Cinderella Girl

by Carin Gerhardsen

  ‘Golf?’ said Petra. ‘You don’t play golf, do you?’

  But her brain was working on a completely different question: Nacka? So you’re involved with Bella Hansson after all?

  ‘Well, I don’t know yet,’ Jamal smiled. ‘I’ve never tried.’

  After a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, Petra rushed down the steps with a centre of gravity that seemed to be somewhere down in her diaphragm.

  * * *

  Even though it was late in the evening, there were a lot of cars out making noise, splashing muddy water on to pedestrians and bicyclists, and saturating the air with stinking exhaust fumes. Nina was already waiting outside the Pressbyrån shop at the Ringen shopping centre on Götgatan when Elise showed up.

  ‘Shit, you look really hot!’ said Nina.

  The colourful lights from the shops’ neon signs were reflected in the sunglasses on her head.

  ‘Where’d you get that jacket?’

  ‘Uh, it’s not mine,’ answered Elise. ‘I borrowed it from Sis.’

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  Elise laughed.

  ‘Got some from my old lady. And you?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Nina replied. ‘But we’re going over to the Crocodile, aren’t we?’

  ‘I don’t have any money. Can I borrow some from you?’

  ‘Hey, look at that old man there.’

  Nina whispered even though the man she was looking at was inside Pressbyrån and the doors were closed.

  ‘He’s so fucking ugly! He’s a paedophile, a real dirty old man,’ Nina continued.

  The man was browsing through a magazine, and with his back turned towards them Elise couldn’t see what he looked like. But at least he didn’t wear a low-brimmed hat or turn up his coat collar for protection from their stares.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Elise asked. ‘Has he been after you or –?’

  ‘No way, as if! But I’ve heard about him from other girls. He drools over little girls and gropes them and carries on. Are we going?’

  ‘But I don’t have any money. Can I just borrow a hundred?’ Elise begged.

  ‘I barely have enough for myself. Sofia and Magda are already in the Crocodile; I’m going there anyway. Why don’t you go home and get some money, then I’ll see you in a while?’

  Nina went off unconcerned and Elise remained standing on the pavement, not really knowing what to do next. Nina turned around a few moments later, waved and called with a happy smile, ‘Hurry up!’

  Elise cast a glance through the Pressbyrån window and her gaze fell on the old man Nina had called a paedophile. He was still standing in the same place, reading magazines for free, but there were lots of people in the shop and the assistant was probably distracted.

  Elise remembered a programme she’d seen on TV. It was a documentary about some young girls in Malmö who were on the street for various reasons. You couldn’t see their faces and their voices were distorted. Elise thought their friends probably recognized them anyway. One of them said she was saving up for a horse of her own. She was thirteen.

  After a few minutes’ consideration, Elise went into the shop. Her eyes swept across sweets and ice cream, sandwiches and drinks. Then she gathered her courage and sidled up to the man to see what he was reading. Sure enough, he was looking at naked girls. She looked quickly around. None of the other customers was within earshot if she spoke in a low voice.

  ‘Do you want to see some of the real thing?’ she asked, not looking at the man beside her.

  He checked behind him to make sure it was really him she was talking to and then turned back to the magazine.

  ‘Some what?’ he asked guardedly, without looking up from his magazine.

  ‘A naked girl.’

  ‘How much do you want?’ he asked unperturbed.

  So he had done this before. Nina was right.

  ‘A hundred for tits, three hundred for pussy,’ Elise answered with simulated experience.

  ‘And more …?’

  ‘That’s all,’ said Elise.

  He put the magazine back in the rack, but still did not look her in the eyes.

  ‘You’ll get two hundred,’ he said, starting towards the door.

  She followed with her heart pounding in her chest. It was both exciting and a little scary. Like the start of something new and dangerous.

