She's Never Coming Back

Marianne wanted Ylva to do it herself. As atonement. Gosta did too. That was their original plan.

They both underlined the desperateness of her situation. That even if she stayed alive, there was no future. She was a whore and could never be anything else.

And of course they were right. Everyone would ask the same question: why didn’t you escape? Why didn’t you even try?

But Ylva hadn’t thought of giving them the satisfaction of committing suicide. She would never be able to do it. She hoped that they would kill her when she was asleep. Or that they’d poison her so she lost consciousness. Though she did want to know what they would do with her afterwards. She wanted to be buried. To give Mike and Sanna something definite, to release them so they could carry on with their lives.

She wished that she didn’t know what was coming. But it was too obvious. Gosta was going to fuck her one last time. She could do her best, in the hope of a few days’ respite. But there was no point. Next time, he’d have to take her as the dead sex doll he’d forced her to become.

Right now she just needed to sleep. She was tired and wanted to enjoy dreams that didn’t tie her down. When she woke up, she would remember them.

Ylva crept under the covers, stretched her hand out to the floor lamp and flicked the switch.

Everything went dark.

52

When the phone call came, Calle Collin wasn’t surprised; he’d been waiting for it.

The managing editor of Family Journal said hello, asked how things were and what the weather was like in the capital. Time-wasting pleasantries that people from outside Stockholm persisted in using.

Get to the point, Calle thought, put me out of my misery.

‘So,’ the managing editor said.

Finally.

‘I saw the editor-in-chief and we discussed a few things and we both agree. Very strongly, in fact.’

Not another round. Why couldn’t they just tell him to get lost and leave it at that?

‘And …’ the managing editor continued.

Here it comes. Calle closed his eyes and held his breath. At best, he would be allowed to do humiliating celebrity questionnaires on holiday weekends. Who will you be kissing at Easter? How we celebrate Christmas and My favourite drinking song. Sitting on the phone for hours in pursuit of has-been TV celebrities who wanted to show their sad faces again.

‘Yes?’ Calle tried.

‘We don’t want any suicide,’ the managing editor said. ‘I know that The Friends’ Post doesn’t write about suicide for the simple reason that it can be contagious. Our readership is older and hopefully more sensible, but all the same. We don’t write about suicide because it’s just too awful. There’s nothing redeeming about suicide and we are thankfully not in the single copy market. So we don’t write about it. Full stop.’

‘N-no suicide?’ Calle stuttered.

Had Ylva’s husband not spoken to her? Were they still interested? Did they still want his series about people who had died too young?

‘Why?’ the managing editor asked. ‘Do you not agree?’

‘Yes,’ Calle said. ‘Absolutely. I wouldn’t even dream of writing about suicide. Never.’

‘Good, I’m so glad. In that case, all I have to say is good luck. How soon do you think we can have the first article?’

When Calle got off the phone, he was so happy that he turned up the volume on the stereo and danced around his flat, until he realised that someone in the building opposite was staring at him.

Blackness and silence, like floating in the universe. Ylva could almost see our blue planet in the distance; from a distance where nothing on the face of the Earth mattered. All worldly struggles became as dust. Her journey would soon be over, the ephemeral will-o’-the-wisp that was Ylva would go out. It was no big deal, it happened every second, every day, and had done since the beginning of time.

Her life had taken some sharp turns. Her difficult childhood that degenerated and ended in catastrophe. It had all started as a game, but then had serious consequences. The shrink’s crazy daughter. Annika.

The long interlude when she imagined that this was how life was meant to be. The summers on the boat, Mike, happiness with Sanna.

The distractions that Ylva had amused herself with once she grew weary of all that.

Sanna could manage fine without her mother, Ylva knew that, even if the knowledge hurt. Her memory of Ylva had probably already faded. She could hear Mike’s voice, how he would try to remind her.

You remember Mummy?

A misguided concern for Ylva’s memory that would only result in bad conscience, and for Sanna, the vague feeling of a person who had once existed but was no longer there.

Ylva tried to imagine the world through her daughter’s eyes. What would Sanna remember about her? It could be anything. A time when Ylva had been a bit boisterous, tickled her on the tummy, had a pillow fight. Or perhaps a comment, hopefully something kind. Maybe a film they had seen together. Definitely one of their many swims in the sea. Ylva jumping into the water, of course. The other mothers used the steps, some of them even lowered themselves into the water. How cautious could you be! Women under forty who reversed into the water up to their waist and then fell back, splashing around like old women and stretching their legs. Without getting their hair wet.

Ylva decided that that would be her gift to the world, that that was how she would live on. As the mother who jumped into the water from the jetty and only used the steps to get out. Ylva was happy. It wasn’t a bad legacy to leave behind.

She didn’t want to dwell on the last chapter of her life. It was what it was and it would soon be over. Even if she chose to see it from their perspective, she had atoned for her crime and was reconciled with the thought that every person had the capacity for good and evil inside them.

She stretched out her hand, pressed the light switch and suddenly the room was bathed in light from the floor lamp. She went to the toilet for a pee, flushed, and then crept back under the covers. She stretched out her hand, pressed the light switch, darkness.

She pressed the light switch again, light.

And again, darkness.

Naturally.

Yes, naturally.

53

Jorgen Petersson had found a real dive.

‘Three for a hundred kronor,’ said the quarter billionaire, blithely, as he put six beers down on the table in front of him.