‘And your dad?’ Johan asked.
‘I don’t know who he is. I actually think Mum was the only one who knew, so now there’s no one left to ask.’
‘When did she die?’
‘Less than a year after Mattias disappeared.’
‘Was she sick?’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘She was very sick.’
They continued to talk about Mattias. Johan wanted her to tell him everything she remembered about him. Had he worked? What had his interests been? Had he still played the guitar? Was it really true he had wanted to bring him here?
Charlie nodded. They’d even set up a room for him. Johan wanted to see that room.
They went upstairs. Johan commented on the stairs. He had never seen steeper ones. Could you even survive if you fell down them?’
‘A lot of people have fallen down them and lived to tell,’ Charlie said. ‘Intoxication apparently makes the human body relaxed and supple.’ She walked over and opened the creaky door to the room right above her own. ‘This is where you were going to live.’
Johan looked at the walls. Who had painted all those cars? When Charlie told him it was Betty, he said her mother, her mother had real talent.
‘I tried to make her paint something else,’ Charlie said. ‘I told her you were probably too old for cars.’
‘I think,’ Johan said, running his hand over a Volvo-like car on the wall, ‘I think I would have liked it here.’
Charlie said nothing. She wasn’t as sure.
‘What’s that?’ Johan pointed to an odd construction along one of the walls.
‘It was going to be a bed. Mattias got it in his head he was going to custom-build it, but it didn’t work out too well.’
Johan went up to what had been meant to become a bed and sat down.
‘What do you think happened to him?’ Johan turned to her.
‘He drowned,’ Charlie said.
‘Sure, but why was he never found? If he did drown, shouldn’t he have floated back up by now?’
‘Not everyone floats back up.’
‘Yes,’ Johan said, ‘sooner or later, they do.’
Charlie considered telling him about the undertow, the whirlpools, the turbine, but realised it would sound horrible, so she just said he might have got stuck somewhere, that they gave up on the search after a while.
‘They should have kept looking,’ Johan said. ‘I would have liked a grave I could visit. I don’t feel there’s proper closure. Without a grave, I mean.’
A grave doesn’t help, Charlie thought to herself.
‘I was there,’ she said suddenly. ‘I was on the jetty when he went out in the rowing boat; I just sat there and watched him die, so I know he’s in there somewhere.’
A long silence followed. Charlie thought he must be able to see her heart beating through the thin fabric of her dress. She tried to read Johan’s expression. Was he sad, angry, relieved?
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Johan said at length.
‘Feels like it was.’
‘What were you supposed to have done?’
‘I should have rescued him.’
‘How? You were just a child.’
‘I should at least have tried. But it was as if … as if I couldn’t move. I realise it sounds mental, but …’
‘It sounds more like you were in shock,’ Johan said.
Charlie nodded, even though she knew it wasn’t true.
‘I understand if you can’t forgive me. I understand if you …’
‘He shouldn’t have gone out in the boat,’ Johan said. ‘He should have stayed on dry land.’ He got to his feet and walked over to the window, opened it, handed Charlie a cigarette and took one himself. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you told me.’
‘The worst part was,’ Charlie said, ‘that you were about to arrive, that he was going to get you here. That he never got to experience that.’
‘I don’t think it would have happened,’ Johan said. ‘Mum would never have let me go. After Dad left me at a train station in Copenhagen once, I was never allowed to see him alone. I would never have been allowed to live with Dad.’
‘It sounds like you have a smart mum.’
‘Had,’ Johan said. ‘Sadly, she died a few years ago. Cancer.’
‘Sucks.’
‘Yeah. It’s empty without her. I mean, I’m an only child; I’m the only one left. To be honest, sometimes, it’s horrifying. Well, maybe you know what I’m talking about.’
Charlie nodded. She knew how he felt. She knew exactly.
There and then
Then John-John breaks free and starts running.
‘Well, catch him, then, Alice,’ Rosa’s shouting. But Alice just stands there, staring. John-John only makes it a few feet before Rosa catches him. She tears at his jumper, something flashes and falls to the ground.
‘His necklace.’ Alice bends down and picks it up and tries to give it to John-John. He just keeps howling. Rosa curses and sticks it in her pocket.
‘Rosa,’ Alice says. ‘I think we’d better take him home now. I think we’d better take him back.’
‘It’s just a joke. I just want to scare them a bit.’
‘Rosa!’ Alice says. ‘I think I hear someone calling.’
‘Just shut up,’ Rosa says, ‘I’m thinking.’
But John-John won’t shut up. He shouts for his mummy and then he starts kicking. Rosa curses and smacks him so hard he falls over.
‘He’s just a little kid,’ Alice says. She’s crying now too.
Rosa tells them both to just be quiet, but John-John can’t stop crying. Rosa straddles his stomach and puts her hands over his mouth. He whimpers and Rosa lets go of his mouth and wraps her fingers around his neck. John-John’s hands flail in the air.
And Alice just wants to scream at her to let him go, that she has to let him go before he … but she just stands there.
