Page 10 of Hidden in Memories
There is a flash of silver.
Why?she thinks before the sharp blade of the knife pierces her throat, as easily as if her neck were made of soft clay.
Her mouth is filled with a metallic taste. Something warm and sticky is bubbling up from inside her, and she can’t breathe.
She wants to call out to Filip, but cannot form the words.
Then everything goes black.
Monday, March 29
7
The therapist’s practice is on the corner, in the red-brick house where the psychologist lives with her family. There is a light glowing through the lavender-colored curtains when Detective Inspector Daniel Lindskog parks his car early on Monday morning.
He is in Järpen—he deliberately chose a psychologist who doesn’t work in Åre.
No doubt there is a good explanation for that,Daniel thinks as he switches off the engine. His partner, Ida, is the only one who knows about these visits; he hasn’t told anyone else.
Not even Hanna, despite the fact that they see each other every day.
She knows him almost as well as Ida does; he can talk to her about more or less anything.
But not this.
This is private.
As always Daniel feels a certain measure of reluctance before he gets out of the car, even though he has been seeing Jovanka Horvat regularly over the past year. He’s not sure if it’s down to shame or distaste. It shouldn’t be either. He doesn’t want to be ashamed of needing therapy, not when his aim is to become a better person, a better father to little Alice, the child he had longed for.
It’s hardly surprising that digging into his past is hard work, given his own father’s betrayal when Daniel was a child. The fact is that he has more or less regarded himself as an orphan since his mother, Francesca, died in a car accident in Sundsvall almost a decade ago. His father is still alive, but Daniel hasn’t seen him for twenty-eight years. After Daniel’s tenth birthday, the sporadic visits to his father’s new family in Umeå stopped completely.
Nor has he seen his half siblings since then—a sister and a brother who are eight and five years younger than him.
He knows it is good for him to see Jovanka. She has helped him to acquire the tools to deal with his volatile temperament and the recurring outbursts of rage that have plagued him all his life. Over the past twelve months, he hasn’t lost control once, which is a huge relief.
If he hadn’t decided to try therapy, his relationship with Ida would probably have been over by now. He doesn’t want to think about what would have happened to his relationship with Alice. His daughter is just eighteen months old now, and Daniel’s greatest worry is that she will be as afraid of him as his own mother was of her bad-tempered father. Daniel has inherited that aspect of his grandfather’s nature, even though they have never met.
He has promised himself that he will never be like that, which is why he continues to see Jovanka.
But it is so difficult to bring to the surface things that have been buried for so long. He is not used to talking about his innermost feelings; it makes him feel alone and exposed.
Sometimes he has been on the verge of tears, making it difficult to get the words out. Sometimes he has broken out into a sweat with the unpleasantness of it all. He has always hated it when his emotions get the better of him.
On many occasions he has been on the brink of calling Jovanka to cancel his appointment, but at the last minute, he has forced himself to go.
It is only in the last few weeks that they have begun to talk about his complex relationship with his father, who walked out on Francesca and his child when Daniel was just two years old. If he wants to be a better father to Alice, then he has to sort this out too.
That is Jovanka’s clear perception.
Intellectually, Daniel realizes that she is right, but it’s so hard to process the past. It brings up far too many unhappy memories. He used to think that therapy would be somehow redemptive, but it has often been agonizingly painful, and has demanded far more of him than he could ever have imagined.
After an hour with Jovanka, he is tired and depressed, and often drives back to Åre the long way round in order to compose himself. He has been known to park in a lay-by for a while before he is ready to see his family or colleagues.
The clock on the dashboard shows one minute to seven. Jovanka allows him to come early because of his job.
Daniel takes a deep breath, unfastens his seatbelt, and gets out of the car.
8
