The Key (36 page)

Mum looks baffled.

‘It’s quite a new situation,’ Vanessa says.

‘Well …’ Mum says. And then the meaning of it all seems to begin to sink in. ‘That’s unexpected.’

‘I know.’

Mum is silent for another long while.

‘Or perhaps not …’

Vanessa glances at her. It’s obvious that Mum is struggling not to give away how shocked she is. Not to make any mistakes.

‘I mean, it’s just me – I’m so out of touch. You know, if she had been a guy I would’ve started to wonder ages ago. You’ve been seeing such a lot of each other …’ Mum loses the thread for a moment. ‘Were you an item already when she stayed with us?’

‘No. She was in love with me but I hadn’t figured out what I felt by then.’

Mum blushes suddenly.

‘And there was I, more or less forcing you to sleep in the same bed. It must have felt really strange for her.’

Vanessa blushes too, because Linnéa has told her about that night and precisely how strange it was.

‘I’m so glad you’ve told me.’

‘I’m glad, too.’

‘You never know …’ Mum speaks with rather forced jolliness. ‘If I had met the right girl for me, maybe I’d have tried it out. Lord knows, men make me sick sometimes …’

‘Stop it, Mum. Linnéa is my girlfriend, not an experiment.’

‘No, of course. That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, Nessa. What I did mean was just that … it wasn’t so terribly long ago that I was your age. I had already had you then. But now it must be easier than it was then to … try out other … to dare to go for different … without making a big thing of it. And that’s really good.’

She looks so embarrassed, bordering on panic. Vanessa has to throw her a lifeline.

‘I know just what you mean,’ she says.

It works. Her mother relaxes.

Anna-Karin knocks cautiously on the door to Minoo’s room.

‘It’s me,’ she says. ‘OK if I come in?’

‘It’s fine,’ Minoo replies.

Anna-Karin steps inside and closes the door behind her. Minoo is sitting on the floor. In front of her is a pile of socks.

‘I’m trying to sort them into pairs,’ she says. ‘But I’m about to give up.’

Anna-Karin looks at the mass of dark blue and black socks and sympathises. She sits down in front of Minoo and shows her the china Dalmatian.

‘I have to show you something,’ she tells her. ‘Or try to, anyway. It hasn’t quite worked so far.’

She focuses, releases her power, closes her hand around the small figurine and concentrates on how it will …

The hard china shell caves with a crunching sound. Minoo catches her breath. Anna-Karin opens her hand and the little Dalmatian lies crushed to pieces in her palm.

‘Was this what happened in the gym?’ Minoo asks.

‘Yes,’ Anna-Karin replies as she puts the pieces on the floor. ‘I’m trying to learn to control my new power, but it’s hard. I need help – yours and the others’ as well.’

‘Of course I’ll try to help.’

‘I think we should meet regularly,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘I could so easily hurt people by mistake. So it is very important that I master this. And we must use the time that’s left before you … join the other circle.’

‘You’re right,’ Minoo says. ‘We must.’

Their eyes meet.

Anna-Karin isn’t sure which of them starts crying first.

Ida is running through the greyness. She has no idea how long she has been running but the areas of light that used to show up all over the place are now nowhere to be seen.

Maybe I’ve gone in the wrong direction, Ida thinks. Though I’m not convinced this place has any directions at all.

Ring, a ring o’ roses …

Ida stops. She doesn’t know if she heard the song or imagined it. But why should she imagine
Ring o’ roses
?

A pocket full of posies …

She tries to follow the sound but it disappears again. This is all so humiliating.

‘Where are you?’ she whispers. ‘Where the hell are you?’

She turns round and faces a wall of white light. It is blindingly strong.

The light swallows her a moment later.

She screws up her eyes but it doesn’t help. The powerful brightness comes through her eyelids.

The ground under her feet disappears. Then, suddenly, it is as if someone has switched the light off. She opens her eyes.

She is floating. Surrounded by the darkest darkness she has ever experienced. This must be the source of all her nightmares. It is where all scary things are hiding. Like murderers, paedophiles, crazed fighting dogs, druggies, ghosts and demons. It is the darkness under the bed. The darkness inside the wardrobe. The darkness in her bedroom mirror.

