suppose that’s the price I have to pay if I want company,’ said Laila, revealing the unexpected sense of humour that Erica had occasionally glimpsed. She had seen pictures of Laila before it all happened. She hadn’t been conventionally beautiful, but she was attractive in a different and compelling way. Back then her blond hair had been long, and in most of the photos she wore it loose and straight. Now it was cropped short, and cut the same length all over. Not exactly what you would call a hairstyle. Just cut in a way that showed it had been a long time since Laila had cared about her appearance. And why should she? She hadn’t been out in the real world for years. Who would she put on make-up for in here? The nonexistent visitors? The other prisoners? The guards?
‘You look tired today.’ Laila studied Erica’s face. ‘Was it a rough morning?’
‘Rough morning, rough night, and presumably just as rough this afternoon. But that’s the way it is when you have young children.’ Erica sighed heavily and tried to relax. She noticed how tense she was after the stress of the morning.
‘Peter was always so sweet,’ said Laila as a veil lowered over those blue eyes of hers. ‘Not even a trace of stubbornness that I remember.’
‘You told me the first time we met that he was a very quiet child.’
‘Yes. In the beginning we thought there was something wrong with him. He didn’t make a sound until he was three. I wanted to take him to a specialist, but Vladek refused.’ She shivered and her hands abruptly curled into fists as they lay on the table, though she didn’t seem aware of it.
‘What happened when Peter was three?’
‘One day he just started talking. In complete sentences. With a huge vocabulary. He lisped a bit, but otherwise it was as if he had always talked. As if those years of silence had never existed.’
‘And you were never given any explanation?’
‘No. Who would have explained it to us? Vladek didn’t want to ask anyone for help. He always said that strangers shouldn’t get mixed up in family matters.’
‘Why do you think Peter was silent for so long?’
Laila turned to look out of the window, and the sun once again formed a halo around her cropped blond hair. The furrows that the years had etched into her face were mercilessly evident in the light. As if forming a map of all the suffering she had endured.
‘He probably realized it was best to make himself as invisible as possible. Not to draw attention to himself. Peter was a clever boy.’
‘What about Louise? How old was she when she started to talk?’ Erica held her breath. So far Laila had pretended not to hear any of the questions that pertained to her daughter.
It was no different today.
‘Peter loved arranging things. He wanted everything to be nice and orderly. When he was a baby he would stack up blocks in perfect, even towers, and he was always so sad when …’ Laila stopped abruptly.
Erica noticed how Laila had clenched her jaws shut, and she tried to use sheer willpower to coax Laila to go on, to let out what she had so carefully locked up inside. But the moment had passed. The same thing had happened during Erica’s previous visits. Sometimes it felt as though Laila were standing on the edge of an abyss, wishing deep in her heart that she could throw herself into the chasm. As if she wanted to pitch forward but was stopped by stronger forces, which made her once again retreat into the safety of shadows.
It was no accident that Erica was thinking about shadows. The first time they’d met, she had a feeling that Laila was living a shadow existence. A life running parallel to the life she should have had, the life that had vanished into a bottomless pit on that day so many years ago.
‘Do you ever feel like you’re going to lose patience with your sons? That you’re about to cross that invisible boundary?’ Laila sounded genuinely interested, but her voice also had a pleading undertone.
It was not an easy question to answer. All parents have probably felt a moment when they approached that borderline between what is permitted and what isn’t, standing there and silently counting to ten as they think about what they could do to put an end to the commotion and upheaval exploding in their heads. But there was a big difference between acknowledging that feeling and acting on it. So Erica shook her head.
‘I could never do anything to hurt them.’
At first Laila didn’t answer as she continued to stare at Erica with those bright blue eyes of hers. But when the guard knocked on the door to say that visiting time was over, Laila said quietly, her gaze still fixed on Erica:
‘That’s what you think.’
Erica recalled the photographs in the folder and shuddered.
Tyra was grooming Fanta with steady strokes of the brush. She always felt better when she was around the horses. She would have much preferred to be grooming Scirocco, but Molly wouldn’t let anyone else take care of him. It was so unfair. Just because Molly’s parents owned the stable, she was allowed to do anything she wanted.
Tyra loved Scirocco. She had loved him from the first moment she saw him. And the horse had looked at her as if he understood her. It was a wordless form of communication that she’d never experienced with any other animal. Or even with any person. Not with her mother. And not with Lasse. The mere thought of Lasse made her brush Fanta harder, but the big white mare didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying the strokes of the brush, snorting and moving her head up and down as if bowing. For a moment Tyra thought it looked like the mare were inviting her to dance. She smiled and stroked Fanta’s grey muzzle.
‘You’re great too,’ she said, as if the horse had been able to hear her thoughts about Scirocco.
Then she felt a pang of guilt. She looked at her hand on Fanta’s muzzle and realized how trivial her jealousy was.
‘You miss Victoria, don’t you?’ she whispered, leaning her head against the horse’s neck.
Victoria, who had been Fanta’s groom. Victoria, who had been missing for several months. Victoria, who had been – who was – Tyra’s best friend.
‘I miss her too.’ Tyra felt the mare nudging her cheek, but it didn’t comfort her as much as she’d hoped.
She should have been in maths class right now, but on this particular morning she hadn’t felt able to put on a cheerful face and fend off her worry. She had gone over to the school bus stop but instead sought solace in the stable, the only place where she could find any respite. The grown-ups didn’t understand. They saw only their own anxiety, their own sorrow.
Victoria was more than a best friend. She was like a sister. They had been friends from the first day of school and had remained inseparable ever since. There was nothing they hadn’t shared. Or was there? Tyra no longer knew for sure. During those last months before Victoria disappeared, something had changed. It felt like a wall had popped up between them. Tyra hadn’t wanted to nag. She thought that when the time was right, Victoria would tell her what was going on. But time had run out, and Victoria was gone.
‘I’m sure she’ll come back,’ she now told Fanta, but deep inside she had her doubts. Though no one would admit it, they all knew that something bad must have happened. Victoria was not the kind of girl to disappear voluntarily, if such a person existed. She was too content with her life, and she didn’t have an adventurous nature. She preferred to stay home or in the stable; she didn’t even want to go into Strömstad on the weekends. And her family was nothing like Tyra’s. They were super nice, even Victoria’s older brother. He had often given his sister a lift to the stable early in the morning. Tyra used to love visiting their home. She’d felt like one of the family. Sometimes she’d even wished that Victoria’s family was hers. An ordinary, normal family.
Fanta gave her a gentle nudge. A few tears landed on the mare’s muzzle, and Tyra quickly wiped her eyes with her hand.
Suddenly she heard