The Lost Village(11)

“She was taken into care,” I say, hoping I sound just as matter-of-fact as when I was talking about Birgitta. “She was probably sent to an orphanage or foster home. That sort of information isn’t made public.”

“Did they ever test her to find out who her parents were?” Emmy asks.

“How, exactly?” I ask, only thinly veiling my sarcasm. “The sixties weren’t exactly CSI. It’s not like they had DNA kits lying around.” I shrug. “Besides, who would they have tested her against? Everyone had disappeared.”

“Well, your grandmother didn’t, did she?” Emmy retorts. “There must have been others like her. People who had relatives here. Next of kin.”

I do my best not to roll my eyes, and confine myself to saying:

“It’s not that simple.”

Emmy looks up at the school’s gaping window frames, ignoring my tone.

“Did they find her in one of the classrooms?”

“In the nurse’s office,” I say. “But she wasn’t there, of course. Just the baby.”

I can’t resist looking up, too. Searchingly, though I know it’s pointless. It’s not like the windows are going to speak.

“Pity you couldn’t find her,” says Emmy, her eyes back on me. “Would have been fucking cool to put her in the documentary. Made it more personal, you know.”

“You’re assuming she’d want to be in it,” I say. “She’d be almost sixty by now. She could be anywhere. Or dead, even.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”

“Plus it’s already personal,” I say. “It’s not like we don’t already have a connection to the village. Grandma’s whole family disappeared.”

My throat is dry, and the words catch as I speak. It makes them sound a little desperate.

I’m about to go on—that’s why we’re here, it’s all thanks to her and what she told me about Silvertj?rn—when Robert interrupts.

“Who was it that wrote those letters to your grandmother, again?”

I’m about to answer when Emmy jumps in, her green eyes locked on me:

“Her grandmother’s little sister. Aina.”

November 13, 1958

Dearest Margareta,

How’s life down in the big city? And the new apartment? How I wish I could see it! Perhaps now that you and Nils have moved, I might finally be able to pay you a visit? I can sleep on your sofa! You know what a shrimp I am, and sadly it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any taller. I know what you’re going to say when you read this—the same thing you always do: “Don’t be silly, Aina, I was hardly taller than a boot at your age, and then I shot up!” Which might have been true if I were twelve, but I doubt it now that I’m sixteen. (I’m sure you think I haven’t aged a day since you left!) I haven’t grown a single inch since I last saw you, and seeing as that was almost fourteen months ago now, I think it’s time for me to give up hope.

I miss you terribly, Margareta.

Couldn’t you just …

I wish you could come and visit us a little more. It’s been so boring here since the mine shut down. At first it was almost exciting, as though every day were a Sunday: there were so many people out and about during the day, and Father was always at home. He said that something was sure to come up. But now it all feels rather odd. So many people have gone. The Janssons on the corner left last week, and just yesterday your old classmate Vera told Mother that she and her family are also going to try their luck elsewhere.

Father’s so quiet nowadays. And Mother’s so busy she hardly seems to have time for us. She asks me to do everything instead. It’s driving me mad! As though nothing I might have to do could possibly be important. And if I tell her I’m busy, she just gives me that stare—you know the one I mean—and tells me that nothing is more important than helping our neighbors and fellow citizens. I hate it when she says that!

Today she asked me to take food over to Gitta. When I asked why she couldn’t do it herself, she said that she and the school nurse were going to pay a visit to some sick old lady to hold her hand. I told her that the nurse was probably capable of doing that by herself, and that I actually had my own things to do. She asked what they were, and when I said that Lena and I had made plans to go to the river, she said that both Lena and the river would still be there after I’d been to Gitta’s. I didn’t know how to explain to her that Lena might not wait for me if I wasn’t there when I said I would be. Obviously we weren’t only going down to look at the water; it’s where Vera’s brother Emil and his friends go to smoke, and Lena’s taken a bit of a fancy to him. But I could never say that to Mother! So instead I said that I had promised Lena, and Mother’s always telling us how important it is to keep our promises, but clearly that wasn’t the right thing to say, either, because then Mother puffed herself up and asked if I thought my promise to Lena trumped the promise she had made to Birgitta’s dying mother to always look after her daughter, and then I felt so rotten and small that I didn’t dare say anything. But I was seething all the way out to Birgitta’s hut, thinking of all of the things I should have said.

It would be better if you were here, Margareta. I even used to enjoy going out to Birgitta’s when we did it together. I think she liked you more than she likes me. Remember that humming noise she’d make whenever she opened the door to find you there on the doorstep? She never does that with me.