Then the dance pavilion suddenly appears. It seems to float in the darkness, too, like herself. Vanessa, Linnéa, Minoo and Anna-Karin are there, wearing the same clothes as on the night of the blood-red moon. And there is Matilda, standing in the centre of the pavilion. She is drawing in the air with her finger and the signs of the elements appear one after the other.

Ida wants to call out to Matilda but can’t make a sound, can’t move either. She can only watch.

She forces herself to concentrate on the pavilion, on what is going on there. Mustn’t think about the darkness.

Matilda is talking. Talking, talking, talking. At one point, she declares that the guardians were demons originally.

Ida isn’t even surprised any more.

Matilda rabbits on, explaining things that Ida knows already, sometimes has even seen herself. True, some of it is stuff she hadn’t quite understood. Like, it was the guardians who made Matilda give up her powers.

Then Matilda starts on how the guardians try to read the future. And how they’ve tried to guide the Chosen Ones.

‘… sometimes it just hasn’t been possible to avoid tragedies,’ Matilda says. ‘They may have been too deeply rooted in the ongoing events. Or it could be that other choices might have led to even more catastrophic situations.’

Ida feels anger bubbling up inside her.

‘You let them die!’ Linnéa jumps at Matilda.

Too right.

Ida explodes. Now she is certain. Certain that the guardians cheated her, using that book of theirs. They knew she was going to die, and exactly when and how, so they used the false kiss to lure her into the trap.

She hears the others droning on but can’t concentrate any more. She is too consumed with her own fury.

The guardians sacrificed her like a useless pawn in a game of chess.

Matilda said it was all for the best, it served the world. Is that so? Of all the thousands of millions of routes they could take, did all of them have to lead to a point where Ida must die so that the world could survive?

Because, even though she doesn’t feel properly dead, she finally accepts that she is. In the ordinary world, Ida Holmström doesn’t exist any more and will never exist again. Her body is rotting somewhere underground, or else it has been burnt. She doesn’t know which is the worst option.

Ida starts listening again when Matilda speaks about the powers of the Chosen Ones making up the Key, but saying that the game may be lost – perhaps has been lost for a long time. And then Matilda tells them that they are the last chance this world has got.

Thanks for that.

The greyness closes in on Ida. She can move again. But she stands completely still in the greyness and feels the tears run down her cheeks.

She has never felt so alone. And she no longer wants to find Matilda who is obviously siding with the guardians and actually
defended
them.

The King has sent his daughter …

‘What the fuck!’ Ida hisses.

To fetch a pail of water …

Ida starts to run towards the song and sees a blue light illuminating the mist. It grows stronger the closer she gets and then, suddenly, she is dazzled by the sun. She is standing on a bright green lawn and at her feet is a plastic mug with a slurp of coffee left. Whenever she’s got to now, they’ve at least invented plastic.

A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down
…
A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down …

Ida turns around and sees the familiar red-painted timber cottages. She’s in the Engelsfors open-air museum. There are the rabbit cages. And there is the stall selling caramelised almonds and disgusting sweets that taste like hair conditioner.

And down there, by the water’s edge, is the maypole. Grown-ups and children, all in summery clothes, are dancing around it. When Ida was little, she used to despise dancing round the maypole. She always felt so embarrassed. But Mum and Dad said it was the traditional thing to do.

Mum. Dad. Are they there, dancing with Rasmus and Lotta?

Dad, is he even
alive?

‘We felt horrible about what we did to you,’ Vanessa says.

Ida swings round to face her. Vanessa is crowned with a wreath of wildflowers and a fascinated wasp is buzzing among the drooping buttercups. She is talking to Gustaf.

G
.

Seeing him makes Ida feel that familiar pang somewhere inside her.

‘We only did it because we had to. I felt disgusted afterwards,’ Vanessa continues.

Gustaf has been crowned with flowers, too, and he looks so gorgeous Ida could die. All over again.

‘I know that Minoo felt just the same,’ Vanessa goes on.

Ida observes Gustaf’s lips. Remembers how they felt against hers for that first and only time. That not-kiss. Just one of the guardians’ lying tricks, but still she remembers it as a kiss. The memory is so powerful, it doesn’t matter that it is false.

