AS I SAT, TROUBLED by the notion of my mum breaking into a house, her hands disappeared into the deepest pocket of the satchel. I couldn’t see what she was doing until she slowly lifted them. She was wearing two red mittens, gravely stretched out for my inspection as if they were as conclusive as blood-soaked gloves. There was an absurdity about the moment, the disjunction between my mum’s earnestness and the novelty mittens, yet I felt no urge to smile.
To avoid leaving fingerprints! These were the only gloves in my possession, thick Christmas mittens. I started carrying them in my pocket during the height of summer, waiting for my chance to break in. As you can testify, I’ve never done anything like this before. I wasn’t going to sneak into Håkan’s farm in the middle of the night as a professional thief might do. I’d be opportunistic, seizing a moment when both Elise and Håkan were out. Remember, this is rural Sweden, no one locks their door, there are no alarms. However, Elise’s behavior had changed since Mia’s disappearance. She wasn’t working. She sat on the veranda, lost in thought. Earlier I described her as always busy. Not anymore—
Before you interrupt again, I agree, it could be argued in many ways. Regardless of how you interpret the change in her character, it made it difficult to break in because she was at home much more.
One day I caught sight of Elise and Håkan leaving together. I didn’t know where they were going or for how long, maybe they’d be gone for minutes, maybe hours, but this was my only chance and I took it, abandoning my work on the vegetable garden, running through the fields, and knocking on their door just to make sure that the house was empty. There was no reply and I knocked again, asking myself, as I slipped on these thick mittens, whether I had the courage to open this door and walk into their house. As with all sensible people, I’ll break the law if need be. However, that doesn’t mean I find the process easy.
Try the mittens on.
Pick up that glass.
You see?
They have no grip. They’re impractical. No professional burglar would ever choose them. Standing in front of their house I became flustered because I was wearing Christmas mittens in the middle of the summer, trying to break into someone’s farm, and I couldn’t even open the door. The smooth round steel handle didn’t turn easily. I tried many times. In the end I had to clasp the handle with both hands.
Those first few meters inside, from the front door to the bottom of the stairs, were some of the most daunting steps I’ve ever taken. So ingrained were my Swedish customs and sense of household etiquette that I even took off my shoes, an idiotic thing for an intruder to do, depositing my clogs on the bottom step, announcing my presence to anyone who might return home.
I’d never been upstairs in that house before. What did I discover? Fetch a brochure for any midrange furniture store and I could show you Håkan’s bedroom. It was neat and proper with a pine bed, pine wardrobes, immaculately clean, no clutter on the bedside tables, no pills, no books, no piles of dirty clothes. The decorative touches were few and inoffensive, as if decided by a committee, acceptable local artists framed on the wall. It was a furniture showroom, not a real bedroom, and I say my next remark carefully, not as a criticism, but as an observation from someone married for forty years—I was quite sure, standing in the middle of this bedroom, next to a vase filled with painted wooden tulips, that no one was having sex in here. It was a sexless space, and yes, you’re right, I don’t have evidence for that, but a person can tell a lot from a room, and it’s my unsubstantiated observation that Håkan was looking elsewhere for his sexual needs. Elise must have surrendered to that fact, and for the first time I felt pity for her, loyal Elise, a prisoner of that pine bedroom. I’m quite sure the inelegant solution of sleeping around wasn’t open to her. She was his. He was not hers.
By deduction the last room on the landing belonged to Mia. I peered inside, certain there was some mistake—this couldn’t be Mia’s room. The furniture was identical to the previous room, the same pine wardrobe, even the same pine bed as her parents. Mia hadn’t personalized the room except for an elaborate mirror. There were no posters, no postcards, and no photographs. It was a room unlike the room of any teenager I’ve ever seen. What a lonely room it was, not a space where Mia had been given freedom, no, it was decorated and cleaned according to Elise’s standards. The room felt like an order—a command, she should become one of them. Mia might have slept in that room but it didn’t belong to her, it didn’t speak of her personality. It was no different from a comfortable guest room. Then it struck me—the smell! The room had been professionally cleaned, the bed had been made, the sheets were fresh and pressed, they were new, they hadn’t been slept in, the room vacuumed—it smelled of lavender. Sure enough, in the plug socket was an automated air freshening device turned to its highest setting. If forensics were called in to make an examination I was sure that they wouldn’t find even the smallest particle of Mia’s skin. This was cleanliness to a sinister degree.
I checked the wardrobe. It was full. I checked the drawers. They were full. According to Håkan she’d packed two bags. With what? I asked myself. Nothing much was missing. I can’t say how many clothes were in the wardrobe before she left, so can’t compare, but this didn’t feel like a room that had been ransacked by a girl on the run. There was a Bible on the bedside table—Mia was a Christian. I have no idea if she believed in God or not; certainly she hadn’t taken the Bible with her. I checked the pages: there were no notes, no pages ripped out. I turned to the verse from Ephesians that Anne-Marie had stitched in the days before she killed herself. It was unmarked. Underneath the Bible was a diary. Glancing through, there were events listed, there were homework assignments, no references to sex, no boyfriends, girlfriends, no frustrations. No teenager in the world keeps a diary like this. Mia must have known that her room was being searched. She was writing this diary in the knowledge it was being read—this was the diary she wanted Elise and Håkan to read. The diary was a trick, a diversion to pacify a snooping parent, and what kind of teenager produces such a clever decoy document except someone with a great deal to hide?
I’d vowed to stay for no more than thirty minutes, but thirty minutes goes quickly and I’d found no evidence. I couldn’t leave empty-handed. I decided to stay until I found something, no matter the risk! It occurred to me that I’d overlooked the mirror. It stood out as different, not an antique, not from a furniture store, but a piece of craftsmanship, handmade and ambitious—shaped like a magic mirror, wood swirled around oval-shaped glass. Standing close, I noticed that the glass hadn’t been glued to the frame: there were steel clips at the top and bottom. They turned, like keys, and the glass fell cleanly from the frame. I jolted forward to catch it and prevent it smashing on the floor. Behind the mirror, carved into the wood, was a deep space. The person who’d crafted this unusual mirror had an ulterior motive. They’d created a hiding space, custom-made for Mia. This is what I found inside.