For the Missing Read online

  ‘I didn’t see much,’ Anders said. ‘At first, I couldn’t tell who it was, but then I realised it had to be the two of you, since everyone else had left.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘What was I supposed to say?’ Anders shot her a look.

  ‘Well, to me, later, that you knew.’

  ‘I guess I reckoned you would tell me yourself if you wanted me to know.’

  ‘It’s over now anyway.’

  ‘Good,’ Anders said.

  ‘What’s good about it?’

  ‘I just reckoned … I mean, he’s obviously married and …’

  ‘He told me he was unhappy,’ Charlie said. Then she had to laugh because it was only just then, as she said it out loud, that she realised how predictable it had been. A married man with a wife who didn’t understand him. How was it even possible she had fallen for that?

  ‘And I don’t like him either,’ Anders said. ‘Just between us, he’s … he just thinks far too highly of himself.’

  Charlie could only agree. She thought about that time in the archipelago. Hugo and her in bed. He had tried to get her to ‘open up’ and tell him about her past. How had she grown up and where? For God’s sake, he didn’t even know where she was from.

  Does it matter? Charlie had asked.

  No, it didn’t matter in the slightest.

  There you go then, she had said.

  Still, couldn’t she … couldn’t she tell him something.

  Like what?

  Like maybe a secret.

  Charlie said she would if he went first.

  Hugo had made himself comfortable and with poorly concealed pride told her about how he used to do graffiti when he was young. And then, when she burst out laughing, he had been offended. What was so funny?

  And she said that it was nothing. Just that surely all young people did their fair share of vandalism. That it wasn’t exactly a mortal sin.

  And what had she done that was so bad then, Hugo had wanted to know.

  And for a split second she thought she might tell him, I let a person die once; but then she got a hold of herself and told him she had never done anything illegal.

  Liar, Hugo had said. Everyone has broken the law. He had straddled her and locked her wrist in a one-hand grip. Now tell me.

  Nothing illegal, but I’ve been with quite a few men, she had told him.

  How many? His grip had tightened and she had seen the lust spark to life in his eyes.

  A few hundred.

  And Hugo had laughed. That’s why he liked being with her so much. He loved women who could make him laugh.

  And she remembered thinking that Hugo was wrong about that thing he always said, that he was great at reading people. Now, when the passion had faded slightly, she could see it clearly, that he was the kind of person she normally didn’t have much time for: deluded, devoid of self-awareness and intuition. So why couldn’t she just move on?

  They had been on the road for twenty minutes when Charlie realised she had left her sertraline at home. Had she even taken it this morning? The first thing she would have to do when Anders was out of earshot was call her doctor and sort out a prescription. She had made the mistake of going cold turkey before, thinking the warnings about withdrawal symptoms were exaggerated, but then she had got the sweats and felt nauseous and anxious. It wasn’t an experience she was eager to repeat, especially not considering where they were heading. She might even have to up her dosage.

  ‘What do you think about the girl?’ Anders asked.

  ‘Too soon to say.’

  ‘Yeah, I realise. But she seems the type who could potentially disappear for a while of her own accord.’

  And then Anders started talking about what they had been told about Annabelle. She had a history of running away. Maybe she was the kind of girl you didn’t start looking for until some time had passed.

  ‘She hasn’t gone missing before,’ Charlie said.

  ‘But Challe said …’

  ‘I went over the file; the report was about her not coming home on time. She was staying over at a friend’s house; her mother found her there herself before the next morning. Completely normal.’

  ‘When did you have time to read that?’

  ‘I skimmed it when you were in the bathroom.’

  ‘I can’t have been away for more than five minutes.’

  ‘I’m a fast reader.’

  ‘You’re fast, period,’ Anders said. ‘You do everything so bloody fast.’

  Charlie thought about how often people commented on how fast she was. She almost never gave it any thought herself. It was only when she had to read together with someone else, or walk next to someone, or when people said she talked too fast, that she realised she was out of sync with the world around her. But that usually only led her to conclude that everyone else was slow.

  ‘Come across anything else of interest?’ Anders asked.

  ‘It was not a derelict house. The party. It was in a boarded-up village shop.’

  What difference did that make? Anders wanted to know. Did it matter what kind of house it was?

  Not to an outsider, Charlie thought, not to someone who hadn’t had their first drink there, who hadn’t made out there, fallen down the stairs and vomited all over the floor. To someone who had grown up anywhere else in the world, it made no difference. But to her … every detail was significant.

  ‘Would you mind not driving so fucking unevenly,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Anders looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  ‘I mean that you keep braking and accelerating instead of keeping an even speed.’

  ‘I’m just following the flow of traffic.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You always drive like this, even when there’s no traffic. That’s why I prefer to drive.’

  ‘In that case,’ Anders said, ‘you might consider trying to stay sober.’

