He had finally taken her along to the hospital and a doctor had given him a jar of sleeping pills.
The effect of the sleeping pills was short-lived, and unfortunately the side effects were serious. Jana lost her appetite as well as her concentration, and finally her teacher, in a confidential conversation with her mother, had said that Jana had fallen asleep in two lessons. She also said that it was completely hopeless to try to have a discussion with the girl. If they asked her to solve a mathematical formula, she would simply mumble in reply. Considering the educational ambitions that Karl and Margaretha had for their daughter, they really must do something about it. And straightaway.
Jana found the drowsiness terrible. She couldn’t think straight and she did everything in slow motion. So it was a victory when they stopped the medication. Since Jana never wanted to visit a hospital again to talk to a psychologist, she lied to her parents and told them that the dreams had disappeared. Even the psychologist had been fooled. Instead she clenched her teeth. Every evening she trained how to smile in front of the mirror. She masked her own personality by copying the gestures of others, their body language and their facial expressions. She learned the social game and its rules.
Pleased with the improvement, Karl Berzelius had patted her on the head and believed there was hope for her. With the lie about everything now being fine, she never needed to worry again about having to visit analysts.
But she dreamed.
Every night.
*
The keys clinked against the letterbox when Mia Bolander unlocked it. She took the pile of letters and quickly browsed through them. Only bills. Mia sighed and relocked the box, ran quickly up the stairs to her flat on the second floor. Her steps echoed in the stairwell. The door to her flat creaked. In the hall, she opened a drawer and put the letters on top of the pile of unopened bills. She locked the door, pulled off her boots and threw her jacket onto the floor.
It was seven o’clock. They would be getting together at Harry’s in an hour.
Mia went straight into the bedroom and got undressed. She picked out a dress she had bought at the Christmas sales three winters ago.
It would have to do, she thought.
Then she went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. With a grim look on her face, she noted that there was no booze left. She looked at her watch again. The liquor store was closed. Oh, fuck!
She quelled an impulse to go down to the supermarket and buy the low alcohol beer. Instead she searched through all the cleaning material under the sink, in the cupboard with the cups and saucers and among the vases. She even opened her microwave in the hope of finding something. In the end, in the pantry behind a loaf of bread in a plastic bag she found one can of Carlsberg. It had already passed its best-before date, but only by a month or so and in the lack of anything else it would have to do. She opened the can and drank straight out of it with her mouth around the edge to stop the froth from dripping onto the floor. Sour and cardboardy.
Mia wrinkled her nose, wiped her mouth with her naked arm and went into the bathroom. She twisted her hair into a ponytail and took another gulp of the beer, then decided to put on some heavy makeup. Two shades of blue eye shadow and black mascara. With the stiff rouge brush she chased the last of the powder left in the compact. She worked up a dark tone under her cheekbone and liked the way it narrowed her face.
She picked up the can of beer and went into the living room to wait. Forty minutes to go.
Suddenly she thought about money. Today was the nineteenth. Almost a week before she got paid again. Yesterday she had seven hundred left in her account. But that was before she went out.
And how much did she spend during the evening? Two hundred?
Entrance, a couple of beers, a kebab.
Perhaps three hundred?
She resolutely got up from the sofa, drank the last of the beer and set the empty can down. She put on a pair of shoes from the hallway, picked up her jacket and went downstairs to the lobby.
The cold wind stung Mia’s bare legs as she walked in the dark past the blocks of apartment buildings. She could have taken the tram, but she saved over twenty kronor by walking. From where she lived at Sandbyhov, it was only a fifteen-minute walk to the center.
Her stomach was rumbling as she passed the Golden Grillbar. She read the signs outside. Hamburger plate, sausage with bread, chips...
She cut across the double tramlines. At the corner of Breda V?gen and Haga Gatan she found an ATM. She checked her balance and saw that she had only three hundred and fifty kronor. She had spent more than she thought yesterday. She’d have to go easy this evening. Just one more beer. Perhaps two, at the most. Then she’d have some money left over for tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll have to borrow from somebody, Mia thought. As usual.
She crumpled the ATM printout and threw it on the ground and continued to walk toward the center.
*
The notebook had two hundred pages. But that was only the first. In her bedside table there were twenty-six more. One year of dreams in each. Jana turned to the final page, to a drawing she had done when she was young. It showed a knife with the edge of the blade colored red.
Jana closed the book and stared out of the window with a thoughtful gaze. Then she opened the book again and turned to a page with a combination of letters and numbers. VPX0410009. That was the exact same combination that Ola S?derstr?m had shown her. Had shown the team.
Jana got up with the notebook in her hand, went into her study and unlocked a door that led to a little storeroom. She had transformed the storeroom into a place where she could collect everything that might help her to understand her background. Up to now she had only had the help of her dreams.
Jana turned on the ceiling light and stood there in the middle of the room. Her gaze was directed at the walls. The room was about ten square meters. Two walls consisted of bulletin boards, and these were completely filled with images, photos and sketches. On one wall there was a whiteboard and that was covered with penned notes. Under it was a small desk and a chair. There was a safe next to that. There was no window in the room, but the light diode up on the ceiling lit up all the surfaces.
She had never shown this room to anybody; her parents would probably try to get her hospitalized if they found out. Nor did Per have any idea of her research. She had never uttered a word about it to any of them, and she never would do. This was her business, and hers alone. Everything in the room was about her earlier life as a child.
The truth was—and she had realized this a long time ago—she liked digging into the past. She had done it for as long as she could remember. It gave her a bit of a kick of satisfaction, like a complicated game, only it was about her, herself. And now another player had joined the game. It felt completely absurd, unreal.
Jana put the notebook down on the table, went up to one of the notice boards and looked at the various bits of paper attached to it. At the very top was a picture of a goddess. She had found it in a book that she had happened across in one of Uppsala’s antique shops in her student days, and she had bought it for just over fifty kronor.