Laima has to decide if she can trust anyone. If she can’t she’ll remain, all alone, in a foreign country—a nine-year-old beneath a bed without money, food, or parents.
“Latvia,” Iwona says to the other woman. Her voice sounds like someone who also had visits during the day and also had been locked into her room at night.
Laima takes a deep breath, gets dust in her nose and almost sneezes. The bed has wooden slats beneath it, unfinished and with splinters. She knocks on them, three times.
CHAPTER 42
Kouplan isn’t there any longer. He’d left Pernilla’s apartment two days ago. She could almost think that she’d imagined him. She called him once, just to check, and he reassured her that he really exists. But perhaps a convincing hallucination would also have done so.
No matter how crazy she is, she has decided two things. The first one is that Julia had existed.
“Thank you, my dearest,” she says to the empty air.
* * *
The thing was, Pernilla should have died six years ago. It was going to be pills and she would have made sure that whoever found her was warned ahead of time. You don’t want your death to be too traumatic for the living.
She was so lonely after Jörgen died. It was a loneliness that turned her inside out. You’d think it would dissipate with time, but the only thing that changed was how people’s sympathy waned. It’s customary to grieve for one year, not longer.
Patrick looked like a duplicate of Jörgen. His posture, the features of his face—as if he were a carbon copy. He answered her anxiety and released passion with kindness and encouraging exclamations. Jörgen wouldn’t have been encouraging—he would have loved and laughed with a brutal self-confidence. He would have laid his tattooed hand on her naked breasts and felt her heart.
She and Patrick had been together for eight months before she understood how mistaken she had been. They’d just moved in together. Most of the moving boxes were gone and their home was an orgy of good taste and middle-class dreams. Not a single book in the wrong place. Not a single unpaid bill. She realized that her loneliness was as acute as ever. It was as if her heart were being squeezed in the five fingers of a hand, squeezed harder day by day. One more inch, and the marrow in her bones would grow cold. Another inch. Patrick thought she was “getting pale” and told her she ought to find a hobby.
At first, she felt nothing only once in a while. Then it came more often. Finally, it was constant. She could feel nothing but emptiness and the emptiness gripped her harder and harder. She found the words self-harming behavior wrong, because when the razor cut, it loosened the grip of loneliness and pulled warmth out with her blood. Only her arm hurt, not her being.
She had been so desperate to get rid of her anxiety that she’s still not 100 percent sure. Even though she’s assured Kouplan that Patrick was the father. Still, Patrick was the one who’d called her parents and told them she’d been committed. He actually called her fucking parents. How inconsiderate! she’d yelled at him. He didn’t understand what he’d done. He told her that it was not necessary to scream at him like that.
Seeing her parents added another feeling in the mix. Not just that cold loneliness but also overwhelming nausea. Finally, Patrick had an explanation why she was vomiting all the time; the hospital had her tested and she was pregnant. But Pernilla knew the whole time that her nausea was not caused by Julia.
She had already been planning suicide when the blood came. That is, she’d already planned how to do it so that it would be easier for everyone. Of course, she couldn’t kill herself as long as there was another life inside her womb, but it helped her to think about it. As soon as Social Services took her child, then she would do it. She had the pills; she knew what she was going to write in the letter. And when she saw the blood flowing from her, she knew it was time.
It’s just that there was a glimmer of life left in her womb. A glimmer of life that Social Services knew nothing about, and the relief she felt was like dark clouds lightening.
* * *
“Thank you for saving me,” she says as she turns to the edge of the sofa, where nobody is sitting.
But when she closes her eyes, she can imagine Julia there.
“I have some theories,” she says. “One of them is that you are an angel.”
Angels appear in almost all religions. It means that people have really seen them. Why not one with blond hair, size eight and a half shoes, and a thin little mouth? On the other hand, why would an angel have her make bead mosaic pictures that she didn’t know she’d made herself? And, above all, if Julia were an angel, who were those unfocused voices she’d heard when she was a teenager?