  Friday Night

  His mother was lying in bed when he arrived. She didn’t complain about the pain; she just stated factually that probably she’d broken a rib because her chest didn’t feel right. Sjöberg asked whether he should call for an ambulance, but he knew she wouldn’t want to cause any fuss and bother. The ambulance staff had much more important things to do and what would the neighbours think. He helped her carefully up on to her feet, put her coat over her shoulders and led her out to the car. Then he went back into the apartment and gathered together some underwear and toiletries in a bag. At the last moment he happened to think of her handbag; then he turned off the lights and locked the door.

  In the car, en route to the hospital, his mother told him that she had climbed up on a stool to put away a tray in a high cupboard after they had left her earlier that evening. She had lost her balance and tumbled to the floor.

  ‘The trouble I’m causing you now! I keep you up, and poor Åsa is all alone with the children.’

  She shook her head and looked out of the side window.

  ‘Mum, the children are asleep and Åsa is too,’ said Sjöberg soothingly. ‘I can’t complain either, I’m off tomorrow. You’re the one I’m worried about; you could have asked me to put away that tray. You shouldn’t do that sort of thing, Mum, not at your age.’

  ‘I know. You don’t notice that the years pass.’

  ‘So how does it feel now? Are you sitting comfortably?’

  ‘I don’t feel it as much while I’m sitting.’

  They sat in silence for a while and Sjöberg thought about what Åsa had said earlier. His mother was a rather strange character, he had to agree with that. He was just so used to her. She was now seventy-four and he was forty-nine. She had been a widow for more than half her life. What had it really been like for her? How did it feel then, when she was left alone with him? Feelings were not something they had talked about at home. Life went on as usual and it was neither good nor bad. It was what it was.

  ‘How did Dad die?’ he suddenly thought to ask.

  His mother hesitated for a moment.

  ‘He got sick,’ she replied.

  ‘But what kind of illness did he have?’

  When she didn’t answer his question right away he continued, ‘Was it cancer, or –?’

  ‘I never asked for details,’ she said with a sharp tone in her voice. ‘You never understand what those doctors say anyway.’

  Sjöberg sighed. That’s how a typical conversation went, always had. The world is so big and incomprehensible. You yourself are little and insignificant and what good does it do to get involved, to stick out, to be seen or heard? The best you could do was to avoid attracting attention, keep your faults and doings hidden, and mind your own business.

  Once at the hospital, they had to sit in the A&E waiting room for several hours. Sjöberg left for a few minutes to get them some weak coffee from a vending machine; otherwise they mostly sat leafing through old newspapers. They didn’t speak much – you don’t in public – but when new patients showed up they both looked up curiously for a few moments. His mother refused to lie down in the waiting room and remained patiently in her seat until her name was called at about one-thirty.

  The female doctor confirmed that several ribs were broken and his mother was taken in a wheelchair to a ward where she would stay, at least overnight, for X-rays and observation. Sjöberg tucked her into bed and promised to be in touch the next day.

  When he finally left she was already asleep; it was almost two-thirty in the morning.

  Sjöberg yawned as he came out into the corridor. He looked around for some clue to which direc
tion might take him out of the large hospital. A little further down the long corridor he spotted some signs and made for them. A couple of nurses came towards him and just as he was about to ask them the way he stopped short. He stood rooted to the spot with a stupid expression on his face and at first he could not manage a word.

  One of the nurses was much too familiar, with her flowing dark-red hair and her lively green eyes. She was the woman in the window, the woman who had tormented him at night for many months. Lately in his dream her facial features had started to blur into a kind of general female appearance, because it had been almost a year since he’d last seen her – Margit Olofsson. But the hair was always the same, and now here he stood, stammering, not knowing what to do. This is ridiculous, he thought. This woman doesn’t know about my absurd dreams. They had only met two or three times the previous year, during a murder investigation, and had not exchanged many words. What was the matter with him? Her neutral expression changed to recognition and she was already smiling broadly when he finally came out with an awkward greeting.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Margit Olofsson …’

  ‘Inspector! Good job, remembering my name after such a long time. I must have been a prime suspect!’ she joked.

