“You don’t understand anything,” says Rebecka; tears and snot are pouring down her face, and she can’t stop herself. “As soon as I answer, I’ve already been abandoned.”
At half past six in the evening Rebecka arrived at the police station with Sara and Lova. They had spent the afternoon at the swimming baths.
Sanna came into the meeting room and looked at Rebecka as if she had stolen something from her.
"Oh, so here you are," she said. "I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me."
The girls took off their outdoor clothes and each climbed up onto a chair. Lova was laughing, because a piece of her hair that had been sticking out from under her hat was frozen solid.
“Look, Mummy,” she said, shaking her head so that the clumps of ice in her hair made a tinkling noise.
“We had sausage and mash after swimming,” she went on. “And ice cream. Ida and me are meeting up on Saturday, aren’t we, Rebecka?”
“Ida was a little girl about the same age that she met in the small pool,” Rebecka explained.
Sanna gave Rebecka an odd look, and Rebecka didn’t bother to add that Ida’s mother was a former classmate of hers.
Why do I feel as if I have to apologize and explain? she thought angrily. I haven’t done anything wrong.
“I dived from the three-meter board,” said Sara, creeping onto Sanna’s knee. “Rebecka showed me how.”
“Oh, yes,” said Sanna indifferently.
She had already disappeared. It was as if just the shell of her remained there on the chair. She didn’t even seem to react when they told her Virku had vanished. The girls noticed and started babbling. Rebecka squirmed uncomfortably. After a while Lova stood up and started to jump up and down on her chair, shouting:
"Ida on Saturday, Ida on Saturday."
Up and down, up and down she jumped. Sometimes she came dangerously close to falling. Rebecka got very anxious. If she fell, she could easily hit her head on the concrete windowsill. Then she’d really hurt herself. Sanna didn’t seem to notice.
I’m not going to interfere, Rebecka told herself.
Finally Sara grabbed her younger sister’s arm and snapped:
“Will you pack that in!”
But Lova just pulled her arm away and carried on blithely jumping up and down.
“Are you sad, Mummy?” asked Sara anxiously, putting her arms around Sanna’s neck.
Sanna avoided looking Sara in the eye when she replied. She stroked her daughter’s blond, shining hair. Tidied up the parting with her fingers, tucked her hair behind her ears.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I am sad. You know that I might have to go to jail, and not be your mummy anymore. I’m sad about that.”
Sara’s face turned ashen. Her eyes enormous with fear.
“But you’re coming home soon,” she said.
Sanna put her hand under Sara’s chin and looked into her eyes.
“Not if I’m convicted, Sara. Then I’ll get life, and I won’t come out until you’re grown up and don’t need a mummy anymore. Or I’ll get sick and die in jail, and then I’ll never come out.”
The last sentence was added with a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all.
Sara’s lips were a thin, strained line.
“But who’s going to look after us?” she whispered.
Then she suddenly yelled at Lova, who was still bouncing up and down on the chair like a lunatic.
“I told you to pack that in!”
Lova stopped at once and slumped down on the chair. She pushed half of her hand into her mouth.
Rebecka’s eyes were shooting flashes of lightning at Sanna.
“Sanna’s upset,” she said to Lova, who was sitting there like a little mouse, watching her older sister and her mother.
She turned to Sara and went on:
“That’s why she’s saying those things. I promise you she’s not going to jail. She’ll soon be back home.”
She regretted it the moment she opened her mouth. How the hell could she promise something like that?
When it was time to leave, Rebecka asked the girls to go out and wait by the car. She was grinding her teeth with suppressed rage.
“How could you,” she hissed. “They’d been out and been swimming and had a nice time for a little while, but you…”
She shook her head, unable to find the right words.
“I’ve spoken to Maja, Magdalena and Vesa today. I know there was something going on with Viktor. And I know that you know what it was. Come on, Sanna. You have to tell me.”
Sanna didn’t say a word. She leaned against the mint green concrete wall and chewed on her thumbnail, already bitten down