Missing Read online

  Now all that had changed. She no longer knew where she wanted to go, not even where she could safely go.

  She was walking along Heleneborg Street and then, where the rows of houses ended, turned into Skinnarvik Park. The sky was growing lighter. A man seemed to combine admiring the view with watching his dog defecate. Man and dog both looked up when they heard her steps on the gravel path. Then the man dutifully bent down to pick up the turd in a plastic bag, peering over his shoulder at her, as if she might object.

  She walked on. There was a newly delivered box of bread outside a restaurant at the corner of Horns Street. They surely wouldn't miss one of the loaves.

  What she needed now was somewhere safe to shelter for a couple of days. A place where she would be left in peace, where no one would think of looking for her. Fear of pursuit had become her constant companion and it was exhausting. She needed rest. From experience she knew that without proper sleep her brain functioned less and less well. She would become an easy prey if she lost her sense of judgement.

  In her mind she was going over all the places she had ever slept in. Few had been as safe and quiet as the hide-out she had to find now.

  By now there were more cars around. To avoid meeting the morning rush-hour traffic she decided to walk up Horn Street Rise. Passing St Mary's Church, she looked at the clock.

  At exactly that moment she realised where she could hide.

  Days and nights, flowing into each other. The same faceless people speaking to her in alien tongues, oblivious of the dangers threatening her.

  The ones without faces were wandering in and out of her room, holding out tiny cups with poison-tablets that they made her swallow. Meanwhile voices were addressing her from inside the radiator and the Devil was hiding under her bed, waiting for her to get up. If her feet as much as touched the floor he would grab her, dragging her down into the big hole down there. Underneath, in the cellar, his black men would be waiting to work her over with their burning hot instruments.

  She didn't want to sleep, didn't dare to. The pills they gave her made her lose consciousness all the same. When she was asleep there was no telling what they did to her. That was the reason they put her to sleep.

  One unending nightmare.

  When she refused to get up they stuck a tube into her down there. They wanted to pump in more poison that way too. The stuff was yellow and they kept it in a plastic bag next to her bed. Then the Devil could top it up whenever he wanted to. When she tore the tube out, they tied her hands.

  There was a man dressed in white who came to make her talk. He pretended to be kind but was only after her secrets. He would pass on what she told him to the men in the cellar.

  Darkness and light following each other. Time ceased to be. New hands made her swallow the white poison-pills.

  Then one day, she suddenly understood what they were saying to her. They sounded kind, concerned to make her feel comfortable. They were protective and listened to her. One of them wheeled her bed across the room to let her see that there was no hole underneath it. Afterwards she agreed to be taken to the toilet and they removed the tube from her private parts and the yellow poison-bag from beside her bed.

  The next day, everyone who came to see her had a face and smiled. They fixed her bed, plumping her pillows and chatting to her all the time. They still wanted her to take poison, though. She was ill and in hospital, they told her. She had to stay until she got better.

  Then where would she go? She tried not to think of the 'afterwards'.

  More days and nights passed. The voices from the radiator stopped speaking so much and finally left her in peace.

  Sometimes she would go outside her room. There was a TV set at one end of the corridor. None of the other patients spoke to her, because they were all enclosed in their own worlds. Often she simply stood at the window in her room, leaning her forehead against the cold bars and observing the traffic outside. Everyone was getting on with life without her.

  They took her for walks in the hospital park sometimes, but never let her out alone. The winter snow was melting by then and there were snowdrops growing in the borders.

  Beatrice Forsenström came to visit her. The man who wanted to make Sibylla talk came as well. Beatrice was immaculately groomed, but there were dark shadows under her eyes. She kept her handbag in her lap when she and the man settled down next to the bed.

  The man looked nice. He smiled at her.

  'How are you feeling now?' Sibylla was watching her mother. 'I'm much better, thank you.' The man seemed pleased. 'Do you know why you're here?' Sibylla swallowed.

  'Maybe because I did something silly?'

  The man was looking at her mother, who had lifted her hand to her mouth. Sibylla had made the wrong answer and her mother would be sad. No, disappointed.

  'Don't worry, Sibylla. You've been ill. That's why you're here,' the man said.

  She kept looking at her hands. No one said anything for a while. Then the man rose and spoke to her mother.

  'I'll leave you two alone now, but not for long.'

  They were on their own in the room. Sibylla was still looking at her hands.

  'Please forgive me.'

  Her mother suddenly got up.

  'Stop that at once.'

  Oh no, she had made Mummy angry as well. 'You have been ill, Sibylla. There's no need to apologise for that.'

  Then she sat down again. For a brief moment their eyes met, but this time her mother looked away first. Not soon enough. Sibylla had a perfectly clear idea of what was going on behind those eyes. Beatrice was furious at her daughter for putting her in this situation, which was outside her control.

  Sibylla went back to studying her hands. There was a knock on the door. The man who wanted her to speak came back in, carrying a brown folder. He came to the end of her bed and spoke to her.

