Ebba wasn’t answering her calls or text messages, so Sara went to Titus & Partners, double parked outside, folded down the visor to show the police emblem and ran inside.
The professional smile on Ebba’s face as she stood in reception vanished as soon as her mother appeared.
‘Leave,’ she said staring pointedly down at the desk. ‘Otherwise I’ll call security.’
‘Do that – I’m armed,’ said Sara. ‘What is it?’
‘“What is it?”’ said Ebba, with an expression on her face as if Sara had run over her firstborn and was wondering why she was so worked up.
‘Well, what is it? Why do you hate me this time?’
Without a word, Ebba turned the screen of her reception desk computer towards Sara. On it was the Aftonbladet website with the leading headline ‘Uncle Stellan the sex offender’. Adnan Westin had apparently not refrained from writing his story. Sara saw the subheading too. ‘Assaulted minors.’
‘So now everyone knows that my granddad was a paedophile!’ said Ebba, looking furiously at her mother. ‘Thanks for giving me that grandfather!’
‘Firstly, I didn’t choose him. One of his victims was your grandmother. And secondly, it wasn’t me who told you that he was my father. I wanted absolutely no one to know. I wanted to spare you exactly this kind of thing.’ Sara pointed to the display.
‘So you’re blaming Grandma like normal?’
‘What do you mean “like normal”?’
‘Apparently everything is her fault. Everything that’s bad in your life.’
Sara made an effort not to offer an immediate retort – she wanted to pause for a moment’s consideration first.
‘I did feel that way before, but I don’t any longer. But perhaps you recognise the feeling? That everything is Mum’s fault?’
‘It is. You and Grandma aren’t at all alike.’
‘And your daughter will think everything is your fault and that you’re stupid for thinking it’s all my fault.’
‘If you ever tell anyone that he’s my grandfather then I’ll never forgive you. I promise I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll never come home. It’ll be over.’
‘Ebba, I think it’s awful too. Dreadful. But it’s not actually my fault that things are the way they are.’
‘Don’t you get it? I’ll never be able to get a good job if people find out that I’m related to that . . . pervert!’
‘I don’t think your grandfather would mind too much about that, actually,’ Sara said with a smile.
‘Oh yes he would. He puts his company first. This isn’t good PR. They have a set of values.’
‘OK. But perhaps the worst thing isn’t offending against the values of Titus & Partners, but all those girls whose lives Stellan ruined. Be happy that you’re not one of them.’
‘But thanks to them I’ll probably be stuck in reception my whole life. I want a career!’
Sara left before Eric walked by, wondering what she was doing here. She couldn’t repair the relationship with Ebba right now. At least, not without help.
Outside Hotel Diplomat she got into a waiting taxi and gave her mother’s address in Vällingby.
*
‘Ebba hates me.’
The words had a marginal impact on the hater’s grandmother.
‘If you’re going to come here every time she says that then you’d best move in.’
Jane opened the door wide to let in her daughter. The flat was just as meticulously clean as always, and as usual her mother had moved the furniture around and changed the paintings and posters on the walls since Sara’s last visit. The only constant was the framed portrait of the old pope.
‘This time it’s for real,’ said Sara, following her mother into the kitchen where a statute book and a yellow highlighter divulged what Jane had been in the middle of doing. Sara noticed that the beautiful medium blue brick was open at the laws of inheritance, but she was too preoccupied with her daughter’s emotions to deal with her own.
‘What is it now then?’ said Jane, ignoring Sara’s gaze taking in the legal text.
‘She’s found out the truth about Stellan.’
Jane filled a glass with water and gave it to her daughter.
‘The problem isn’t that she’s found out,’ said Jane. ‘The problem is that that monster is part of my child and my grandchildren. The worst and the best parts of my life are merged into one.’
‘That monster is part of my child.’ The words shook Sara. She put down the glass and tried to digest what her mother had said. She felt something against her cheek and pulled back her head. Only then did she realise that it had been herself unconsciously fiddling with her scars.
Why did her subconscious connect Stellan with the injuries? Was the burnt half of her face the monstrous part? The external proof that Stellan had become part of her? Was she like him? No, she wasn’t. And no one was going to be allowed to think that either. The scars were the result of her stopping evil – not her becoming part of it.
