I Am Behind You (12 page)

Peter usually just felt sick and embarrassed, but now he was really frightened, and started shaking.
What if he kills her?
His legs trembling, he got up and put on his Mickey Mouse dressing-gown, which was made of thick towelling and provided at least some protection. He opened his bedroom door.

His father was yelling something about ‘putting stupid ideas in the fucking kid's head' and ‘not even Jesus wants your fucking cunt', but the worst thing was what Peter could hear in the pauses. His mother's breathing. It was a kind of gurgle, as if she had something wet in her throat. His father let out a roar, then there was a clattering from the kitchen, heavy footsteps.

Peter reached the living room door as his father emerged from the kitchen, carrying a hammer. His mother was half-lying on the floor, with blood on her face and one eye swollen shut. She had one hand on her belly; the other was clutching a wooden crucifix.

Peter's father stepped forward, raised the hammer and bellowed: ‘See how you like this, you fucking—' Peter opened his mouth to scream as loud as he could, and at the same time his mother looked up and held out the crucifix as a last defence against her husband.

That was when it happened. The scream that had been on its way out of Peter's mouth turned into a gasp as his father was hurled backwards, as if a shock wave of force had surged out of the crucifix and
struck him in the chest. He staggered back two steps and dropped the hammer as he fell over the coffee table. He hit the edge of the table, then lay there shaking his head as if to deny what had just happened.

His mother crawled over and picked up the hammer. Peter's lips moved as he soundlessly whispered, ‘Kill him. Kill him,' but his mother only managed to push the hammer under the sofa before she collapsed again, pressing the crucifix to her breast. Peter ran over and curled up beside her, putting his arms around her. Perhaps the faint warmth radiating from the crucifix onto his forearm was a figment of his imagination, perhaps not.

His father got to his feet and stood there swaying, looking down at Peter, his mother, the crucifix. Then he turned around and staggered out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

That same night Peter and his mother got a cab and went to a women's refuge, and a life in safe accommodation began. That night Peter started to believe in God.

Peter walks behind the car and pushes a garden cane into the ground. A new smell rises to meet him. Blood.

The smell of blood that surrounded his mother that night. The blood that wouldn't stop pouring from her nose, the blood that had dried on her hands, her face, the smell that filled Peter's nostrils as he sat close beside her in the cab.

Mum.

Tears fill his eyes. Angrily he dashes them away and turns to face the field and the car, expanding his chest muscles like a challenge.

Just you try it. Go on, just try.

He started to believe in God when he was seven, stopped when he was eleven. He has no illusions. In a couple of strides he reaches the car door, gets in and starts the engine. He drives until the cane has almost disappeared from view, then he stops, gets out, and pushes another one into the ground.

Then he drives on. Further and further.

*

Seven more canes, one kilometre further out. Lennart and Olof are leaning against the back of the car, letting the engine rest for a little while.

‘I think it's got cooler, don't you?' Olof asks.

‘Now you come to mention it, yes I do.'

They are contemplating the row of canes stretching back towards the campsite. They can see four. Lennart closes one eye and notes with satisfaction that they are in a perfectly straight line. Nothing slapdash about their work. He says: ‘We create our own space, don't we?'

‘I think you're going to have to explain that.'

Lennart nods at the canes. ‘It's like putting up a fence. You have an area, and that's all there is to it. Then you put up the fence, and it becomes something else. Something you can call your own.'

‘I suppose so, although the question is whether you are fencing something in, or keeping something out. And there are many different kinds of fence.'

‘This one isn't much of a fence at all.'

‘No.'

They stand there side by side, each lost in his own thoughts. Olof turns his face up to the empty blue sky, while Lennart gazes across the unchanging expanse of grass. Then Olof says: ‘That time when Ingela shot through. I looked after the animals and so on, but I don't think I ate anything for three days.'

‘I was the same when Agnetha disappeared,' Lennart said. ‘I didn't bother eating. I just didn't feel like it.'

‘I drank beer. You can get by on that.'

