She counted to 200 once the car was out of sight and only then did she dare to leave her hiding place.
It wasn’t much of a hiding place, anyway; if he had started looking for her he would certainly have found her without any problem. A few low and bushy spruce branches, a mossy rock, a fallen tree trunk. She had spent the last three hours there, after initially wandering about the forest in a state of indecision and semi-panic. In the end she lay down on the ground behind this scant cover. It was no further than thirty or forty metres from the house and she could keep an eye on both the door and the car.
Well, what had she expected? That was the question whirring away in her head the whole time. What had she expected?
That she would be able to stay here undisturbed for as long as she liked?
That no one ever came to this little cottage? That it had no owner?
How stupid can you be? thought Anna Gambowska. I’m definitely losing it. Dumb girl.
She had gone a little way into the forest to relieve herself, it was as simple as that. She didn’t like the compost toilet – it had a horrible smell and she thought it was gross. She’d rather answer the call of nature in God’s free air, even if that wasn’t exactly enjoyable either.
And as she was crouching there with her trousers down, he turned up. She heard the car first, then she saw it, and finally she saw the man get out and go into the cottage with two heavy bags.
Fuck, had been her first thought. I’ve had it now. He’ll ring the police, and I’ve been so stupid that I’ll lose my guitar and all my stuff.
Including the 120 kronor in her purse. Anna Gambowska, you’re a mega loser, she’d thought, and there’s no point trying to tell yourself any different. Anybody could have worked out that things would end up like this.
But she had still loitered near the house. Sandals without socks, jeans, a T-shirt and a thin cardigan, that was her entire kit. What point was there in setting off into the world with just those? On the run from a residential treatment centre.
No point at all, even she knew that. So the only solution was to hang about and see what happened. How things developed. Would a police car arrive? She hadn’t broken in, after all. She hadn’t broken anything, of course, or done any damage, but even so. When she found the house the day before yesterday she had been utterly exhausted, and it was a childish thought that made her feel for the key up in the gutter above the door. Only because that was where Uncle Julek used to keep the key to his house in Kołobrzeg, right by the sea; she had spent a few weeks there over a couple of summers when she was around ten or twelve, and this place reminded her a little of Julek’s house. Or she imagined it did, and that must have been what prompted her to look for the key there.
Or perhaps God had decided to help her onto the right track.
The first thing she did was to sleep for five hours. When she woke up it was already late afternoon and she was ravenous, so she struggled with her conscience for half an hour and then helped herself to the food she found in the fridge and larder. She remembered a fairy tale she had read as a child, where it said that anyone who steals to satisfy their hunger cannot be counted as a thief.
She found bread, butter and cheese. Coffee and crispbread, jam and biscuits. A few packets of soup and a dozen assorted tins. There was no water in the house, but she located the pump outside.
I’ll eat my fill and stay the night, she thought, but waking up on Sunday morning to the birds chirruping and the sun shining in her eyes, she changed her mind.
There’s a meaning to my finding my way here, she told herself. I came to this little cottage because I’m going to stay here for a while, that’s how it feels.
Stay here and decide what to do with the rest of my life.
She had only smoked three cigarettes on the Saturday, so she had three left. One a day, she decided, which felt almost heroic, and as she sat in the chair by the outhouse wall and smoked her Sunday evening cigarette, she felt she could be happy in a place like this.
This is all I ask, she observed to herself. For now, at any rate. To be left in peace on my own in a little house out in the forest. Read, play the guitar and sing, go for a stroll if the weather’s nice, why shouldn’t a person be able to live in that simple way?
Young girl, dumb girl . . . no, she didn’t actually feel young or dumb. Mature and sensible, more like. Once darkness had fallen on the Sunday evening and she had got the stove alight, she wrote a few new lines, finding a simple tune for them almost at once. She played it a few times and felt that if there really was a God in Heaven, as she believed deep inside her soft soul, then He was listening and giving her a kindly nod to show he thought it sounded all right.
House in the forest
Heaven on Earth
Soul is a phoetus
Waiting for birth
The tune was clearly better than the words, and she wasn’t sure how to spell or say phoetus. But she knew what it meant, and once she had settled down in bed she thought that she wasn’t really much more than one of those half-formed creatures – childish and undeveloped with its hands between its knees – but just as she was falling asleep, God told her that this was a mistake that many people unfortunately made.
He said it was this very simplicity and purity that was gradually being lost to the world. And for that reason, it was important to nurture it.
And then it was Monday. A sandwich, a cup of coffee, relieving herself in the woods – and then seven hours’ waiting, that was what this day had offered her so far. Hunger had clawed at her as the afternoon dragged by and all she had been able to find to keep it at bay were bilberries. She had always loved bilberries, but they weren’t exactly filling.
But apart from the hunger and the fact that she was slightly underdressed she had nothing to complain of. That was the way of the world, she thought: the body’s needs first, then the soul’s.
