She curls up on the sofa again, pulls the blanket over her and tries to get back to sleep.
She rolls over onto her stomach to the sound of muffled laughter from Johan’s room. She’s quietly grateful to Hurtig, but at the same time it surprises her that he’s so irresponsible that he doesn’t seem to understand that a teenager needs his sleep if he’s to cope with school. His training later on tomorrow is probably ruined now. Hurtig might manage to work, but Johan’s going to be like a zombie.
She soon realises it’s pointless trying to sleep. She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling.
She can still make out the three letters ?ke once wrote on the ceiling in green paint when he was drunk. The fact that he’d painted over them the following day hadn’t helped, and like so many other things he had promised to sort out, nothing more ever happened. An H, an F and a C stand out through the otherwise white ceiling: Hammarby Football Club.
If we end up selling the house, he’d better help me, she thinks.
There’ll be loads of paperwork and estate agents going on about home staging. But no, ?ke will just piss off to Poland, drinking champagne and selling old paintings he’d have destroyed years ago if I hadn’t stopped him.
She imagines what it would be like if they signed the divorce papers.
The legally prescribed six-month period between marriage and divorce suddenly feels like limbo to Jeanette. And after that comes the nightmare of dividing their assets. But she can’t help smiling at the thought that she actually has a legal right to half of their shared assets, and wonders if she ought to scare ?ke by pretending to demand her share, just to see how he reacts. The more paintings he sells before the divorce goes through, the more money she could get.
More laughter from Johan’s room, and although Jeanette’s happy on his behalf, she feels lonely.
Please, Sofia, come to me soon, she thinks, lying on her side as she huddles up beneath the blanket.
She longs to feel Sofia pressed against her.
Vita Bergen – Sofia Zetterlund’s Apartment
SOFIA GETS THE tape recorder, sits by the window and looks down into the street. It’s stopped raining. A woman walking a black-and-white Border collie passes by on the opposite pavement. The dog makes her think of Hannah, who was so badly bitten by a similar dog shortly after they got home from interrailing that she had to have a finger amputated. Yet she remained devoted to dogs.
Sofia switches on the machine and starts talking.
What’s wrong with me?
Why can’t I feel the same tenderness and love for animals as everyone else?
I certainly tried plenty of times when I was a child.
First it was stick insects, because they were easier than fish, and were more suitable because he was so bloody allergic to Esmeralda, who had to go and live with someone else who liked cats. Then there was the attempt to get something for the summer, a baby rabbit that died in the car because it didn’t occur to anyone that even bog-standard rabbits need water, then the goat we borrowed that spent all summer having a phantom pregnancy, and all anyone remembers are the sticky black pellets of shit that got everywhere and kept getting stuck to your feet. Then there were the hens that nobody liked, then the neighbour’s horse for a while, before the rabbit that was faithful and happy and obedient and warm, looked after come rain or shine, fed before school, but the rabbit got bitten by the neighbour’s German shepherd, which probably wasn’t evil to start with, but anyone who’s been beaten probably ends up getting seriously pissed off and attacking anything weaker …
This time she doesn’t get tired of her voice. She knows who she is.
She sits there by the window, peering down through the venetian blind at everything going on outside, and letting her brain work.
The rabbit couldn’t get away, because there was snow blocking everywhere it could have taken cover and the dog bit it on the scruff of the neck the same way it had bitten the three-year-old who had been feeding it ice cream. Because the dog hated everything, it hated ice cream too and bit the kid’s face and no one really cared, they just sewed up the wounds as best they could. And they all hoped for the best, and then there was the horse again, and riding lessons and ponies and love hearts in diaries that were actually for some older guy you wanted to like you or at least look at you as you stood there in the corridor with your new breasts and tightest trousers. When you could smoke properly without coughing or being sick like you did when you’d taken Valium and drunk too much and been stupid enough to go home and fall over in the hall and Mum had to take care of you and you just wanted to sit in her lap and be as young as you actually were and feel her hugs and the smell of sneaky cigarettes seeing as Mum was scared of him as well and kept her smoking a secret …
She switches off the tape recorder, goes into the kitchen and sits down at the table.
She rewinds, then takes the tape out. She now has a sizeable collection of memories lined up neatly on the shelf in the study.
Gao’s light, almost soundless steps, then the creaking sound of the door behind the bookcase in the living room.
She gets up and goes in to him, in their secret, soft and safe room.
He’s sitting on the floor drawing, and she sits down on the bed and puts a fresh cassette in the tape recorder.
The room is a den, a place of refuge where she can be herself.
Klara Sj? – Public Prosecution Authority
WORDS ARE STREAMING out of Kenneth von Kwist’s mouth as he explains his role in the follow-up interview with P-O Silfverberg, and Jeanette notices that he’s doing so without checking a single fact. Von Kwist has all the details in his head, and she has a growing feeling that he’s reciting a story he’s learned by heart. The prosecutor peers at her as if he’s trying to work out what she’s after.
‘As I remember it, the Copenhagen police called in the morning,’ he says. ‘They wanted me, in my capacity as a prosecutor, to sit in on the interview with Silfverberg. The session was conducted by former police commissioner Gert Berglind, and Per-Ola Silfverberg had his own lawyer, Viggo Dürer, present.’
‘So there were just the four of you?’
Von Kwist nods, then takes a deep breath.
‘Yes, we talked for a couple of hours, and he denied all the allegations. He claimed that his foster-daughter had always had a vivid imagination. I recall him saying that she had been abandoned by her biological mother soon after birth and had been placed in foster care with the Silfverberg family. I clearly remember that he was very sad and deeply affronted about having such allegations made against him.’