She's Never Coming Back (23 page)

Just as Ylva thought, Mike’s spontaneous visit and bottle of wine had made Gösta and Marianne nervous. It was an intrusion into their private life, a sign that the outside world was moving in, that the trap was set. And so they had to get rid of Ylva. She had become a burden. Without her, they had nothing to hide; without her, they could open their home and welcome people in.

Marianne wanted Ylva to do it herself. As atonement. Gösta did too. That was their original plan.

They both underlined the desperateness of her situation. That even if she stayed alive, there was no future. She was a whore and could never be anything else.

And of course they were right. Everyone would ask the same question: why didn’t you escape? Why didn’t you even try?

But Ylva hadn’t thought of giving them the satisfaction of committing suicide. She would never be able to do it. She hoped that they would kill her when she was asleep. Or that they’d poison her so she lost consciousness. Though she did want to know what they would do with her afterwards. She
wanted to be buried. To give Mike and Sanna something definite, to release them so they could carry on with their lives.

She wished that she didn’t know what was coming. But it was too obvious. Gösta was going to fuck her one last time. She could do her best, in the hope of a few days’ respite. But there was no point. Next time, he’d have to take her as the dead sex doll he’d forced her to become.

Right now she just needed to sleep. She was tired and wanted to enjoy dreams that didn’t tie her down. When she woke up, she would remember them.

Ylva crept under the covers, stretched her hand out to the floor lamp and flicked the switch.

Everything went dark.

When the phone call came, Calle Collin wasn’t surprised; he’d been waiting for it.

The managing editor of
Family Journal
said hello, asked how things were and what the weather was like in the capital. Time-wasting pleasantries that people from outside Stockholm persisted in using.

Get to the point, Calle thought, put me out of my misery.

‘So,’ the managing editor said.

Finally.

‘I saw the editor-in-chief and we discussed a few things and we both agree. Very strongly, in fact.’

Not another round. Why couldn’t they just tell him to get lost and leave it at that?

‘And …’ the managing editor continued.

Here it comes. Calle closed his eyes and held his breath. At best, he would be allowed to do humiliating celebrity questionnaires on holiday weekends.
Who will you be kissing at Easter? How we celebrate Christmas
and
My favourite drinking song
. Sitting on the phone for hours in pursuit of has-been TV celebrities who wanted to show their sad faces again.

‘Yes?’ Calle tried.

‘We don’t want any suicide,’ the managing editor said. ‘I know that
The Friends’ Post
doesn’t write about suicide for the simple reason that it can be contagious. Our readership is older and hopefully more sensible, but all the same. We don’t write about suicide because it’s just too awful. There’s nothing redeeming about suicide and we are thankfully not in the single copy market. So we don’t write about it. Full stop.’

‘N-no suicide?’ Calle stuttered.

Had Ylva’s husband not spoken to her? Were they still interested? Did they still want his series about people who had died too young?

‘Why?’ the managing editor asked. ‘Do you not agree?’

‘Yes,’ Calle said. ‘Absolutely. I wouldn’t even dream of writing about suicide. Never.’

‘Good, I’m so glad. In that case, all I have to say is good luck. How soon do you think we can have the first article?’

When Calle got off the phone, he was so happy that he turned up the volume on the stereo and danced around his flat, until he realised that someone in the building opposite was staring at him.

Blackness and silence, like floating in the universe. Ylva could almost see our blue planet in the distance; from a distance where nothing on the face of the Earth mattered. All worldly struggles became as dust. Her journey would soon be over, the ephemeral will-o’-the-wisp that was Ylva would go out. It was no big deal, it happened every second, every day, and had done since the beginning of time.

Her life had taken some sharp turns. Her difficult childhood that degenerated and ended in catastrophe. It had all started as a game, but then had serious consequences. The shrink’s crazy daughter. Annika.

The long interlude when she imagined that this was how life was meant to be. The summers on the boat, Mike, happiness with Sanna.

The distractions that Ylva had amused herself with once she grew weary of all that.

Sanna could manage fine without her mother, Ylva knew that, even if the knowledge hurt. Her memory of Ylva had probably already faded. She could hear Mike’s voice, how he would try to remind her.

