She doesn’t know what she’s going to find in there.
Or, rather, she knows exactly what she’s going to find, but doesn’t know what it’s going to do to her.
Inside the box are an envelope, a photograph album and a threadbare stuffed animal. On top of the envelope is the videotape she once sent to herself.
She looks over at the desktop, where she once carved loads of hearts and all sorts of different names. Her finger traces the carved letters and she tries to conjure up the faces the names represent. She can’t remember any of them.
The only name that means anything is Martin’s.
She had been ten and he three when they got to know each other that week out at the cottage.
The first time he had put his hand in hers he had done it without wanting anything more.
He had just wanted to touch her hand.
Sofia puts her hand over Martin’s name on the desktop, and feels grief rising like sap in her chest. She had him in her hands, he used to do whatever she suggested. So full of trust.
She sees herself next to Martin’s dad. The threat she thought he was. The way she had tried to play the game she knew so well. Constantly waiting for that moment, the time he would catch her and make her his. The way she had wanted to protect Martin from those adult arms, that adult body.
She giggles at her own memories and the naive assumption that all men were the same. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she had seen Martin’s dad touching him, everything would have been different. It was that moment that had confirmed beyond any doubt that all men knew no boundaries and were capable of anything.
But in his case she had been wrong.
Martin’s dad had been a perfectly ordinary dad. He had been washing his son. That’s all.
Guilt, she thinks.
Bengt and the other men made Martin’s dad guilty. The ten-year-old Victoria saw the collective guilt of all men in him. In his eyes and the way he touched her.
He was a man, and that was enough. No analysis was required. Only the logical conclusion of her own thoughts.
She reads the label on the videotape in her hand.
Sigtuna 84.
A car passes at high speed down Sk?rg?rdsv?gen, and she drops the tape on the floor. To her the noise is deafening and she stands frozen, but there’s nothing to suggest that they heard her down in the sauna.
It’s still quiet, and it occurs to her that everything might have just stopped after she vanished from their lives.
Maybe she was the root of all the evil?
If that’s true, then she has no framework to follow, no timetable to put her faith in. In spite of her uncertainty she can’t resist watching the film. She has to experience everything once more.
Relief, she thinks.
She sits down on the bed, puts the tape in the video player, and turns the television on.
There’s a hiss as the film starts, and she lowers the volume. The picture is sharp and shows a room lit up by a single, bare light bulb.
She sees three girls kneeling in front of a row of pig masks.
She is on the left, Victoria, smiling faintly.
The sound of the old video camera is audible.
‘Tie them up!’ someone hisses, then bursts out laughing.
The girls’ hands are bound behind them with duct tape, and they’re blindfolded. One of the masked girls brings forward a bucket of water.
‘Silence. And … action!’ the girl holding the camera says. ‘Welcome to Sigtuna College for the Humanities!’ she goes on, while the contents of the bucket are emptied over the three girls’ heads. Hannah coughs and Jessica lets out a yelp, but Sofia sees herself sit in complete silence.
One of the girls steps forward, puts on a student cap and bends over, making a sweeping gesture towards the camera, then turns towards the girls on the floor. Sofia watches in fascination as Jessica begins to sway backwards and forwards.
‘I am the representative of the student body!’
The others all burst into loud laughter, and Sofia leans forward and lowers the volume on the television a bit more, while the girl goes on with her speech.
‘And to become full members you must eat the welcome gift from our school’s most eminent headmistress.’ The laughter gets even louder, but Sofia can tell that it’s forced. As if the girls are laughing out of obligation, and not because they are genuinely amused. Goaded on by Fredrika Grünewald.
The camera zooms in to show just Jessica, Hannah and Victoria sitting on the floor.
Sofia Zetterlund sits mutely in front of the flickering television screen, feeling fury bubble up inside her. They had agreed that they would be served chocolate pudding, but Fredrika Grünewald had served them real dog shit in order to cement her hold over the younger girls.
As she sees herself in the film she feels proud. Because she had fought back, and had gained victory by being responsible for the final shock.
She had played her role to the end.
She was used to dealing with shit.
Sofia takes the tape out and put it back in the box. The water pipes are rumbling and the boiler clicks into action down in the cellar. She can hear his agitated voice from the sauna, and her mum’s attempts to calm him down.
Sofia thinks it smells musty and cautiously opens the window. She looks out over the dusk-shrouded garden. Her old swing is still hanging from the tree below. She remembers it being red, but none of the paint is left. Just dry, yellow-brown flakes.
A world of facades, she thinks, as she turns and looks around the room. There’s a picture of her on the wall, from when she was in year 9. Her smile is radiant and her eyes full of life. No indication of what was really going on inside her.
She had learned to play the game.
Sofia feels that she’s close to tears. Not because she regrets anything, but because she suddenly comes to think about Hannah and Jessica, who got caught up in Victoria’s game but never found out that it had been her idea all along.
It had turned into an experiment in guilt. A joke that became serious.
In front of Hannah and Jessica she had played the role of victim, even though she was actually the opposite.
It was a betrayal.
She spent three years sharing the shame with them.
For three years the idea of revenge held them together.
She had hated Fredrika Grünewald and all the anonymous upper-class girls from Danderyd and Stocksund, who used their parents’ money to buy the nicest and most expensive brands of clothes. Who thought they were something special because of their smart names.
Four years older.
Four years more mature than her.
Who carries the greater anxiety today? Have they forgotten it, suppressed it?
Sofia sits down on the soft, pale blue carpet and leans her head back. She looks up at the ceiling and sees that the cracks in the plaster are still there. Others have appeared since she was last there.
She wonders which of them stuck to the contract they signed with their own blood.
Hannah? Jessica? She herself?
They stuck together for three years, then they lost touch.