‘The water’s too cold.’ Einar flinched as the rag rubbed at his stomach.
‘I’ll make it warmer.’ Helga stood up, went back to the bathroom, put the basin under the tap and turned on the hot water. Then she returned to the bedroom.
‘Ow! It’s scalding! Are you trying to burn me, you bitch?’ Einar shouted so loud that she jumped. But she didn’t say a word, just picked up the basin, carried it out, and filled it with cold water, this time making sure that it was only slightly warmer than body temperature. Then she carried it back to the bedroom. This time he didn’t comment when the rag touched his skin.
‘When is Jonas coming?’ he asked as she wrung out the rag, turning the water brown.
‘I don’t know. He’s working. He went over to the Andersson place. One of their cows is about to calve, but the calf is in the wrong position.’
‘Send him up here when he arrives,’ said Einar, closing his eyes.
‘Okay,’ said Helga quietly, as she wrung out the rag again.
Gösta saw them coming down the hospital corridor. They were hurrying towards him, and he had to fight his impulse to flee in the opposite direction. He knew that what he was about to tell them was written all over his face, and he was right. As soon as Helena met his eye, she fumbled to grab Markus’s arm and then sank to the floor. Her scream echoed through the corridor, silencing all other sounds.
Ricky stood there as if frozen in place. His face white, he had stopped behind his mother while Markus carried on walking. Gösta swallowed hard and went to meet them. But Markus passed him with unseeing eyes, as if he hadn’t seen the same bad news in Gösta’s expression that his wife had seen. He kept on walking along the corridor with no apparent goal in mind.
Gösta didn’t move to stop him. Instead, he went over to Helena and gently lifted her to her feet. Then he put his arms around her. That was not something he usually did. He had let only two people into his life: his wife, and the little girl who had lived with them for a brief time and who now, through the inexplicable workings of fate, had come into his life again. So it didn’t feel particularly natural for him to be standing there, embracing a woman whom he’d known for such a short time. But ever since Victoria disappeared, Helena had rung him every day, alternating between hope and despair, anger and grief, to ask about her daughter. Yet he’d been able to give her only more questions and more worry. And now he had finally extinguished all hope. Holding her in his arms and allowing her to weep on his chest was the least he could do.
Gösta looked over Helena’s head to meet Ricky’s eye. There was something odd about the boy. For the past few months he had been the family’s mainstay, keeping them going. But now he stood there in front of Gösta, his face white and his eyes empty, looking like the young boy he actually was. And Gösta knew that Ricky had lost for ever the innocence granted only to children, the belief that everything would be okay.
‘Can we see her?’ asked Ricky, his voice husky. Gösta felt Helena stiffen. She pulled away, wiped her tears on the sleeve of her coat and gave him a pleading look.
Gösta fixed his gaze on a distant point. How could he tell them that they wouldn’t want to see Victoria? And why.
Her entire study was cluttered with papers: typed notes, Post-it notes, newspaper articles, and copies of photographs. It looked like total chaos, but Erica thrived in this sort of working environment. When she was writing a book, she wanted to be surrounded by all the information she’d gathered, all her thoughts on the case.
This time, however, it felt as if she might be in over her head. She had accumulated plenty of background details and facts, but it had all been obtained from second-hand sources. The quality of her books and her ability to describe a murder case and answer all the questions readers might have relied on her ability to secure first-hand accounts. Thus far she had always been successful. Sometimes it had been easy to persuade those involved to talk to her. Some had even been eager to talk, happy for the media attention and a moment in the spotlight. But occasionally it had taken time and she’d been forced to cajole the person, explaining why she wanted to dredge up the past and how she intended to tell the story. In the end she had always won out. Until now. She was getting nowhere with Laila. During her visits to the prison she had struggled to get Laila to talk about what happened, but in vain. Laila was happy to talk to her, just not about the murder.
Frustrated, Erica propped her feet up on the desk and let her thoughts wander. Maybe she should ring her sister. Anna had often been a source of good ideas and new angles in the past, but she was not herself these days. She had gone through so much over the past few years, and the misfortunes never seemed to stop. Part of her suffering had been self-imposed of course, yet Erica had no intention of judging her younger sister. She understood why certain things had happened. The question was whether Anna’s husband could understand and forgive her. Erica had to admit that she had her doubts. She had known Dan all her life. When they were teenagers they’d dated for a while, and she knew how stubborn he could be. In this instance, the obstinacy and pride that were such a feature of his personality had proved self-destructive. And the result was that everyone was unhappy. Anna, Dan, the children, even Erica. She wished that her sister would finally have some happiness in her life after the hell she had endured with Lucas, her children’s father.
It was so unfair, the way their lives had turned out so differently. She had a strong and loving marriage, three healthy children, and a writing career that was on the upswing. Anna, on the other hand, had encountered one setback after another, and Erica had no idea how to help her. That had always been her role as the big sister: to protect and support and offer assistance. Anna had been the wild one, with such a zest for life. But all that vitality had been beaten out of her until what remained was only a subdued and lost shell. Erica missed the old Anna.
I’ll phone her tonight, she resolved as she picked up a stack of newspaper articles and began leafing through them. It was gloriously quiet in the house, and she was grateful that her job made it possible for her to work at home. She had never felt any need for co-workers or an office setting. She worked best on her own.
The absurd thing was that she was already longing for the hour when she would leave to fetch Maja and the twins. How was it possible for a parent to have such contradictory emotions about the daily routines? The constant alternating between highs and lows was exhausting. One moment she’d be sticking her hands in her pockets and clenching her fists, the next she’d be hugging and kissing the children so much that they begged to be let go. She knew that Patrik felt the same way.
For some reason thinking about Patrik and the kids led her back to the conversation with Laila. It was so incomprehensible. How could anyone cross that invisible yet clearly demarcated boundary between what was permitted and what was not? Wasn’t the fundamental essence of a human being the ability to restrain his or her most primitive urges and do what was right and socially acceptable? To obey the laws and regulations which made it possible for society to function?
Erica continued glancing through the articles. What she had said to Laila today was true. She would never be capable of doing anything to harm her children. Not even in her darkest hours, when she was suffering from postnatal depression after Maja was born, or caught up in the chaos following the twins’ arrival, or during the many sleepless nights, or when the tantrums seemed to go on for hours, or when the kids repeated the word ‘No!’ as often as they drew breath. She had never come close to doing anything like that. But in the stack of papers resting on her lap, in the pictures lying on her desk, and in her notes, there was proof that the boundary could indeed be crossed.