They took her for walks in the hospital park sometimes, but never let her out alone. The winter snow was melting by then and there were snowdrops growing in the borders.
Beatrice Forsenström came to visit her. The man who wanted to make Sibylla talk came as well. Beatrice was immaculately groomed, but there were dark shadows under her eyes. She kept her handbag in her lap when she and the man settled down next to the bed.
The man looked nice. He smiled at her.
'How are you feeling now?' Sibylla was watching her mother. 'I'm much better, thank you.' The man seemed pleased. 'Do you know why you're here?' Sibylla swallowed.
'Maybe because I did something silly?'
The man was looking at her mother, who had lifted her hand to her mouth. Sibylla had made the wrong answer and her mother would be sad. No, disappointed.
'Don't worry, Sibylla. You've been ill. That's why you're here,' the man said.
She kept looking at her hands. No one said anything for a while. Then the man rose and spoke to her mother.
'I'll leave you two alone now, but not for long.'
They were on their own in the room. Sibylla was still looking at her hands.
'Please forgive me.'
Her mother suddenly got up.
'Stop that at once.'
Oh no, she had made Mummy angry as well. 'You have been ill, Sibylla. There's no need to apologise for that.'
Then she sat down again. For a brief moment their eyes met, but this time her mother looked away first. Not soon enough. Sibylla had a perfectly clear idea of what was going on behind those eyes. Beatrice was furious at her daughter for putting her in this situation, which was outside her control.
Sibylla went back to studying her hands. There was a knock on the door. The man who wanted her to speak came back in, carrying a brown folder. He came to the end of her bed and spoke to her.
'Sibylla, there's one special thing both your mother and I want to talk to you about.'
He glanced at Beatrice, but her eyes were fixed on the floor
and she was clutching her handbag so hard her knuckles were going white.
'Sibylla, do you have a boyfriend?'
She started blankly at him.
'Do you have a boyfriend? I have a reason for asking.' She shook her head. He came to sit next to her on the edge of the bed.
'This illness you've been suffering from, it can have physical causes, you see.' Is that so.
'We've tested some samples we've taken from you.' Yes, I know.
'The results show that you're pregnant.'
The last word went on echoing though her head. She had a vision of the brown checked blanket.
She alone would be his. Only his. And he hers. Together.
Anything for just a second of such closeness. Anything at all.
She glanced at her mother. Beatrice must have known all along.
The man who wanted her to speak put his hand on hers. His touch triggered a pulse of emotion that flowed through her body.
'Do you know who the father of the baby is?'
The two of them, together. Linked for ever.
Sibylla shook her head. Her mother kept looking towards the door, her whole being longing to open it and get out of there.
'Your pregnancy is already in its twenty-seventh week, so a termination is not really an option for you.'
Sibylla put her hands on her stomach. The man who wanted her to speak smiled at her, but somehow didn't look happy.
'How do you feel?'
How did she feel?
'Your mother and I have been discussing this.' Somebody started screaming in the room next door.
'Because you've not yet come of age and your parents know you better than anybody else, their views are taken very seriously. As your doctor, I fully support their decision.'
She stared at him. What decision? They couldn't do things to her body, could they?
'We all agree that adoption would be the best thing for your baby.'
She rarely granted herself the luxury of shopping in a Seven Eleven store, where the prices were always way above average. This time though, her usual rules had to go overboard. She needed enough food to keep going for a few days and she needed to buy it early, before the doors opened to Sofia High School. The idea was to get in as soon as possible, before the corridors filled with pupils and their observant teachers.
Minutes after seven o'clock, she had stocked up on baked beans, bananas, yoghurt and crisp-bread. She was ready to go, the moment the school porter or whoever unlocked the doors to paradise. She would be left in peace there.
By twenty past the school's 'responsible person', whoever he was, had done his duty. When he was gone, she crossed the street, went in through the main door and simply walked up all the stairs to the corridor at the top of the building, meeting no one on the way. It was an old building and her footfalls echoed between its stone walls. Up there, the door to the attic was just as she remembered it.
Staff Only. No Access.
Underneath the sign the responsible person had placed a hand-written note, warning that the floor was in bad repair and might collapse.
It couldn't be better.
The door was locked by an ordinary padlock. She sighed, missing her Victorinox pen-knife. Presumably it was part of the evidence in the case and stored in a police station somewhere. The loop in the wall was held by four screws. She rooted around in her rucksack for some kind of implement and found her nail-file. It had to work.
It did, in fact she had barely prodded at the upper screw before it came out. She felt a small chilly shiver of suspicion. Did somebody else know about the quiet seclusion of this attic? Still, she had no time to reconsider. The rumble of voices from the floors below was growing and she went in, closing the door behind her.
Down a few steps. There was a handrail to hold on to. It was looking different now. She had been there six, seven years ago and since then the school had been renovated, that had been obvious from just walking up the stairs. Last time the attic had been full of rubbish and old junk, but the dicey floor presumably meant that they had cleared away as much as possible. All that was left were a few piles of old textbooks.
She recalled that it had been summer back then and the heat under the poorly insulated roof had been suffocating. Maybe that was why the attic space was unused. Anyway, this time heat would not be a problem – on the contrary.
The clock was still where she remembered it. Seen close-up, the Sofia School clock was enormous. They had rigged up two lamps to light the clock-face. The clock had been broken then, but now she could see the minute hand moving. This worried her a little. How often did they need to fix the clock?
She forced herself to stop worrying. If she just kept her things along the far wall, she would have time to hide if some busybody suddenly turned up.
It didn't take long to roll out her mat and put the sleeping bag on top. She hung her panties and towel to dry from an electric cable. Tonight she had to find the staff-room shower and wash her smalls again, because if left to go sour they'd smell bad for ever. She still felt dirty. Thomas's hands were far away by now, but somehow they had left her coated in a sticky film. Had he woken up yet and found that she'd gone? What would he do then?
So, here she was. Hidden in an attic. Humiliated, hounded and abandoned.
Over the years, she'd had so many reasons for giving in but something inside her had made her fight on. Maybe the moment had come, for was all this not reason enough? It might be a relief to finally admit that she was nothing but a mistake, from beginning to end.
She listened out for the noise of the pupils filling the school.
Silly-billy Sibylla. Sibylla's a banger, grill her. Sylla Bylla, kill 'er.
Maybe they had been right? They had found her out, smelled her otherness when she was just a child. All the time, people had just been following their instincts about her, sensing that she wasn't meant to join their groups. She hadn't understood at first and had to learn the hard way. Her stubborn fighting back had gained her a little extra time, which had not been hers by right. She and Heino and all the rest of the outcasts were a kind of undergrowth in society. They seemed destined to make the standard citizen feel more satisfied with his existence, by giving him a chance to rank his success relative to their failure.