What Did I Do?

by Jessica Jarlvi

  ‘That’s right,’ Peter says. ‘She thinks she’s safe here, so she’s bound to trip up.’

  He’s used her. Arranged the commission to get close to her, seduced her and for what? Revenge?

  ‘This is safe, what we’re doing?’ she says.

  ‘Of course, it’s safe,’ he says, pulling her close.

  But she’s not sure. If Birgitta is who he says she is, it’s not safe at all.

  Chapter 54

  Frank

  Frank wakes up with another piercing headache although it takes him a while to realise he’s on the floor… in his study? He sits up, trying to remember what happened. The last thing he recalls is watching security footage while sipping his whiskey. He looks across at the empty tumbler on his desk. Could the whiskey have made him that sleepy?

  He stands up, desperate for a painkiller, but the door is locked. He jiggles the handle but it doesn’t open. What’s going on?

  ‘Birgitta?’ he calls through the door. No answer.

  He looks at the tumbler again. It seems like a crazy idea but has someone… spiked it? Birgitta said Gabriella was coming over. Could it have been her? Only, he’s had this type of headache before and always after drinking whiskey. Whiskey that his wife had poured. Is it possible that…?

  A loud bang makes Frank take a step back. What was that? It sounded like something breaking.

  ‘Birgitta?’ he calls again. Has she had an accident? ‘Birgitta!’

  A deafening sound rings out. Was that a gunshot? Frank runs to his desk and pulls out the drawer underneath it. The gun is gone.

  ‘Birgitta!’

  He’s banging on the door now. Where is she? What’s happening?

  ‘Kristin?’ A man’s voice is outside the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Frank asks.

  ‘Where is Kristin?’ the man says. Niklas?

  The handle moves up and down but the door doesn’t open. Where’s the key?

  ‘Please get me out of here,’ Frank begs.

  ‘Where’s my girlfriend?’ Niklas asks.

  ‘She…’ Frank starts, but realises it will seem sinister that he’s locked his daughter in the basement. There was just no other room that was appropriate. ‘I only want to help her.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Niklas shouts and, without any warning, the door flies open, Niklas and another man with a beard bursting into the room.

  ‘It’s you?’ Niklas says.

  ‘Believe me, I want to help her. She’s a danger to herself and others.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Frank asks, pointing at the bearded man, instinctively taking a step back.

  ‘That’s Mohamed,’ Niklas says. ‘I’m afraid he just broke down your front door. Where is she? We thought we heard a gun go off.’

  Niklas’s face is harried. He cares about her, Frank thinks.

  ‘Downstairs,’ Frank says.

  There’s no point hiding it; he’s equally worried now. If they thought they heard a gunshot, then he can’t have imagined it. And where is Birgitta? Is she in trouble?

  Frank leads the way as they descend the stairs. He’s the first to enter the basement, followed by Niklas and his friend, but the scene that awaits them is not what he expected.

  There’s blood. A lot of it. His daughter is lying in the middle of a pool of red, her mother on top of her.

  ‘Sofia!’ Frank cries while Niklas yells out, ‘Kristin!’

  They both run across the room and pry the two apart.

  ‘Help,’ Kristin sobs.

  ‘You’re alive,’ Niklas says, pulling her head to his chest. ‘Where are you hurt?’

  She points to her leg, where a bullet seems to have penetrated her leggings. Frank sees a dark hole surrounded by blood before he turns his attention to his wife. Behind them, they can hear Mohamed calling 112.

  Birgitta is covered in blood too, a knife sticking out of her stomach. Oh, dear God. What’s happened here?

  ‘Birgitta?’

  A gurgled sound.

  ‘Sofia,’ he says, alarmed. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ someone says. ‘She’s done nothing.’

  Frank turns and there, in the corner, is his oldest son. Peter is leaning against the wall, splashes of red covering his clothes too.

  ‘It’s over,’ he says. ‘They’re both finished.’

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘They killed my girlfriend,’ he says.

  ‘Not me,’ Kristin says, her voice so thin Frank can barely hear her. ‘It was our mother.’

  ‘Prove it,’ Peter says.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Frank says, agitated.

  ‘I did no-o-ot do it,’ Birgitta slurs. ‘I let X… X put her out of… misery.’

  ‘I hate you,’ Peter says and, to his horror, Frank sees his now crying son leap at Birgitta.

  ‘Don’t!’ Frank shouts, blocking him. ‘Everyone stop talking until the ambulance is here. They need to save their strength.’

  Peter is clearly furious, but Frank won’t let him make this worse than it already is.

  ‘I told Anders about our mother,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘I thought he could help but he wouldn’t listen!’ He’s shouting now. ‘I bet she finished him off to keep him quiet. She’s nasty.’

  ‘Later,’ Frank warns his son. He can’t deal with these accusations. ‘Not now.’

  His daughter is clinging onto Niklas. ‘How did you find me?’ she whispers, her eyes closing.