  'Sibylla, there's one special thing both your mother and I want to talk to you about.'

  He glanced at Beatrice, but her eyes were fixed on the floor

  and she was clutching her handbag so hard her knuckles were going white.

  'Sibylla, do you have a boyfriend?'

  She started blankly at him.

  'Do you have a boyfriend? I have a reason for asking.' She shook her head. He came to sit next to her on the edge of the bed.

  'This illness you've been suffering from, it can have physical causes, you see.' Is that so.

  'We've tested some samples we've taken from you.' Yes, I know.

  'The results show that you're pregnant.'

  The last word went on echoing though her head. She had a vision of the brown checked blanket.

  She alone would be his. Only his. And he hers. Together.

  Anything for just a second of such closeness. Anything at all.

  She glanced at her mother. Beatrice must have known all along.

  The man who wanted her to speak put his hand on hers. His touch triggered a pulse of emotion that flowed through her body.

  'Do you know who the father of the baby is?'

  The two of them, together. Linked for ever.

  Sibylla shook her head. Her mother kept looking towards the door, her whole being longing to open it and get out of there.

  'Your pregnancy is already in its twenty-seventh week, so a termination is not really an option for you.'

  Sibylla put her hands on her stomach. The man who wanted her to speak smiled at her, but somehow didn't look happy.

  'How do you feel?'

  How did she feel?

  'Your mother and I have been discussing this.' Somebody started screaming in the room next door.

  'Because you've not yet come of age and your parents know you better than anybody else, their views are taken very seriously. As your doctor, I fully support their decision.'

  She stared at him. What decision? They couldn't do things to her body, could they?

  'We all agree that adoption would be the best thing for your baby.'

  She rarely granted herse
lf the luxury of shopping in a Seven Eleven store, where the prices were always way above average. This time though, her usual rules had to go overboard. She needed enough food to keep going for a few days and she needed to buy it early, before the doors opened to Sofia High School. The idea was to get in as soon as possible, before the corridors filled with pupils and their observant teachers.

  Minutes after seven o'clock, she had stocked up on baked beans, bananas, yoghurt and crisp-bread. She was ready to go, the moment the school porter or whoever unlocked the doors to paradise. She would be left in peace there.

  By twenty past the school's 'responsible person', whoever he was, had done his duty. When he was gone, she crossed the street, went in through the main door and simply walked up all the stairs to the corridor at the top of the building, meeting no one on the way. It was an old building and her footfalls echoed between its stone walls. Up there, the door to the attic was just as she remembered it.

  Staff Only. No Access.

  Underneath the sign the responsible person had placed a hand-written note, warning that the floor was in bad repair and might collapse.

  It couldn't be better.

  The door was locked by an ordinary padlock. She sighed, missing her Victorinox pen-knife. Presumably it was part of the evidence in the case and stored in a police station somewhere. The loop in the wall was held by four screws. She rooted around in her rucksack for some kind of implement and found her nail-file. It had to work.

  It did, in fact she had barely prodded at the upper screw before it came out. She felt a small chilly shiver of suspicion. Did somebody else know about the quiet seclusion of this attic? Still, she had no time to reconsider. The rumble of voices from the floors below was growing and she went in, closing the door behind her.

  Down a few steps. There was a handrail to hold on to. It was looking different now. She had been there six, seven years ago and since then the school had been renovated, that had been obvious from just walking up the stairs. Last time the attic had been full of rubbish and old junk, but the dicey floor presumably meant that they had cleared away as much as possible. All that was left were a few piles of old textbooks.

  She recalled that it had been summer back then and the heat under the poorly insulated roof had been suffocating. Maybe that was why the attic space was unused. Anyway, this time heat would not be a problem – on the contrary.

  The clock was still where she remembered it. Seen close-up, the Sofia School clock was enormous. They had rigged up two lamps to light the clock-face. The clock had been broken then, but now she could see the minute hand moving. This worried her a little. How often did they need to fix the clock?

  She forced herself to stop worrying. If she just kept her things along the far wall, she would have time to hide if some busybody suddenly turned up.

  It didn't take long to roll out her mat and put the sleeping bag on top. She hung her panties and towel to dry from an electric cable. Tonight she had to find the staff-room shower and wash her smalls again, because if left to go sour they'd smell bad for ever. She still felt dirty. Thomas's hands were far away by now, but somehow they had left her coated in a sticky film. Had he woken up yet and found that she'd gone? What would he do then?

  So, here she was. Hidden in an attic. Humiliated, hounded and abandoned.

  Over the years, she'd had so many reasons for giving in but something inside her had made her fight on. Maybe the moment had come, for was all this not reason enough? It might be a relief to finally admit that she was nothing but a mistake, from beginning to end.

  She listened out for the noise of the pupils filling the school.

  Silly-billy Sibylla. Sibylla's a banger, grill her. Sylla Bylla, kill 'er.

