‘You always try not to have too many expectations of your children. Well my husband and I did, at least. And when he died, I carried on the same way. But… But you do have certain basic expectations, you can’t help it. Of course you want your children to grow up and be able to look after themselves. But Nora’s mother never really did, I’m afraid. And we didn’t have any more children.’
Margareta tailed off, and Fredrika did not realize until she raised her head from her notebook that the other woman was crying.
‘We can take a break if you like,’ she said uncertainly.
Margareta gave a weary shake of the head.
‘It’s just that it hurts so much to think I’ve got neither of the girls left now,’ she sobbed. ‘I felt so wretched when Nora’s mother died. But I knew what sort of life she’d lived, how hard it had been for her. There was really only one way it could end. But then I could console myself that at least I had Nora left. And now she’s gone, too.’
Tintin came out of his basket and approached the table. Fredrika quickly pulled her legs aside. She had never liked cats.
‘Things went wrong for Nora’s mother early on in her life,’ Margareta told her. ‘Very early on. When she was still in secondary school, just after her dad died. She got into bad company and brought home one boyfriend after another. I was beside myself when she decided to leave school as soon as she could and go out to work instead. She got a job in a sweet factory; it closed down years ago. But she didn’t stick to the rules, and she got the sack. I think that was when she turned to prostitution and the more dangerous drugs.’
In Fredrika’s family there was a very conservative saying that went: ‘In every woman of every age there lives a Mother.’ She wondered if she herself was harbouring one. And she wondered what she would have said in that position, if her daughter had dropped out of school, started work in a factory and gone on the game.
‘Who was Nora’s father?’ Fredrika asked cautiously.
Margareta gave a bitter laugh and wiped away her tears.
‘You tell me,’ she said. ‘It could have been literally anybody. Nora’s mother didn’t register a father’s name when Nora was born. I was with her for the birth. It was several days before she would even hold little Nora.’
The sun vanished briefly behind a cloud and it went darker inside the flat. Fredrika felt cold, sitting there.
‘Nora was as unwanted as a child could possibly be,’ Margareta whispered. ‘Her mother hated her even when she was still in her stomach; she hoped for a long time she might have a miscarriage. But she didn’t. Nora was born whether she liked it or not.’
Fredrika felt the floor lurch beneath her.
‘Unwanted,’ she repeated softly.
She immediately saw the pictures of Lilian Sebastiansson’s body in front of her eyes. Somebody had written ‘Unwanted’ on her forehead. ‘Unwanted.’
Fredrika swallowed.
‘Did she know about this when she was growing up, about being unwanted I mean?’ Fredrika asked, trying not to sound too eager.
‘Yes, of course she did,’ sighed Margareta. ‘Nora lived with me for most of the time until she was two, since her mother didn’t want her, but then social services found out about it and they said it would be better for Nora to be in a foster home, “A real family,” as they put it.’
Margareta gripped the edge of the table hard.
‘The girl would have been much better off with me,’ she said in a shrill voice. ‘It would have been much better for her to live with me than to keep being moved from family to family. She could always come and visit me, but what good did that do? There was no chance of making something decent of her with so many other people allowed to mess her up.’
‘Did you both live here in Umeå while all this was going on?’ asked Fredrika.
‘Yes, the whole time. It’s hard to believe one person can have lived at so many addresses in the same town as Nora, but that’s what she did. The only thing that cheered me up a bit was that she stuck with school right until the end of upper secondary. She chose an odd course, social this and social that, but at least school gave her a bit of structure.’
‘Did she get a job when she left?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ sighed Margareta. ‘Just like her mother: she started going off the rails, too much booze, too many parties, too many men. She could never hang on to her job. She always looked haggard and drawn. And then she met that man.’
Fredrika held her breath.
‘I remember, because it was the same year my brother got married for the third time. That was seven years ago.’
Tintin the cat took an agile leap from the floor to Margareta’s lap. She put her tired hands on his back and started stroking his fur.
‘At first I thought she’d found something decent for herself,’ Margareta recalled. ‘He got her to stop drinking, stop taking drugs. At first I thought it was wonderful, a sort of Cinderella story. The girl in the gutter got her prince and was saved from her horrible life. But then… everything changed. And I was terrified, to put it bluntly.’
Fredrika frowned.
‘I never met him,’ Margareta suddenly asserted. ‘I might just as well tell you that straight away, so you don’t go expecting me to whip out a pile of photos for you or anything.’
‘But what you can tell me is important, all the same,’ Fredrika said quickly, but with a growing sense of disappointment.
Part of her had hoped she might be coming away from Margareta’s with at least a description of the suspected murderer.
Margareta looked quite pleased with herself. Fredrika could see she liked being the centre of attention.
‘She met the man in early spring. I’m not sure how they first met, but I think he saved her from some awkward situation in the street one time.’
‘Was Nora a prostitute, too?’
‘No, no,’ Margareta said indignantly, ‘but you can still find yourself with that sort of people, can’t you?’
Fredrika was not so sure about that, but she said nothing. She wished Margareta would get a move on with her story. Her wish was instantly granted.
‘She told me about him right away. Said he was a psychologist, very clever and good-looking. Then she told me he was always saying she was “chosen” and “special”, and together they’d achieve great things in this world. She became a completely different person. For a while, I thought it must be some kind of sect she’d joined. I mean, it was a good thing of course for her to get a bit more sense of order in her life, but she was going through bad depression just then, and the man’s message to her was basically “pull yourself together, you can sort this out if you really want to”. And when she didn’t get better quickly enough…’
Margareta stopped. She took several deep breaths.
‘When she didn’t get better quickly enough, he lost patience with her and started beating her up, very violently.’
Big tears began rolling down Margareta’s cheeks again. They dropped from her chin onto Tintin’s fur.
‘I pleaded with her to leave him,’ Margareta sobbed. ‘And in the end she did. It was after the time he burnt her so badly. She left him when she was discharged from hospital.’
‘Burnt her?’ whispered Fredrika.
‘He burnt her with matches,’ replied Margareta. ‘He tied her to the bed and lit them, one after another.’
‘But didn’t you go to the police?’ persisted Fredrika, sickened by what she was hearing.
‘Of course we did, but it didn’t help. That was why Nora moved away and got protected identity status.’
‘You mean he wasn’t committed of the crime, in spite of Nora’s terrible injuries?’
‘I mean we didn’t know who he was,’ screeched Margareta, her voice almost cracking. ‘Don’t you see? Nora didn’t even know his name. He’d told her just to think of him as “The Man”. And they only ever met at Nora’s flat.’