Sometimes Mikael can be cruel. Other times he looks like he wants to die. His moods are like a rusty old see-saw. Today it feels like he wants to crawl under my skin. My heart is rising up into my throat and a chill sweeps beneath my oversized dressing gown. He’s enjoying making me sweat. I am a little girl playing grown-up, not ready to hear whatever he is waiting to say. The fire in the living room delivers quiet flames. I’m getting used to the smoke that is blown back down the chimney when it’s storming outside. It used to sting my eyes and make them water, but now I’m grateful for the heat when I’m allowed out of my room.
I wish that I’d been able to get dressed. I feel naked, even though Johanna’s old home-made dressing gown is covering me, right down to my ankles. It’s giving off this sickly smell like cheap, flowery perfume, and the collar is edged with a crust of black dirt. Who puts perfume on a dressing gown? Still, I want to shrink inside it, like a tortoise hiding in their shell. The silence is deafening. Mikael was different when he first took me, like a toy wound up too hard. Then I think of the sepia bottles of tablets piled up in Johanna’s bathroom and it makes me wonder. Had he taken something that day? She won’t let me clean there alone. I watch Mikael’s tongue dart from his mouth and slide across his lips. It’s a weird habit that makes me feel like I’m his next meal. The drumming stops. I clutch a handful of dressing gown as he takes a breath to speak. From the way he is looking at me, no good will come from what he has to say.
“Mother...” he starts, his eyes flicking to Johanna’s. “She’s not well.” His jaw tenses, then he looks at me once more. “She doesn’t have long left, do you, Mother?”
I inhale a sudden breath. Touch my collarbone and pinch my skin to stay in this moment. I do this a lot now, because I can’t afford to react. I had not expected this.
“That is correct,” she replies, with the calmness of someone checking homework, instead of saying they’re dying. She leans forward, her eyes turning dark as she looms over me. Her voice is as low as a growl. “But do not mistake illness for weakness. I am still as strong as ever.”
Mikael laughs. A low, dry sound. It’s so out of place in this moment. The cabin creaks around us. Watching. Listening.
I nod at Johanna because I don’t know what to say.Why are you doing this? What has you dying got to do with me?I want to ask, but can’t. I force myself to look sad. She seems satisfied by my reaction.
Mikael sits back in the hard wooden chair as Johanna takes over explaining why I’m here. “This thing inside me—this cancer—it’s taking me quickly. But I can’t leave my darling alone.” She gives her son an encouraging smile.
His face turns serious as his pale, mistrustful eyes land on me. “We are to be together. You will cook and clean, and I will mend the house and get food. We will live here, as a family. Understand?”
I frown. What does he mean, “as a family”? Is he related to me after all? I realise that I am rocking slightly, back and forth on the chair, and I stop.
Mikael picks up a small, sharp knife from the table and uses the point to pick his nails. “You are to be my wife.” He stares at his nails as he speaks. “We will have children.”
And then my world begins to shift, like it does when you’re in a nightmare. You want out, but you are trapped. Forced to watch it play out. I look to Johanna, because surely he is wrong. This is a joke...isn’t it? A silly cruel joke. Any minute now they will both laugh. Because how can I be his wife? I am twelve years old. Children—he wants children. I grip my throat with my hand because I can’t swallow now.Iam a child. How can that be? I can’t do this. Johanna is watching me, but her expression is far away.
“I...I don’t understand,” I finally say, because they’re waiting for a reply. Another gust of wind drives its way down the chimney with a howl, and the sudden influx of smoke makes me cough.
“You don’t need to understand.” Johanna fixes me with a stare. “You just need to get used to the idea. You are going to own this lovely cabin with Mikael. You will live off the land, and once a month you will go shopping and buy supplies. You will be a family. You will use your new name, and you will look after my boy when I am dead.” She nods to herself, giving a crooked smile to Mikael. There are cold sores on either side of her mouth, and her lips are so badly chapped that she makes my stomach churn.
I can’t look at Mikael. I want to plead with Johanna instead. She’s a woman. She must understand how wrong this is. “But I’m only twelve.” Fresh tears find their way into my eyes.
Johanna tuts. “You’re not getting married today, silly girl. Not until you are a woman. After your first bleed.”
Mikael’s knife glints as he scrapes the dirt from beneath his fingernails. I don’t know what to say. Time passes. Johanna stares at me so hard and I push down the scream rising up into my throat.
Chapter 29
“When are you moving out?” Elea picked up a marble paperweight from Swann’s desk and laid it back down again. She was dressed in her suit, the casual clothes discarded for now. The briefing had been conducted, and she had shared details of her fruitless visit to Sienna and Ant’s home. “Your new office is down the hall, isn’t it?” she teased as she stood by his desk. “Having trouble letting go?”
“You’re one to talk about letting go.” Swann sat back in his chair, watching her every move. He seemed to regret the comment as the smile slipped off her face. “Sorry. I meant...”
“No apology needed. You’re right.” Elea felt strangely upbeat as she wandered around his office, taking everything in. “But it’s a strength, not a weakness. If your boys went missing, who would you want on the case?”
“We both know the answer to that.” Swann folded his arms during the rare moment of respite. He was always on the go, attending strategy meetings and press conferences, trying to make the allocated budget stretch, managing the number of people needed to keep the investigation moving forward. “But it’s your inability to let go that makes me wonder,” he continued. “Why did you walk away from Ant and Sienna so easily?”
“Ah. So that’s why you sent backup. You thought I’d kick off, didn’t you?”
Swann didn’t deny it. Elea saw herself as a competent officer with many years of experience under her belt. She could read a situation. Knew when to use force and when to wait it out. Must she always be babysat by those below her rank? It was insulting to be seen as some deranged, grief-stricken woman. Had she been a man, things would have been different.
“I’m playing the long game with those two,” Elea admitted. “Or rather, with Sienna. She knows something about Chelsea Hobbs. I could see it in her eyes.” She straightened a certificate on the wall—one of the many commendations that Swann had received.
“That may be so, but she won’t talk to you while Ant’s around. Her loyalty is to her husband.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Elea had met lots of people like Sienna in the course of her career. Respectable young women who fell in love with “bad boys.” Addicted to the initial excitement, they gave up everything they knew—friends, family, their jobs; decisions they would come to regret. They spiralled into violence, mistaking their partner’s intense possessiveness for love. Elea had looked into Sienna’s history and the intelligence pack provided by DIU. Sienna’s past episodes of violence could also be viewed as self-defence. None of the so-called victims were innocents, but you can’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, in the eyes of the law. Her use of a knife had gained her time inside. Prison would have changed her. Made her feel like there was no way back. Even her accent had altered to reflect her surroundings. She was born in a village in Kent; now she spoke with a ghetto twang. Sienna was a chameleon. Elea articulated all of this to Swann as she tried to explain. “I bet she’s tooled up every time she goes out,” she continued. “She has to be. Ant has pissed a lot of dealers off, encroaching on their patch. No wonder they were so jumpy when we stopped by.”
“They won’t improve things by dobbing in their mates,” Swann replied. “Unless we bring them in for another offence.”
Deals could be made, but Elea wasn’t sure this was the way forward. Not for Sienna anyway. She had seen the look on her face. She didn’t want to criminalise Sienna anymore. There was a chink of good in there somewhere, buried beneath all that mistrust. Elea would never admit it, but her maternal streak was strong. “I have a plan. Leave it with me.”
“Why do I not like the sound of that?” Swann asked.