  The other nurse continued on her way along the corridor and they were left alone together. Sjöberg couldn’t think of anything to say, so Margit Olofsson continued, ‘What are you doing here? Is there another murder case?’

  ‘No, my mother broke a couple of ribs, so I drove her here. We’ve been in casualty since eleven o’clock, and she’s spending the night for observation. Do you work at this time of night?’

  ‘Yes, periodically. But tonight has actually been pretty quiet, so it’s no problem.’

  Sjöberg didn’t know where the idea came from, but without thinking he heard himself saying, ‘May I get you a coffee?’

  In order to play down what felt to him like a minor social transgression, but which presumably meant nothing to Margit Olofsson, he added, ‘I feel like I need a cup of coffee, so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel.’

  ‘Why not?’ Margit Olofsson replied. ‘I’ll just go and tell them I’m taking a break. Wait here so I can pilot you through the labyrinth here at Huddinge!’

  ‘So how is she doing now?’ asked Margit Olofsson as they sat facing each other in the hospital cafeteria with their coffee.

  ‘Pretty good, I guess. They’re going to X-ray her to make sure she hasn’t punctured a lung or anything. She may get to go home as early as tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll look in on her. What’s her name? Sjöberg perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, Eivor. And how are you doing? And – what was her name – Ingrid?’

  ‘I don’t have any contact with Ingrid Olsson now. I never knew her well; it was only for a few weeks that it worked out that way.’

  ‘The good Samaritan …’ said Sjöberg.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Margit Olofsson self-deprecatingly. ‘Things are fine with me anyway. Two happy children who’ve left home. A husband in the painting business and personally …’

  ‘Isn’t he happy then?’ Sjöberg interrupted.

  ‘… I’ve been idling around here for thirty years.’

  She finished the sentence, but now she looked at him thoughtfully. Sjöberg felt like he was blushing, but hoped it didn’t show. Why did he ask that? What had got into him? Was he really sitting here flirting with Margit Olofsson, an extremely peripheral person from an old murder investigation? It was definitely time to drive home.

  ‘Well, I guess he’s happy in his own way. And I in mine,’ she answered cryptically, with a slight, almost imperceptible smile. ‘And you?’

  During the few seconds Sjöberg took to consider how he should answer that, he was flooded by an almost irresistible urge to tell her about the strange dream. She aroused peculiar feelings in him, which he couldn’t really put into words. It wasn’t love, in any event not the kind of love he had for Åsa or the children. Not a communion of souls either, because what did they have in common? Nothing apparently, at least nothing he could discern behind the outer shell of the person he’d encountered up to now. Was it desire? Absolutely not. Margit Olofsson – who was certainly decent-looking and not at all lacking in charm – did not have much of what he would normally be attracted to in a woman.

  Even so, he was drawn to her. There was something about this person that simply made him want to crawl into her arms and weep. He wanted to tell all the secrets of his heart and pour out his innermost thoughts to her. Was the same maternal aura that had caused Ingrid Olsson to ask her for help now sucking him in too? He didn’t think so. He already had all the love, concern and friendship he needed. Margit Olofsson stirred up his emotions in a way he did not recognize from his almost half-century of living. He had to get out of here, collect himself.

  ‘Oh yes, no reason to complain,’ he replied, the words sounding as if they had come from his mother rather than himself.

  They sat out the rest of her half-hour break and talked about themselves and their lives, aspects both important and trivial. When Sjöberg finally got in the car to drive home he did not think he had exposed too much of himself. He had not mentioned the dream.

  Saturday Morning

  Hanna stayed in bed for a long, long time, waiting for the familiar sounds. Even though the blinds were down it was completely light in the room. She didn’t feel tired at all, but she tried to go back to sleep anyway. Mummy said that if she woke up before anyone else, she had to stay in bed and try to fall asleep again. But now she just couldn’t stay in bed any longer. She decided she had to get up and play, no matter what, with the door closed. She crept out of bed and took down a puzzle from the shelf. She chose the green box with Pooh on the lid, opened it and scattered the pieces on her little table. The table was red with yellow chairs. Daddy and Hanna had painted the furniture together, but Mummy had painted the blue flowers on the seats with a very small brush.

