The Sandman

69

Agnes is sitting on the floor in her blue pyjamas with bees on. She’s clutching her little white hairbrush and feeling each bristle with her fingertip, one by one, as if she were counting them. Anders is sitting on the floor in front of her, holding her Barbie doll and waiting.

‘Brush the doll’s hair,’ he says.

Agnes doesn’t look up at him, she just goes on picking at each individual bristle, one row after the other, slowly and intently.

He knows she doesn’t play spontaneously like other children, but she plays in her own way. She has trouble understanding what other people see and think. She’s never given her Barbie dolls personalities, she just tests their mechanics, bending their arms and legs and twisting their heads round.

But he has learned from courses organised by the Autism and Asperger Association that she can be trained to play if the games are divided up sequentially.

‘Agnes? Brush the doll’s hair,’ he repeats.

She stops fiddling with the brush, holds it out and pulls it through the doll’s blonde hair, then repeats the movement twice more.

‘She looks lovely now,’ Anders says.

Agnes starts picking at the brush again.

‘Have you seen how lovely she looks?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, without looking.

Anders gets out a Sindy doll and before he even has time to say anything Agnes reaches forward and brushes its hair with a smile.

When Agnes is asleep three hours later Anders settles down on the sofa in front of the television and watches Sex and the City. In front of the house heavy snowflakes are falling through the yellow glow of the outside lights. Petra’s at a staff party. Victoria picked her up at five o’clock. She said she wasn’t going to be late, but it’s almost eleven now.

Anders drinks a sip of cold tea and sends Petra a text to tell her about Agnes brushing her dolls’ hair.

He’s tired, but he’d like to tell her about the meeting at the hospital, and how he’s assumed responsibility for the secure unit and has a guarantee of permanent work.

In the advert break Anders goes to turn out the light in Agnes’s room. The nightlight is shaped like a life-size hare. It gives off a lovely pink light, casting a soft glow on the sheets and Agnes’s relaxed face.

The floor is littered with pieces of Lego, dolls, dolls’ furniture, plastic food, pens, princess’s tiaras and a whole porcelain tea set.

Anders can’t understand how it’s got into such a mess.

He has to shuffle forward so as not to stand on anything. The toys rattle slightly as they slide about the wooden floor. As he’s reaching for the light switch he imagines he can see a knife on the floor beside the bed.

The big Barbie house is in the way, but he can make out the glint of steel through the little doorway.

Anders tiptoes closer, leans over and his heart starts to beat faster when he sees that the knife looks like the one he found in the secure cell.

He can’t understand it, he gave the knife to Brolin.

Agnes begins to whimper anxiously and whisper in her sleep.

Anders crawls over the floor and sticks his hand through the ground floor of the dolls’ house, opens the little door wide and reaches for the knife.

The floor creaks and Agnes is coughing slightly as she breathes.

Something is glinting in the darkness under the bed. It could be the shiny eyes of a teddy bear. It’s difficult to tell through the tiny leaded windows of the dolls’ house.

‘Ow,’ Agnes whispers in her sleep. ‘Ow, ow...’

Anders has just managed to touch the knife with his fingertips when he sees the twinkling eyes of a wrinkled face under the bed.

It’s Jurek Walter – and he moves fast as lightning, grabbing his hand and pulling.

Anders wakes up as he snatches his hand back. He’s gasping as he realises he’s fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the television. He switches it off, and sits there with his heart pounding.

Car headlights shine in through the window. A taxi turns round and disappears. Then the front door opens carefully.

It’s Petra.

He hears her go to the bathroom and pee, then take her make-up off. He walks slowly closer, towards the light of the bathroom spilling into the corridor.