You remember Mummy?

A misguided concern for Ylva’s memory that would only result in bad conscience, and for Sanna, the vague feeling of a person who had once existed but was no longer there.

Ylva tried to imagine the world through her daughter’s eyes. What would Sanna remember about her? It could be anything. A time when Ylva had been a bit boisterous, tickled her on the tummy, had a pillow fight. Or perhaps a comment, hopefully something kind. Maybe a film they had seen together. Definitely one of their many swims in the sea. Ylva jumping into the water, of course. The other mothers used the steps, some of them even lowered themselves into the water. How cautious could you be! Women under forty who reversed into the water up to their waist and then fell back, splashing around like old women and stretching their legs. Without getting their hair wet.

Ylva decided that that would be her gift to the world,
that that was how she would live on. As the mother who jumped into the water from the jetty and only used the steps to get out. Ylva was happy. It wasn’t a bad legacy to leave behind.

She didn’t want to dwell on the last chapter of her life. It was what it was and it would soon be over. Even if she chose to see it from their perspective, she had atoned for her crime and was reconciled with the thought that every person had the capacity for good and evil inside them.

She stretched out her hand, pressed the light switch and suddenly the room was bathed in light from the floor lamp. She went to the toilet for a pee, flushed, and then crept back under the covers. She stretched out her hand, pressed the light switch, darkness.

She pressed the light switch again, light.

And again, darkness.

Naturally.

Yes, naturally.

Jörgen Petersson had found a real dive.

‘Three for a hundred kronor,’ said the quarter billionaire, blithely, as he put six beers down on the table in front of him.

He slid three of them over to Calle.

‘Couldn’t we have started with one each?’ Calle asked.

‘Don’t worry – my treat,’ Jörgen assured him.

‘Great.’

‘Just saves us getting up and down, you know how it is. So, tell me about your progress.’

Calle told him about the telephone call with the managing editor, how he had ducked and held the receiver out
from his ear fearing that his eardrum would be damaged by the bollocking she was going to give him. And how it had all turned out so well in the end.

‘So one doesn’t write about suicide, does one not?’ Jörgen mocked.

‘No,’ Calle said. ‘Because there’s always some dimwit who reads it and is inspired:
I want to be in the papers too.
’

‘
Even if it’s the last thing I do
,’ Jörgen quipped.

‘Exactly. Strange that the managing editor felt that she had to point it out. A bit of a let-down, I must say.’

‘And, ta-da, you’ve transformed progress into a setback,’ Jörgen said. ‘You’re about as pessimistic as Krösamaja in the Emil books. We could put you in a room full of stockbrokers and as soon as the stock market rose, you’d put your hands to your head and say: “First they’ll go blue in the face and then they’ll die.”’

‘And it wouldn’t be a moment too soon,’ Calle said.

‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

They finished their first beers, pushed the empty glasses to one side and grabbed another full one. Nursing it like a baby bottle.

‘So suicide is contagious?’ Jörgen said thoughtfully.

‘Just like seasickness,’ said Calle.

‘Do you remember that girl at school who took her own life?’

‘Who?’

‘Annika, the shrink’s daughter.’

‘Oh yes, her.’

‘Lived in the white pile down by the water,’ Jörgen prompted. ‘Right out on the point. Black dog that ran up and down the fence barking whenever you cycled past.’

‘Oh, her. Hanged herself, didn’t she?’

‘Think so. No one really went into any details. Good-looking mum, as far as I can remember.’

‘Not my department,’ Calle sniffed.

‘The dad wasn’t bad, either. Richard Gere type.’

‘Now you’re talking.’

‘The daughter, on the other hand, was rather plain,’ Jörgen added, philosophically.

‘God, listen to yourself.’

‘It’s possible she might’ve grown out of it, who knows? But I don’t think she’d ever be as sexy as her mum. Don’t you remember her? She was the neighbourhood MILF. Used to rake the gravel on the driveway.’

Calle started, diving into his own thoughts: rake the gravel.
The elderly woman in Hittarp. The one who looked familiar. Who had pointed out where Michael Zetterberg lived.

