love you.
he wrote.
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure how I felt. After a couple of minutes, I received another message.
You don’t want your boyfriend to know about us, do you?
He was threatening me? Shit. Double shit. I definitely couldn’t lose my boyfriend now, not when I was about to be kicked out. He would maybe let me sleep at his place for a night or two, to tide me over? But what was I going to do with X? Ignore him? Sadly, that wasn’t an option. I had stupidly invited him into my life. He knew where I worked and who my boyfriend was. How could I have let my guard down? Although… he did claim to love me. I decided to test him.
My mum is throwing me out.
I wrote, and as I typed the words I realised I never could have written those same honest words to my boyfriend out of fear of what he would think of me.
X’s response was immediate.
You can stay with me.
I could stay with X? He had offered.
Are you sure?
I wrote.
Yes, one of my friends can pick you up straight away.
One of his friends? That immediately made me distrustful.
No, thanks.
I responded.
Come on, it’s only Stanley. You know him. He’s available now.
Stanley was one of the guys who had partied with us before. He seemed harmless.
I would love for you to stay with me.
X wrote.
He would ‘love’ it? Wasn’t that what I’d hoped he’d say? It was the proof I had looked for: that, despite the stupid stunt he had pulled on me with his friend, he did care about me, maybe even love me.
Chapter 14
Frank
January 2017
‘I’m starting to get around to the idea of leaving,’ Frank admitted. It was a new year and time for a new start. ‘I just need to go away for a few days, to tie up a few loose ends.’
Birgitta didn’t question why they weren’t going together. They had always maintained interests that were separate. He had his charitable causes and weekend cycling club and her former hobby had become her job: she was a type of life coach, guiding people spiritually through an open-minded approach. The fact that she was willing to leave her business behind showed him how serious she was about moving.
But first, he would go on one of his round trips, visiting the girls he had helped over the years. They all reminded him of his sister, Ulla, who his parents had turned their backs on when she’d started using drugs. He had been angry back then and hadn’t wanted to give up on her, but he’d soon realised you couldn’t help someone who didn’t want support. That was why, in the US, he had targeted those girls who were willing to change.
‘I’ll be back in a few days,’ he told Birgitta, who seemed nervous about being left alone. ‘The security system is up and running again and there are several panic buttons in the house for you to press, should you need to. But I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
He didn’t want Birgitta to come with him. Not only because he needed space, but she had never appreciated his passion for helping young women. She regularly threw it in his face, making it sound as if it were something else entirely, as if he were preying on them as opposed to helping them. It was hugely unfair.
He wouldn’t have left, however, had he known what was to happen.
*
The camera wires had been cut but Birgitta refused to turn their daughter over to the police. This needed to remain between the two of them, she said.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ he said.
Was this what their marriage had come to? His wife had spent three days in hospital without reaching out to her husband.
‘I knew you needed your space,’ she said, her pale face for once without make-up. ‘Anyway, I don’t want anyone to know what happened.’
‘I didn’t think you cared about other people’s opinions of us.’
‘I don’t. At least, not as much as you do, but this is a family matter.’
He couldn’t agree more. They had given birth to Sofia. She was their responsibility and no one else’s. His parents had let his sister be shuffled around a system without their involvement and that had failed.
‘Tell me everything,’ he said. ‘What exactly happened?’
Birgitta’s body was slumped in a hopeless posture that made him want to cry. He rested a hand on her knee to encourage her. What exactly were they dealing with here?
‘She must have known you were going somewhere,’ Birgitta said. ‘It was as if she’d waited for you to leave.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He couldn’t understand why Sofia would avoid him and not her mother? He was the one who had always gone above and beyond, the one who had visited her and made sure she was okay.
‘She turned up shortly after you left. The alarm didn’t even go off and before I knew it, she was here.’ She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I was so scared, Frank. She looked outraged and utterly disturbed. Her hair and her clothes… she was a mess, and her eyes were frantic. I tried to talk to her calmly but she kept yelling at me.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said we should stay away from her or there would be trouble.’
‘Where does she live now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did you say to her, Birgitta?’
What could possibly have made Sofia hurt her ow
n mother? Birgitta had a hard edge at times and her tongue could be sharp.