Could things have been different if she hadn’t started going out with Erik? If she had told Gustaf much sooner that she loved him? Her pride had been pointless anyway, because Felicia and Olivia, and probably everyone else at Engelsfors senior school, had spotted it anyway.

Why had she wasted so much time?

‘We agreed not to tell the others more than absolutely necessary,’ Vanessa says. ‘We just said that you were innocent.’

Ida is taken aback. Innocent? Of what?

‘And Minoo …’ Vanessa continues. ‘Before we left she said to you that Rebecka had not taken her own life. She hoped that you would remember, somewhere inside you, that it was in no way your fault …’

‘Please, stop it.’ Gustaf presses his hand against his eyes.

Vanessa falls silent and Ida tries to grasp what this is about. Why is Vanessa telling G that Rebecka didn’t commit suicide? How come she is talking to him as if he knew the whole business with the truth serum?

‘She thought it was me,’ he whispers. ‘She believed I was the one who killed her.’

Rebecka. Rebecka, who was murdered by Max disguised as Gustaf. How come G knows this? It must be such an appallingly awful thing to know. She reaches out with her hand. Holds it so that her fingertips almost but not quite touch Gustaf’s arm, which allows her to pretend to herself that she could still touch him if she wanted to.

‘She didn’t believe it was you,’ Vanessa says.

Gustaf takes his hand from his eyes. They are shining with tears.

‘But she
saw
me,’ he says, sounding almost angry.

‘Yes, she did,’ Vanessa replies. ‘But she couldn’t make herself believe it was you.’

‘It’s true,’ Ida agrees. ‘I could feel what Rebecka felt, so I know it’s true.’

But, of course, Gustaf doesn’t hear her.

‘That’s what Minoo said, too, but I still can’t stop thinking about it,’ Gustaf says. ‘I don’t know what to believe any more. I don’t know what to feel. I don’t know anything anymore. Sometimes, I’m angry with Minoo because she didn’t tell me earlier. The next moment, I’m angry with her because she told me at all.’

So it was Minoo who told Gustaf?

It makes Ida furious. Why didn’t Minoo leave him in peace? Did she have to drag him into all this shitty business? Hasn’t G suffered enough?

‘Look, I do understand that this must be awful for you,’ Vanessa says. ‘But think about Minoo and how she feels for a moment. You don’t know what it’s like having to lie all the time. It becomes like a wall separating you from everyone who means most to you.’

How can she sound so harsh? How can she stop herself from touching him, she who can? Can’t she see that he needs it?

‘We’ve tried our best to do the right thing,’ Vanessa continues. ‘And all things considered, I think we’ve done a bloody good job. We identified the killer of Elias and Rebecka. We prevented the slaughter of half the school this spring. And we saved Adriana from execution.’

‘I know.’ Gustaf looks away.

Minoo has told him
everything
, Ida realises.

‘She didn’t want to lie to you,’ Vanessa says. ‘By telling you the full story, she took a big risk.’

Gustaf looks at Vanessa again and his eyes say everything. He cares for Minoo. He really does care for her.

‘How is she?’

‘How do you think?’

Vanessa doesn’t sound accusing; she just says it straight, the way only she can.

‘I was angry with her,’ Gustaf says. ‘But, more than anything else, I was angry with myself because I was angry with her. Her situation was impossible, I see that.’

‘I understand exactly how you felt,’ Vanessa tells him. ‘But it isn’t me you should say all this to.’

Gustaf shakes his head. A buttercup works loose from his wreath and falls through Ida’s hand.

‘I can’t talk to her, not yet,’ he says. ‘It will just go wrong. I’ll try to take all these things on board. But please tell her that I understand. And that I don’t hate her and that I’m sorry I can’t deal with this better.’

Vanessa doesn’t speak. She looks despondent.

‘I must get back to my family now,’ Gustaf says. ‘Got to pretend everything is normal.’

‘Me, too.’

‘Does it get easier with time?’ he asks. ‘I mean, to pretend to everyone around you?’

Vanessa stops to look at him, as if she is really thinking about it.

The fog is welling up and separating them from Ida. It is so thick she can’t see her hands any more.

‘You’re a horrid, lying slag!’ Julia says behind her.

Ida turns to look behind her.