Frozen Moment (27 page)

    The
anger gradually cooled and the pain of the harsh words closed in on itself.

    But
Maya never came back home with her dirty washing. This time she had moved out
for good, and when she came to the little three- room apartment with the sofa
bed in the living room, it was as a guest of Solveig and Sebastian.

    It
wasn't too bad. In many ways most things were different after they left
Rydboholm for Norrby. The monotonous buzzing in her ears fell silent, at least
for a while, and this brought with it the benefit that Solveig could cut down
on the sleeping tablets and the other pills she took when she felt she couldn't
cope.

    Sebastian
was at that outgoing age - he was thirteen years old - and was starting to
bring friends home. The little hallway was filled with size 10 shoes. The boys
played deafening music, which distracted Solveig's attention from her feelings
of abandonment. Sebastian was a teenage boy to the very tips of his fingers, in
the sense that he avoided her questions and all gestures of affection.

    She
consoled herself with the thought that at last he was starting to make friends.
He had always been so lonely. And even if he no longer had as much time for
her, she was still his mother, however much he fought against it.
Perhaps the most important person in his life.
As an adult
he would have the sense - both children would - to appreciate everything she
had done for them. All the effort she had made.

    'Mum?'

    Solveig
turned towards the door in slow motion. The adjustment from thinking she was
alone to interacting with another person took such a long time. And it seemed to
be getting worse as the years went by.

    'Mum?'

    Sebastian
had already assumed That Expression, the one she disliked so much. The one that
made her feel small in front of her own child.
Judged.
As if he thought he was privy to some kind of secret information about his
mother. What gave him the right to be worried?

    Solveig
loathed this false concern. She had encountered it in so many different
contexts.
As a child in the face of the social worker, in her
foster-parents' expression.
As an adult in the
doctors' rapid movements as they leafed through her notes.
Social
security, staff at the nursery, the class teacher,
the
parents of her children's friends, all with their head tilted to one side, when
it was really about one thing: condemnation.
We're worried about you,
Solveig; we're wondering how you manage,
which meant,
We
think you're completely worthless and hopeless.
But she'd shown them,
hadn't she? That she could manage. She had coped and she was a brilliant mother
to her children: loving, committed. Always there, unlike so many of today's
parents, who were so focused on their career, so self-
centred.

    'Mum.'

    'What!'

    Her
tone was sharper than she had intended.
I must pull myself together.
Her
thoughts drifted away so easily these days.

    'What
do you want?' she asked in a more gentle voice, but the boy's face had already
shut down.

    'I
was just wondering if you'd bought me some cigarettes. You said you were going
to, and I've promised Krille he can have some of mine.'

    Everything
stopped inside her head.

    'We
can't get them from the Greek any more. He wants to see ID.'

    She
examined how she felt.
Couldn't go out today, no.
Not
today.

    'I'll
do it tomorrow. I'll go to the Co-op and buy a box. I need some too. And it'll
be cheaper that way,' she decided.

    'No!
For fuck's sake, you promised! And tomorrow's no good! Tomorrow's too late! I
need them for the party!'

    
'Party?
What party?'

    He
sighed and rolled his eyes and his voice became supercilious.

    'I
told you - you never remember anything. I told you I was going to Evil tonight,
with Krille. His brother's a member, and there's a party.'

    
'Evil?'

    
'Evil Riders, a bikers' club.
There's a band I want to see.
I told you. You just don't get it, you never listen. It's in Frufallan, that's
why I told you to get petrol for the moped. Oh, let me guess - you didn't do
that either?!'

    'You're
not going.'

    'What
are you talking about?'

    'You're
not going. Your sister's coming today and we're going to have a nice time
together. I think she's been looking forward to seeing us. I don't think she's
having a very easy time of it at the moment. She's arriving on the train at
15.35, and I said you'd go and meet her. You're staying at home tonight,
Sebastian.'

    He
looked at her with a mixture of contempt and pity.

    'Are
you stupid, or what? It's too late now, it's all arranged.'

    He
didn't wait for a reply, just walked into the hallway and yanked his jacket
from the hook. The door slammed behind him.

    She
looked at her hands, carefully examining the ring on her right hand, a broad
silver ring with a green stone. The children had given it to her on her
thirty-third birthday.

    'Besides
which, you get bad people at parties like that,' she mumbled.
'Gang members, drunkenness and fighting.
No, you're not
going.
Over my dead body.'

    2006

    It
was that name, it triggered a confusion of unwelcome memories Seja didn't know
she'd been harbouring. If anything surprised her, it was the fact that the
memories hadn't chafed more over the years.

    For
a moment this very fact made her feel as if she were emotionally
cold,
and a wave of shame flooded over her at the thought of
the article.
Shame over those intimate hours with Christian
Tell, suddenly tainted by deception.
During the lonely nights when she
lay
half- awake it was established that the guilt was hers;
she was guilty, and the jury was unanimous. Yet she carried on writing. She
wrote to keep the anxiety in check and because her suppressed shame fuelled her
writing.

