chilly wind suffused with rain whistled between the tree trunks, making her shudder. Something white flickered on the periphery of her vision.
A broken branch was sticking out from the trunk of a pine tree, a fragment of a plastic bag hanging from it. Laila’s gaze roamed over the ground. A couple of metres from the pine tree she spotted a hollow in the earth; a few leaves and twigs had blown into it. Laila pulled off the piece of plastic and lowered herself carefully next to the hollow until she was able to flop down into a sitting position. She scraped away the leaves and twigs.
Traces of earth that had been dug up were still visible around the hole. Laila squeezed the piece of plastic in her hand, released it, squeezed again. She examined it and found nothing but white plastic. She felt around in the hollow with her hand. Nothing.
This was where the girl came from. This was where she had lain. In this bag, in this hole. No other tracks led to this place, none led away from it. This was where it began.
She sat there for a long time with her hand in the hole, moving it back and forth as if she were searching for the remains of a residual warmth. Then she slumped, lowering her head. Icy drops of rain dripped down the back of her neck as she caressed the wet earth and whispered:
‘Help me, Little One. Help me.’
Jerry also noticed the change in Theres’ behaviour when he came to visit every few weeks, but it wasn’t something that bothered him. Something about the way his sister kept searching gave him the impression she was looking for a way out, a way that did not lead through the door she had now started using as she examined the rest of the cellar. A loophole, so to speak. Such a thing didn’t exist, he knew that better than most. But he let her carry on. They had other fish to fry.
A month or so after their Bowie session he had played her one of his own songs, running through the chord sequences that he had scribbled down on a piece of paper. He had thought the song was some kind of Britpop a la Suede, but when Theres added a melody line, it turned into more of a hybrid between Swedish folk music and the most mournful kind of country. No money, no love, and nowhere to go.
During the winter he withdrew his threat to reveal her existence to the outside world, but in return he insisted on being allowed to spend time alone with her now and again.
As soon as he had a couple of new songs in the bag he came to call. Shut himself in with Theres and hung a blanket over the window to stop Lennart spying on them. Then they got to work.
Without exception, the songs became significantly darker as they passed through the filter of Theres’ voice. Or perhaps ‘darker’ was the wrong word. More serious. At any rate, Jerry was amazed at how good his songs were when he heard Theres sing them. When he was sitting on his own humming, they just sounded like ordinary songs.
There was no purpose in his writing apart from the fact that it made him feel better. As soon as he sat down with Theres and played an E-major seventh as the first chord-that was their little ritual-and Theres replied in her clear voice, it was as if something poured off him and out of him.
After that, when they started jamming and Theres elevated his simple ideas to genuine music, he was somewhere else for a few minutes, in a better place. Perhaps there was a loophole after all, a way of getting out. If only for a while.
Laila knew there had to be an end to it.
It had begun the day she came home after visiting the place where Lennart had found the girl. She had begun to search. First of all she had opened the wardrobe where they kept old records, and gone through them. Then she had searched the room where they stored clothes. Over the course of a few days she had opened every single box and drawer containing their old things. Then she started on all the nooks and crannies in the house.
When she finished she started searching in places where she had already looked. She might have been careless the first time. Missed something.
From time to time she came across an old forgotten toy or a souvenir from some holiday. She had stood for a long time, staring at a wooden man from Majorca that produced cigarettes from his mouth when you pressed his hat. She had completely forgotten about him, and tried to convince herself that
At the same time she knew it was a lie, and that what she was searching for didn’t exist. And yet she kept on. In between times she went and sat downstairs with the girl, watching as she did the same thing. Laila felt as if she were on the way to crossing a boundary. At any moment she would hear a faint click inside her head, and then she really would be insane.
Things went so far that she began to long for that day. She would no longer have to take responsibility for her behaviour. Like the girl, she would have a bed, a room and food at set times. Nothing else.
But the exhaustion got there first. She began to spend her time sitting in the armchair in the living room, doing absolutely nothing. She no longer had the strength to search, to do a crossword, or even to think. Sometimes Lennart came and made derogatory remarks about her, but she barely heard him. She felt nothing but a vague sense of shame at what she had become.
One day when Lennart had gone to Stockholm and she had been sitting in the armchair for two hours, she did actually hear something like a
She hadn’t searched the garage. No. So now she was going to go into the garage and open a cupboard or pull out a drawer and the first thing she saw would be
An eagerness and a sense of excitement she hadn’t felt for a few months seized her as she hurried across the garden. The garage door was ajar, welcoming her, because Lennart had taken the car out. The sun poured down from a pale July sky. Laila pushed the door open further and stepped into the darkness.
On a bench lay some tools and things to do with the car, and beneath it a cabinet containing three drawers. Laila stood in front of the cabinet, slowly running her hand over the three drawers, like the host of Bingolotto when a lucky winner was about to choose his or her secret prize. What would it be? A holiday in the Maldives or a hundred kilos of coffee?
Laila said eeny, meeny, miny, mo in her head, and her index finger stopped at the middle drawer. She pulled it open.
It couldn’t have been clearer. There was only one thing in the drawer. A brand new nylon rope, ten metres long. Laila took it out and weighed it in her hands.
So. Now she knew what she had to do. It felt right. It felt like a relief.
She lived through the following days as if she were on a high. Each daily task seemed like fun, or at least valuable, because she knew she was carrying it out for the last time. As she sat with the girl she felt sorry for her, searching fruitlessly. Laila’s own search was over.
No more pain in her leg, no more embarrassment over her clumsy body, no more of the constant, nagging feeling that she wasn’t good enough. It would all be over. Soon.
Lennart noticed the change in her and became gentler, almost kind. He was more tolerant than she was used to. But that was still what he was doing: tolerating her. She saw everything so clearly now. It would be a release for Lennart when he no longer had to drag her around with him. Nobody would shed any tears because she was gone. It was just a matter of getting it done.
That was a problem. She wasn’t afraid of dying, but however ridiculous it might sound, she was afraid of hanging herself-because it would hurt, and because it was ugly somehow.
Then again, she wouldn’t actually need to use the rope. The rope was just a guide; the result was the important thing. After a little thought she decided how she wanted to do it, and the only thing that remained was to wait for the right opportunity.
It was almost a month before it came along. At the beginning of August it rained heavily for a week, followed