‘Not in the long term.'

‘No.'

‘And it's a bad habit to get into.'

‘Yes, but what can you do? I felt kind of disorientated, as if nothing was where it was supposed to be any more.'

‘Everything seemed unfamiliar,' Lennart says.

‘Exactly. Unfamiliar. I stroked the cat, and it wasn't the same cat, somehow.'

‘Things were…mute. Dead.'

‘Yes. Everything had moved away from me.'

They fall silent. Stare at the field. Olof blinks a few times, peers at the canes. Then he says: ‘This is a strange conversation.'

‘Is it?'

‘No, not really. But it's unusual.'

‘I thought it was good.'

‘Me too.'

Lennart peers at the grass around his feet for a while. He crouches down and runs his hand over the surface, then digs with his fingers, moving them around until he has a handful of earth. He rubs it between his palms, then slowly shakes his head.

‘Not much good?' Olof wonders.

‘No. Although it is slightly damp in spite of everything.' Lennart cups his hands and pushes his nose between his thumbs, takes a deep breath. He frowns, draws back, then pushes his nose in once more. He seems confused. He holds out his hands to Olof. ‘Smell this.'

Olof does as he asks, and he too is puzzled, has to check again. He can't be sure, but the earth seems to smell of something different.

‘You used to slaughter calves,' Lennart says. ‘So I thought you might be in a better position.'

Olof nods. ‘I think you're right.'

‘Blood?'

‘Blood.'

Lennart lets the earth fall between his fingers, brushing his hands together to get rid of a few stubborn crumbs. ‘Well, at least that solves the question of nutrients.'

*

Molly carries on drawing, while Isabelle sits opposite her leafing through an old copy of a TV magazine. There is a double-page spread
of paparazzi shots of female celebs' bottoms in varying degrees of enlargement, showing their cellulite and lumps and bumps without the benefit of airbrushing. Admittedly Isabelle's skin has lost some of its elasticity over the years, but she has a long way to go before she is sporting a baboon's arse like the ones glowing out at her from the magazine.

But then again…Who's boarding a luxury yacht or sunning themselves on a Florida beach, and who's sitting in a run-down caravan without even so much as a plain fucking biscuit to eat? How did it come to this?

The answer is simple. It is sitting opposite Isabelle, wagging its curly blond head from side to side as it determinedly drags a black felt-tip across a piece of paper.

Suddenly Molly looks up. ‘Mummy, is it possible to live without skin?'

‘Sorry?'

‘If you take away a person's skin, would they still be able to live?'

‘Why are you asking me that?'

‘I was just wondering. If you used like a potato peeler…'

‘Stop it.'

Molly shrugs and returns to her drawing.

Sometimes it seems to Isabelle that her daughter is a complete stranger, while at other times they have a mutual understanding so powerful that it is almost like telepathy, which can be frightening. At some point while she was looking at the paparazzi shots an image from
Martyrs
had flickered through Isabelle's mind. The final scene. The flayed skin. Could it be a coincidence that Molly asked such a strange question just seconds later?

Occasionally Isabelle thinks it could have something to do with what happened in the Brunkeberg tunnel. But Molly was only two years old, and doesn't remember anything. Or so she says.

At the time the family was living on the fourth floor of an apartment block on Birger Jarlsgatan in Stockholm. Peter had been away for
three days at a training camp, and was due to be away for three more. Isabelle spent her time meeting friends for coffee at Saturnus, lunching at Sturehof, and sucking up praise for her adorable daughter wherever she went.

She was perfectly capable of making Molly look pretty for outings in the three-wheel buggy, playing the role of the smart, proud, inner-city mummy, as long as she had a clear picture of what was expected of her. She did the same as everyone else, with her own added flair.

In the evenings, back in the apartment, the panic took over. Xanor helped, but only temporarily. Molly had a tendency to temper tantrums, kicking and lashing out at everything in sight, screaming for no reason, and Isabelle struggled to push away the images of herself hurling her daughter against the wall or stuffing her into the washing machine.