    When
she woke up and considered her options in the cold light of day, she decided
she couldn't have done anything. She didn't know anything, after all, couldn't
put it down to anything other than a teenager's confused guilt over a tragic
event. The evening at the bikers' club had probably shape-shifted thousands of
times in her head. It was strange, because although it was many years since she
had thought about that night, she realised that it had coloured her own
transition to adulthood in many ways. Perhaps she hadn't understood that until
now.

    Christian
had called her quarter of an hour before midnight, just as the kids down the
hill started letting off fireworks. The living room was in darkness, apart from
a faint red glow from the stove. She was relieved to hear his voice.

    'I'll
be there in ten minutes.'

    Seja
had turned down her only party invitation by pretending she was already going
elsewhere. The truth was that a party at which half the guests were strangers
and the other half were couples she and Martin used to spend time with was not
appealing. She was also fairly sure Martin himself would be there and she
didn't feel at all ready to see him.

    She
went out into the garden to meet Christian. They missed midnight by a quarter
of an hour, for which he apologised as he hugged her, out of breath after
running across the footbridge in the dark. For a dizzying second Seja dared to
hope she could just stay there, with the beat of his agitated heart against her
throat.

    'I
was invited to a party, but I decided not to go,' she said simply, assuaging
his guilty conscience at having let her see in the New Year alone, waiting for
him. '
It's
fine, I promise. We didn't arrange anything
definite, after all. But I'm glad you're here.'

    He
took her by the arm as she tried to move away and gazed at her with a serious
expression.

    'I've
got it wrong so many times in the past, this business of getting a relationship
to work. I mean, it's not my strong point. I know we haven't known each other
very long, but…'

    A
tendency to feel guilty is something we have in common.
When he fell silent,
she didn't encourage him to go on.

    She
walked ahead of him into the house to switch on the lights. He outlined the
reason why he had been working on New Year's Eve.

    'A
man has been found murdered outside Kinna. It's exactly the same pattern as the
man at the car repair workshop. We suspect it's the same killer.'

    He
carried on talking, still a little nervous but eager, as if he were seeking her
approval. Or perhaps he thought she was already involved, in a way.

    She
silenced him with a kiss and said it was fine, but soon left him to make an
unnecessary trip to the outside toilet. Out there she tried to regulate her
breathing. A cold hand had grasped her stomach so tightly that she could hardly
take in any air.

    She
suspected that Christian Tell was suffering because he felt that in going to
bed with her he had overstepped the mark as far as his profession was
concerned. But instead of suffering with him, his embarrassment made
her own
deception easier to bear. He would never dare to
confront her or challenge her, she thought; he was far too caught up in his own
transgression.

    There
was a reason why it felt impossible to tell him about the memories that had
begun to chafe at her so unbearably, despite the fact that perhaps she ought
to. That was where the guilt came in. Not just because she was withholding
information that might possibly be relevant to a murder enquiry. No, her guilt
went much deeper.

    2007

    The
day's task - door-to-door enquiries - was a foretaste of future cross-district
collaboration. Detective Inspector Sofia Frisk, the sparkly
blonde
from the Christmas party, had driven like a joyrider. Around every bend on two
wheels, insane overtaking; it wasn't what you'd have expected when you first
met her, slender and blonde with blue eyes, like an advert for coloured lenses.
Now she put on a pair of sunglasses that covered half her face and made her
look like an insect.

    Gonzales
couldn't help laughing.

    'What?'

    'You
look funny in those glasses.'

    She
smiled and stretched her legs beneath the fleece rug.

    
'Mmm, lovely.
But my feet are cold.'

    Michael
Gonzales didn't think it was lovely at all. He had decided to look good when he
was detailed to spend the day out and about with Sofia Frisk from the Borås
team. Therefore he was wearing his cool, but thin, leather jacket. His backside
was well on the way to freezing firmly to the garden furniture, despite the
fact that he had been given a blanket and a fluffy cushion. Not to mention how
cold his feet were in his sodden trainers. At the moment there was actually no
feeling in them at all.

    'Just
imagine living like this. What a luxury, waking up to this every morning.'

    She
leaned back, allowing her gaze to sweep over the islands, apparently scattered
at random in the lake down below the terrace.

    Their
hostess
appeared, dressed in a warm padded coat. She
was carrying a tray with three cups and a cake on it. 'And you're not cold,'
she stated rhetorically, but Frisk shook her head anyway, the beetle shades
bouncing up and down on her nose.

    
'Goodness no.
I was just saying what a magnificent view you
have. It's hard to believe when you're driving along these narrow roads that a
place like this can suddenly appear.'

    Good
God, she was laying it on with a trowel.

    'Yes,
it is lovely.' Anette Persson smiled contentedly. 'When we retired about ten
years ago, we didn't want to stay in Borås. We wanted to live in the country,
and so… We'd inherited this place from my father. It's in such a beautiful
spot, although we were a bit anxious that first winter. It's quite inaccessible
out here, after all.'