Chapter 6 #2
“And if there is anything specific you want that you didn’t bring, we get grocery deliveries twice a week. If you tell me, or any of the other staff members, we can put in an order for you.”
“Great.” The woman puts the meatball in her mouth and chews slowly, looking directly at Pernilla. “Fabulous.”
As she starts to twirl the fork in the spaghetti, I spot the intricate tattoo sleeve on her left arm, teal and black and burgundy blooming against the backdrop of her brown skin.
Then the older woman, Pernilla, raises her head and looks at Clara.
“I am curious,” she says, her voice so sweet and polite it nearly manages to hide the razor-sharp disdain hiding underneath, “as to what would make you come directly to a place like this from traversing the beaches of Thailand?”
Clara laughs a bit and says:
“I think … I mean, we are just meant to be getting to know each other tonight. Right? We can go over all of that tomorrow, when we start therapy.”
“I’m sorry,” Pernilla says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I was just curious.”
Clara seems thrown; for a moment, she casts her eyes around, and despite the impeccable grooming, she suddenly looks every bit the teenager she was just a few years ago.
Never having had much of a maternal streak, I still feel a pang of protectiveness. Despite my plan to blend into the background as much as possible, I clear my throat.
“I guess we should continue with the introductions, huh?” I say. My voice is a bit hoarse; I’ve barely spoken at all since Anna left my cabin two hours ago.
“I’m Isobel,” I say. “I’ve lived in Stockholm my whole life. Not much traveling, I’m afraid, but”—I look at Clara—“I would love to see a bit more of the world someday.”
The woman across from me, Katarina, pipes up.
“What do you do for a living?” she asks me.
“I’m a technical copywriter,” I say. “I guess I run my own business, but I functionally work full-time for an online kitchenware retailer. It’s a lot of SEO, and completely B2B, so not very sexy.”
Armin helped me come up with the fake job, and the description. Something that sounded qualified but boring, which would conceivably give me enough disposable income to make my presence at Himlafall make sense but wouldn’t invite any follow-up questions.
He told me to make sure to use at least two acronyms. In his experience, he’d said, people stopped listening after two acronyms.
Katarina perks up.
“Oh,” she says. “Which company do you work with? I recently handled a copyright case for a big whiteware retailer. I had to learn a lot about marketing. I thought it was really fascinating.”
“So, wait, are you a lawyer?” Clara cuts in next to me.
Katarina turns to her.
“Yes,” she says. “I mainly work with intellectual property rights. Mostly cases of international copyright disputes.”
“Like, with China?” Clara says.
Katarina’s face doesn’t betray any emotion as she responds.
“No,” she says. “It’s usually within the EU. I was adopted as a child. I’ve never been to China. You have probably spent more time in Asia than I have, based on what you said before.”
It’s hard to tell under the liquid blush, but I think Clara turns red.
“Sorry,” she says. “Shit. I shouldn’t have assumed.”
“It is no problem,” Katarina says, her voice as even as ever.
I hear a laugh from the other side of Clara, a low chuckle.
“Easy mistake to make, right, Clara? I’m sure you didn’t spend much time with any actual Asian people when you were gallivanting around Thailand and Vietnam, discovering yourself.”
Clara clamps her lips together before turning to the woman sitting next to her, the only one whose name I’ve yet to learn.
“Listen,” she says. “I get it. I fucked up. But I think it’s between me and Katarina, and she already said that it’s okay. I don’t understand why you feel the need to make me out to be someone I’m not.”
“I’m not trying to make you out to be anyone at all,” the tattooed woman says, her eyes dancing.
“Leyla,” Martina says.
She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. We all fall silent.
The tattooed woman raises her chin a smidge as she looks over at Martina.
“That protective instinct you’re feeling is a good thing,” she says. “But I think you would agree, if you are being truthful, that what you are doing right now isn’t coming from an entirely altruistic place. Am I correct?”
Leyla doesn’t answer her.
“Let’s just move on for now,” Martina says. “I’ll go tell the kitchen that we are ready for dessert.”
