Autumn Killing

3

Mum.

You’re so angry, Tove thinks, as she pulls the covers over her head and listens to the rain clattering on the roof, hard and fierce, as if there were an impatient god up there drumming millions of long fingers.

The room smells of the country. She was just looking at the rag-rugs, resting like flattened snakes on the floor, their pattern like a beautiful series of black-and-white pictures that no one will ever be able to interpret.

I know, Mum, Tove thinks. I know you blame yourself for what happened last summer, and that you think I’m bottling up all sorts of things. But I don’t want to talk to a psychologist, I don’t want to sit there babbling opposite some old lady. I’ve been chatting to other people on trauma.com instead. In English. It’s as if it all gets easier when I see my own clumsy words about what happened, and about how scared I was then. The words take the fear away, Mum, I’ve only got the images left, but the images can’t get me.

You have to look forward, Mum. Maybe you think I haven’t seen you drinking. That I don’t know where you hide the bottles around the house, that I don’t notice that your breath smells of alcohol behind the mask of chewing-gum. Do you think I’m stupid, or what?

She and Janne had remained at the kitchen table when Malin disappeared with all her rage.

Janne had said: ‘I hope she doesn’t crash the car and kill herself. Should I call the police? Or go after her? What do you think, Tove?’

And she hadn’t known what to say. Most of all she wanted her mum to come back, to rush into the kitchen in her very best mood, but things like that only happened in bad books and films.

‘I don’t know,’ she had said. ‘I’ve no idea.’

And her stomach had been aching, as far as her chest, a black pressure that wouldn’t let up, and Janne had made sandwiches, had told her things would sort themselves out once her mum had calmed down.

‘Can’t you go after her?’

And Janne had looked at her, then simply shaken his head in response. And the ache had found its way up into her heart and head and eyes, and she had to struggle to hold back the tears.

‘It’s OK to cry,’ Janne said, sitting down beside her and holding her. ‘It’s awful. It’s awful, because no one wanted it to turn out like this.’

‘It’s OK to cry,’ he had said again. ‘I’m going to.’

How can I help you, Mum? Because no matter what I say it’s like you’re not listening, don’t want to listen, like you’re trapped in an autumn river full of dirty torrential water and you’ve made up your mind to float off into the darkness.

I can see you in the kitchen, on your way to work, in the mornings, on the sofa in front of the television, or with all your files about that Maria woman.

And I want to ask you how you are, because I can see you’re feeling bad, but I’m scared you’d just be angry. You’re completely shut off, Mum, and I don’t know how to get you to open up.

And there’s so much else that I’d rather think about: school, my books, all my friends, all the fun stuff that I feel I’m just at the start of. All the boys.

Tove pulls the covers down. The room is there again.

The ache in her stomach, her heart, is still there. But for me it’s quite natural that you don’t live together, you and Dad. And there’ll be more fighting. Because I don’t think you’re coming back here, and I don’t know if I want to live with you now.

A crow has landed on the windowsill. It looks in at her. It pecks at the glass before flying off into the night.

The room is dark.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Tove thinks. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Janne is lying in bed with one of the bedside lamps on. He’s reading a folder from the British Armed Forces. It’s about building latrines, and it helps him to find his way into his memories, to Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan, where he most recently constructed latrines in a refugee camp. The memories from his time in the Rescue Services Agency mean that he can avoid thinking about what happened this evening, about what has happened, and now must happen.

But the images, black and white in his memory, of people in desperate need in distant corners of the planet, are constantly shoved aside by Malin’s face, her red, puffy, tired, alcoholic’s face.

He confronted her several times. And she evaded the issue. Yelled at him when he poured away the drink from the bottles she’d stashed away, screaming at him that it was pointless, because she still had ten bottles hidden in places he’d never find.

He pleaded with her to see someone, a psychiatrist, a therapist, anyone at all. He had even spoken to her boss, Sven Sjoman, telling him that Malin was drinking more and more, but that it might not be visible at work, and asking him to do something. Sven had promised that something would be done. That conversation had taken place in August, but nothing had happened yet.

Her rage. Against herself. Presumably because of what happened to Tove. She refused to accept that it wasn’t her fault, that there is evil everywhere, always, and that anyone can get in its way.

It’s as if her stubbornness has led her in the wrong direction. That she’s absolutely committed to driving herself as far down as she can go.

And tonight she hit him. She’s never done that before.

Dig deep. Dig deep.

Regular check-ups. Bacteria sanitation.

Janne throws the files across the room. Turns out the light.

It was pretty stupid, really, he thinks. To imagine that a bloody terrible experience could make us work together as a family. As if evil could be a catalyst for good. In truth the complete damn opposite has happened.

Then he looks at Malin’s side of the bed. Reaches out his hand, but there’s no one there.