  Maybe they had been right? They had found her out, smelled her otherness when she was just a child. All the time, people had just been following their instincts about her, sensing that she wasn't meant to join their groups. She hadn't understood at first and had to learn the hard way. Her stubborn fighting back had gained her a little extra time, which had not been hers by right. She and Heino and all the rest of the outcasts were a kind of undergrowth in society. They seemed destined to make the standard citizen feel more satisfied with his existence, by giving him a chance to rank his success relative to their failure.

  Well, there are worse fates than always pitching your demands on life as low as possible, in the name of social balance. Sheep and goats are sorted from the outset anyway.

  She lay down. The bell rang and the whole building fell silent.

  It would be so easy to give up. Accept that you were a lost soul, fit for nothing. She would never go to the police willingly, never ever, but there were other ways of giving in.

  If she didn't have the strength to walk as far as Vast Bridge, something could surely be managed right here in the attic.

  They had let her go home two weeks later. The silence in the large house was as solid as concrete. Gun-Britt had been given notice, presumably because Beatrice couldn't bear the shame of a servant observing her daughter's growing belly. As few eyes as possible must see it. Walks were strictly forbidden. After dark Sibylla was allowed to wander in the garden, but never to stray to the wrong side of the fence.

  Her father spent almost all his time at home in his study. Now and then she heard him walk across the tiled floor at the bottom of the stairs.

  She ate in her room, her own choice after the first evening meal back home. It had been painful, her parents silent to the point of muteness but somehow still speaking volumes. How could she blame them? Her whole being was in contradiction to their expectations of a daughter. They had looked forward to showing off a model young person, proudly confirming the success and dignity of the Forsenström family. Instead all she gave them was the shame of a total failure, which must be hidden away from the prying, malicious eyes of the local citizenry.

  No problem, she really preferred eating on her own.

  She did not think often about Mick. He was a dream she had dreamt. He was somebody she met long ago. Someone who didn't exist any more.

  Nothing that had been before stayed the same. Everything was different now.

  She had been mentally ill.

  She had become a person who had been sick in the head -gone mad, weird. Nothing could change that. What she had experienced she would never be able to share with anyone. No one would understand what it had been like. No one would want to try.

  At the same time a sense of having being unjustly treated was lurking inside her. It grew stronger day by day until it almost consumed her. It was unfair that she should be here, because she didn't want stay. If only she could, she would have left long ago.

  She was carrying a load of guilt on her shoulders, made heavier each day as their disappointed eyes were following her round the house. All she wanted was to get away from them, but instead she was their prisoner. While she was waiting, her stomach was growing steadily bigger. What was she waiting for? What was it?

  She was like a tool without a will of its own, helping to build the dream of two unknown adoptive parents-to-be. Her body was working for them.

  Of course everyone was becoming very keen on looking after her. Even her mother tried her best. Her swelling stomach became something she could hide behind now, but what would happen when it had gone?

  Then what would they do about her?

  The word 'adoption' had seemed purely descriptive, free of values. It just sounded like any ordinary word – 'percentage', say, or 'democracy'. It meant giving her child away.

  She had to give away this thing that had turned up inside her body without being asked and made her grow bigger and bigger. Now she could feel it kicking when she was lying still. It was kicking against the tense skin on her stomach, as if wanting her to know it was there.

  There was a knock on the door. Sibylla checked the time. It must be her supper. 'Come in.'

  Her mother entered carrying a tray, which she put down on her desk. Sibylla realised at once
that there was something on her mind. Usually the tray ritual was quick, but now Beatrice was taking her time, apparently engrossed in arranging the place-setting just so.

  Sibylla had been lying on her bed reading. She sat up, watching her mother's back.

  'The vegetables, Sibylla. You didn't eat them yesterday. You should be eating lots of greens, it's important just now.'

  'Tell me why.'

  Her mother stopped in the middle of a movement. A few seconds passed before she answered. 'It's important for…' She cleared her throat. '… the child.'

  Is that so? The child, now. It had taken time for her to get the words across her lips. Even her back had shown what an effort it had been. Suddenly Sibylla lost her temper.

  'Why is it so important to look after the baby?'

  Her mother turned slowly to face her.

  'I haven't been getting… pregnant. It's up to you to take responsibility for your actions.'

  Sibylla didn't answer, mostly because there was so much to say.

  Her mother seemed to be pulling herself together. Obviously it wasn't just the vegetables she had wanted to talk about. The value of eating your greens had just been an unfortunate sideline. Sibylla watched her as she steeled herself to carry out her real errand.

  'I want you to tell me about your child's father. Who is he?' Sibylla did not answer.

  'Was it the youth with the car? That Mikael Persson? Was it?'

  'Might have been. Why? What does it matter?'

  She could not stop herself. Her mother was trying hard to control her anger, but Sibylla wasn't going to help her. Not any more.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that he's not in Hultaryd any more. All the motor sports people had to go. Your father owned that property and he decided it was convenient to have it knocked down. I gather that Mikael has moved out of town.'