Watching You(30)

She turned away and stared at the wall beside them.

‘That smile,’ Berger went on. ‘Anyone would think you had your whole life ahead of you, that anything was possible, don’t you think? Look at the picture, Nathalie. I want you to remember who you were then. Ten years old. Look at that smile. You were happy. But could you see a future of unlimited possibilities?’

‘I don’t know what you want.’

‘I’m looking at that smile, Nathalie, those disproportionately large front teeth, the sort everyone has when they’re ten; those teeth seem to be there to tell the rest of the body: hurry up and catch up with us. But I know that neither you nor I see a future of unlimited possibilities in that smile. It’s something else, isn’t it? What do you see, Nathalie?’

The same silence. Which was different from the first interview. He went on: ‘Just before I came in here the staff at Mariehem School managed to dig out some files from their pre-digital archive. Someone had to physically hunt through a basement up in V?sterbotten. Do you know what they found, Nathalie? It wasn’t that you moved abroad.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘No. No, of course not. But if I put it like this: in those days there used to be counsellors in schools. Even the occasional school psychologist.’

Nathalie Fredén was present in a different way now; it was as if she was suddenly crash-landing into her own body. She fixed her eyes on him in a way that he hadn’t experienced up to now. She became a different person. But she said nothing.

He went on, his eyes on a sheet of paper: ‘There are three visits to the counsellor in fairly quick succession, and then – just a few days after the last one – a visit to the school psychologist. That takes place four days before the end of the school year, in June. Then you don’t come back for the autumn term, because you’ve moved abroad, according to your teacher. How much of this do you remember?’

‘The betrayal.’

It came so abruptly, so distinctly, with a sharp and very clear stare, straight into Berger’s own eyes. He held her gaze for a while, and was then held by hers. He found himself thinking about the balance of power, about the interrogator’s indisputable upper hand in the interview room. In the end he looked away and, to his immense irritation, found himself moving his papers around the table.

‘Whose betrayal?’ he said without raising his eyes.

When she didn’t answer he was obliged to look up, ready to regain control of the conversation. But the look in her eyes was too strong, too sharp; it was as if she was delving deep inside him, even though he had no idea why. He had to alter the situation. He let his eyes drift towards the wall instead. She hummed and leaned back hard in her chair, as if she had gained some sort of insight.

‘Who betrayed you?’ he tried again, looking back at her once more. But she was no longer looking at him, her gaze was turned inward.

He paused for a moment. There had been contact, a strong, peculiar contact, and now it was gone again. He didn’t have time to get to the bottom of it, and falling silent was hardly an option. Some sort of breakthrough had taken place, and he had to find his way back to it.

‘The school psychologist, a Hans-Ove Carlsson, is dead now,’ he said, ‘but the counsellor is still alive. It won’t take us long to track her down. What’s she going to say, Nathalie?’

Fredén sighed heavily and said nothing.

Berger pushed the enlarged photograph of the ten-year-old Nathalie Fredén forward and put another picture next to it.

‘The class photo,’ he said. ‘Your happy smile in context.’

No response at all.

‘Group photographs are always interesting,’ he went on. ‘Even formulaic ones like class pictures. Can they tell you anything about the dynamics within a group? Are the individuals merely positioned by a jaded photographer who once had grand ambitions? Or do these compositions reflect real relationships?’

Still no response, except possibly a hint of derision at the corners of her mouth. He continued: ‘There’s a tiny gap around you. All the others are standing close together, their bodies touching. But it looks like no one wants to touch you, Nathalie.’

The same unfocused, neutral gaze, now with a trace of scepticism.

‘Did your classmates think you were disgusting, Nathalie?’ Berger asked gently.

He saw something flare up in her eyes and slowly move towards him. Before it found its target he went on: ‘You were ten years old, Nathalie. What had happened to you to make them think you were disgusting?’

A light was shining out from her half-closed eyelids, a tremulous light that for a moment or so replaced all sound.

‘You know exactly what happened,’ she said sharply.

For a fleeting moment Berger felt something course through him. Surprise, yes, definitely, but more than that. Discomfort, a short jolt of discomfort. And something else, something that lingered, a feeling that her words were on a completely different plane to his. He didn’t understand who she was, what she was doing, and that was so unusual that for a few moments he actually felt at a complete loss.

Even so, he was on a path, and at the end of it was fifteen-year-old Ellen Savinger, and she was alive, and nothing could make him stray from it.

‘I actually think I do,’ he said gently. ‘What you remember of that time, Nathalie, is the “betrayal”, you said that very clearly. I assume that you were betrayed by the world around you, the whole world, from parents to friends to teachers. There wasn’t much talk of bullying in those days, Nathalie. A lot of people in the older generation still thought bullying was a useful trial for life as an adult. But you couldn’t bear your classmates thinking you were disgusting; you were in such a bad way that you were sent to the counsellor, once, twice, three times, and in the end the counsellor wasn’t up to the job and had to send you to the school psychologist. The school psychologist organised a place for you in a private clinic. What sort of place was it, Nathalie?’