The Sandman

61

Saga runs along the pavement, between the buildings and the bank of snow lining the road. She breathes in the icy air so deeply that it hurts her lungs. She crosses the road, runs across Mariatorget, then stops on the other side of Hornsgatan and gets some snow from a car roof and presses it to her hot, stinging eyes, then runs the rest of the way home.

Her hands are shaking as she unlocks the door. She lets out a lonely whimper as she steps into the hall and closes the door behind her.

Saga lets the keys fall to the floor, kicks off her shoes and walks straight through the flat to her bedroom.

She picks up the phone, dials the number, then stands and waits. After six rings she is put through to Stefan’s voicemail. She doesn’t listen to his message, just throws the phone at the wall as hard as she can.

She staggers, leans forward and grabs the chest of drawers.

Still fully dressed, she lies down on the double bed and curls up like a foetus. She knows all too well when she last felt like this. When she was little and woke up in her dead mother’s arms.

Saga Bauer can no longer remember how old she was when her mother got ill. But when she was five she realised that her mum had a serious brain tumour. The illness changed her mum in terrible ways. The poisoned cells made her distant and increasingly irritable.

Her dad was hardly ever home. She can’t bear to think about how he let them down. As an adult she’s tried to tell herself he was only human, he couldn’t help being weak. She repeats it like a mantra, but her fury at him won’t subside. It’s quite incomprehensible that he kept out of the way and handed the burden to his young daughter. She doesn’t want to think about it, never talks about it, it just makes her angry.

The night the illness finally claimed her mother she was so tired she needed help taking her medication. Saga gave her pill after pill, and ran to get more water.

‘I can’t take any more,’ her mum whispered.

‘You have to.’

‘Just call Daddy and tell him I need him.’

Saga did as her mum asked, and told her dad that he had to come home now.

‘Mummy knows I can’t,’ he replied.

‘But you have to, she can’t take any more...’

Later that evening her mum was very weak, she didn’t eat anything but her medication and shouted at Saga when she knocked over the bottle of pills on the rug. Her mum was in terrible pain, and Saga tried to comfort her.

Her mum just asked Saga to call her dad and tell him she’d be dead before morning.

Saga cried and said she mustn’t die, that she didn’t want to live if her mum died. Her tears were trickling into her mouth as she called her dad once more. She sat on the floor, listening to the sound of her own crying and her dad’s answer-phone message.

‘Call... call Daddy,’ her mum whispered.

‘I’m trying,’ Saga sobbed.

When her mum finally fell asleep, Saga turned out the little lamp and stood by the bed for a while. Her mum’s lips were shiny and she was breathing heavily. Saga curled up in her warm embrace and fell asleep, exhausted. She slept beside her mum until she woke up early next morning, frozen.

Saga gets out of bed, looks at the remnants of the broken phone, takes off her coat and lets it fall to the floor, then goes to the kitchen and gets a pair of scissors, and heads for the bathroom. She studies herself in the mirror, sees John Bauer’s pretty princess, and thinks about how she could save a lonely girl. Maybe I’m the only person who can save Felicia, she thinks, looking sternly at her own reflection.