Sara put her hands together in a pleading gesture.
‘Please, won’t you withdraw the application? For the sake of my children?’
Jane snorted at the question.
‘They can look after themselves.’
‘They’re children.’
‘Ebba is an adult now. And she has no right to take your father away from you. What she thinks isn’t important. He’s your father. You have a right to be acknowledged as a daughter.’
‘But I don’t want to be.’
‘You don’t understand. Listen to me – you’re someone’s child.’
‘Yes. Yours.’
‘And his. He was an evil man, and you’re the person who can tell the truth about him. It has a lot more impact if you are his daughter. That’s why Malin and Lotta don’t want you to be his child. They want everyone to believe their version.’
‘But do you have to prove it with DNA? Everything’s in the papers now – isn’t that enough?’ Sara objected.
‘They’re just writing what he did. Not that he was your father.’
‘Why is it so important? Isn’t it enough that everyone knows what he did? Why do I and the kids have to be related to him too?’
‘Because my father renounced me! It hurt. It still does. And I’ve never had the chance to prove the truth about myself,’ said Jane, looking at her steadily.
‘He renounced you? You’ve never mentioned that. You just said your parents were dead.’
‘They are now. But he lived a long life and he was never held accountable. But my mother died far too soon – thanks to him.’
Jane had never opened up like this before. And Sara had never seen the vulnerability that was now visible in her mother’s eyes.
‘Mum, sit down,’ said Sara, taking her mother’s wrist and pulling her down onto one of the kitchen chairs, while she herself took the other. ‘Tell me. I don’t know anything about your parents.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Tell me. They’re my grandmother and grandfather. Your mother and father.’
Jane looked out of the window, down at the statute book and then at her daughter.
‘They were both members of the Communist Party,’ she said. ‘My father was a party official and my mother was a secretary at the party offices in Kraków. He seduced her, but when she found she was with child, he denied that it was his. That I was his. And Mum was sacked, excluded from the party and forced to work at the Nowa Huta steel mill instead. It turned out my father was already engaged to the daughter of a party bigwig in Warsaw and as a single mother stigmatised by the party, Mum could never meet anyone new or get another job. She worked herself to death.’
Sara placed a hand on her mother’s and was silent for a long time.
‘OK, I get what this means to you,’ she said finally. ‘But do you really want Olle and Ebba to be related to a monster? Stellan was even worse than your father. Ebba thinks it might ruin her career.’
‘She’s like you. Nothing’s going to stop her.’
‘Is that good or bad?’ said Sara, unable to help smiling a little.
‘It’s good. Perhaps not always so much fun for the people around you both.’
‘I think we take after you.’
‘And my mother. Your grandmother. You never got to meet her. That was my fault.’
‘Your fault?’
‘I went home to see her before she died. 1987. In June. Then she died in July. She was only fifty.’
‘Fifty? I’ll be that soon.’
Jane nodded.
‘You wanted to come with me, but had to stay with the Bromans. And you were so angry. I thought you’d never forgive me.’
‘Do you know what, Mum, I had completely forgotten about that. I remember it now you say it, and of course I would have liked to meet my grandmother, but there are many who have it worse. The important thing for me is that my children have got to know their grandmother.’
‘I was just so worried that the communists would arrest us,’ said Jane. ‘I would probably have coped in prison, but you were so little. And they might have taken you from me because I had fled, so I didn’t dare.’
‘But you didn’t say that. You just let me be angry at you.’
‘All children are angry at their parents. It’s part of the package. But if you had known why you couldn’t come with me, then you would have gone on your own. Just to defy me and the communist regime.’
‘You might be right about that,’ Sara admitted.
‘So now you know. It feels good to have told you.’
‘After thirty-five years?’
‘Better late than never.’
Sara smiled at her mother, and then her gaze fell on the open statute book.
‘But are you really sure you want to tie us to Stellan?’ said Sara. ‘Can’t we forget about this DNA thing?’
‘I’ve already told you: I want everyone to know what he did. Everything that he did.’
‘How does it help? He’s dead.’
‘Sara, we’re witnesses. It’s our duty to tell others. Haven’t you read about #MeToo? This is my #MeToo.’
Sara was silent. Now she understood her mother better. And she found it difficult to disagree with her.
‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘Then we’ll do it.’