Stalker

50

Sandra Lundgren leaves the bedroom, and feels a shiver run down her spine, as if someone were watching her from behind.

She tightens the belt of her dressing-gown, which is so long it reaches the floor. Her medication leaves her feeling drowsy long into the day. She goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge and takes out the remains of the chocolate cake and puts it on the worktop.

She adjusts her glasses and her dressing-gown falls open again, uncovering her stomach and sagging underwear. She shivers, pulls the wide-bladed knife from the block, cuts a small slice of cake and puts it in her mouth without bothering to get a spoon.

She’s started using Stefan’s striped dressing-gown even though it actually makes her feel sad. But she likes the way it weighs upon her breasts, its drooping shoulders, the threads hanging off the sleeves.

Beside the candleholder on the drop-leaf table is the letter from Södertörn University College. She looks at it again, even though she’s already read it thirty times. She’s on the reserve list for creative writing. Her mum helped her fill in the application. Back then she didn’t feel up to doing it herself, but her mother knew how much it would mean to her to be accepted onto the course.

She cried in the spring when she was told she hadn’t got a place. That was probably a bit of an overreaction. Nothing had really changed, after all. She would just carry on with her fourth term on the career-counselling programme instead.

She doesn’t know how long the letter had been lying there among all the old post on the hall floor, but she’s read it now, and it’s sitting on the kitchen table.

She decides to phone her mum and tell her the news.

Sandra glances at the window and sees two men walking towards Vinterviken on the other side of the road. She lives on the ground floor, but still hasn’t got used to the fact that people sometimes stop and look right in through her windows.

The wooden floor out in the hallway creaks. She thinks it sounds like a grown person trying to creep quietly.

Sandra dials the number as she sits down on one of the kitchen chairs. She holds the phone to her ear as the call goes through, pinching the corner of the letter.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me,’ she says.

‘Hello, darling, I was just going to call you… Have you thought any more about this evening?’

‘What?’

‘About coming over for a meal.’

‘Oh yes… I don’t think I feel up to it.’

‘You still have to eat, you know. I could come and pick you up in the car, I’ll give you a lift both ways.’

Sandra suddenly hears something rustling and looks over towards the dark hallway, and its clothes and shoes.

‘Will you let me do that? Darling?’

‘OK,’ she whispers, looking at the letter in her hand.

‘What would you like?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Shall I do beef á la Rydberg? You usually like that, you know, cubes of steak and-’

‘OK, Mum,’ she interrupts, and goes into the bathroom.

The blister-pack of Prozac is on the edge of the basin. The green-and-white capsules shimmer in their plastic rows.

Sandra looks at her own reflection in the mirror. The bathroom door is open behind her and she can see right out into the hall. It looks like there’s someone standing there. Her heart skips a beat, even though she knows it’s only her black raincoat.

‘The three musketeers went out for lunch today…’

Sandra leaves the bathroom while her mother tells her that she and her sisters went out to the Waxholm Hotel and had fried Baltic herring with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam, melted butter, and nice cold low-alcohol beer.

‘How is Malin?’ Sandra asks.

‘She’s amazing,’ her mother replies. ‘I don’t know how she manages to be so positive the whole time… she’s had her last session of radiotherapy, and feels pretty good… It makes you glad you live in Sweden… she’d never have been able to pay for the treatment on her own…’

‘Isn’t there anything else they can do now?’

‘Karolina thinks we should all move to Jamaica and sit around smoking cannabis and eating good food until the money runs out.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Sandra smiles.

‘I’ll let her know,’ her mum laughs.

The phone feels warm and sticky against her cheek. Sandra moves it to her other ear and walks to the bedroom, but stops suddenly. She can’t help staring at the window. The big bird cherry is moving through the broken blinds.

‘I had a look at the list of course literature for your fourth term,’ her mum says. ‘It’s all about the politics of the job market.’

‘Yes,’ Sandra says weakly.

She isn’t sure why she doesn’t just tell her mum about her place at Södertörn.

