When did I lose you, Mum?
That time you disappeared? Because you did go away when I was little, didn’t you, and where were you then?
On planet Look-after-number-one. And I would go to you, and I was allowed to sit on your lap, but never for more than five minutes, then you would have to do something else, I was too heavy, too hot, too in the way. How can a mother think that her own daughter is in the way?
So I turned away.
I would run to Dad. He was the one who came to my athletics competitions, who gave me lifts to football matches, who made sure I got my hair cut. That was all true, wasn’t it?
You turned me towards Dad, didn’t you? You did, didn’t you?
I remember sitting in my room out in Sturefors, waiting for you to come to me, Mum. Waiting for you to say something nice, rub my back with your hand.
But you never came.
Instead I would lie in bed and stare up at the white ceiling, unable to sleep.
One night when there was a storm I went to your bed and crept in beside you. I was five years old.
You turned on the lamp on the bedside table.
Dad was sleeping next to you.
You looked at me.
Lie down next to me, you said. Are you scared of the thunder?
Then you turned out the light and I could feel your warm body against mine under your nightgown, the way it carried me off to sleep as if your whole being were a vessel of bubbling warmth.
When I woke up the next morning you were already gone. I found you in the kitchen.
Sleepy, with bags under your eyes.
‘I haven’t slept a wink,’ you said. ‘And it’s all your fault, Malin.’
I never felt the warmth of your body under your nightgown again.
You hardly ever got angry, Mum.
It was as if you didn’t really exist, even though you were there in those rooms out in the villa. You decided how I should dress, or wanted to decide, at any rate, trying to make me more girly, because that’s what girls were supposed to be like. I hated the skirts you tried to make me wear. The dresses.
And I tried to rein myself in. You tried to get me to feel small in the world, to know my place.
You’re not that intelligent, Malin.
Make sure you find someone with money.
Maybe you should be a nursery teacher. That might suit you. But try your best.
Make sure you find someone with a good name.
Becoming part of my own failure, my inability to accept what I had, what I had created for myself.
You hated reality, Mum.
Did you hate me? Because I was a reminder of your own reality?
The words, said in your grudging voice when I came home with my school report.
Have you been flirting with the teachers?
And when Tove arrived. You cursed me for my clumsiness, how could I get pregnant, just like that? So young? You said that I, we, weren’t welcome, that you’d die of embarrassment in front of all your acquaintances because I couldn’t keep my legs together.
Tove.
You never looked at her. You never held her in your arms. You’d made up your mind that she was a disgrace, simply because she didn’t suit your plans, or fit in with the image of the perfect life that you were trying to create.
But no one cared about that picture, Mum.
I cared about you.
I wanted your love. But because I didn’t get it when I was little, maybe I didn’t really want it once I was grown up, and you didn’t want to give it to me either.
Was there ever any love?
What were you scared of, Mum? God knows, I could have done with your support when I was studying at Police Academy and was on my own with Tove.
Dad used to come to Stockholm sometimes.
But you refused.
Women shouldn’t be police officers.
The distance grew over the years. The lack of love became greater than the love, eradicating it, and in the end I had to ignore you, Mum.
I miss the mum I never had, but I can’t mourn the mother I did have.
Does that make me a bad person?