For the Missing

by Lina Bengtsdotter

  ‘Your source has been revealed,’ she said and smiled.

  ‘What are you watching anyway?’ Annabelle sat down next to Rebecka on the sofa. Gruesome scenes were taking place on the muted screen in front of them, pictures of a big, bloated corpse.

  ‘It’s Seven. Mum recommended it. I asked her what the scariest film she ever saw was and she said this one. I’ve just watched the whole thing, but I just started over from the beginning. It’s about the seven deadly sins. This fat guy, for instance, he’s guilty of …’

  ‘Gluttony?’ Annabelle interjected.

  ‘Right. I forgot I was talking to the Bible expert. It’s still really messed up that you’ve started hanging out in church. It’s for him you’re actually going, though, right? It’s not for God, the old ladies or the Bible talk. Just tell me straight, Bella. You’re hot for the priest, right?’

  ‘Give it a rest,’ Annabelle said, ‘you already asked me that. Hannes would never … don’t forget he’s a priest.’

  ‘Priests are the worst,’ Rebecka said. ‘Priests, police officers and social workers. You can’t trust people who do those things for a living. Do you swear it’s not him?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘On the Bible?’

  ‘On the Bible.’

  ‘Then who is it? I’ve guessed, like, every single man in this whole bloody town.’

  Annabelle kept her mouth shut and waited her out. Rebecka had trouble focusing on anything for long, particularly when she was drunk. She had planned to tell her tonight, about Him, the baby, everything, but now … It would be catastrophic to say anything about it now.

  ‘And it’s going to be greed in a minute,’ Rebecka said, nodding at the TV. ‘Fuck, I’m going to have to go Christian too soon, because I’m guilty of every one of the deadly goddamn sins.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ Annabelle said. ‘By the way, do you have cigarettes?’

  ‘I’m out. Check Mum’s stash in the cupboard above the fan. And grab a whole pack from the carton. That way, she won’t notice.’

  Annabelle went to get a packet of Prince and sat back down. She took a sip of the drink Rebecka had mixed for her from the booze she had brought. It tasted horrifically strong. After the second drink, she started feeling that familiar sensation of her arms growing heavier. She leaned back in the sofa.

  ‘Just don’t pass out now,’ Rebecka said. ‘It’s going to be a hell of a party tonight. The whole gang’s already there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The usual crowd. William’s coming too.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that swell,’ Annabelle said.

  ‘You’re not upset, are you?’

  Annabelle shook her head. No, she wasn’t upset. She just didn’t feel like seeing him. Not him and not Svante.

  39

  The corkscrew was in a spice box above the hob.

  Charlie took a few deep swigs straight from the bottle. She had never been a connoisseur, and at least it didn’t taste like vinegar. She went over to the counter by the kitchen window and looked out at the shed, remembering that Betty and Mattias had painted in there and started building a wall so the boy could have his own room when he arrived. But then Mattias had moved into the house instead, so the project had been left unfinished.

  Why couldn’t he have stayed in the shed?

  Because, she had to understand, Betty loved him, they loved each other, and when people love each other, they want to live together. What was so strange about that?

  What’s strange about it, Charlie wanted to say, what’s strange about it is that I’m not enough.

  What’s so wrong about Mattias? Betty wanted to know. She couldn’t see what Charlie’s objection to him was. He had never done anything to her, had he?

  Charlie hadn’t known what to say to that. He had never done anything to her, and yet she wished he had never come, that he would go away. Because everything got worse after he moved in with them: the parties, the drinking, the chaos. Was it so strange then that she hated him?

  After a glass of wine, Charlie had made her mind up. She was going to stay here. She was going to do what that stubborn therapist had advocated: face her demons. Nothing else had worked, so what did she have to lose? She pulled out her phone, called Susanne and told her where she was.

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘I couldn’t keep staying at the motel. I’ve been put on sick leave.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I suppose it’s because I’m … sick.’

