Sofia already knows what Jeanette’s going to say.
‘We haven’t actually seen each other since then, and it’s so strange that I didn’t even consider talking to you about it over the phone. Victoria’s psychologist has got exactly the same name as you. She lives in a nursing home out in Midsommarkransen.’
Stockholm, 1988
Walk in silence, don’t walk away in silence.
See the danger, always danger.
Endless talking, life rebuilding.
Don’t walk away.
THE LAST TIME. The farewell, their last meeting.
If she had her way, she would go on seeing her, but the decision she had made meant she had to go against her own will completely.
Victoria Bergman could never see Sofia Zetterlund again.
She knocked but didn’t wait for an answer. Sofia was sitting in the living room with her knitting, and looked up at her as she entered the room. Her eyes seemed tired, and perhaps like she hadn’t slept that night either, and perhaps she had also been thinking about their impending separation.
Sofia’s smile was as tired as her eyes. She put her knitting down and gestured to Victoria to sit on the sofa. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘No, thanks. How long can I stay?’
Sofia looked at her warily. ‘One hour, like we agreed. You were the one who suggested that, and you made me promise not to make any attempt to persuade you otherwise.’
‘I know.’ She sat down on the sofa, as far away from Sofia as possible. It’s the right decision, she thought. This is the last time, it has to be.
But she was reluctant. Soon she would have the decision of the Nacka District Court in her hand, and then Victoria Bergman would no longer exist. Part of her felt that she wasn’t yet finished with herself, that Victoria wasn’t just going to disappear simply because she had arranged for it to happen in legal terms. Another part of her knew that this was absolutely the right decision, her only possibility to heal.
Become someone else, Victoria thought. Become like you. She cast a quick glance at the psychologist.
‘There’s one thing we have never really finished talking about,’ Sofia said. ‘And because this is our last session, I’d like to –’
‘I know what you mean. What happened in Copenhagen. And Aalborg.’
Sofia nodded. ‘Do you want to tell me?’
She didn’t know where to start. ‘You know I had a baby last summer,’ she attempted, as Sofia looked at her encouragingly. ‘In a hospital in Aalborg …’
It had been the Reptile who gave birth for her. The Reptile who had stored up the pain and hardly made a noise during the birth. The Reptile who had squeezed out an egg and then crept away to lick its wounds.
‘A little bundle of jaundice that they put in an incubator,’ she went on. ‘She’s probably got learning difficulties as well, considering that he’s the father and I’m the mother.’
Why was Sofia staying so bloody quiet? Only the Eyes, looking at her, prompting her. Carry on talking, they seemed to say. But she couldn’t do more than just think about what she ought to say, the words wouldn’t come out.
‘Why is it that you don’t want to tell me?’ Sofia eventually asked.
It had survived when she dropped it on the floor, anyway.
But forget her now. Forget Madeleine. She’s just an egg in a blue onesie.
‘What is there to say?’ She could feel a welcome anger bubbling inside her. Better that than anxiety, than shame. ‘Those bastards stole my baby. They drugged me and dragged me to some quack at University Hospital in Copenhagen and forced me to sign a load of papers. Viggo had arranged everything. Papers saying I had been declared legally incompetent in Sweden, papers saying Bengt had power of attorney, papers saying the baby was born four weeks earlier than it really was, because I would have been of age then. They covered their backs the whole way with masses of papers. If I was to claim that I was of age when the baby was born, they had papers saying I had been declared incompetent. If I dared to suggest that the baby was born on a particular date, they could produce another piece of paper saying that it had been born four weeks earlier, before I came of age. All those fucking papers, important names that couldn’t be contradicted. I’m of age now, but I wasn’t then, when the baby was born. Back then I was mentally ill and incompetent. And, on their papers, seventeen years old rather than eighteen, just to make sure.’
‘What are you saying? That they forced you to give up your baby?’
I don’t know, Victoria thought.
She had been passive, and probably had to take a share of the blame herself. But her resistance had been almost entirely broken down by then.
‘Pretty much,’ she said after a pause. ‘But it doesn’t matter now. Nothing can be done, not a bloody thing. They’ve got the law on their side and I just want to forget it all. Forget that bloody child.’
All she had wanted was to be allowed to see the baby once more. But they wouldn’t let her, and when she did it anyway, tracking the child down and finding the foster-family, the Swede’s lovely family in their lovely house in Copenhagen, that’s when she dropped it on the floor.
Obviously she wasn’t mature enough to have a baby.
She couldn’t even manage to keep hold of it, and maybe she had actually dropped it on purpose.
Stop it now, stop thinking. But that didn’t work.
The child was all out of proportion, so it leaned to one side when you picked it up and the head was far too big and she was fucking lucky the skull didn’t crack like an egg when it hit the lovely marble floor and didn’t even bleed. Now she had finally proved that she wasn’t capable of taking responsibility for herself and her actions, so of course it was just as well that she’d signed all those papers …
‘Victoria?’ Sofia’s voice sounded distant. ‘Victoria?’ it repeated. ‘How are you feeling?’
She could feel that she was shaking and her cheeks felt hot. At first the whole room seemed very distant, then suddenly very close, as if her eyes were a camera shifting focus from telephoto to wide-screen in no more than a second.
Shit, she thought as she realised she was sitting there crying like a baby, incompetent and inadequate.
I hope you can come to terms with your memories had been the last thing Sofia said to her, and Victoria didn’t look back as she walked along the path towards the bus stop, with autumn slowly creeping across the trees around her.
Come to terms with my memories? How the hell am I supposed to come to terms with them?
They have to go, and you, Sofia Zetterlund, are going to help me with that. But at the same time I have to forget you, however that’s supposed to happen.
If you only knew what I’ve done.