She closed her eyes. Lowered her hand with the awful report and cursed Axel, who hadn’t had the sense to throw out something that could only cause pain.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this?’
What could she say? Nothing. What had happened had happened, but the lie they had chosen. Perhaps to be able to endure. A barrier had slammed down at first then all these strange feelings had surfaced to keep the pain away. What could not be admitted under any circumstances without allowing madness to take over.
‘Answer me!’
‘I’m trying.’
She had done all she could to forget. Made an effort to take long detours around details when the memory came too close. Spent aeons of time trying to suppress the remorse about not having understood how serious things were. But certain voices are never silent. They’re still there, far away in the din. Nobody was ever whole after losing a child, especially not if the child died by her own hand. What could not be acknowledged at first had taken years to arrive. The conversation with her daughter that had never managed to get started, but which would now remain lost for ever. The thought of all the tiny, tiny steps that had been taken. The certainty that all the choices she had made, none of which was especially reprehensible, had added up and led to what could never be changed for all eternity.
She took off her reading glasses and placed them on the arm of the sofa.
‘We don’t know why.’
Jan-Erik shifted position, waiting impatiently for her to continue.
‘What happened? Did she leave a note?’
Alice shook her head, rubbing her hand over her face. No, she hadn’t left a note. Only a message clearer than any words could ever have expressed.
‘But you must have noticed something before, surely? Something must have happened, or why did she do it? She couldn’t have simply decided to hang herself from one day to the next without something happening, could she?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that question? That I’ve cursed myself because I didn’t understand how bad things were?’
‘How bad were they?’
She sighed and put the paper down on the table. Took one of the embroidered sofa cushions and put it on her lap. Involuntarily her finger began tracing the intricate pattern.
‘We never got a real answer. It came out of the blue, she was suddenly changed beyond recognition. She’d been acting the same as always, but one morning she simply refused to get out of bed.’
Alice tried to remember. Gather up all the bits that she had so conscientiously banished. All at once she realised that it was all intact, that the details were still there as if they had only been in a deep freeze.
It had been a beautiful morning. She’d been in an unusually good mood, sitting in the kitchen drinking her coffee. The garden had been bejewelled with glittering new snow, and the sheaves of grain that Gerda had set out were full of little birds. She had thought that Axel’s gesture might be a turning point. That even he had finally realised that everything was untenable. She had viewed his initiative as a sign that he was making an effort.
‘We were in the city the evening before and went to the cinema, Axel and I. You know how he would never do anything like that. It was even his suggestion.’
They had seen Face to Face by Ingmar Bergman. It was so rare they did anything together, shared any experience at all. Whenever he left the house it was on literary business: readings and banquets as guest of honour, and she went along only because it would attract attention if she didn’t. Those occasions were merely reminders of her own failure. At home Axel was hardly ever seen, locked in behind the door to his office. But that evening he had suddenly suggested the cinema, despite the fact that there was only an hour to go before the show began.
‘I was eating breakfast in the kitchen when Gerda came and told me that Annika was still in bed. We thought she was already at school. I remember that it was past ten o’clock.’
Alice had left the kitchen and gone to her daughter’s room. Pulled up the blind with a snap and torn the bedcovers off the girl. She thought Annika was ruining everything, just when she finally felt a little joy for a change. She got a lump in her throat when she thought about it. The way she had scolded and scolded but got no reaction.
‘At first I thought it was just something to do with puberty, that she was just lying there out of sheer spite. Being difficult. But after a while I realised it was something else. She seemed closed off, as if she didn’t even hear what I was saying.’
The days that followed: the worry; the frustration. Axel said nothing, withdrew, as if he didn’t want to be involved in what was happening.
‘I tried to talk to her, I really did. I asked her if something had happened, but she didn’t say a word. She just lay there staring at the wall.’
Tears, so long bottled up, were spilling out along with the words. She remembered how she had tried and tried but finally lost patience. Gerda had cautiously suggested they should call the doctor, but Axel thought it was a family matter. And her vacillating between the desire to get help and the shame that their daughter was behaving like someone who was mentally ill.
Jan-Erik went over to the window, turning his back to her as if he wanted to be spared seeing her tears.
‘How long did she lie there like that?’
‘Four or five days. Gerda and I took turns looking in on her at night. Then one evening she suddenly began eating again, and naturally we took it as a sign that she was getting better.’
She needed a drink but knew that this was not the time. Jan-Erik seemed to have calmed down a bit, and she didn’t want to provoke his wrath. It had frightened her.
‘Afterwards I realised it was because she had made up her mind.’
‘Didn’t you ever talk to her friends? Did they not notice anything? What did they say at her school?’
Early on the lie had been formed. The fear that what had happened in the Ragnerfeldt home might cause a scandal had prevented them from asking any questions. The hit-and-run accident had been given as an explanation at her school as well, and it thus became the official truth.
‘They hadn’t noticed anything.’
Alice looked down at the cushion on her lap.
‘Where did she hang herself?’
She couldn’t stand it any longer. She got up and went to the kitchen. Blew her nose first on a piece of kitchen roll to create a diversion, and then quietly took the bottle out of the cupboard and unscrewed the top. When she turned round, Jan-Erik was standing in the doorway. Without a word he went over to the plate rack and got a glass. He took the bottle out of her hands and filled the glass to the brim, draining it in a single gulp and then setting it down on the worktop.
‘So, where did she hang herself?’
Maybe they should have got a divorce. One’s hand doesn’t linger on a hot-plate that sears the skin. But the soul was allowed to atrophy slowly without relief. Naturally she had considered it then, as a last desperate attempt to have some influence. But only briefly. One did not get divorced. It was as simple as that. Even if there was reason enough, there were other things that were more intimidating. She had few friends, and all contact with her parents and siblings had been broken off, so where could she turn? As Mrs Axel Ragnerfeldt she at least enjoyed a certain status.
All the sacrifices she had made to maintain the illusion.
If only she had understood how unhappy Annika was. If only she’d had the ability to look beyond her own pain, to see that there were others to consider. Perhaps then everything would have been different.
‘She hanged herself in Axel’s office.’
Jan-Erik collapsed on a kitchen chair and put his face in his hands. She filled the glass he’d set aside and brought it gratefully to her lips. She took a large mouthful and tried to defend herself against what her memory had set loose, everything that was now running amok. Jan-Erik sat motionless; only his shoulders moved in time with his breathing.