  ‘Lay off, will you.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  They were quiet for several miles. Charlie was thinking that she was tired, that she should be at home, in bed, with sertraline, a couple of aspirin and an oxazepam in her, but instead she was sitting here, feeling sick and shaken, on her way to the one place on earth she had promised herself she would never go back to.

  6

  They stopped to eat at a roadside restaurant. There was something familiar and attractive about the dark chairs and the tables with their red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths. An older woman took their order. Anders was being indecisive at first, but eventually settled on the same thing Charlie had ordered: a shrimp sandwich.

  ‘Not hungry?’ he said, watching her push her shrimp around.

  ‘All right, enough already. I don’t need a daddy.’

  ‘Who said you did?’

  ‘I just don’t understand why people can’t mind their own business. I’m thirty-five. What’s the problem if I like to have a drink from time to time?’

  ‘Thirty-three.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re thirty-three.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  She watched Anders pick all the toppings off his sandwich and discard the bread.

  ‘Why don’t you just eat it as is?’ she asked.

  ‘Trying to cut carbs.’

  ‘Pretty stupid to order a sandwich then – if you’re not eating bread, I mean.’

  ‘There wasn’t exactly a superabundance of outstanding options,’ Anders said and shoved a lettuce leaf in his mouth.

  He started talking about how there was nothing wrong with exercising a bit of caution. We all get just one life, one body, after all. And Charlie said she agreed, which was why only fools would waste their time counting calories, working out and messing about with miracle cures.

  ‘Our brains actually need carbs,’ she added.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the activity level up here,’ Anders said, tapping his forehead with his middle finger. ‘At least, I haven’t noti
ced a slowdown.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just deluded. You do know men tend to over-estimate their abilities, right? I mean, generally speaking.’

  ‘I mean, generally speaking,’ Anders mimicked. ‘Aren’t you the one who hates it when people make generalisations?’

  ‘Only when it’s someone else doing it. I suppose it’s because I like to think I have facts to back my statements up.’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone when they make generalisations? Isn’t that the problem?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Charlie said. She put her fork down and stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Anders said.

  ‘Cigarette.’

  ‘I thought you’d stopped?’

  ‘I started again.’

  She went over to the petrol station next door and bought a pack of Blend Menthol, the same ones Betty used to smoke. She stood under the roof in the forecourt, because she was dead certain she would faint if she ventured out into the sunshine.

  The taste of mint instantly transported her back in time. She could see Betty sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, hear Joplin’s raspy voice from the record player in the living room. There had always been music playing at their house. I can’t bear the silence, Charline. Without music, I’d lose my mind.

  And Charlie’s forbidden thought: You’ve already lost your mind, Mum.

  A memory: dancing with Betty in the garden. The cherry trees in full bloom, the cats slinking about their feet. Betty has thrown the windows open so they can hear the music from outside.

  Betty is the man and she is the woman. Don’t forget that the man leads, Betty says, pretend-sternly.

  And when Charlie asks why, Betty shrugs and says she doesn’t know, that it’s just a silly rule. And what the hell – rules are meant to be broken, so sure, she can lead.

  Betty teases her about her feet, saying they are like missiles aimed at her toes. Relax, you have to relax.

  But Charlie can’t. She is stiff and limp in all the wrong places.

  You’ll never be a dancer, Charline.

  You always told me I could be anything I wanted.

  Anything except a dancer, sweetheart.

  Charlie pulled hard on her cigarette. She was no longer the lanky teenager who left town almost two decades ago. Even her dialect was gone. And yet, she thought – and yet so much remains. She thought about the people who had been in her life back then, about who might still be there and who wouldn’t be. She hadn’t had too many friends and everyone she had hung out with had agreed they would leave Gullspång at the first opportunity. Because of the tedium, because there was nothing there, because their dreams drew them to the big cities. And then she thought about Susanne, the girl who had been her best friend once, the two of them together in Betty’s bedroom window in Lyckebo, their legs dangling against the wood panel, their parents laughing, shouting, cavorting down in the garden.

  We’re the only grown-ups here, Charlie.

  And then, the memory of the two of them on the cliff beneath the falls, their tanned naked bodies, Susanne squinting at the sun, sketchpad in hand. It really bothers me that I can never draw you the way you look. No, you can’t look, I’m not done, stop it!

  Charlie grabs the pad from her.

  You’ve drawn me much more beautiful than I am.

  But I wasn’t finished!

  So finish.

  Charlie leans over Susanne’s shoulder as she carefully draws the scar next to her eye and adds a dot under it so it looks like a question mark.

  You’re a riddle, Charline Lager.

  Susanne … Charlie had left her without saying goodbye.

  Why?

  Because she hated goodbyes.

  Charlie closed her eyes, leaned her head against the wall behind her and saw herself in the forest that night, barefoot, screaming, stumbling.

  ‘How many are you going to smoke?’ Anders was suddenly standing in front of her. ‘And what’s with standing so close to the pumps?’

  ‘It’s not that close.’

