Missing

suffocatingly heavy quilt. With infinite care, she managed to ease herself out from under him and stand up.
    Still naked, she picked up her scrunched-up notes from the floor. She tried to flatten them against her thigh before putting them back into the purse again.
    Thomas was sleeping on his side with his mouth open. A string of saliva was dribbling from his mouth into his bushy beard and soaking into the mattress. She was grateful that she hadn’t used her own roll-up mat, because she would have had to leave it. Her sleeping bag had slipped off them and she retrieved it easily after lifting one of his legs.
    She dressed quickly, longing for a shower to wash off the trail left by his eyes crawling over her body. It was unbearable – she must find a tap with running water to wash under. Packing her things, she noticed that her towel and panties smelled sour after being packed while damp. They needed another wash.
    Where? Where could she go?
    She wanted to get out and away as soon as possible, but was thirsty enough to risk staying a little longer. She drank from the plastic bottle and then let the water run over her face and hands to wash them. The sawdust on the floor was turning into a sodden slurry, brown with coffee grounds.
    Thomas shifted the leg she had been pulling at and she stood stock-still until she was certain he was deeply asleep. She must hurry up the ladder and out into … into what, exactly? Not ‘freedom’, that was not an option any more.
    Fuck them all.
    It was dark outside. Old reflexes made her look at her unhelpful watch.
    All the lanes of the South Mälarstrand carriage-way were empty and the windows in the big blocks of flats were almost all dark. Maybe it was still too early for people to be up and about.
    Good. The less she was seen, the better.
    She tiptoed across the deck and climbed onto the Navy vessel. Once back on the quay, she started walking towards the bridge. Her legs seemed to have a will of their own. Her head was empty. She had no idea where she should be going.
    Still, that was quite normal.
    In her world, not knowing where you were heading was the rule, not the exception. She sometimes asked herself if her block against planning ahead was connected to the illness of her youth. Perhaps it had damaged some part of her nervous system which was meant to deal with foresight. In her new life, finding something to eat every day and a sheltered place for her sleeping bag every night were the only things that demanded any thought at all.
    Fair enough, you could live without any expectations higher than holding onto the freedom to move. This freedom was the basis for the way she lived. No one could tell her what to do. Her will was her only directive and she went only where she wanted to go.
    Now all that had changed. She no longer knew where she wanted to go, not even where she could safely go.

    She was walking along Heleneborg Street and then, where the rows of houses ended, turned into Skinnarvik Park. The sky was growing lighter. A man seemed to combine admiring the view with watching his dog defecate. Man and dog both looked up when they heard her steps on the gravel path. Then the man dutifully bent down to pick up the turd in a plastic bag, peering over his shoulder at her, as if she might object.
    She walked on. There was a newly delivered box of bread outside a restaurant at the corner of Horn Street. They surely wouldn’t miss one of the loaves.

    What she needed now was somewhere safe to shelter for a couple of days. A place where she would be left in peace, where no one would think of looking for her. Fear of pursuit had become her constant companion and it was exhausting. She needed rest. From experience she knew that without proper sleep her brain functioned less and less well. She would become easy prey if she lost her sense of judgement.
    In her mind she was going over all the places she had ever slept in. Few had been as safe and quiet as the hide-out she had to find now.
    By now there were more cars around. To avoid meeting the morning rush-hour traffic she decided to walk up Horn Street Rise. Passing St Mary’s Church, she looked at the clock.
    At exactly that moment she realised where she could hide.

D ays and nights, flowing into each other. The same faceless people speaking to her in alien tongues, oblivious of the dangers threatening her.
    The ones without faces were wandering in and out of her room, holding out tiny cups with poison-tablets that they