  ‘Would you like me to come over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘Yes, I need …’ Charlie looked around. ‘I need cleaning supplies, sheets, water, a camping stove if you have one. I need, like, everything.’

  Susanne arrived within the hour with two big Ikea bags.

  ‘My God, it’s overgrown,’ she said. ‘You’d have to cut it all back and get rid of the undergrowth and …’

  ‘It’s not like I’m moving in permanently,’ Charlie said. ‘I was just thinking … I mean, since I’m here anyway, I might as well check in on the house.’

  ‘Sure. It really looks like it needs to be checked on, to put it mildly.’

  They went inside and unpacked the things Susanne had brought. She started wiping down the cupboards and sighed when she realised the fridge wasn’t working. How had Charlie planned to get by without a fridge?

  Charlie told her they could put things in the basement, that it was pretty cold down there.

  ‘Have you been upstairs?’ Susanne asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because we could go up there together and …’

  ‘Sorting out the downstairs will do for now.’

  When they were done, they sat down at the kitchen table and Charlie poured Susanne a glass of wine.

  ‘So, what’s up?’ Susanne said. ‘What’s really going on?’

  ‘I’ve been having a tough time lately. It’s been … I’ve been drinking quite a bit.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ Susanne lit a cigarette. ‘Things never turn out the way you thought they would. Look at us, thinking we wouldn’t … that we wouldn’t turn out like them, but the genetic inheritance or whatever it is. It’s bloody hard to resist.’

  ‘We’re not like them,’ Charlie said. ‘We are not our parents.’

  ‘I’m not far from, myself. I feel like I could very easily take that final step, if you know what I mean, and just let it all go.’

  ‘But you haven’t been suspended from work.’

  ‘Probably only because I don’t have a job,’ Susanne said. ‘If I had one, I would definitely have been suspended.’

  Charlie had to laugh.

  ‘Tell me,’ Susanne said. ‘What happened?’

  So Charlie told her about her night with the journalist, that she must have leaked privileged information. She had no memory of doing it, but either way, her boss had had enough and suspended her.

  ‘Is it about the video?’ Susanne asked. ‘I read about it online.’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘So there is a video?’

  ‘I can’t comment on that. I’ve fucked up enough as it is.’

  ‘It wasn’t necessarily you who leaked though,’ Susanne said. ‘You know how people are, how they sniff out every last thing.’

  Charlie nodded. She did know.

  ‘But sometimes they sniff out the wrong thing,’ she said. ‘They may even muddy up the track.’

  ‘And sometimes they sniff out the right thing,’ Susanne said.

  Charlie looked out of the window and said she wanted to go outside.

  They brought their glasses and chairs and went out to sit in Betty’s sun nook. They started talking about the parties. How many parties had actually been thrown at Lyckebo? A hundred? A thousand?

  They laughed about the old man who had fallen down climbing on the gutter outside Betty’s room, laughed about when they caught Susanne’s dad with another woman in the shed. They
talked about all the nights they had spent together in Charlie’s single bed, how they had told each other whispered horror stories, about nails in coffin lids and ghosts in the woods, when all the time, the ghost were actually there, all around them, alive in the house.

  ‘Should you really take the car?’ Charlie said when a few hours later, Susanne cursed about how late it was.

  ‘It’s all back roads,’ Susanne said. ‘And the police are busy with other things, obviously.’ But fuck, time had got away from her. Isak was going to kill her. She had promised to make dinner, clean the house and … yeah, fuck, she’d promised a lot of things. On the other hand, she continued as she stood up, Isak had promised a thing or two as well, like being faithful to her.

  ‘Is he … ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Susanne said. ‘My husband’s an adulterous shit. I have no idea why I ever got married in the first place.’

  ‘I suppose maybe you don’t know those things before they happen,’ Charlie said.

  Susanne laughed and said she could hardly blame ignorance. She knew what most men were like, after all, so she should have figured out that the likelihood of her, of all people, finding a normal person among the swine was marginal.

  ‘Why don’t you leave him?’ Charlie said.