  ‘I was going to get a cup of coffee.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Charlie said. ‘As soon as I’m done.’

  Before going back into the petrol station, she pulled her phone out and called her GP. Annoyed, she navigated through all the choices and prayed they would call her back. She really needed her prescription.

  ‘You’re quiet,’ Anders said. They had brought their coffees back to the car.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Charlie said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘All kinds of things.’ Oh my God, why couldn’t he just leave her be?

  Her phone rang. Charlie looked at the screen, where an H appeared. It bothered her that it still triggered a split second of hope. Love or passion or whatever it was really had a way of making people stupid.

  ‘If you’re not going to answer it you could at least turn the sound off,’ Anders said.

  Charlie turned the sound off. Seconds later, she had a message from her voicemail. She couldn’t stop herself from calling to listen to it.

  ‘Hi, it’s me. I think we need to talk. It’s Anna. She went through my phone and all hell broke loose and I … I told her it was just a harmless fling, that we’re not seeing each other any more, but she doesn’t believe me and now she’s saying she’s going to call you and … Well, it would be nice if you could call me back as soon as possible.’

  Fuck that, Charlie thought and put her phone back in her bag.

  ‘Who was it?’ Anders asked.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I thought it might be about work.’

  ‘If it was, I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I just feel like you’re being really secretive,’ Anders replied. ‘I mean, more than usual.’

  ‘It’s the place we’re going to,’ Charlie said, ‘Gullspång. I used to live there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I said, that I used to live there.’

  ‘And you’re only telling me now?’ The look Anders gave her made it clear he thought she was insane.

  ‘It was ages ago.’

  ‘What difference does that make? So is that where you grew up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what’s it like?’

  ‘I guess it’s like the rest of small-town Sweden,’ Charlie said. ‘Young mothers, bad dental health, unemployment. I haven’t been back in almost twenty years.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I guess I didn’t feel like it.’ She thought to herself that it had been a mistake to tell him, but in case anyone recognised her, unlikely as that seemed, it was probably best to have mentioned it.

  ‘Do you know the girl?’ Anders asked.

  Charlie shook her head. How could she, when Annabelle hadn’t even been born when she left?

  ‘When was it?’

  ‘A long time ago,’ Charlie said. ‘I was just fourteen.’

  ‘Your family moved to Stockholm?’

  ‘I did,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Just you?’ Anders looked at her.

  ‘Yes, things weren’t great at home. I ended up in foster care. Could you look where you’re going, please?’ she continued.

  ‘Why haven’t you told me this?’

  ‘It’s not something I think about, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it.’

  But Anders didn’t seem to get it. He wanted to know what her foster family had been like. Because obviously there were a lot of horror stories about teenagers who ended up in foster care.

  ‘I was fine,’ Charlie said.

  ‘And so this is the first time you’ve been back since then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what about your parents?’

  ‘It was just my mother and she’s not there any more.’

  Charlie took a big swig of coffee and thought about the house out in Lyckebo. A few months ago someone had called from the local council, telling her she
should consider selling it – coming down to do it up and then putting it on the market. But it was her house and she was free to do what she wanted with it. And so what if she neglected the upkeep? Were the neighbours complaining? Surely that was her problem?

  Anders continued his interrogation.

  ‘Are you close, you and your mum?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Charlie said. ‘I haven’t seen her in a long time.’ And that’s the truth, she thought. It’s the absolute truth. She had no intention of telling Anders about Betty. She had made that mistake with a few old boyfriends a long time ago and it always ended up with them feeling sorry for her.

  Anders asked some more questions; she replied increasingly tersely.

  ‘The woman without a past,’ Anders said eventually.

  ‘Is that what you people call me?’

  ‘Are you surprised? You never give anything personal away.’

  Charlie sighed. She had never understood the point of turning yourself inside out for the people around you. Once, a friend of hers (who had wanted to be more than friends) had said it was the reason she never got close to anybody. No wonder she was alone, he had said, given that she clammed up any time someone wanted to really get to know her.

  Depends on who it is, Charlie had replied, and that had ended that relationship.

  ‘So you talk about me?’ Charlie said, turning to Anders. ‘I thought men didn’t gossip about things like that. Isn’t that what they say, that male-dominated workplaces are so great because you don’t have to deal with gossip and office intrigue?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true. Men talk as much as women do. At least that’s my experience.’

  ‘Either way, I don’t like being too private with work colleagues,’ Charlie said. Only when it was already said did she realise what she had left herself open to.

  ‘You seem to have been fairly intimate with some,’ Anders said, grinning.

  Charlie had to smile. And then she told him how she saw it, that there was a difference between the physical and the emotional. Just because you exchanged bodily fluids didn’t mean you actually opened up to someone.

  Anders grinned again. Then he turned serious. No one was asking her to reveal her innermost secrets, but it was in fact a bit odd, to his mind, to never speak a word about one’s past. They had worked together for almost three years and all he knew about her was what he could see.