We see you, Malin, in the solicitor’s office. You’re about to find out something, you’re upset and scared and you feel like you’re about to explode, that all the feelings in the room where you’ve gathered are going to make you burst.
The solicitor has introduced the woman.
She’s asked him to let her explain who she is. Stay calm, Malin, she isn’t your mother.
Calm down.
She’s about to start talking, and even if you feel the world quake, you should know that she’s bringing an opportunity, a present, the most beautiful present of all.
Malin’s nostrils flare, and she feels them develop a nervous twitch, and looks at the painting – or is it a photograph? – behind the solicitor’s head.
She recognises the picture. Can’t quite place it. It’s a photograph of people in a hammock, but they’re just silhouettes, as if they’ve abandoned their lives. Didn’t it used to hang in Skogså Castle? The castle where they found the IT millionaire murdered in the moat?
Malin feels like sinking into the picture, but the present wants her here.
Dad.
He hasn’t said a word and it’s as if Mum’s spirit is floating in the room and once more turning him into the wimp he so often was in her presence.
But now she recognises what it is. He isn’t in control here, and this drama, written and directed by another force, is to be played out to its end.
The woman, this Britta Ekholm, is facing Malin, looking her in the eye, as she starts to talk.
‘As Mr Strandkvist has just said, my name’s Britta Ekholm. For more than thirty years I’ve worked at Norrgården Care Home in Hälsingland, the last fifteen years as manager. Norrgården isn’t a home for the elderly, we’re mainly a home for children whose parents can’t quite manage to look after them, children who were either born with a severe handicap, or developed one early in life. Some of them have been with us for a very long time, and Norrgården has become their home.’
Fuck.
She has an idea of where this is going, doesn’t want to hear any more, or does she? The woman’s voice, a gentle narrator’s voice.
‘For over thirty years I’ve been Stefan Malmå’s legal guardian.’
Malmå.
She wants to turn to her dad, but can’t, wants to yell at him and ask what the hell is this? What have you done? What did you do? But she stays silent, lets Britta Ekholm carry on.
Malmå.
Mum’s maiden name, and the rest of the stories told by the woman and the solicitor are like a long exhalation, as if someone’s been holding Malin’s breath for her throughout her life, and now she’s free and can breathe again.
What next?
Then an indescribable anger wells up. A sense of having been betrayed. Robbed of something important. Something that has made her feel like half a person all her life.
Then the desire for revenge.
‘So, Stefan Malmå lives in our care home. He’s thirty-one years old, and he’s severely handicapped, both physically and mentally. He’s spent his whole life with us, since he was just a few weeks old. I’m here to represent his interests when his mother’s will is read.’
The solicitor clears his throat, stretches his neck and looks less hungover now, but his attempt to look authoritative fails, and he just ends up looking rather foolish.
Britta Ekholm falls silent as Johan Strandkvist goes on: ‘While I was working on the will, a second child appeared in the records. It turns out, Malin, that your mother had a son for whom she surrendered responsibility shortly after birth, and who is now entitled to a share of the inheritance. This will not be applicable until after your father’s death, but in purely legal terms this needs to be taken into account, and the rights of a child of a different union protected. I should point out that this came as a surprise to me, and that I was the person who found the information.’
Dad.
You must have known.
Malin shuts her eyes, is taking short, shallow breaths, then she says: ‘So this Stefan Malmå is my brother?’
‘He’s your brother,’ Britta Ekholm says.
A face, a faceless face, a mask turning into a person’s face.
‘Your half-brother,’ Britta Ekholm clarifies.
‘So I’ve got a little brother?’
Dad. Malin can’t see the look in his eyes, is it apologetic? Is he sad? Ashamed? He’s slumped deeper into the armchair, his shoulders look weighed down by some invisible force.
‘In all these years your mother didn’t want any form of contact with us. I called her several times, but she got angry and upset each time, and told us to leave her family alone.’
Mum?
Dad? What about you?
It’s as if you’re not really here in the room. That both the solicitor and the woman from the care home have decided to despise you.
A brother? A half-brother? So, Dad, you’re not his father? And me, why was I never told of his existence? Surely that ought to have been my fucking choice, and she gets up, looks at her dad, then turns to the woman and yells: ‘Why the hell didn’t you contact me? If he’s been there in the home all my life, surely you could have contacted me? I might have wanted to meet my brother.’