‘I told her that she should leave us alone and… I may have said that we blamed her for her brother’s death.’
He groaned. Confronting Sofia was usually not a good idea. She would only retreat into a defensive shell.
‘Frank, she confessed.’
He let the words sink in.
‘Sofia confessed to what exactly?’ he said numbly.
‘She left him out there, in the lake.’ She sobbed. ‘Told me he didn’t deserve to live.’
Frank felt a pang in his heart, the loss of his son overwhelming him once more, his eyes remembering the pale, water-filled skin. Sofia was responsible? ‘Please, no,’ he said, openly crying. How could she have done this?
‘She said she couldn’t stand how we had spoilt him.’
‘But we didn’t,’ he said desperately. ‘Did we?’
‘No,’ Birgitta agreed. ‘He may have been the youngest, but I don’t think so. Maybe she resented that we never helped her financially after she moved out?’
‘That was because I didn’t want her to go anywhere,’ he cried out. ‘I was worried she couldn’t cope on her own, and she’s clearly proven that she couldn’t!’
‘She was full of hatred,’ Birgitta said. ‘Apparently her husband has left her for someone else and she said it was our fault since we had never accepted him. She was acting as if she had been hard done by. That’s when she pushed me. She was insane, Frank.’ Birgitta’s eyes expanded as if she were reliving the fear. ‘I’ve never seen her like that. I tried to get back up but she pushed me again. Then I told her I could hear your car out front, to distract her, and that bought me some time. I ran for the basement door and thought I’d escaped when she came at me from behind…’ She fell silent, her eyes studying her hands. ‘I remember tumbling down the stairs but then it went black. She must have thought I was dead. When I came to, she was gone.’
‘Oh, dear God. Birgitta…’
He leaned into the wheelchair and hugged her as best he could. She didn’t hug him back. It was obvious that she was still in shock. He couldn’t have been more furious with Sofia, the doubts about her involvement in Anders’s death now gone.
‘You should have called me,’ he muttered.
What type of a husband was he if he couldn’t protect his own wife?
‘Don’t worry. The ambulance staff and the doctors at the hospital were lovely,’ she said. ‘And they all believed me when I said I had fallen down the stairs. No one had any reason to think I had been pushed.’
That was good. They’d had enough police involvement. Still, as the head of the family he needed to work out what to do.
‘They don’t know how long it will take to heal,’ she said. ‘Worst-case scenario… I won’t be able to walk again.’
That shook him up. ‘Are you sure?’ A life in a wheelchair was a death sentence to someone like Birgitta, who was used to being on the go.
‘That’s what they said.’
‘We will get the best doctors,’ he assured her. ‘You will walk.’
‘It’s okay, Frank,’ she said calmly, adopting her life-coach voice. ‘Maybe this has happened for a reason. I’ll get better parking and people will have to treat me with respect.’
She tried to smile through the tears but it sounded mad to him. People would look at her with pity, nothing else.
‘But this changes everything,’ Birgitta said. ‘We don’t just need to leave, we need to go after her. Take matters into our own hands.’
He was on board with that. They couldn’t let Sofia get away with this. She had gone too far.
‘What do we do when we find her?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Get her help?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘If we’re going to bring her home, then we need another plan. No shrinks.’
They would only blame him for being an overprotective parent, and he wasn’t going to take the blame for this. He had done his damn best.
‘Okay, what do you suggest?’
‘Let me do some research. We’ll figure it out. First, we need to sell the house so that we’re no longer a target. She won’t know where we are.’
It felt bizarre to think of his daughter as the enemy, but she had crossed the line from being mentally challenged to a destroyer of lives. That was unforgivable.
Chapter 15
Kristin
May 2017
‘Aren’t you getting up?’ Niklas asks. ‘I thought you were going to look for a job today?’
He’s right to be concerned. Her money will run out at some point. It was reckless to spend the majority of her funds on the apartment and the beautiful furniture, but it felt necessary at the time, and, more importantly, liberating.
‘I will,’ she says. ‘Soon.’ I’m just not ready to face the world yet. MURDERER.
Before she went to sleep the night before, she picked the note off the floor as if it were a hot piece of coal, and tossed it into the bin.
‘Please can you empty the rubbish when you leave?’ she asks Niklas now.