When Rosa finally lets go, the child is still and quiet. His little face is no longer red. Rosa shakes his shoulders.
‘Wake up,’ she says, ‘wake up, you stupid brat.’
But John-John doesn’t wake up.
49
Fredrik got out of the armchair and went out into the kitchen. He stood next to the sink for a while, turned the water on, but forgot to take a drink. Then he went back to the living room.
Nora had been taken to the psychiatric emergency ward. She had refused, but an urgent care doctor had insisted and Fredrik had not objected. There was nothing he could do to help her. At least in the hospital, she’d be given something strong enough to blur reality.
In front of him on the coffee table was a brown wooden trunk with a broken lock that he had carried down from the attic. Before Nora left, she had mumbled something about a trunk in the attic, saying he might as well read what was in it, that she no longer cared. You might not forgive, she had whispered, you might not even understand.
There was something in Fredrik that wanted to know and understand. He sensed that whatever that trunk contained, it might break him. There are limits to how much a person can bear.
He took a big sip of whisky from the glass he had filled to the brim, leaned his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. The picture of Nora’s hopeful face when they moved into the house came back to him. I think I can be happy here.
But she has never been happy, he thought. She’s just been more or less unhappy.
He leaned forward and took another sip of whisky, then he opened the lid. In the trunk were notebooks, newspaper clippings and a handful of letters. He started reading the articles. They were on the same theme as the one he’d glimpsed in Annabelle’s closet. And the notebook he’d found there as well, which he’d understood to be a diary, was continued here. Since Nora had deteriorated rapidly, he hadn’t had a chance to give it a closer look. And since the diary seemed to belong to a girl he didn’t know, he hadn’t thought much of it. But now he had the rest of the story. He went cold as it started dawning on him
who had written the diaries. Who Alice was.
Three hours and two glasses of whisky later, he stood up, went to fetch his phone and called Charlie Lager.
That evening
‘Annabelle!’ Svante Linder shouted when she entered the kitchen. He was sitting at the kitchen table with Jonas, smoking. ‘We thought you’d left, that you were too busy fucking some old geezer.’
‘What the fuck are you on about?’ Annabelle said. She glared at him.
‘Calm down.’ He put his hands up. ‘Don’t get excited now. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.’
‘And what the fuck have you heard?’
‘That you fuck old men, that you don’t have time to party any more, because you’re so busy fucking.’
‘Maybe I prefer fucking old men to fucking children.’
‘What are you implying?’
‘I think you know.’
Svante’s eyes went black. He looked like he wanted to hit her, but his voice was deceptively soft when he asked if he could offer her some weed, for old times’ sake.
Annabelle shrugged. She wanted a smoke, but at the same time she loathed taking anything from Svante. There was something about him that made her skin crawl.
‘Where’s William?’ she said without answering his question.
‘The Fucking Room. He’s banging Rebecka instead since you …’
‘Oh, come off it, will you.’
‘Come on,’ Svante said. He pulled out the chair next to his and waved a rolled joint at her. ‘I’m sure you’ll be happier after smoking this.’
Annabelle sat down next to him, hoping he was right.
50
Johan had left. He might be back, he’d told her. Charlie sort of wished he hadn’t meant it, but at the same time she already missed him. They had kissed at the door. He had stroked her hair and told her he was happy to finally have had some answers.
Then she went to bed, and for the first time in a long time her dreams were peaceful. When she woke up, the sun had disappeared from her window and evening mist had started rolling into the garden. It was eleven o’clock. She had just pulled out her phone when it rang. It was Fredrik Roos. Could she come over? He had something for her, something she might want to read.
Half an hour later, Charlie was outside his front door.
‘I’ve found some things,’ Fredrik said. He handed over a bag with a stack of newspaper clippings, a few black notebooks and a pile of letters. ‘I think Annabelle might have seen some of this.’
Charlie took the bag.
‘Don’t show them to anyone else,’ he said.
Charlie opened her mouth to say something, but Fredrik backed away and closed the door in her face.
When she got back to Lyckebo, she sat down in the kitchen and started flipping through the clippings. They were all from the seventies and were about the murder of a young boy. Two-year-old John-John Larsson had disappeared in the middle of the day from a car park by a supermarket.
In one article, there was a photograph of the murdered boy’s family, mother, father, brother, with their arms around each other. Further down the page was a picture of the child they had lost, a smiling, curly-haired toddler. Charlie’s brain was racing. Her fingers were damp with sweat when she flipped through the newspaper articles. What did this case have to do with Annabelle’s disappearance and why did Fredrik want her to read about it? Especially since he knew she’d been suspended.
Satan’s children? The next headline read. It was a quote from one of the murdered boy’s relatives. In this article, the police confirmed that the main suspects were two children.
Charlie stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter to top up her wine glass. The bottle was empty. She stepped into Betty’s clogs and went down to the basement to fetch another one. When she got back up to the kitchen, she opened one of the many black notebooks. It contained diary entries written by a girl called Alice. Something about her life was not right, that much became clear fairly quickly. She described her mother’s claw-like hands, the longing for an absent father, her fear of the boys who harassed her on her way home from school. But after a few pages, there was suddenly a measure of joy in the elaborate, childish hand. There was a new friend.
