Malin chooses a picture that shows Theresa Eckeved’s face clearly: small mouth, full lips, chubby teenage cheeks and lively, almost black eyes, medium-length dark hair.
No point asking what sort of clothes she had with her. What about how she usually dresses?
‘Jeans. And a shirt. Never skirts, not ever. She thinks they’re stupid,’ Agneta Eckeved says.
‘In the pictures she looks quite girly.’
‘Appearances can be deceptive. She’s a bit of a tomboy,’ Sigvard Eckeved says.
‘You don’t have any suspicions about where she might be? Any special friends?’ Zeke asks.
Both parents shake their heads.
‘She doesn’t have that many friends,’ Agneta Eckeved says. ‘I mean, she knows lots of people, but I wouldn’t say many of them are real friends.’
‘We’d like phone numbers for her boyfriend and any friends that you happen to have numbers for,’ Malin says. ‘And anyone else who means a lot to her. Teachers, sports coaches and so on.’
‘She’s never really liked sports,’ Sigvard Eckeved says. ‘But there’s a girl who used to come and swim here sometimes, some new friend who lives in the city. Do you remember her name, Agneta?’
‘Nathalie. But I’ve no idea what her surname might be.’
‘What about a phone number?’
‘Sorry, no. But her name is Nathalie. I’m sure about that.’
‘If you do remember, we’d like to know,’ Malin says.
‘Does Theresa have a computer?’ Zeke asks.
‘Yes. In her room. She doesn’t use it much.’
‘Can we take it with us? To check her emails and so on.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thanks,’ Zeke says. ‘That pool certainly looks very inviting,’ he says.
‘You’re welcome to have a swim,’ Sigvard Eckeved says.
‘We have to work.’
‘It does look nice,’ Malin says. ‘Cool.’
‘Yes, Fors here.’
Malin is standing on the steps of the Eckeveds’ well-kept seventies’ dream. She managed to fish the phone out of her bag and answer on the third ring. Zeke is beside her, with Theresa’s Toshiba laptop under his arm.
‘Sjoman here. You can go to the hospital, ward ten. The doctors have finished examining her. And she’s feeling a bit better, she’s even managed to tell them who she is.’
‘Josefin Davidsson?’
The heat like a glowing net around her brain.
‘Who else, Fors, who else?’
‘What have we got?’
‘She’s fifteen years old, lives with her parents in Lambohov.’
As she clicks to end the call Malin looks through the green-tinted glass beside the front door, sees Sigvard Eckeved’s silhouette pacing anxiously back and forth in the hall.
7
You came to us late, Theresa.
I was forty-two, your mum forty-one.
We did all the tests and the doctors said that there might be something wrong with you, but out you came to us one late February day, like a perfectly formed reminder of all that was good in the world.
For me you are smell, feeling, sound, breathing in our big bed at night.
You creep in tight and what am I to you? The same as you are to me. We are each other, Theresa.
They say that having children is an act of handing over, showing you a way out into life. Giving you to the world, and the world to you.
I don’t believe that for a moment.
You’re mine.
I am you, Theresa.
Together we are the world.
Children provide a step up to the emotional realisation that we human beings are one. A child is the most important bearer of that myth.
One’s own child, the person I am.
You’re two years old, running across the parquet floor of the living room, language is developing, you flail and point, consuming the world, we consume it together. Even if I sometimes tell you off, you come to me, searching in me for the world.
You’re four and a half and you hit out at me in anger.
