Shame

13

‘Thanks for coming.’

Åse was sitting on the sofa in her cosy living room, and Börje had placed a blanket over her shoulders. Upset but exceedingly grateful, he now sat next to her with one rough fist holding her hand. He used the other hand to wipe his eyes from time to time.

Doctor Monika Lundvall had remained standing. Confident and professional on the surface, desperately holding herself together, she had made it through the past two hours despite her inner inferno. She spoke with the police and ambulance crew, asked the firemen what they were planning to do with the van, and, finally, full of information, drove Åse home and relayed all the essential facts to Börje. But there in the comfortable living room, Doctor Lundvall, for safety’s sake, had chosen to remain standing. If she sat down in one of the inviting easy chairs and permitted herself to relax, she was afraid that Monika the young girl would manage to break out. Locked in behind her rational façade young Monika was wandering about amongst the wreckage, desperate and terrified. At any moment she might escape, and in that event Doctor Lundvall would have to leave. She was just about to begin her parting comments when she heard the front door open.

‘Hello?’

It was Börje who answered. ‘Hello, we’re in here.’ He looked at Doctor Lundvall and explained, ‘It’s our daughter Ellinor. I asked her to come over.’

She appeared in the doorway, a young blonde woman with a purposeful step. She had only one goal in sight, her parents there on the sofa. She didn’t even see Doctor Lundvall as she passed her.

‘How are you feeling?’

The daughter sat next to Åse and leaned her forehead on her shoulder. In Åse’s lap all their hands met: mother, father, child. A close-knit family. They would stick together through thick and thin, all their lives.

‘There’s no danger, but she isn’t quite able to talk about it yet. They gave her a sedative.’ Börje’s voice was calm and low but his tenderness radiated from his hands as they rearranged the blanket that had slipped down from Åse’s shoulders. Then he stroked Ellinor’s hair.

Monika was kicking and biting inside. Throwing herself again and again at the fragile shell that held her captive. Doctor Lundvall was having a hard time breathing, and things were starting to get urgent, very urgent.

‘If it’s all right with you I’ll be leaving now.’

It was there in her voice. At any rate she could hear it herself. But maybe the people on the sofa were too immersed in their own gratitude to hear it. Börje got up and came over to her.

‘I don’t know what else to say but thank you. It’s a bit hard to find the words right now.’

‘You don’t have to say a thing.’

She took his outstretched hand and pressed it fleetingly, then turned to Åse, who was looking at her with a bottomless sorrow in her eyes.

‘Goodbye Monika, thanks for coming.’

When she heard her name the façade cracked, but she managed to make it out to the car before the scream came.

The car knew the way better than she did. Incapable of making any decision at all, she suddenly found herself parked outside the cemetery. Her legs walked the familiar paths and the flame that had been lit in another time flickered in its holder. She sank to her knees. Rested her forehead against the cold stone and wept. For how long she didn’t know. Darkness had fallen and the cemetery was empty; she and a headstone and a candle flame were all that were left. All the tears that had been stifled with such obedience and restraint over the years came welling up in a frenzy. But they gave her no comfort, they only drove her deeper into despair. There was nothing she could do. A woman had lost her beloved and a child had lost her father, and she just sat there, alive and of no use to any human being. Once again she was the one who had survived and had managed to kill someone who should have been allowed to live. If there was a God, his ways were truly inscrutable. Why take Mattias and let her go? Two people depended on him. His new job would have been their salvation. And Monika herself was expected to continue on as if nothing had happened. Just drive home to Thomas with all her opportunities in safe custody and begin to build her future. Return to her expensive possessions and her well-paid job and pretend she was caring for human lives, when the truth was quite the reverse.

She straightened up and read the words she had looked at thousands and thousands of times.

My beloved son.

So natural, always so present. And always so out of reach.

She placed her palms over his name on the cold stone, and in the depths of her heart she had only one desire.

That she once and for all might trade places.