Slowly she forces herself to look away from the window, and catches sight of herself in the mirror. Her dressing-gown has fallen open again. She stands there in her underwear, looking at herself, her pale skin, rounded breasts, her smooth stomach, and the long, pink scar across her right thigh.

She and Stefan had rented a cottage in Åre over the Easter holiday. She was driving and Stefan was asleep as they got close to Östersund. It was dark, and the box of skis on the roof was making a lot of noise. They had been stuck behind a timber truck for several kilometres through the black fir-forest. The wide rear tyres of the swaying trailer were churning up masses of snow from the edge of the road. In the end she pulled out to the left to overtake, but saw the lights from an oncoming bus and pulled in again.

After the bus there were three cars, then nothing again. Sandra pulled out again and accelerated. They had just reached a long downward slope and the timber-truck was going faster. She sat beside the huge trailer, clutching the wheel with both hands and felt the car lurch in the turbulence.

Sandra accelerated a bit too hard to get past, and her wheels slid in the ridge of snow in the middle of the road. She lost control of the car and ended up underneath the timber truck. They got stuck and were dragged along, the metal screeching and shaking. She had blood in her eyes but saw the huge wheels thud into the side of the car. The metal gave way and crumpled on top of Stefan. There was a whirlwind of glass and the truck jack-knifed as the driver braked and the trailer lurched forward with a screech.

She was alive, but Stefan was dead. She had seen the photographs and read what little had been reported about the evening when her life was thrown off course.

‘Are you taking your pills like you should?’ her mum asks gently, and Sandra realises that she must have stopped talking again.

‘Leave it, Mum, I can’t talk now,’ she says.

‘But you’ll come this evening?’ her mum says quickly, unable to conceal her concern.

‘I don’t know,’ Sandra replies, sitting on the bed and screwing her eyes as tightly shut as she can.

‘It would be lovely if you did. I’ll come and get you, and if you change your mind I can take you back whenever you want.’

‘We’ll talk later on,’ Sandra says, and ends the call.

She puts the phone down on the bedside table, next to her blood-sugar monitor.

Outside the window the verdant foliage of the bushes is swaying about.

Sandra takes off the dressing-gown and lays it on the bed, pulls on her jeans and opens the chest of drawers. The broken deer is lying beside the pile of neatly folded clothes. The funny thing is that the little head has disappeared. She takes off her glasses and pulls on a clean T-shirt. Once again she feels like she’s being watched, and glances at the broken blinds, the shadowy garden, the leaves moving in the wind.

She hears a thud from the hall and jumps. It’s probably just more adverts, despite the sign on the door. She picks up the phone to call her mum back and apologise, and try to explain that she’s actually happy, but that being happy dredges up a load of sadness too.

She goes out into the kitchen again, looks at the letter on the table and walks over to the worktop to cut herself another slice of cake, but the knife isn’t there.

She has time to think that her medication has made her confused, that she must have put the knife down in the bathroom or bedroom, when someone dressed in yellow comes towards her from the hall with long strides.

Sandra just stands still, this can’t be happening.

She doesn’t manage to say a word, just hold her left hand up to protect herself.

The knife comes from above, and hits her in the chest.

Her legs collapse and the knife is jerked out as she falls backwards and sits down hard on the floor. She hits her head against the table, dislodging the candle from its holder, and it rolls over the edge.

Sandra feels hot blood pulsing down over her stomach. She has a terrible pain deep inside her chest, it feels like her heart is shaking.

Sandra just sits there, unable to move, unable to understand, when she feels a blow to her head, then a terrible pain in her cheek. She falls backwards and loses consciousness. Everything becomes dark and warm, she can hear burbling water, then a burning pain in her lungs. She comes round and starts coughing up blood, stares up at the ceiling for a few seconds, feels the blade of the knife moving about inside her chest.

Her heart quivers a few times, then stops. It all goes quiet, it feels as if she’s wading out into warm water. A silver-grey river that’s flowing gently on into the night.