  ‘The usual reasons,’ Susanne said. ‘The kids, too tired, no sense it would improve things. Money.’

  ‘What is this, the nineteenth century?’

  ‘For some of us, yeah. Some of us have no choice.’

  For a split second, Charlie was about to parrot Anders’s stupid line about how everyone has a choice. Had his view of things affected her after all? Maybe sometimes there was a choice, she thought, but usually chance, fate or whatever it was stood in the way.

  There and then

  Rosa says you have to do what the spirit tells you to.

  Or else?

  Or else one of them will die, and she doesn’t want that, does she?

  Alice says she doesn’t want to die. Her mum and dad would be sad if she died.

  ‘What dad?’ Rosa says. ‘You’ve never had a dad, have you, Allie?’

  And Alice says she does have a dad, one who’s sailing the high seas, and Rosa laughs and says Alice should give up her Pippi Longstocking fantasies and face the truth: Her dad left. He doesn’t love her. No one loves you like I do, Allie.

  40

  Charlie stayed outside after Susanne left. She leaned back and closed her eyes in the warm afternoon sun. She must have dozed off but was woken up by something touching her bare legs. Her first thought was that it was a badger, an animal she was inexplicably mortally afraid of; but before she could scream or kick she realised it was a cat. It looked just like a skinnier version of the albino they’d had once, the same snow-white fur and light blue eyes. How long did cats live for?

  No, she thought to herself as she sat down and called to the animal. That cat had been old back then. Betty had even used to joke about it, that she had the world’s oldest cat – the world’s oldest cat and the world’s oldest daughter. But it might be one of the albino cat’s offspring. Charlie stroked its back, which was lumpy with wounds and scars. One of its ears was jagged and floppy. At first, it seemed suspicious of her touch, but it soon gave in, lay down, rolled over and started to purr.

  ‘Have you been in a fight?’ Charlie whispered. ‘Who hurt you so badly? Are you hungry?’ She went down to the basement, fetched one of the milk cartons Susanne had brought and poured some into a newly washed saucer. The cat was still there when she came back. It greedily started lapping up the milk. Its ribs were clearly visible under its fur. This was a cat that had probably never been dewormed. Betty had never bothered with deworming, spaying or euthanising. She felt life should run its course.

  It was past seven, but the heat was still oppressive. Charlie hadn’t been down to the lake since the summer she turned thirteen, but now she realised she wanted to go there. Physical memory was a peculiar thing, she mused as she walked the path towards the water; her feet remembered every root and stone. How many times must she have walked this way with Betty, all those evening swims from early June to the end of August?

  The lake was like a mirror. Charlie stopped. She had forgotten how beautiful it was. Steam was rising from the water. A gull shrieked, everything was sparkling. She continued onto the jetty. Some of the boards were rotten. She carefully made her way to the end before sitting down and gazing into the dark water.

  If you dive down too far, Betty had told her once when Charlie had wanted to show her how long she could stay under, if you dive down too far, the cold can warp your thoughts so you think down is up and up is down, and you don’t realise you’re on your way to the bottom until it’s too late.

  Charlie dangled her feet in the water, closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her.

  It was midsummer. Betty had started drinking early. She had put together a small maypole and insisted that everyone had to dance around it. Is it Midsummer’s Eve or isn’t it? What is this group of bores I’ve invited to my home?

  Susanne and Charlie had tired of staggering around with the grown-ups. They were sitting in Betty’s room, smoking and looking down at the idiots wandering about on the lawn.

  I feel like we’re the only adults around here, Charlie.

  There was a fight. Betty was crying over something, pushing away anyone who came near her to try to console her. It was her party and she’d cry if she wanted to. After midnight, all the guests had left, but Betty carried on shouting and making a racket. She yelled at Mattias that he was a coward, a wimp, and Mattias roared back that he was no knight in shining armour come to save her on his steed, if that’s what she was thinking.

  Because the truth is, Betty Lager, that no one can save you.

