ALEXANDRA

12.05 P.M.

Bea was sitting in front of the computer in her room and barely reacted when she came in. The blinds were pulled down, and the screen lit up her face. She hadn’t left her room since the outside world got wind of their family arrangement, and the newspapers started writing about them.

Alexandra went up and put her arms around her. ‘It’s going to be fine.’ She wished she could believe that herself.

Bea quickly closed down what she’d been doing on the computer. ‘Lay off, Mum. Don’t come in here and snoop. You have no right to be here.’

Alexandra didn’t even want to know what she was up to and instead breathed in the scent of her daughter. Even though her daughter reeked of smoke and resisted, Alexandra finally got the endorphins she needed. She let go and went to the door.

‘I love you, honey,’ she said, closing the door carefully behind her.

Märtha was sitting on her bed in a bathing suit, sorting cards and talking to herself. The children were allowed to stay home from school, she hadn’t had the energy to nag them this morning, and she didn’t want them to have to deal with mean comments about what was being said about them in the newspapers.

Alexandra looked mournfully at her daughter and wished that Märtha hadn’t had to end up in the shadow of her sister. What had happened to this family? It was time she stopped putting the blame on anyone else. Somewhere in all this chaos, she had been forced to realise how bad things really were.

She went up to Märtha, leant down, and snuggled up against the back of her head. Whispered how much she loved her and then slipped quietly out.

Patrik was still asleep. He’d come home late from Hanna’s and had been completely distraught; she’d hardly been able to get a sensible word out of him. He rambled, and the only thing she’d been able to understand was that Hanna had left him and that she’d told the police everything. He also told her that their car had been identified on surveillance cameras the same night that Liv was murdered.

Now she and Patrik were the only ones left, and even though that was how she’d always wanted it, all she could feel was emptiness.

Alexandra took her handbag, went out to the car, and backed onto the street. Before she drove off, she stopped and looked up at the house and the plants all around it. Saw that the cracks outside the kitchen window had grown so large that the whole facade probably needed plastering.

She drove down towards the city. Slowed down in front of the sausage stand and read the tabloid placards that screamed out her family’s tragedy. Suddenly, the tears came. It was time that she, too, told her story. Nothing had any significance any more. Everything was already out. She would report her own daughter, and tell them how everything was actually her own fault. She would tell them that Bea hadn’t been home the night that Liv was murdered, and that Alexandra had driven all over town and Stentuna looking for her. That was why their car had been seen on the surveillance cameras.

It was time for the police to take care of Bea; she couldn’t manage her any longer. She would file a report against herself, too. She was just as complicit in all this as Bea was. She hadn’t been much of a parent.