She knows her anger ought to be directed at her dad instead, but she can’t bring herself to force him up against the wall and demand an explanation.
‘We were under the impression that the whole family wanted to be left alone. Your mother stressed that point, time and time again. Our duty was to look after Stefan as well as we could.’
Official records, Malin thinks, sitting down on her chair again. If only I’d ever looked up our family in the records, just once, I’d have found out about this long ago.
Clarity.
And unreality, and she sees a skinny little boy lying alone under a yellow health-service blanket on a hospital bed pushed into the corner of a dark, featureless sickroom, marked out by the fact that none of his own flesh and blood care about him at all.
A room without love.
She gets up and shouts: ‘So you, you’re not his father?’
The woman said half-brother.
Her dad is staring down at the floor.
And the solicitor says, in a voice that sounds as if he is summarising a boardroom decision: ‘Your father isn’t the boy’s father. His father was a travelling salesman dealing in office supplies, she met him while she was working at Saab.’
Dad nods slowly, as if to confirm the story.
‘She spent one night with this man at the Central Hotel. He, Stefan Malmå’s father, died just a few months later in a car accident. When your mother realised she was pregnant it was too late for an abortion. She refused to acknowledge her condition for a long time. Then she left you and your father to conceal her pregnancy from everyone.
‘She gave birth to the child in Hälsingland and was planning to have it adopted. As I understand it, she didn’t want to cause a scandal or disturb her marriage with an illegitimate child. But when the child turned out to be severely handicapped, that was no longer even an option. Social Services stepped in and arranged a place in the care home, with Britta Ekholm here as his legal guardian.’
‘And the years passed,’ Britta Ekholm says.
She holds back what she was about to go on to say, breathing calmly and looking at Malin, as if to calm her as well.
Malin’s thoughts are spinning. Was it you, Dad, who refused to accept the child? Or was it her? It must have been Mum, so worried about protecting her precious fucking reputation at all costs.
‘I can tell you that Stefan is a very special young man. You should meet him. He’d probably love to meet you,’ and there isn’t an ounce of criticism in the woman’s voice, no reproach, just hope for something new, perhaps an end to loneliness, and Malin feels her eyes filling up, then she takes two steps towards her dad and starts slapping him hard about the head and face, over and over again, but she doesn’t shout, she just goes on hitting him, and he makes no attempt to defend himself and just accepts her blows. Then Malin feels arms around her, the solicitor and the woman from the care home, and she realises that this is all true and she has no idea what to do next, how to get out of this situation, and she thinks that she has to visit him, now, now, now.
I have to see my brother, I have to hold him, let him know I exist before it’s too late, because who knows what this wretched world might come up with, what it wants with us?
She spins towards the door.
Wriggles out of their snake-like grip.
Wants to strike out again.
But her body has no more blows in it, not at the moment.
‘Bastard,’ she says to her dad.
His head bowed.
‘You fucking bastard. You knew all along, didn’t you? You hid the truth from me, you’re nothing but a fucking coward and I hate you. Did you refuse to accept him? Maybe it was you who forced Mum to give him up? Who are you? Don’t you ever come near us again!’ she yells. ‘If you so much as phone me or Tove or anyone else who has any damn thing to do with us, I’ll kill you. Got that?’
‘Malin, I—’
‘Shut up!’
‘Malin—’
‘Shut up!’
And she opens the door, wants the woman to tell her to stay, that there’s so much she doesn’t know yet, needs to know.
‘You bastard!’ she shouts at her dad. ‘You didn’t even say a word about this to the solicitor? Did you? Did you think it was just going to disappear?’
She wants to go to Hälsingland now.
To the care home. Can’t the woman ask her to go with her? To the darkest of forests, to a room waiting for some light.
But no one asks her anything. The three people in the solicitor’s office sit in silence, have nothing more to add, and Malin can see that the woman is embarrassed, can see her looking with derision at Malin’s dad, who is sitting there without saying anything, as if shame has sewn his lips together.
She slams the door shut.
A short, pointless bang.
Breathes.
Wondering: What the fuck happens now?