The Ice Child. Camilla Lackberg

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СКАЧАТЬ long to wrestle the twins into their clothes so she could take them and Maja to the day-care centre, she hadn’t had time to change. Oh well. She wasn’t exactly going to a social gathering.

      The guard’s key ring clanked as he unlocked the door and showed Erica into the visitor’s room. It seemed so old-fashioned that they still made use of keys in this place. But of course it would be easier to get hold of the combination to a coded lock than to steal a key. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that old measures often prevailed over more modern solutions.

      Laila was sitting at the only table in the room. Her face was turned towards the window, and the winter sun streaming through the pane formed a halo around her blond hair. The bars on the window made squares of light on the floor, and dust motes floated in the air, revealing that the room hadn’t been cleaned as thoroughly as it should have been.

      ‘Hi,’ said Erica as she sat down.

      She wondered why Laila had agreed to see her again. This was their third meeting, and Erica had made no progress at all. Initially Laila had refused to meet with her, no matter how many imploring letters Erica had sent or how many phone calls she’d made. Then a few months ago Laila had suddenly acquiesced. Perhaps the visits were a welcome break from the monotony of prison life. Erica planned to keep visiting if Laila continued to agree to see her. It had been a long time since she’d felt such a strong urge to tell a story, and she couldn’t do it without Laila’s help.

      ‘Hi, Erica.’ Laila turned and fixed her unusual blue eyes on her visitor. At their first meeting, Erica had been reminded of those dogs they used to pull sleds. Huskies. Laila had eyes like a Siberian husky.

      ‘Why do you want to see me if you don’t want to talk about the case?’ asked Erica, getting right to the point. She immediately regretted her choice of words. For Laila, what had happened was not a ‘case’. It was a tragedy and something that still tormented her.

      Laila shrugged.

      ‘I don’t get any other visitors,’ she said, confirming Erica’s suspicions.

      Erica opened her bag and took out a folder containing newspaper articles, photos, and notes.

      ‘Well, I’m not giving up,’ she said, tapping on the folder.

      ‘I suppose that’s the price I have to pay if I want company,’ said Laila, revealing the unexpected sense of humour that Erica had occasionally glimpsed. She had seen pictures of Laila before it all happened. She hadn’t been conventionally beautiful, but she was attractive in a different and compelling way. Back then her blond hair had been long, and in most of the photos she wore it loose and straight. Now it was cropped short, and cut the same length all over. Not exactly what you would call a hairstyle. Just cut in a way that showed it had been a long time since Laila had cared about her appearance. And why should she? She hadn’t been out in the real world for years. Who would she put on make-up for in here? The nonexistent visitors? The other prisoners? The guards?

      ‘You look tired today.’ Laila studied Erica’s face. ‘Was it a rough morning?’

      ‘Rough morning, rough night, and presumably just as rough this afternoon. But that’s the way it is when you have young children.’ Erica sighed heavily and tried to relax. She noticed how tense she was after the stress of the morning.

      ‘Peter was always so sweet,’ said Laila as a veil lowered over those blue eyes of hers. ‘Not even a trace of stubbornness that I remember.’

      ‘You told me the first time we met that he was a very quiet child.’

      ‘Yes. In the beginning we thought there was something wrong with him. He didn’t make a sound until he was three. I wanted to take him to a specialist, but Vladek refused.’ She shivered and her hands abruptly curled into fists as they lay on the table, though she didn’t seem aware of it.

      ‘What happened when Peter was three?’

      ‘One day he just started talking. In complete sentences. With a huge vocabulary. He lisped a bit, but otherwise it was as if he had always talked. As if those years of silence had never existed.’

      ‘And you were never given any explanation?’

      ‘No. Who would have explained it to us? Vladek didn’t want to ask anyone for help. He always said that strangers shouldn’t get mixed up in family matters.’

      ‘Why do you think Peter was silent for so long?’

      Laila turned to look out of the window, and the sun once again formed a halo around her cropped blond hair. The furrows that the years had etched into her face were mercilessly evident in the light. As if forming a map of all the suffering she had endured.

      ‘He probably realized it was best to make himself as invisible as possible. Not to draw attention to himself. Peter was a clever boy.’

      ‘What about Louise? How old was she when she started to talk?’ Erica held her breath. So far Laila had pretended not to hear any of the questions that pertained to her daughter.

      It was no different today.

      ‘Peter loved arranging things. He wanted everything to be nice and orderly. When he was a baby he would stack up blocks in perfect, even towers, and he was always so sad when …’ Laila stopped abruptly.

      Erica noticed how Laila had clenched her jaws shut, and she tried to use sheer willpower to coax Laila to go on, to let out what she had so carefully locked up inside. But the moment had passed. The same thing had happened during Erica’s previous visits. Sometimes it felt as though Laila were standing on the edge of an abyss, wishing deep in her heart that she could throw herself into the chasm. As if she wanted to pitch forward but was stopped by stronger forces, which made her once again retreat into the safety of shadows.

      It was no accident that Erica was thinking about shadows. The first time they’d met, she had a feeling that Laila was living a shadow existence. A life running parallel to the life she should have had, the life that had vanished into a bottomless pit on that day so many years ago.

      ‘Do you ever feel like you’re going to lose patience with your sons? That you’re about to cross that invisible boundary?’ Laila sounded genuinely interested, but her voice also had a pleading undertone.

      It was not an easy question to answer. All parents have probably felt a moment when they approached that borderline between what is permitted and what isn’t, standing there and silently counting to ten as they think about what they could do to put an end to the commotion and upheaval exploding in their heads. But there was a big difference between acknowledging that feeling and acting on it. So Erica shook her head.

      ‘I could never do anything to hurt them.’

      At first Laila didn’t answer as she continued to stare at Erica with those bright blue eyes of hers. But when the guard knocked on the door to say that visiting time was over, Laila said quietly, her gaze still fixed on Erica:

      ‘That’s what you think.’

      Erica recalled the photographs in the folder and shuddered.

      Tyra was grooming Fanta with steady strokes of the brush. She always felt better when she was around the horses. She would have much preferred to be grooming Scirocco, but Molly wouldn’t let anyone else take care of him. It was so unfair. Just because Molly’s parents owned the stable, she was allowed СКАЧАТЬ