  ‘I checked the “find your phone” app that I set up. Kristin? Kristin, stay with me. Can you hear me?’ Niklas says, hysteria in his voice. ‘I called Mohamed’s taxi number that you’d left on the dresser. He brought me here. Come on, stay with me. We’re so glad to have found you.’

  ‘Someone threaten me,’ Mohamed says. ‘Said stay away from you and I did. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You hear that, Kristin?’ Niklas says. ‘When he told me that, I knew you were in danger, but you’re all right, aren’t you? Come on now.’

  ‘Peter, look what you’ve done!’ Frank cries.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be pleased,’ he says. ‘My mother was about to finish your precious daughter off. Luckily I twisted the knife out of my sister’s hand and stuck it into my mother. She still managed to fire the gun, but it ended up in a leg as opposed to a heart. You should thank me. I saved your daughter.’

  ‘Birgitta wouldn’t do that,’ Frank says. ‘She isn’t perfect.’ He weeps, finally hearing sirens in the distance. ‘But she’s my wife.’

  ‘She just got what she deserved,’ Peter says.

  Epilogue

  It was dark and the concrete beneath her was cold. She pulled her legs up; hid them under her skirt. The inside of her cheeks was raw, her teeth gnawing at the skin. She swallowed, wishing the taste of blood to go away.

  ‘Can you tell the children it’s time to eat?’

  Mother’s muffled voice travelled down through the ceiling, a waft of stew making its way downstairs, but her stomach didn’t rumble. She was too preoccupied with listening.

  ‘I can’t find them,’ Father said.

  As if he’d even looked. They probably didn’t know where her siblings were – they never did – but she wanted to shout: you should know that I’m here! This was where she always hid. Yet she didn’t make a noise. Peter would be with his friends and Anders too. Anders stood up for her at school but never at home. No one wanted to get into trouble in that house, so she stayed where she was, waiting, shaking. She hugged herself tightly, her dry eyes burrowed into hard knees.

  ‘Have you looked in the garden?’ Mother asked.

  ‘I don’t know where they are,’ Father insisted, and a short but intense verbal exchange erupted. She listened as his steps moved towards the front door, heard the bang when it shut behind him. Only then did she move. Knees scraped against the floor. Slowly, so as not to give away a sound, she crawled up the stairs. At the top she cautiously opened the door, the smell of food
mixing with the crispness of Clorox. She had cleaned away the blood in the kitchen as requested. She had buried Bingo in the garden. She had sat through a lecture. One hundred times, she had written and verbally repeated how sorry she was, and that one should not kill.

  In the kitchen, pots were clattering. She limped to the bathroom, desperate to relieve herself after hours down there.

  Before Mother saw her.

  Before Mother looked away.

  Before Mother understood:

  that her daughter knew what she’d done.

  *

  ‘I was punished for killing my cat,’ Kristin tells Olof.

  Will that sound worse than having your brother and mother in police custody?

  ‘My father went crazy. First, he sent my brothers out of the house. He didn’t want them to know what had happened. After that he shouted, scolded me, pushed me up against a wall and screamed in my face. Eventually he told me to get out of his sight so that he could think of a suitable punishment. I hid in the basement for hours, reliving the events over and over. I couldn’t remember killing Bingo. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t remember.’

  ‘Before that day, did you worry about killing the cat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you think you would do it?’

  ‘Exactly the way it happened, that I would cut the steak knife through Bingo instead of the beef on the counter. My mother forced me to help her cook on Sundays even though she knew I hated knives.’

  ‘Do you remember cutting the beef?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I went to the bathroom and when I came back, Bingo was lying on the floor with the knife through her body.’ She loved Bingo. Her eyes water, but she’s afraid to let the tears loose now that she’s finally in control. ‘My mother said I killed the cat and she scared me. After that I always tried to please her. I wanted her approval so that she wouldn’t do something like that to me again.’

  ‘Does that mean that, deep down, you suspected it wasn’t you? Even then.’

  She nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you were accused of Brandon’s and Anders’s deaths,’ Olof says, crossing one corduroy leg over another, ‘how did that make you feel?’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone else could be responsible for Brandon’s death but me. I was the only one there and ever since I found out about his allergies I had worried about accidentally killing him.’

  ‘But it wasn’t you?’

  ‘No. She confessed. It was Stanley.’

  He adjusts his glasses, which are surprisingly clean today.

  ‘And Anders?’

  ‘I was there. I saw him. It could have been me.’

  Olof closes the notebook on his lap.

  ‘Now you know it wasn’t you,’ he says firmly. ‘You need to learn to trust yourself, Kristin.’

  ‘I will.’

  She wants to tell Olof that she already feels stronger; now that she’s eventually beaten her mother at her own game. She wants to tell him that while her father was too preoccupied to understand her mother’s real business venture, his daughter watched and documented. Anything to free those girls. But she had to be cunning. Her mother was not only shrewd, she was vicious. After Amanda, Peter did start to build his own puzzle, but he was late to the game. She was already ahead of him, but instead of turning her material over to the dreaded police, she sent it anonymously to Peter. When the information reached the police, her name wouldn’t be on it. She didn’t want to be blamed for her mother’s downfall; she was too obvious a target. Still, the police did not manage to catch her.