I just can’t understand that she, Rosa Manner, wants to be with me, that we’re best friends now. Then followed long, rapturous descriptions of visits to Rosa’s house. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted there, Alice wrote, bake, stay up all night, order pizza on a school night. I’m the happiest person in the world.
The rest of the first diary was all about Rosa, about going swimming in the lake, the games they played and their run-ins with someone called ‘stupid-head’.
As soon as she finished the first diary, Charlie picked up the next one. The tone was more serious now, she noted. Alice was no longer as positive about everything Rosa did. She scares me when she’s angry. I don’t understand why she’s so angry. And her mum … there’s something weird about her.
When Charlie got to the third diary, it was as if time and space dissolved. She longer bothered about why she was supposed to read an unknown girl’s diary, why Fredrik had given her all of this. She read about the games that went wrong, the threats, all the encounters with shady men at Rosa’s house. She read about the assault on Rosa’s pregnant mother, the man who had kicked and the little stillborn girl, about Alice’s confusion and fear. Sometimes I think we must have summoned the devil, no matter what Rosa says.
And just when Charlie thought it couldn’t get any worse, it got more intense. She shuddered to read about the cat in the rain barrel, about Rosa haranguing Alice about how she should do anything for her if she really was her best friend.
The final book was the least coherent. Clearly, something horrible had happened.
Rosa was the one who said we should do it. She said she just wanted to scare him. But now … what have we done??? If there’s a heaven and a hell, I know where I’m going. I told Rosa that yesterday. I said we’re going to hell for this. She said it would be hell long before we died if anyone found out what had happened. Because no one would believe us, no one would believe we hadn’t meant to, that it was an accident. Rosa had just wanted to give that braggy family a scare. It wasn’t her fault the kid stopped breathing all of a sudden. How was she supposed to know it would happen so quickly? But maybe the world wasn’t so unfair after all, she figured, because if anyone should find out what it feels like when a child dies, it was John-John’s dad.
That was when I finally realised who that man had been, that he was the reason why Rosa’s sister had never drawn a single breath.
After finishing the final diary, Charlie stood up and lit a cigarette. She had been so engrossed in the story about the girls, the boy and the murder that she had forgotten to put the events into a bigger perspective. Do I even want to know more, she wondered. All that remained now were the letters. Charlie’s hands trembled slightly when she pulled the first one out of its envelope. The letters had no sender on them and contained only a few brief lines. Have you forgotten who saved you? In some, there was just desperation about the lack of response: Why won’t you write back?
It wasn’t until she got to the last letter that all the pieces fell into place. It was the only one that had both the sender and the recipient’s names in it. Sharp knives stabbed at Charlie’s brain; she had to lie down on the kitchen bench for a while. Then she sat up and read the last letter again.
Darling Nora, it feels strange to call you anything other than Alice, but maybe I shouldn’t worry about it since you don’t want to be in touch.
What you tell me is probably true, that some people don’t deserve a second chance. But I want you to at least know that I didn’t move here to make life hard for you. I did it because I missed you, because I’ve kept the promise we once made to each other. I thought you’d be happy I’d found you. It wasn’t easy, but I finally succeeded. I suppose I should move away from here now, but my little girl’s alre
ady settled and I have a job. But you don’t have to worry. I’m going to leave you alone. You know where to find me if you ever change your mind.
Your friend forever
Rosa ‘Betty’
Charlie looked around the kitchen, the old clock on the wall, the copper pots, the bread-drying stick under the roof. It was as though everything was coming at her, talking to her, as though she was losing her grasp on reality. I should call Anders, she thought. Annabelle’s disappearance might have something to do with Nora’s past, there might be someone looking for revenge, who wants to do the same thing to her child that she was part of doing to someone else’s. I’m going to call Anders, I just have to … close my eyes for a bit first. She put her head down on her arms on the kitchen table. Pictures of Betty danced around in her head. Betty in her white nightgown in the cherry forest, her hair loose and her eyes staring skyward. Charlie herself was a child again, sitting in the open kitchen window, singing along to the music playing.
That night
They had moved up to the living room and were sitting in a circle on the floor. A cigarette was being passed around; whomever the ash fell on had to answer any question honestly.
The secondary school kid from the front steps, the one whose name Annabelle couldn’t remember, was too wasted to understand the rules. She answered other people’s questions, laughed at nothing and was unable to sit still.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me something, Svante?’ she giggled when she dropped still-glowing ash in her lap. ‘Aren’t you going to ask what happened in the barn … ?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Svante said. ‘Are you even allowed out this late, Sandra?’
The girl glared at him defiantly and said her name was Sara and she was allowed to stay out as long as she liked. She was thirteen years old, after all.
A guy in the year above Annabelle looked at Svante and said that if that was the case, what Svante was doing was illegal.
For the Missing Page 25