‘I do that at work every day,’ he says, and she unintentionally holds her breath. Did she say the wrong thing? Will he punish her now? Then he breaks into a laugh. ‘So I can do it for you as well.’
For a split second she was somewhere else, in another life.
‘But this is barely even half full,’ Niklas says. ‘What’s this?’
He picks up a ball of paper. The ball of paper.
‘For the love of God, will you please stop going through our trash?’ she shouts, throwing herself over him, the bin and the paper, which rolls over the polished floor.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Forget it,’ she says and picks it up, hiding it behind her back.
He scratches his chin, indicating that he’s uncomfortable. She’s scared him. How can she make this right? Before she has a chance to, he says, ‘Kristin, I think…’ He looks at her and the corners of his mouth twitch. ‘Living with you is different, but fun.’
She exhales. ‘Oh, good,’ she says, putting her best Stepford Wife’s smile on. She perfected that while married to Brandon.
As soon as Niklas has left, she opens the burning note, the hard black letters unfolding in her hands.
MURDERER
She will need to burn it to forget that it ever existed. That will clean her mental state before she goes to the care home. She lights it up in the sink and washes it down, watching the ashes swivel down the plughole like a tiny tornado. Only then can she start her day.
*
Paranoid after the recent phone calls and the letter, Kristin feels it’s safer to call a taxi than to catch a bus. The driver’s name is Mohamed, his accent revealing that he’s probably learnt Swedish recently. An outsider, she thinks. Like me. She provides Mohamed with the address and they drive into traffic, cars and a mixture of yellow and green buses running like ants through the city.
‘You have meeting?’ Mohamed asks.
‘Yeah, sort of,’ she says.
He smiles at her in the rear-view mirror.
‘You look nice,’ he says. ‘Dressed up.’
She pulls the jacket closer to her chest.
‘Oh, not in creepy way,’ he laughs, briefly glancing at her again. ‘I mean, meeting will go well. You know?’
She nods, averting her eyes. She would prefer that he stopped talking.
Be polite and friendly to strangers. She shakes her head, making the words disappear.
‘I just started job,’ Mohamed announces. ‘What you think? I’m good driver?’
‘A bit fast,’ she says.
He laughs again. ‘You Swedes are…’ He’s searching for the word. ‘Blunt.’
She looks up. He thinks she’s Swedish? That’s good. Very good. Or is it his own accent that makes him less able to detect hers? Her brother is the language genius. He speaks three languages like a native, but they haven’t spoke
n since she moved. It’s been a nice breather to be away from him and his constant judgment.
It only takes twenty minutes to reach the home, but before she pays she asks Mohamed if he can please wait for her.
‘I’ll only be half an hour or an hour,’ she says.
‘Okay. Someone left a magazine in the car. I’ll read it to practise Swedish,’ he says, picking up a copy of Bamse, a children’s comic about the world’s strongest and kindest bear. It looks so innocent and makes her feel safe.
But it turns out you can’t just show up at an old people’s home and offer your services. They tell Kristin she needs to speak to a manager somewhere. That won’t do. Volunteering for her is not about doing good and time is of the essence. Therefore, she stands in the corridor as if her Converse are glued to the floor, taking in the lingering, sweet smell of perfume mixed with acrid cleaning products. Almost every resident’s door is open and through one of them, Kristin sees an old woman sitting alone. Excellent. Next to her door is a sign with her name on it: Beata Larsson. She has an embroidered shawl across her shoulders and is staring into space. Kristin knocks on her door.
‘Hello, Beata, would you like company?’
The woman looks up in surprise but doesn’t protest. Kristin slips inside the room and sits on a folk-art inspired Carl Larsson sofa.
Although Kristin has come to believe that all Swedes drink several cups of coffee a day, Beata doesn’t touch the stuff. Luckily, Kristin has brought a bottle of mango-flavoured sparkling water called Ramlösa, together with plastic glasses, napkins and vanilla buns. She didn’t want to arrive empty-handed.
‘Is it my birthday?’ Beata exclaims euphorically and takes a bite.
Vanilla cream spills onto her chin and Kristin can’t focus on anything else until she’s wiped it off. She hands her a napkin and points to her face.
‘Does your family live close by?’ Kristin asks.
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