The lake will hold you up, my princess, Hedda’s voice whispers. And we are right behind you. Me and your little girl. All the way home.
She feels a slight pricking sensation exactly where the hand is holding her, an electrical impulse that travels up through her body and makes the scar on her back burst into flames. The warmth brings her muscles back to life. She doesn’t want to die here. She doesn’t want to be a victim. Not anymore. Laura kicks hard, and maybe there is a hand helping her upwards, or maybe it exists only in her oxygen-starved brain. It doesn’t matter, because she is swimming towards life, swimming so fast that the water is singing in her ears, rejoicing as she breaks the surface. There is nothing to see, only bobbing ice floes and the fog swirling beneath the night sky.
She ought to crawl out onto the ice before the cold paralyses her again. Run towards the blue lights and voices on the shore.
Instead, she takes two deep breaths and dives back down.
Because she is not afraid – not of the darkness, nor the cold.
Inside her chest and across her back, the winter fire burns for the last time. A strong, clear flame that keeps her warm for long enough to find the person she is looking for and bring them back to the surface.
67
All that remains of Hedda’s house is a charred skeleton. The foundations, the bottom half-metre of some of the walls. A blackened pillar that is part of the chimney breast.
Piles of burned crap everywhere. The remains of furniture, machinery, household items, all drenched in water. It all looks even more pathetic in the pale afternoon sunshine.
The snow around the house, even the ice closest to the shore has melted in the heat, leaving a circle of mud, puddles and trampled yellow grass.
The fire engines, police cars and the ambulance are long gone. The crows have returned to their trees, glaring anxiously and flapping their wings, but otherwise they are surprisingly quiet, as if the night’s events have given them a fresh perspective on what danger really means.
Laura and Peter are standing side by side a short distance away from what used to be the porch. A piece of the handrail lies in the mud along with the remains of one or two of the steps; otherwise everything is gone. Elsa is stomping around in wellington boots, peering curiously at the mess.
Laura wants to tell her to be careful, but the impulse is nowhere near as strong as it used to be. Plus, she’s tired, utterly exhausted by everything that has gone on.
‘Jesus,’ Peter mutters.
Without a word she moves closer to him, rests her head on his shoulder. He gives a slight start, then relaxes.
‘So what happens now?’ she says. ‘To Iben . . .’
‘Bengt Sandberg has taken over the case. He thought I was too close, and he’s absolutely right. He’s a good cop, deep down. Unnecessarily hard maybe, but he’s good at what he does.’
‘And Tomas?’
‘The doctors say he’ll probably survive.’
‘Why do you think he did it? Went along with whatever she said, just like that?’
‘Tomas has always loved Iben, ever since they were little.’
Laura pictures them at six years old, in the back of Kent Rask’s car. Clinging to each other in terror as Källegården burns right outside the windows. The flames, the shouts, the smoke. Iben’s mother dancing around them. That must have affected them for the rest of their lives, bound them together. She closes her eyes, pushes away the image.
Elsa knocks something over. The bang makes them jump, but she waves to show it’s OK.
‘I’m sorry if I scared you the other night,’ Peter says. ‘The models are a kind of therapy. A way of . . . I don’t know . . . processing things.’
‘I understand.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Peter asks after a few seconds. ‘About Gärdsnäset and . . .’ he hesitates ‘. . . everything else?’
‘I don’t actually know.’
‘You could stay.’
She’s had the same thought herself, but however much she would like to, she can’t.
‘I have a company to run. A family that’s dependent on me.’
Peter opens his mouth to say something. Part of her hopes he will, but he changes his mind. They stand there in silence for a little while as Elsa continues to rummage among the ruins.
‘I’ve found something!’ she shouts, holding up a black rectangle.
She brings it over, and Laura recognises it. A cigar box, so blackened that it is no longer possible to make out the word MONTECRISTO on the lid, but Laura knows exactly what it is. Her old treasure chest, the one she hid in the crawl space all those years ago.
Inside there are two bundles of letters. The heat has turned them yellowish brown, but the writing on the envelopes is still legible. Hedda’s characteristic, careless, sprawling handwriting.
Princess Laura Aulin
128 Kotewall Road
Hong Kong
But the address has been crossed out in black ink. Three words have been added in sharper, more efficient writing that Laura also recognises.
Three words, that’s all her mother wrote. The same three words on every single one of Hedda’s letters.
Over and over again, without even opening the envelopes.
Return to sender.
The top letter is postmarked 23 December 1987. Ten days after the fire.
The next one is postmarked a week later, then another, and another.
She counts the letters, her eyes filled with tears.
Fifty-two – one a week for a whole year, in spite of the fact that they kept on coming back. Then five more, sent once a year a few days before her birthday. Her mother wouldn’t even let a greetings card through.
Beneath both bundles there is one more letter. Her name is on the front, but this one has no address, no stamp, no postmark, no ‘Return to sender’ from her mother.
One final letter that was never sent.
She opens it.
Darling Laura, it begins.
I loved you from the moment I held you in my arms for the first time. Maybe even before that. My perfect little princess.
But I was afraid, afraid that someone like me wouldn’t be able to protect something so small and fragile as you.
So I made a mistake. A mistake I’ve regretted all my life.
Hedda’s letter continues, but a tiny object that was stuck between the pages falls into Laura’s hand and makes her stop reading. A yellowing ID bracelet from the maternity unit at Ängelholm, almost identical to the one she found among Hedda’s photographs, except that this is smaller, meant for a newborn.
Once again the world tilts on its axis and she almost falls to the ground.
‘Are you OK?’ Peter asks anxiously.
She doesn’t answer. She simply holds the little plastic bracelet in her hand, staring at it as if she can’t really grasp what it means. A bracelet that a midwife once placed around the wrist of Hedda’s and Johnny Miller’s love child.
The child Hedda gave away. The child that came back.
The child Hedda brought up, loved, risked her life for.
The child she was forced to part from for a second time. The child she never saw again.
Unstoppable tears pour down Laura’s cheeks.
‘What is it?’ Peter says, putting his arm around her.
She shows him the bracelet. Scrawled across it in blue ink, in Hedda’s sprawling handwriting, are four words.
Her name is Laura.
Epilogue 1
There are three people in the windowless visitors’ room. The air is thick, hard to breathe. Bengt Sandberg, the police officer with the boxer’s nose, is sitting in the corner with his arms folded. His chin is raised as if he’s listening carefully. He is only a silent observer of this conversation.