She pushes her chair back, stands up, and disappears through the doors in the back.
When she’s gone, Belinda appears to decide to take control of the room before it spirals back into conflict.
The mood is still tense; Clara has turned her body away from Leyla, Katarina is staring down at her half-empty plate, and Pernilla has her arms crossed so tightly across her torso that it looks like she’s locked them in place.
“I think we should introduce ourselves too,” Belinda says, just on the verge of too loudly and too cheerfully. “Some of you met me when you arrived, and some of you met Anna. We’re the general caretakers here at Himlafall.”
Anna does a funny little wave, which makes Belinda smile, the tension leaking out of her shoulders.
“And this is Ellen,” she says, referring to the small, compact woman to her right, the one who, so far, hasn’t said a single word. She looks young and grim, her fair hair cut close to her scalp and her mouth set in a thin line.
“Ellen is going to be your physical therapist for the next couple of days.”
I stiffen in my seat.
“Physical therapist?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Belinda, thankfully, misinterprets my question.
“Yes,” she says. “She is going to be working with all of you, leading you in group classes, helping you handle and express your feelings through movement.”
Belinda adds:
“And don’t worry, it won’t be too physically strenuous for those of you who aren’t used to heavy exercise.”
“Who would you assume isn’t used to heavy exercise?” Leyla asks her, raising her eyebrows.
“No one,” Belinda stammers. “I—”
“I have a bad knee,” Pernilla interjects, her eyes steely, her words crisp. “So I appreciate that, Belinda. Thank you.”
I reach for my water glass, barely aware of the conversation taking place around me.
Did I miss something? Did she text me? Did I not see it?
Fuck.
“Like she said, I will only be here for a couple of days,” Ellen says. Her voice doesn’t match her face; it’s high and lilting, nigh on sweet.
“After that, the other physical therapist, Sandra, will be taking over. She would have been here to start off your week, but something came up, so I am covering for her until she gets here.”
What could have come up?
Last time we spoke was only a couple of days ago.
The whole plan is contingent on Sandra being here. I’m not sure I can do it without her. She’s my inside woman, my access point, my—
I realize I’m squeezing the fork so hard my knuckles have gone white, and I force my hand to relax.
This wouldn’t mean anything at all to Isobel Anderssen; she wouldn’t care about which physical therapist is working and when.
“I’m just going to go check that everything is going okay in the kitchen,” Anna says, standing up from the table and leaving. I’m dimly aware that Belinda is still attempting to make conversation with the others, but I’m having a hard time focusing on it.
It’s only when one of the waiters picks up my plate, and I hear my name, that I snap back into focus.
“… Isobel?”
I look up, and see Clara staring at me, a small, expectant smile on her lips.
“What?” I blurt out. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t focusing. I’m tired.”
“She asked how you heard about the clinic,” Katarina explains.
“I…”
The news about Sandra has thrown me off. And I wasn’t lying when I said I was tired. I am on the verge of exhausted, actually.
Being off-balance and tired has never done much for my sense of impulse control.
I look straight at Ellen and Belinda, and I say, as casually as I can muster:
“It was recommended to me by a former patient. Susannah Wallin?”
Ellen looks confused. Confused or … stricken.
She opens her mouth to speak, but Belinda stops her with a hand on her arm. Whispers something to her.
Ellen turns to Belinda and begins to say:
“What…?”
Just then, Anna comes walking out the doors.
“I’m sorry that took so long, ladies,” she says. “Martina has something she needed to take care of, so she won’t be able to join us for dessert. But it’s on its way now.”
Anna beams at us.
“I hope you still have room for brownies!”
The anticlimactic disappointment nearly makes me dizzy. I bite down, not allowing it to show, swallowing my frustration.
It doesn’t matter that Anna interrupted. Because I saw it.
Ellen recognized the name. She had heard it before. She was surprised to hear me mention Susannah Wallin.
And of course she was.
Because Susannah disappeared without a trace after her week at the Himlafall Clinic, nine months ago.