Missing

What can you expect? Beatrice had been all of thirty-six when Sibylla was born.
    Sibylla’s grandmother had a finely honed ability to make herself understood, a skill relying entirely on insinuations and covert accusations. Her daughter had inherited it in full. As a grown-up, Sibylla had sometimes wondered if she too carried the same dissembling gene.
    At that time, she had been a teenager and hiding halfway up the stairs to listen to what her parents were saying about going to see Granny.
    ‘Her cousins simply can’t understand what she’s talking about half the time. They make fun of her. I shouldn’t expose her to that.’
    Henry Forsenström said nothing. Perhaps he was just looking through some of his documents. ‘Her accent is even coarser than some of the working-class children here, you know.’
    Her father sighed audibly, but must have felt he should comment.
    ‘What’s wrong wi’ that. She’s born ’n’ bred in these parts after all.’

    Henry Forsenström’s version of the local dialect showed no regard for proper speech. Beatrice didn’t answer at once. Although Sibylla couldn’t see her, she felt she knew exactly what her mother’s face looked like.
    ‘Anyway, I think she’d better stay here this time … Besides, I’d have a chance to get out on my own for a change. Mummy mentioned a premiere at the opera on Friday – they’re doing La Traviata .’
    ‘You do as you think best, of course.’
    Sibylla had never again been allowed to travel with her mother to Stockholm. The next time she arrived in the capital, it was under quite different circumstances.

W hen she woke the following morning, her body was telling her that all was not well. The little shed made her feel trapped. The paraffin heater had cut out and the air was cold. Her throat didn’t feel quite as rough as it had, thank God. The night before it felt like a really bad throat infection, the kind you might need to take penicillin for. It’s tricky to persuade a doctor to see you without being a registered patient and now it would be worse still, because she was presumably a wanted person.
    She was hungry and ate the last piece of bread. There was nothing to drink because she’d finished the Coke at supper last night. She ate the tomato and the apple as well. Then she started packing her things.
    She put away the iron candlestick and the fruit-bowl, stacked the cushions and finally looked around to check she hadn’t forgotten anything. Swinging her rucksack onto her shoulder, with one hand on the door handle, she suddenly hesitated. It was a long time since she’d felt fearful.
    Her rucksack was slipping off her shoulders. She shut the door again.
    Bloody hell. Stay cool.
    But she sank down on one of the kitchen chairs, leaning her head in her hands. As a rule, crying was not something she did because she knew only too well how pointless it was. For as long as she was left in peace to do her own thing, she normally never wanted to cry anyway. There was only one cause of grief that might still surface, although hidden so deep down in her mind that she only rarely became aware of the pain.
    Her conscious thought was almost always focused on food for the day and sleeping quarters for the night ahead. Everything else was secondary.
    She had her savings, too.
    She put her hand to her chest, where the sacred 29,385 kronor were tucked away inside a safe purse, hanging on a strap round her neck underneath her clothes.
    Soon she would have enough saved up. With this money she would finally reach the goal she had fought hard to achieve. Her decision to live differently one day had been utterly sincere and thinking about it had buoyed her up during the last five years. She wanted to change. Instead of always moving on, she wanted a country cottage to live in. It would be her home, where she could peacefully lead her life in her own way. Maybe she would grow vegetables, maybe keep some hens. Draw water from her own well. She didn’t dream of comfort, just four walls that were hers alone.
    Peace and quiet.
    She had investigated and found that about 40,000 kronor would be enough, if you were prepared to live without electricity and running water in unglamorous countryside, somewhere obscure. That was exactly what she wanted. In the far north her kind of place might be even cheaper, but the thought of the long hard winters frightened her. She would keep struggling for a little longer instead.
    During the last five years she’d