Missing

hospital. I was moving about for a couple of months or so, sleeping in basements and eating what I could find.’
    ‘How old were you?’
    ‘It was just after my eighteenth birthday.’
    ‘That’s three years older than me.’
    ‘Than I.’
    He turned to look at her.
    ‘Than what?’
    ‘You should say “older than I”.’
    He snorted.
    ‘Were you a damn prefect at school or what?’
    She was smiling into the darkness. No, never a prefect. They didn’t pick her.
    ‘No, but I was rather good at Swedish – at writing essays and things.’
    ‘Why didn’t you ever get a job?’
    ‘I didn’t dare tell people my name. They might recognise it, you see. I thought they were looking for me, that I was wanted by the police.’
    The last phrase brought her right back to the present. Where exactly was this chat taking her? Time to cut it short, now.
    ‘Good night.’
    He lifted his head, leaning on one elbow.
    ‘Hey, you can’t stop now.’
    He sounded disappointed, but she turned her face towards the wall.
    ‘It’s almost eleven o’clock and I’m tired. So, good night.’
    ‘Please, just one more thing. How come you ended up in Stockholm? Can’t you tell me about that bit, too?’
    She sighed and turned again. The lamps illuminating the clock-face were throwing their white light into the attic, but its corners remained pitch dark.
    ‘Listen, I’ll only say this much. If I were you, I’d go for a job in television. You wouldn’t sleep too well if I told you about everything I’ve seen and done and felt on the streets.’
    She stopped speaking for a moment, tried to find the right words. How much of herself could she give? Then she sat up.
    ‘Six of these years are blanks, I hardly remember a single thing. Who I was with. Where I slept. I was drunk out of my mind most of the time. I didn’t want to be able to think, because if I did I might lose my grip and sink without trace. You see, living on the streets gets to you. It’s really hard to pull yourself out. The main reason is that you become unable to adjust to living in other conditions. You have to be able to conform to regular society and you don’t want to conform. It’s a vicious circle. Patrik, you must listen to me. I know what it’s like and you’re just wrong about the freedom thing. It’s a load of shit, all that about sleeping rough. You haven’t got a fucking clue about what it’s like, not really.’
    She lay down again. For once Patrik was quiet, presumably silenced by her vehemence. Would he really stay all night? Maybe he was angry now?
    Not another word. She could hear him stirring, testing different positions on the thin sleeping mat. Then the attic became totally quiet.
    She felt too restless to sleep. Memory snapshots came and went behind her closed eyelids, in fast-changing sequences. His questions had ripped the lid off stored experiences that she had avoided for years.
    The memories of hitchhiking to Stockholm in the hope of merging with the crowds in the capital and so find some way to earn a living. How frightened she had been all the time that they would trace her, catch her and lock her up in hospital again. As if anyone had cared about her absence!
    Then came the slow realisation of how difficult it is for someone without money, contacts or even a name to find a safe harbour. She didn’t dare use her ID number, which meant that the Job Centres were out of the question. She had taken some illegal jobs as a cleaner or dish-washer, but moved on as soon as anyone at all became curious about her. Safety seemed to be among those who only knew each other by nicknames and never asked any questions except about drink or drugs and only when necessary. In the end, hungry and tired to death, she had faced utter humiliation, swallowed her pride and phoned home to ask for help. Begging for forgiveness, she told them she wanted to come home again.
    ‘We’ll give you an allowance, Sibylla. If you give us your address, we’ll send you the money.’
    As always when she remembered this, her stomach contracted. If only she hadn’t given in! She often thought that phone call was harder to bear than almost anything else she had been through. It was intolerable that when she spoke to her mother for the last time, she had been reduced to apologising yet again.
    The money started arriving. Because she had an income and spoke in dialect, her mates called her the Queen of Småland.
    Her lost years began. She spent all her energy on