She was stuck in someone else's life, a life she was incapable of living, and everything around her was either false or meaningless. She hated the existence into which she had gradually slipped, bit by bit, and she hated herself because she had been so weak, believing that a child could alleviate her loneliness.

Because she had always been lonely. At fabulous parties where the champagne flowed and she was the centre of attention for every man in the room; in converted loft apartments and king-sized beds as she screwed her way around, searching for someone or something to free her from the feeling that her skin was a barrier against all living things.

A child had seemed like the obvious answer, and that was how she had felt during her pregnancy. But as soon as Molly was born, the separation had begun, and her daughter was just another person. On top of that, she constantly demanded Isabelle's attention without giving very much in return. A mistake.

Worst of all were the times when Molly was asleep and Isabelle simply wandered around the apartment. She could stand in the middle of the living room floor for half an hour staring at the print of
Guernica
while fear tore her guts to shreds.

At half past nine on one such evening, Molly woke up and was inconsolable. By that stage Isabelle felt so bad that the child's screams were a relief, a concrete manifestation of her own internal bellow of pain. She picked Molly up and carried her around, humming a lullaby between gritted teeth. Nothing helped.

As they passed the stove for the fifth time, and the pile of newspapers waiting to be recycled, Isabelle wondered whether to light all four rings, throw the newspapers on top, then hurl herself out of the window with Molly in her arms, just like Jonatan in
The Brothers Lionheart
. A beautiful death. The idea was so appealing that she had to bang her head against the refrigerator door a couple of times to get rid of it.

Only one thing helped in a situation like this. Isabelle dressed her screaming, struggling daughter, grabbed the buggy and took the lift down to the street as Molly's despairing cries echoed through the stairwell.

‘Shut the fuck up,' Isabelle hissed. ‘Can't you just shut your fucking mouth?'

Outside, Isabelle shoved Molly into the buggy and set off along Birger Jarlsgatan. It was early September, and darkness had fallen. The lights of Stureplan up ahead were tempting, but Isabelle would rather be French-kissed by a pig than turn up with her daughter in her present state.

She passed the Zita cinema, where people turned to stare at the screaming bundle. Isabelle bent her head and increased her speed. People, people everywhere, with their accusing, disparaging looks. In order to escape from them she turned into Tunnelgatan and carried on towards the Brunkeberg tunnel, which seemed to be deserted for once.

At first she felt a sense of liberation as she set off alone through the well-lit tunnel. The movement of her feet, the tapering perspective, the straight route ahead of her. But Molly was throwing herself back and forth in the buggy, her amplified screams bouncing off the walls, and soon it was worse than ever.

The tunnel closed in around Isabelle, and she was walking through
a deafening nightmare. Everything went black before her eyes; something collapsed inside her chest. In a few seconds the madness would take her. She stopped in the middle of the tunnel and let go of the buggy. Then she turned on her heel and walked away.

She had gone only a short distance when the screaming behind her stopped. She carried on walking, faster now. With every step her body felt lighter, and by the time she left the tunnel she had regained her normal weight and was able to straighten her back. She drifted out onto Birger Jarlsgatan feeling as if she were drunk on laughing gas and turned right, heading for Stureplan.

Tomas, the doorman at Spy Bar, nodded to her and let her in. The two of them went way back. Isabelle floated into the club. Within a couple of minutes she was sitting at the bar with a treble Scotch. She knocked it back and ordered another.

Someone chatted to her and she chatted to this someone. Then she chatted to someone else. She gazed out across the room, looking for the guy who would have the privilege of taking her home with him tonight. There would probably be a better selection later, in the VIP room, but whether she would be allowed in there depended on who was in charge. Tomas would get her in if the worst came to the worst.

A final wave of euphoria swept over her; she wanted to spread her arms wide, to laugh, to dance. However, the way she was currently expected to behave was embedded in her very bones, so she merely glanced idly around, even though happiness was bubbling away inside her. It was a wonderful evening.