But as she came stumbling back down to the house, she felt as if her legs would barely carry her. If she had any thought in her mind at all, it was to have a drink of water and grab some crispbread or whatever she could find. Pack her things and get out of there.
At least he hadn’t taken them with him, neither the guitar nor the rucksack. She had seen that from her hiding place behind the earth cellar. She wondered who he was, as she had been doing all day. Was he a baddie or goodie? A kind person or like that creep in the Volvo? The one she’d nearly killed.
Maybe he’d only pretended he was leaving? Maybe he’d work out what time she might risk returning to the house and come back? Was he hiding somewhere up in the forest, watching her?
He’d put the key in the same place where she’d found it before. Why? Why hadn’t he simply taken it with him?
Her head was buzzing with anxiety and questions, but first she had to deal with her hunger and thirst. As she’d known she would. If he came back and caught her, well, she’d have to cross that bridge when she got to it. Tell him the truth and hope he would understand.
The rucksack was beside the bed. The guitar too; he had folded up its soft case and the clothes she had left behind and put them all on a chair.
Her book and notepad were still on the table; he didn’t seem to have touched them. Or to have gone through her things.
That was odd. Or was it? Her purse was in the outside pocket of her rucksack and she couldn’t tell if he had looked in it or not. Shouldn’t he at least have tried to find out who she was?
Had he done that? Had he taken out her ID card, called the police and reported everything to them?
Maybe there was an alert out for her? Maybe they were looking for her?
But that was nothing new, was it? Sonja Svensson at Elvafors surely wouldn’t have wasted any time in contacting the authorities on Saturday, as soon as somebody realized she was missing.
Yet for some reason she had a feeling Sonja hadn’t done so. She didn’t really understand where this feeling had come from, but it wasn’t something she felt like wracking her brains about right now. The priority at the moment was to get some food inside her.
She devoured several crispbreads and slices of bread with liver pâté and drank half a litre of water. She put on her socks and trainers and a thicker jumper. It hadn’t exactly been cold in the woods, but she’d barely moved for several hours and felt chilled through.
Why aren’t I getting out of here? she thought, slightly annoyed with herself. Why aren’t I packing up my stuff and making myself scarce before it’s too late?
Why am I being so slow?
I’m an intruder in this house, who’s spent two nights here and taken some of his food. Now he’s found me out yet here I still am, waiting to be caught like some stupid mouse in a trap.
She shook her head at her own indecision. Then checked the time. It was almost six, the sun had sunk below the line of trees to the west and the whole area round the cottage was in shadow.
Coffee, she thought suddenly. Coffee and a cigarette.
She laughed as it struck her that her mother would have thought exactly the same thing. And said it, too.
Coffee and a fag first, Anna, she would often declare. No making important decisions on an empty stomach.
She went outside with her cup and her last but one cigarette, and stood in the long grass as she sipped, smoked and listened to the faint whisper of the forest around her.
He won’t come back, she thought. Not today, it’s been an hour since he went. I’m safe here until tomorrow.
She realized this was wishful thinking. She didn’t feel like packing her things and leaving, that was it, of course. Setting off to trudge along the dreary road with her overloaded rucksack and unwieldy guitar. It would be dark in a couple of hours’ time.
She thought back to Saturday. There was something that had led her to this place, she hadn’t imagined it, had she? First when she left the main road at the Rödmossen sign and then when she turned along the narrow forest track, so exhausted she could barely see straight. When she caught sight of the house it had felt as though . . . well, what? As though she was some poor girl in a fairy tale? Who had been forced to leave home by two wicked stepsisters or something, and who was all alone and abandoned on her path through the big, dangerous world.
But under the protection of God, and it was His finger that had pointed out this house to her.
There were other fairy tales, too. The kind about witches who lived in remote woodland cottages like this one, and those tales never ended happily.
Nor had she been driven out by any stepsisters, she had to admit. She was on the run from a home where social services were paying a thousand kronor a day for her to be properly looked after while she found a way out of her drug addiction. That was what her fairy tale looked like, and she would do well not to forget it.
She gave a shiver, took the final drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out. She went back indoors, realized she was fighting back tears, and made another cup of coffee.
She sat down at the table in the main room and put her hands together. She tried to pray to God, but felt fear and forlornness swelling inside her instead.
And then Marja-Liisa came into her head. And Steffo. Which didn’t help matters at all.
A few weeks after he moved in with her, she met Marja-Liisa. It was in the town park, in the evening after one of those carefree days that were the addict’s raison d’être. That was an expression she’d learnt in one of the few French lessons she’d bothered to attend at upper secondary – raison d’être, reason for existing. She and Steffo and a few other people had been smoking all afternoon and having a few beers, but once they were at the park, Steffo left the gang to go and do some business.
That was the way he put it. Business, but there wasn’t much doubt what he meant. Soon afterwards, two giggly girls came along and sat down nearby, and one of them was Marja-Liisa. She was as delicate as a baby bird and her face was all eyes. But she couldn’t stop giggling and was clearly a bit high. For some reason, Anna started talking to her, and it soon came out that she was one of Steffo’s former girlfriends. Once it emerged that Anna was living with him, Marja-Liisa’s giggles died away. She turned serious and seemed on edge.
‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Christ, you be careful.’
‘Why?’ Anna asked her. ‘What do I need to be careful about?’
‘Where is he now? He’s not coming here, is he?’
Anna told her Steffo had just left and would be gone for a while. Marja-Liisa hugged herself, her thin body cold although it was a warm, early summer’s evening and she was wearing a thick jumper.
‘You shouldn’t have shacked up with him,’ she said. ‘He’s fucking sick. He tried to kill me.’
‘Kill you? What are you talking about?’
‘I’m telling you, he tried to kill me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I went out with a couple of my girlfriends instead of being with him. We had a few bottles of wine and when I saw him later that night he beat me up and left me for dead. An old man with a German Shepherd found me in the bushes and I was in hospital for two weeks.’
Anna stared at the terrified bird girl. ‘But . . . I mean, you must have reported him, right?’
But Marja-Liisa just shook her head.
‘Didn’t dare. If I’d reported him he would have done me in for sure. You’ve got to watch out – Steffo isn’t right in the head.’
Then she stood up and walked away.
She had trouble getting Steffo out of her head for the rest of the evening. He was there inside her like a painful, unlanced boil, fuelling other dark and brooding thoughts, which she soon identified as the classic craving for drugs.
They had talked about that at Elvafors. The craving for drugs; whatever you did, however you behaved, sooner or later it would resurface. And it was hard to handle. In actual fact it was the worst and most insidious thing of all, everyone was aware of that, but Anna hadn’t felt it in earnest in the four weeks she had spent at the place.
Only now. But you had to acknowledge it. Talk about it, look it in the eye and fight it . . . a force stronger than yourself.
But who could she talk to? What had she got to fight with? Alone, on the run, in a stranger’s cottage in an unfamiliar forest?
Don’t feel sorry for yourself! she thought, straightening her back. Don’t sink down into the swamp of self-pity, do something!
She gave a laugh. The only drug in her possession was one miserable cigarette, so at least she was out of range of any immediate temptation. That was always something.
She went out to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. It was pretty full; he had stocked it with a variety of items. If she stayed the night and left early tomorrow morning, she’d be able to have a decent amount to eat first.
But what did it tell her, the fact that he’d stocked up on food?
The answer was so obvious that not even she could avoid seeing it.
He was planning to come back. If not tonight, then in the morning. You don’t put cultured milk and butter and fruit and bread in your fridge and larder unless you’re intending to eat it.
Lucky he hadn’t laid in any beer or spirits, she thought. If he had, she would have drunk the lot, and then she’d have been on her way down into the abyss again.
What sort of person was he?
She always found it hard to judge ages and his was no exception. She’d had quite a clear view of him when he arrived in the morning and later in the day when he was out in the yard. Fifty, perhaps? Or sixty? Two or three times as old as she was, at any event. Oh well, age didn’t really matter, and she didn’t think he’d looked particularly threatening.
But then she’d thought that about the Volvo man, too.
Did he realize she was just a young girl? He didn’t seem to have gone through her things, but he might have worked it out, even so. He must have seen her knickers. And her guitar; old ladies didn’t tend to tote guitars round with them, did they?
What if he was the Steffo type, but thirty years older?
No, thought Anna Gambowska, deciding to light a fire instead. I’ve got to stop being scared of everything. If I’m to get through this, I can’t keep meeting trouble halfway.
Just after ten, she went to bed. She lay under the blanket fully clothed, and had her rucksack packed and ready, her guitar in its case. If she was forced to run for it, at least she wouldn’t have to scramble to gather up her possessions first.
Before she fell asleep she sent up a prayer to the benevolent God who had helped her so far. What she asked for was a good night’s sleep, so she could resume her trek in reasonably good shape the next morning.
And to be left alone for the night. She had locked the door and left the key in the lock on the inside; not that it was much of a protection, but still.
Have trust, she thought. Trust was a word she liked very much, and she kept it in her mind until the moment she fell asleep.
She had resolved to wake up at half past six, and she did. Her internal alarm clock worked as usual.
She went outside to pee. Then she had a wash and cleaned her teeth at the pump. Made some coffee and ate a couple of slices of bread with toppings from the fridge. The weather was as fine as the day before: a blue sky with a few wisps of thin, high clouds. She’d brought her rucksack and guitar out of the cottage, but instead of picking them them up and setting off, she took an entirely different decision.
She stowed her luggage behind the outbuilding. In the tangle of undergrowth and nettles growing there, it was well hidden from the eyes of the world. After that she went into the cottage and sat down at the table with a pen and a sheet of paper torn out of her notepad.
She wrote a message and left it in the middle of the table.
Thank you. My name is Anna.
Then she filled a plastic bottle with water, made some sandwiches, took an apple and a banana and went out into the forest.