  Betty had lunged at him and started punching him in the chest. She wanted to know why he was staying with her if that was the case, if she was beyond salvation. What the fuck was he doing in her house? Why didn’t he just fuck right off?

  Charlie had escaped to the lake. She had sat down on the jetty and waited for the sun to come up, for a new day to arrive. But then Mattias had appeared. He didn’t see her, just staggered straight down to the beach further on, pushed the old rowing boat into the water and waded out a bit before crawling into the boat and starting to pull on the oars. It looked precarious and Charlie thought she should call out for him to turn around, to sit still, that the lake got deep quickly, but she didn’t. And then everything happened so quickly. She saw him stand up, stand there for a while before falling overboard and disappearing into the blackness.

  And what had she done? Had she swum out to him with the lifebuoy? No.

  Had she run up to the house, fetched Betty and called emergency services? No, not that either.

  She had just sat there on the jetty, watching the surface of the water grow still again while a strange serenity spread through her.

  ‘What was he even going out on the lake for?’ Charlie said to Betty when the police started dragging the lake for Mattias.

  But Betty had just screamed she didn’t know. How was she supposed to know? He must have … wanted to row to somewhere. What did it matter why he’d done it? How could she be so calm when Mattias was missing? Mattias was missing!

  ‘He’d just been told his son was going to be allowed to come,’ Betty said after she found out the police had stopped searching. They can’t stop looking, what’s going to happen to the boy?

  Maybe he hadn’t gone out on the lake after all, she ventured. And Charlie pointed out the obvious, his cardigan in the boat, how everything pointed to …

  Then why hadn’t they bloody well found him?

  Charlie had had to remind her about the chasm in Lake Skagern again and again. And Betty had cried and said it was all so unfair. They’d had it so good together. And Mattias had been so happy about his little boy.

  Charlie had retorted that if he’d really been so happy, maybe he shouldn’t have gone out on the lake when he wa
s drunk as a skunk.

  ‘Who the fuck said anything about him being happy?’ Betty had snapped. ‘I said he was happy about his boy, but in other ways …’ And either way, the drunkenness had had nothing to do with it, it was the swimming. Mattias didn’t know how to swim.

  Then, afterwards … it was as if Betty had forgotten that she had a job, or a daughter. All she did was lie in bed, staring at the ceiling.

  It’s as if everything’s coming back.

  What, Mummy? What’s coming back?

  Everything. Everything comes back.

  Betty went over and over how it had happened, maybe he’d been afraid, in pain. And it didn’t matter that Charlie had tried to comfort her with her own words, that drowning was the best way to go, because Betty had said that actually, they had no way of knowing that, and either way, she didn’t give a toss, because she wanted Mattias here with her. Without him, she was like a flapping piece of tissue in the wind; without him, there was no telling where she’d flutter off to. She no longer had anything tying her down.

  Charlie thought about the sofa on which Betty had spent most of her time during her last year. How she would lie there shivering even though it was warm and complain about the light seeping in through the gaps between the blankets she’d hung across the windows. It’s the light, honey. We have to shut out all this light.

  Betty kept a bottle of whisky on the coffee table and all her pills. At night, she’d wander about the house like a restless spirit. Sometimes, Charlie woke up with her pale face hovering over her. And yet when social services were standing on the pallets outside the door, asking to come in, Charlie said there was no need, that her mum needed to rest. Everything would be okay if she just had a chance to rest.

  But it made no difference how much Betty slept, how much Charlie talked in whispers and covered light sources; weeks went by, the holidays were over, but Betty stayed on the sofa. Her hair got so knotted Charlie thought they would never be able to comb it out again. School started, the leaves turned brown, but Betty stayed where she was. Charlie started going home with Susanne after school; they went to the village shop together, any day of the week. It was as if the partying was the one thing that gave Charlie the strength to look at Betty at all, to force some food down her, to keep hoping she’d come home one day and find her in the kitchen. She’d be standing by the hob, smoking with the phone pressed to her ear, inviting people over for a party. But there never was another party at Lyckebo.