“Another theory is that you did exist, but only in my mind. You existed, because you were needed. For everyone else, you were imaginary, but it’s like Thor said…”
She stops speaking and thinks about Thor’s rough hand on Julia’s cheek. As he stroked it, he must have been seeing nothing but air. Why did he do this?
“As Thor said, you were in my heart and mind. As real for me as everything else is for everybody else.”
A warm body comes and nudges her legs. She opens her eyes and picks up Janus.
“Until I’d healed,” she says as she rubs her hand along her dog’s back. “Until I no longer wanted to die. So I…”
She stops talking. She’d been talking to the wall, with an armchair, with her dog. It suddenly felt ridiculous.
* * *
The second thing she did was to choose something she’d been fighting against her entire life.
The thing was, they beat her down, those psychologists. She’d tell them about the voices, the ones who wanted her to cut herself, and they tore her down and never listened. They picked at her until her mind was screaming, no! Until her entire being was nothing but one huge no! Look at me now, she thinks. I have a dog, a nice apartment, and a job I figured out by myself. I’m hardly a failure and you know nothing about me.
She’d made a decision today, a decision she’d never been able to make before. It had not been a choice available to her. Now she picks up her phone. She expects a fight from the voices in her head, but never even feels the urge to put her phone back down.
“Hello, I’d like to make an appointment with a psychologist,” she says.
She sounds like an adult.
“I need a specialist on hallucinations and things like that,” she explains. “When can I come in for an initial consultation?”
The receptionist asks her if she can wait a few weeks for an appointment or is it more urgent. Pernilla tickles Janus’s stomach. Her little dog with the big name.
“I can wait,” she says.
It’s not acute.
She no longer wants to die.
CHAPTER 43
Kouplan has become a bit bigger since Pernilla first gave him a chicken sandwich. He thinks this as he stands sideways in front of the miniscule bathroom mirror and tries to judge what he looks like. He tenses his arm muscles and thinks his shoulders look wider. Perhaps the constant influx of fish sticks and chicken sausage has played a role.
He now has over nine thousand crowns in cash. It felt odd to take them when he did not actually find Pernilla’s child, but she had insisted: Don’t be an idiot. Nine thousand will be enough for rent, a bus pass, and basic groceries for a few months. That’s how he’ll divide the money, he thinks, and involuntarily thinks of his debt. He does not want to think of his debt. At least not while he’s living on peanuts.
“It’s not fair that someone who has terrorized his former partner for years gets off with less punishment than someone who pirated a song on the net,” a voice says on the radio.
Astrid Lindgren, the radio, and some people he used to know have taught him all the difficult words. And now he’s back to learning. If he is going to keep at this vocation, he needs more words having to deal with crime, and Swedish Radio, luckily enough, has just started a series called Crime and Punishment.
“We h
ave to end this debate now,” the program leader says for the second time. “We’re now going to today’s Wanted Criminal.”
He’s such a vain person, he thinks, remaining hidden and alone and spending time looking at his muscles in a mirror. Then the radio announcer says something that makes him really listen. He’s missed the introduction.
“The girl and two women were part of a huge human trafficking ring. The police would like to contact the person who gave them the tip which was delivered through a priest.”
“A priest involved in a smuggling ring?” asks the announcer’s sidekick.
“No, not the priest … a person had called the priest to tip off the police. This person is keeping his identity secret and the priest’s duty is to keep his name confidential.”
“That was smart!”
The person on the radio was right. It was smart. Kouplan had been thinking about the fact that Thor kept his word even though Kouplan had been hired as Pernilla’s private detective. So the priest took his vows seriously, which meant Kouplan could trust him, and Kouplan had his number. So all he had to do was convince Thor of the seriousness of what he had seen. A child who was not a hallucination.
“The police do not believe the tipster had anything to do with the crime, and he or she is not a suspect,” the program leader says. The sidekick agrees.
“He or she is just a citizen. A citizen who would not keep silent.”
“That’s right. So if you are listening, tipster, you can call us here at the radio station. You don’t need to give your name. The police would just like to speak to you.”
Kouplan almost smiles. The radio personalities are telling more modified truths. Citizen. He is definitely not going to call in. But he’s glad he made the right decision, for the sake of the child.