  But there were the videos from the house where the girls stayed, the ones the security guys fed to her mother. She never held onto them for long before they were destroyed but in that short time, Kristin made copies. They were her real insurance policy in case her mother did find her. Niklas sent them, unknowingly.

  ‘If I haven’t left a note to say where I am, if I don’t come home and you can’t get hold of me, then send this package express.’

  Everything was organised, the dates, the meetings, the files on the girls including Amanda’s story, which Kristin had typed up. She tried to save Amanda and failed, but now the remaining girls would be safe.

  ‘Anyway, I have moved on now,’ she tells Olof.

  Her last words to her mother: ‘I didn’t do anything.’ She will never confess to what she did do: put her mother in an orange jumpsuit.

  We hope you enjoyed this book!

  Jessica Jarlvi’s next book is coming in summer 2019

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  Acknowledgements

  I am extremely lucky to have worked with the wonderful publishers Aria and Head of Zeus, and a special mention to my editor Sara Ritherdon who is always supportive, to copy editor Sue Smith and proof reader Sue Lamprell, and the marketing and sales team who work tirelessly to ensure my wonderfully talented fellow Aria and HoZ authors and I are noticed globally.

  Nothing would have been possible however, if it weren’t for my charismatic agent, Luigi Bonomi and his wife Alison who inspire me in more ways than one. It was through the fabulous Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, that you came into my life and for that I am forever grateful.

  Behind the world-class literature festival in the Middle East, are Isobel Abulhoul and Yvette Judge. Their incredible teams work diligently to bring international authors to the region. Thank you also for introducing me, and other authors, to Charles Nahas and the amazing Montegrappa Prize for First Fiction, which changed my life in 2016.

  This novel, What Did I Do?, brought me back to Chicago, a city I love and where I used to live. Thank you to Patty Wolf-Yoshimura for joining me on my research adventures! For additional research, a big thank you to Jörgen Winberg, Gary Scott, Scott McDonough, Linda Nilsson, Katarina Fröberg and the Swedish American Museum in Andersonville. Any mistakes or liberties with the truth have, however, been made or taken by the author!

  For added support and encouragement, I also want to send a special thank you to Angela for being my first reader, and to my wonderful friends Lotta, Gwen, Ann, Anna, Rich, Cindy, Jamie, Jen, Kim, Barb, Brandy, Mina, Mia, Teresia, Mikaela, Annabel, Lulu, Penny, John, Nicola, Sara, Tobias, Lorraine, and my two wonderful book clubs. I am blessed to have many beautiful people in my life and if I have left anyone out by name, please know that I do appreciate you! :0)

  Thank you also to everyone who bought my first book, When I Wake Up, and to the many talented book bloggers out there. You do an amazing job spreading a love for the written word!

  I also appreciate my parents for always instilling a love of books in me, and my brother and his wonderful family for being my fans, my awesome sis-in-law Natalie and her family for cheering me on, and my incredibly strong and inspirational mother-in-law, Lou.

  And thank you to the talented poet Ann Jäderlund for letting me use her beautiful poem in this book.

  Last but not least, without the support of the most important people in my life – my husband and my children – this book could not have been written. You are my all, and I love you.

  Jessica Jarlvi

  PS. If you’re an aspiring author reading this, keep writing (persistence pays off!) and surround yourself with people who believe in you. Writers should always support one another, and with all my heart, I wish you good luck!

  About Jessica Jarlvi

  Born in Sweden, JESSICA JARLVI moved to London at the age of 18 to obtain a BSc Hons degree in Publishing and Business. She worked in publishing in the UK for a number of years before heading to Chicag
o where she edited a magazine for expats. Back in Sweden, she completed a Masters in Creative Writing. Since 2010, Jessica has taught journalism and media at a local university, and has spent the last five years as the marketing and PR manager for a British firm. Last year, she was one of the winners in the Montegrappa Prize for First Fiction at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. Jessica is married with three spirited children, and although she’s known for her positivity, her writing tends to be rather dark!

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  A Letter from the Author

  Dear reader,

  From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading my book – I truly hope you enjoyed it.

  Writing a book is a journey and once you reach that final stop, where the book is complete and no more edits can be made, it’s absolutely terrifying and completely thrilling, all at once. Knowing someone like you would read this novel kept me going, and if you have time, I would be very grateful if you could write a review or share your thoughts via on Facebook and Twitter. Just follow the links below.

  As a writer, I like to reflect the lives of those who are often judged or misunderstood – sometimes that can be an ordinary person who simply doesn’t feel like he or she fits in. Life is interesting, and even more so in fiction. ☺

  Please do check out my website for more information and to, hopefully, feel inspired to pursue your own dream.

  Much love

  Jessica

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