  When she finished the Pooh puzzle she prepared some make-believe food on her stove. In the oven she found a battery-powered mixer and whipped a little cream for Magdalena, the brown-eyed doll with long, dark, flowing hair and a pink dress. The mixer buzzed loudly, and she suddenly thought that maybe the noise had wakened the others. But it was still just as silent in the apartment.

  Her nappy was heavy after the night and was hanging uncomfortably under her red and white striped nightie. Her stomach was also starting to rumble, even though she usually didn’t care much for breakfast. What could she do to wake Mummy without getting yelled at? If she screamed, maybe … that she’d had a horrible nightmare …

  ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ she called. ‘Mummy, come here! Help!’

  Nothing happened. Hanna opened the door a little and called out again, but it was still completely silent. Suddenly it struck her that her little brother was quiet too. Even though he had been screaming and screaming nonstop for days. Lukas had a sore throat and a fever and took medicine, but he still didn’t get better, Mummy said. Maybe his sickness had passed, now that he’d stopped screaming? Then Mummy would finally have a little time left over to play with her too, and not just be always occupied with Lukas.

  Hanna stuck her head through the doorway, pushing back a strand of fair hair that was hanging down in her face. She had long hair that Mummy would put up in a ponytail or pigtails in the morning, so it wouldn’t get into her eyes when she played. She was three years old and went to preschool several days a week, although not today because today was Saturday. Hanna knew that, because you kept track of such things when you were as big as she was; Saturdays were especially easy to remember, because then you could buy sweets and drink pop.

  So Mummy would just have to be angry. Hanna couldn’t stand waiting any longer; she tiptoed out to the living room. The bedroom door stood wide open and there was full daylight inside. That was strange; were they sleeping with the blinds up? She sneaked up to the doorway and looked carefully into the room. The big double bed was where
it always was, but it was empty. There were no covers, no pillows. There was no Mummy or little brother either.

  Hanna stood quietly for a long time, without really understanding what she saw, but then she crept up on to the empty bed and started to cry.

  * * *

  With a jerk he sat up in bed and screamed. He had never done that before. Åsa, with a hardened parent’s ability to go straight from deep sleep to being wide awake, sat up just as quickly and looked at her husband in alarm. Then she caressed his back with big, gentle movements and he put his hands over his face and rocked slowly back and forth.

  ‘What were you dreaming?’ Åsa asked carefully. ‘You’ve never done that before.’

  Sjöberg did not answer, simply shook his head in distress and sighed. They remained like that for a long time, and then he whispered, ‘There’s a woman in a window.’ He hoped she didn’t hear him. ‘She’s looking down at me and I’m standing barefoot in the grass.’

  Then he fell silent.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Åsa.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sjöberg said quietly.

  ‘You’ve only slept for a few hours,’ said Åsa. ‘It’s not time to get up yet. Lie down again and I’ll stroke your back.’

  He lay down beside her obediently, with his back turned towards her. She drew her hand through his blond hair a few times and then brought it slowly across his shoulder, arm, back and down to the lower back. He was sweaty and his entire body was still tense, despite Åsa’s gentle caresses.

  The dream had been the same as so many times before. He was standing barefoot on a lawn wet with dew, looking down at his feet. He wanted to look up, but something held him back. His head felt so terribly heavy that he was barely able to raise it. He exerted himself with all his strength and managed at last to turn his face upwards, but still he didn’t dare open his eyes. The back of his head pulled down towards his shoulders and he didn’t want to move.

  At last he opened his eyes. And there she stood again in the window, the woman with the dazzling dark-red hair like sunlight around her head. She was dancing for him up there in the window, before finally meeting his gaze. But she only seemed surprised. So strange. He raised his arms up towards her but lost his balance and fell headlong backwards.