* * *
The one thing that disturbs Kouplan’s vision of his beefier self is the elastic. He checks the window curtains twice before he takes it off. Undoes the metal hooks and lets his chest come free. Tries to ignore the two small bags of fat that others call breasts. He tenses his pectoral muscles and thinks that they’ve been absorbed a bit more. It’s hard to see oneself from the outside. Some evenings he thinks nothing has happened. Others, he thinks he sees the changes. The hormones are worth it. Don’t think about the debt.
He puts on a T-shirt. He never sleeps without one ever since Liam burst into his room that morning. He turns off the light but doesn’t fall asleep. Something is making a light reflection on the ceiling. He focuses on it so that he doesn’t have to listen to the confusion in his own head.
* * *
He’s missing Pernilla. The mental case, as she called herself. He misses her. He analyzes this and realizes it’s because she needed him. He misses the feeling of being liked, from someone he could touch. But at least he has a bed, he thinks, as his emotions overwhelm him. And nine thousand crowns.
And he is loved, even though he feels no touch. He is loved from a distance. The thought is supposed to calm him and not make him more upset.
“I will think of you every night,” his mother had said before he left. “And you must think of me every night.”
“I’m thinking of you, Mâmân,” he mumbles toward the square of light on the ceiling.
He knows how she prays for them. For him and for his brother Nima. He can hear her voice if he thinks of the words. And if he keeps thinking of the words, he can fall asleep as if he were still a child. Calmly. Happily. As if someone is holding him in a great hand, holding him gently.
Allah, let my children live.
Be merciful to them and let them live.
Let them find their way.
Let them be happy.
My brave son Nima.
My wise daughter Nesrine.
AFTERWORD
This book started with an idea. I’m not going to tell you the idea, in case you’re flipping to the back of the book first, as I don’t want to give it away. My idea came from the thought of what could happen to a parent who lost their child. There would be a hunt for a kidnapper, but the one who was hired to find the child would come to realize that what was happening was not what he’d first thought. I knew that I needed that detective for my story. Who showed up was not your normal policeman. Instead, a cautious academician appeared, one in difficult circumstances. That was Kouplan. I hadn’t written many pages before I realized that his story was greater than a single book.
Where did Kouplan come from? I think he emerged from my life and from situations in which I found myself; the life histories I’d heard and the immigrant students I’d gotten to know as a teacher for Swedish as a Second Language. Most people don’t have just a single problem. Problems tend to appear in groups. And reality is even stranger than fiction.
Writing this book would have been more difficult if I hadn’t had help from my friends, their friends, and my former students. They shared their experiences: Everything from living with a psychosis, to life in Iran, to the influence of testosterone, to the width of an umbilical cord, to how it feels to be illegal.
Therefore I would like to give my greatest gratitude to all of you, but especially Farzaneh Sohrabi, Shaghayegh Paksima, Shadé Jalali, Zinat Pirzadeh, Nalle Högberg, Linda Carlsson, Valfrid Arvidsson, Oscar Schröder, Mio Olsson, Pouriya, Masoud, and Mehdi, as well as the organizations Ingen människa är illegal (IMÄI—No Person Is Illegal) and Stockholm Newcomers.
ALSO BY SARA LÖVESTAM
Wonderful Feels Like This
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARA LÖVESTAM is a Swedish novelist, born in 1980 and living in Stockholm. She writes in many genres—historical fiction, young adult, crime—but her books all deal with deeply human struggles, such as challenging perspectives, dealing with alienation, and being true to oneself. Lövestam worked for many years as a Swedish teacher for immigrants, and she says that a lot of her inspiration comes from her students. She enjoys music, carpentry, and learning new languages. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Afterword
Also by Sara Lövestam
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin�
��s Publishing Group
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LIE. Copyright © 2019 by Sara Lövestam. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
Translation copyright © 2019 by Laura A. Wideburg
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photograph of background by Istock/Olaser
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-30007-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-30008-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250300089
Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First published in Sweden in 2019 by Piratförlaget
First U.S. Edition: August 2019
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