‘All right then. Let’s pack it all way,’ said Gösta, and he began putting items in a box.
‘I suppose there’s nothing for it.’
Patrik started cleaning up too, while Erica stood there, making no effort to help. Her eyes swept over the room in one last attempt to find something of interest, and she was just about to give up when she noticed several black folders that she recognized at once. The family’s passports, which Gösta had neatly stacked on the table. She squinted, then moved closer to examine them, quietly counting to herself. She picked up the stack and laid out the passports side by side.
Patrik stopped packing and looked at her. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Don’t you see it?’ She pointed at the passports.
‘No. What do you mean?’
‘Count them.’
Silently he did as she said. Erica noticed his eyes open wide.
‘There are four passports here,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t there be five?’
‘Yes, if we assume that Ebba was too young to have one.’
Patrik went over and picked up the passports. He opened them, one after the other, to check the name and photo. Then he turned to face his wife.
‘Well? Whose passport is missing?’ she asked.
‘Annelie’s. Annelie’s passport is missing.’
FJÄLLBACKA 1961
Mamma knew best. That was a truth Inez had always taken for granted as she was growing up. She didn’t even remember her father. She was only three when he had a stroke and died a few weeks later in hospital. After that, she had only Mamma and Nanna.
Sometimes Inez wondered if she loved her mother. She wasn’t quite sure. She loved Nanna and the teddy bear that had sat on her bed since she was a baby, but what about Mamma? She knew that she ought to love her, just as the other children in school loved their mothers. The few times she was allowed to go home with another girl to play, she’d seen how mothers and daughters greeted each other with happy expressions and how the girl would throw herself into her mother’s arms. Inez had felt a hard lump in her stomach when she saw her classmates with their mothers. Then she had done the same thing when she went home. She had thrown herself into Nanna’s arms, which were always open to her.
Mamma was not a mean person, and she’d never raised her voice as far as Inez could recall. It was Nanna who scolded if she’d done something wrong. But Mamma was strict about the way things should be done, and Inez was not allowed to contradict her.
The most important thing was to do things properly. That was what her mother always said: ‘Anything worth doing needs to be done right.’ Inez was never allowed to be sloppy. Her lessons had to be written out neatly on the lines, and the numbers in her maths book had to be correctly formed. The faint impressions left by incorrect figures were forbidden, even if they had been carefully erased. If Inez was unsure, she had to write them down on a piece of scratch paper first, before entering the correct numbers in her notebook.
It was also important not to make a mess, because any sort of disarray at home would cause something terrible. She didn’t know what that might be, but her room always had to be in perfect order. She never knew when Laura might peek inside. If anything was out of place, her mother would look so disappointed and say that she wanted to have a talk with Inez, who hated those conversations. She didn’t want to make her mother sad, and that was usually the subject of such discussions – that Inez had disappointed Laura.
She wasn’t allowed to make a mess in Nanna’s room or in the kitchen either. The other rooms in the house – her mother’s bedroom, the living room, the guest room, and the parlour – were all off-limits to the girl. She might break something, her mother explained. Children didn’t belong in there. Inez obeyed, because that made life simpler. She hated quarrels, and she didn’t like having that sort of conversation with her mother. If she did as Mamma said, she could avoid both.
In school she kept to herself, careful to do everything that was expected of her. And that clearly made her teachers happy. The grown-ups seemed pleased when children obeyed them.
Her classmates paid no attention to Inez, as if it wasn’t worth the trouble to quarrel with her. On a few occasions they had jeered at her, saying something about her grandmother, which Inez found very strange, since she didn’t have a grandmother. She had asked her mother about it, but instead of answering, Laura had decided they needed to have one of those conversations again. Inez had also asked Nanna, but she had unexpectedly pursed her lips and then said that it wasn’t her place to discuss such matters. So Inez didn’t ask any more questions. It wasn’t important enough to risk yet another conversation, and besides, Mamma knew best.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ebba jumped on to the dock at Valö, offering effusive thanks for the lift. For the first time since she’d come here, she had a sense of anticipation and joy as she walked up the path towards the house. There were so many things she was looking forward to telling Tobias.
As she got closer, she was struck by how beautiful the house was. Of course it still needed a lot of work – in spite of all their efforts, they’d really only just begun – but it had potential. Like a white jewel, it stood there amidst all the greenery, and even though she couldn’t see the water, she knew it was all around her.
It was going to take time for her and Tobias to find their way back to each other, and their life would never be the same. But that didn’t mean that it would be worse. Maybe they’d be able to have a stronger relationship. She’d hardly dared think of such a thing before, but maybe they could also find room for a child in their life. Not while everything was still so new and fragile and they had so much work left to do, both on the house and on themselves, but maybe later Vincent could have a brother or sister. That was how she looked at it. A brother or sister for their angel-child.
And she’d managed to calm her parents’ fears. She had apologized for not telling them about everything that had happened and then persuaded them not to come rushing out to Fjällbacka. She’d also given them another call to say that she’d been learning about her biological family, and she knew they would be happy for her and understand how much it meant to her. But her adoptive parents didn’t want her to go back to the island until the police worked out what was going on. So she had told a white lie, saying that she would spend another night at Erica’s house, and that had seemed to satisfy them.
It scared her to think that someone was trying to harm them, but Tobias had chosen to stay, and now she had decided to join him. For the second time in her life, she chose Tobias. The fear of losing him was greater than her fear of some unknown person threatening them. It was impossible to control everything in life – Vincent’s death had taught her that. And it was her destiny to stay with Tobias, no matter what happened.
‘Hello?’ Ebba dropped her bag on the floor in the front hall. ‘Tobias? Where are you?’
It was very quiet in the house. She listened for sounds as she slowly went upstairs. Could he have gone to Fjällbacka on some errand? No, she’d seen the boat at the dock. There was another boat moored there too. Did they have visitors?
‘Hello?’ she called again, but she heard only her own voice echoing between the bare walls. Bright sunshine shone through the windows, lighting the dust motes that whirled through the air as she moved. She went into the bedroom.
‘Tobias?’ She stopped in surprise at the sight of her husband sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, staring straight ahead. He didn’t respond.