‘That dog used to make a racket, with all the boys cycling past for an ogle,’ Jörgen said.

She had been raking the gravel. Just like she always had. It was her, Annika’s mum.

Jörgen snapped his fingers under his friend’s nose.

‘Calle? Hello? Can you hear me?’

The flex was attached to the base of the floor lamp. About two hundred centimetres from the switch, which was one of those you can tap with your foot. But Ylva normally turned off the light with her hand, so she didn’t need to get out of bed. There was about one and a half metres of cord from the switch to the wall, which had been pushed under the bed so it wouldn’t look messy.

When the switch was off, there was no power supply to the lamp.

Gösta and Marianne had overwhelmed her and locked her up with the help of a stun gun. Now it was Ylva’s turn to give them a taste of their own medicine.

She was not a whore, she was the mother who jumped into the water.

Ylva got out of bed and went over to the kitchen area. It was pitch-black, but she knew every centimetre of her limited space. She took the scissors and knife and went back to bed. The light was off, so no electricity could run past the switch.

She crouched down, felt around for the flex and cut it as close to the base as she could. Using the knife, she stripped the ends, bent the wires out so there was a couple of centimetres between them. She stuck the end of the flex back under the base.

From now on, she wouldn’t turn the light on, under any circumstances. Not until the time was right.

She went back to the kitchen area and returned the scissors and knife to their place on the counter, where they were visible, in accordance with the rules. She was punished harshly if she ever broke or forgot the rules.

She opened the drawer and took out the fork, the only piece of metal cutlery she had been given to eat with, went back to the bed and hid it under the mattress.

She was going to give him a new experience, a completely new experience.

‘No,’ Calle Collin said. ‘No, no, don’t.’

They had drunk six beers each and the bill was now
standing at four hundred kronor. Plus twenty for a bowl of peanuts. Calle couldn’t imagine that his super wealthy friend would leave anything more than ten as a tip.

‘It can’t just be a coincidence,’ Jörgen said.

‘Pff, well,’ Calle started. ‘What’s the connection, you reckon?’

‘I don’t bloody know. But one thing’s for sure, I don’t believe in coincidences.’

‘You don’t need to believe in coincidences,’ Calle said. ‘In our middle-class world – and I hope you don’t mind me including you in it, you just happen to have earned a lot more – but our middle-class world is so laughably small that it doesn’t take much. Do you know what I do when I’m feeling a bit paranoid and want to stoke the flames? I look up old adversaries on Facebook. All the bastards are there. You get a picture of the person in question and can see all the idiot’s friends. Then you look at the updates and discover a whole new raft of friends. And I tell you, you don’t have to do that many times before you come across a name that you know from somewhere else. You press on that and, hey presto, a new person and a new gallery of friends. Updates, and a click on. The whole world is connected. The fact that Annika’s parents live where they live,
among other well-to-do folk, is not a coincidence. They always flock together. So they can avoid people with different points of view. So much for coincidence, thank you very much.’

‘God, you’re drunk,’ Jörgen stated.

‘I’m not drunk.’

‘Okay, well, think about this then. Imagine if the shrink and his MILF wife for some reason held the Gang of Four responsible for Annika’s death …’

‘There is no Gang of Four. They were friends for a while in secondary school, and, yes, they were bullies and should have all been locked away, I couldn’t agree more, but, and I mean a big but, they weren’t a gang. After Class Nine you never saw them together at all. One of the guys dropped out of school, if I remember right. Jörgen, you bloody weirdo moneybags, are you listening to me?’

‘I’m listening, I’m listening.’

‘Well, look like it then, don’t just sit there staring at the wall.’

‘I’m not staring at the wall, I’m thinking.’

‘Would it be possible to share some of your great thoughts?’

‘I think I’m right. The group split after Annika’s suicide.
I don’t give a damn what you say, I think I’m going to call Ylva’s husband.’

‘Then I won’t have a job to speak of.’

‘I can employ you, you can write my memoirs.’

‘That wouldn’t be very difficult: woke up, won the lottery, fell asleep.’