The shower is running and her head is full of Victoria’s voice. It’s as if it’s eating its way into her, gnawing at the tissue of her brain.
It’s a voice she’s been listening to her whole life, but never got used to.
Dare you, dare you today?
She gets up on unsteady legs and goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Come on, she thinks, I’ve got to calm down.
She sees her reflection in the hall mirror and realises how tired she looks. Tired, down to her very marrow.
She turns on the kitchen tap, but it’s as if the water doesn’t want to get cold enough, and in her mind’s eye she sees it being drawn from ancient rocks, deep beneath her, where it’s hot as hell.
She burns herself on the jet of water and she can see flames before her eyes.
Children in front of a campfire.
Mambaa manyani … Mamani manyimi …
Sofia shudders at the memory of the childish song.
She goes out into the hall and rifles through her bag, looking for the box of paroxetine.
She tries to gather enough saliva to swallow the pill. Her throat is dry, but she still pops a tablet in her mouth. Its bitterness takes her by surprise, and when she tries to swallow, it catches in her throat. She swallows over and over again, and feels it move jerkily down her throat.
Dare you today? Dare you?
‘No, I dare not,’ she mutters quietly, and slumps halfway down the wall of the hall. ‘I’m petrified.’
She curls up there, waiting for the medication to take effect. Trying to rock herself to a state of calmness.
Waiting. The rumbling noise she can’t get away from.
Sauna, baby birds, cloth dog.
She clings to the thought of the cloth dog, calmness. ‘Cloth dog, cloth dog,’ she repeats to herself to get the voice to shut up and to regain control over her thoughts.
Suddenly her mobile rings, but it’s as if the sound comes from another world.
A world she no longer has access to.
With an effort she gets up to answer the ringtone that fate has thrown her just as she is losing her grip. The phone call is the way back, the link between her and reality.
As long as she can manage to answer it, she can come back down and find her way home. She knows that’s how it is, and that conviction gives her the strength to grab her phone.
‘Hello,’ she mutters, sliding down the wall again. She managed it. She managed to catch the lifeline.
‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
‘Yes, I’m here,’ Sofia Zetterlund replies, and believes she’s home again. Safe.
‘Yes, hello … I’m trying to get in touch with a Victoria Bergman. Is this the right number?’
She hangs up and bursts out laughing.
Mambaa manyani … Mamani manyimi …
Suddenly she recognises Victoria’s voice, gets to her feet and looks around.
Do you think I don’t know what you’re up to, you weak fucker.
Sofia follows the sound into the living room, but the room is empty.
She feels she needs a cigarette and reaches for the packet. She fumbles but manages to get hold of one, sticks it in her mouth, lights it and inhales deeply while she waits for Victoria to make herself known.
She hears Samuel clattering about in the bathroom.
So you’re not smoking under the exhaust fan today?
Sofia jerks. How the hell can Victoria know that that’s what she usually does? How long has she been here? No, she tries to calm herself. It’s impossible.
What’s really going on in your kitchen?
‘Victoria, what do you mean by that?’ Sofia makes an effort to resume her professional role. Whatever happens, she mustn’t show that she’s afraid, she has to stay calm, regain control.
The bathroom door opens.
‘Talkin’ to ya’self?’
Sofia turns round and sees Samuel standing naked in the doorway. He observes her, dripping with water from the shower. He smiles.
‘Who you talking to?’ He looks around the room. ‘Nobody here.’ Samuel takes a few steps out into the hall and walks over to the doorway. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Forget about her,’ Sofia says. ‘We’re playing hide-and-seek.’ She takes Samuel’s arm.
He looks surprised and raises his hand to her face.
‘What’s happened to ya’ face, ma’am? Look strange …’
‘Get dressed and eat before it gets cold.’ She opens a drawer of the dresser and passes him yet another towel. He wraps it around himself and goes back into the bathroom.
She closes the door behind him, gets the box of pentobarbitone from her handbag and empties it into the mug of Coca-Cola.
Are you going to lock him up as well?
‘Victoria, please,’ Sofia pleads. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What do you mean?’
You’ve got a little boy locked up here in the apartment. In the room behind the bookcase.
Sofia understands nothing, and her unease is growing stronger and stronger.
Then she remembers the significance of the song the first time she heard it, when she was sitting tied up in a pit in the jungle.
Mambaa manyani … Mamani manyimi …
Scarecrow fuck children … Must have a dirty cunt …
You disgusting fat whore. Didn’t it do any good, cutting your arms with a razor blade?
Sofia thinks how she used to sit behind Aunt Elsa’s house cutting herself.
Hiding the bleeding wounds with long-sleeved tops.
And now you buy shoes that are too small instead. To remind yourself of the pain.
Sofia looks down at her feet. On her heels she has terrible calluses from years of tormenting herself. On her arms pale scars from razor blades, shards of glass and knives.
Suddenly the other part of her memory opens up, and what have previously been fuzzy still images become fragments of film.
What was past becomes present, and everything falls into place.
Dad’s hands, and the judgemental look in Mum’s eyes. Martin on the Ferris wheel, the jetty down by the Fyris River, then the shame at having lost him. University Hospital in Uppsala, the medication and therapy.
Memories of Sigtuna and the masked girls in a ring around her.
The humiliation.
The boys who raped her at Roskilde, then her flight to Copenhagen and the failed suicide attempt.
Sierra Leone and the children who didn’t know what they hated.
A tool shed in Sigtuna, a hard earth floor and a light bulb through a blindfold.
The same image.
Sofia has dug into Victoria’s internal world and occasionally seen things Victoria has spent her whole life trying to forget. Now Victoria is walking around in her home, in her private space. She is everywhere and nowhere.
And the tape player that you spend hours with, talking and talking and talking. No wonder Lasse left you. He probably couldn’t bear you banging on about your horrible childhood. It was you who wanted to go to a sex club in Toronto, you who wanted group sex. Thank fuck he didn’t want to have children with you.
Sofia makes an attempt to protest, but can’t make a sound. But he’d been sterilised, she thinks.
You’re perverted. You tried to steal his children. Mikael is Lasse’s son! Have you forgotten that?!
The voice is so loud that she flinches away and sinks onto the sofa. It feels like her temples are about to burst.