‘Darling,’ she mutters, as her hands stroke his chest. ‘Welcome back. Mum’s here. I’m waiting for you.’
She calls a doctor, who explains that this is a natural part of coming round, but that it will be many hours before he’s conscious.
‘Life is slowly returning to all of us,’ Sofia says when the doctor leaves them on their own.
‘Yes, maybe,’ Jeanette says, and makes up her mind at that moment to say what she knows. ‘By the way, do you know who’s lying in a coma in the next ward?’ she asks.
‘No idea. Anyone I know?’
‘Karl Lundstr?m,’ Jeanette says. ‘I went past his room earlier today. It’s actually quite strange,’ she goes on. ‘Two corridors away Karl Lundstr?m is lying between the same sort of sheets as Johan, and the staff care for them both with the same devotion. Life seems to be worth just the same, regardless of who you are.’
‘We live in the world of men,’ Sofia replies. ‘Where Johan is worth no more than a paedophile. There, no one’s worth more than a paedophile or a rapist. You can only be worth less.’
Jeanette laughs. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, if you’re a victim, you’re worth less than the paedophile himself. They’d rather protect presumed perpetrators than presumed victims. The world of men.’
Jeanette nods but isn’t sure she understands. She looks at Johan lying there. A victim? She hasn’t really dared think the thought. A victim of what? She thinks of Karl Lundstr?m. No, impossible. She thinks him away.
‘What sort of experiences have you had with men?’ she hazards.
‘I suppose I hate them,’ Sofia replies. Her eyes are blank. ‘As a group, I mean,’ she adds, turning to look at Jeanette again. ‘You?’
Jeanette isn’t prepared for the question to be thrown back at her. She looks at Johan, and thinks of ?ke, and her bosses and colleagues. Sure, there are pigs among them, but that doesn’t apply to them all. What Sofia is giving voice to comes from a different world to hers. That’s the sort of thing you just feel.
Sofia’s darkness, what exactly does it consist of? Her eyes are difficult to read.
Hatred or irony, madness or wisdom? Is there really any difference? Jeanette thinks.
‘I could do with a cigarette,’ Sofia says. ‘Do you want to come?’
At least she never bores her. Unlike ?ke.
‘No … you go. I’ll sit here with Johan.’
Sofia Zetterlund picks up her coat and walks out.
Stockholm, 1987
THE ROWAN TREE was planted the same day she was born. She once tried to set fire to it, but it wouldn’t burn.
The compartment is warm and smells of the people who were sitting here before her. Victoria opens the window in an attempt to air it, but it’s as if the smells are ingrained in the velour seats.
The headache she’s had since she woke up with the noose around her neck in the Copenhagen hotel room is starting to ease. But her mouth still feels sore and her broken front tooth hurts badly. She runs her tongue over her teeth and can feel that a piece has broken off, and thinks that she’ll have to get it fixed as soon as she gets home.
The train pulls out from the station with a jolt, and it starts to pour with rain.
I can do what I like, she thinks. I can leave it all behind me and never go back to him. Will he allow that? She doesn’t know. He needs her, and she needs him.
At least for the moment.
A week earlier she, Hannah and Jessica took the ferry from Corfu to Brindisi, then trains to Rome and Paris. There had been grey rain through the windows the whole way. July was more like November. Two pointless days in Paris. Hannah and Jessica had started to get homesick and they were cold and wet as they sat in their seats at the Gare du Nord.
Victoria curls up in a corner and pulls her jacket over her head. After a month interrailing through Europe, only the last stretch remains.
Throughout the entire journey Hannah and Jessica had been like rag dolls. She had grown tired of them, and when the train stopped in Lille she decided to get off. A Danish lorry driver offered her a lift, and she went with him all the way to Amsterdam. When she got to Copenhagen she cashed in her last traveller’s cheques and booked into a hotel.
The voice had told her what to do. But it had been wrong.
She had survived.
As the train approaches the ferry terminal in Helsing?r, she wonders if her life could have been different. Probably not. Her father stuck a knife into her childhood, and the blade is still quivering from the blow. Not that it matters now. She and the hatred belong together, like thunder and lightning. Like a clenched fist and a punch.
The journey home takes all night, and she sleeps the whole way. The conductor wakes her just before they arrive, and she feels giddy and uneasy. She has been dreaming, but can’t remember of what, and all that remains of the dream is a feeling of anxiety.
It’s early morning, and there’s a chill in the air. She puts her rucksack on, gets off the train and walks into the large, arched concourse. As she anticipated, there’s no one there to meet her, and she takes the escalator down to the metro.
The bus from Slussen out to V?rmd? and Grisslinge takes half an hour, and she uses the time to make up innocent little anecdotes about the trip. She knows he’s going to want to hear everything, and won’t be happy if there are no details.
Victoria gets off the bus and walks slowly along the road where she once named so many things.
She sees the Climbing Tree and the Stepping Stone. The little mound she called the Mountain, and the stream that was once the River.
Even as she takes her seventeen-year-old teenage steps, part of her is only two years old.
The white Volvo is parked in the drive, and she sees them out in the garden.
He’s standing with his back to her fiddling with something, while Mum is crouched beside one of the flower beds, weeding. Victoria takes off her rucksack and leaves it on the terrace.
Only then does he hear her and turn round.
She smiles and waves to him, but he looks at her expressionlessly, then turns away and continues with his work.
Mum looks up from the flower bed and nods warily at Victoria. She nods back, then picks up her rucksack again and goes into the house.
She unpacks her dirty clothes in the basement and puts them in the laundry basket. She undresses and gets in the shower.
A sudden gust of air makes the shower curtain move, and she realises he’s standing outside the shower.
‘Did you have a nice time?’ he says. His shadow falls on the shower curtain and she feels her stomach tighten. She doesn’t want to answer, but in spite of the humiliations he has subjected her to, she can’t give him the sort of silent treatment that might make him reveal himself.
‘Oh yes. It was good.’ She tries to sound happy and relaxed, and not think about the fact that he’s standing so close to her naked body.
‘And you had enough money to last the whole trip?’
‘Yes. I’ve even got a bit left. After all, I had my grant, so …’