Cinderella Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

lying in bed when he arrived. She didn’t complain about the pain; she just stated factually that probably she’d broken a rib because her chest didn’t feel right. Sjöberg asked whether he should call for an ambulance, but he knew she wouldn’t want to cause any fuss and bother. The ambulance staff had much more important things to do and what would the neighbours think. He helped her carefully up on to her feet, put her coat over her shoulders and led her out to the car. Then he went back into the apartment and gathered together some underwear and toiletries in a bag. At the last moment he happened to think of her handbag; then he turned off the lights and locked the door.
    In the car, en route to the hospital, his mother told him that she had climbed up on a stool to put away a tray in a high cupboard after they had left her earlier that evening. She had lost her balance and tumbled to the floor.
    ‘The trouble I’m causing you now! I keep you up, and poor Åsa is all alone with the children.’
    She shook her head and looked out of the side window.
    ‘Mum, the children are asleep and Åsa is too,’ said Sjöberg soothingly. ‘I can’t complain either, I’m off tomorrow. You’re the one I’m worried about; you could have asked me to put away that tray. You shouldn’t do that sort of thing, Mum, not at your age.’
    ‘I know. You don’t notice that the years pass.’
    ‘So how does it feel now? Are you sitting comfortably?’
    ‘I don’t feel it as much while I’m sitting.’
    They sat in silence for a while and Sjöberg thought about what Åsa had said earlier. His mother was a rather strange character, he had to agree with that. He was just so used to her. She was now seventy-four and he was forty-nine. She had been a widow for more than half her life. What had it really been like for her? How did it feel then, when she was left alone with him? Feelings were not something they had talked about at home. Life went on as usual and it was neither good nor bad. It was what it was.
    ‘How did Dad die?’ he suddenly thought to ask.
    His mother hesitated for a moment.
    ‘He got sick,’ she replied.
    ‘But what kind of illness did he have?’
    When she didn’t answer his question right away he continued, ‘Was it cancer, or –?’
    ‘I never asked for details,’ she said with a sharp tone in her voice. ‘You never understand what those doctors say anyway.’
    Sjöberg sighed. That’s how a typical conversation went, always had. The world is so big and incomprehensible. You yourself are little and insignificant and what good does it do to get involved, to stick out, to be seen or heard? The best you could do was to avoid attracting attention, keep your faults and doings hidden, and mind your own business.
    Once at the hospital, they had to sit in the A&E waiting room for several hours. Sjöberg left for a few minutes toget them some weak coffee from a vending machine; otherwise they mostly sat leafing through old newspapers. They didn’t speak much – you don’t in public – but when new patients showed up they both looked up curiously for a few moments. His mother refused to lie down in the waiting room and remained patiently in her seat until her name was called at about one-thirty.
    The female doctor confirmed that several ribs were broken and his mother was taken in a wheelchair to a ward where she would stay, at least overnight, for X-rays and observation. Sjöberg tucked her into bed and promised to be in touch the next day.
    When he finally left she was already asleep; it was almost two-thirty in the morning.
    Sjöberg yawned as he came out into the corridor. He looked around for some clue to which direction might take him out of the large hospital. A little further down the long corridor he spotted some signs and made for them. A couple of nurses came towards him and just as he was about to ask them the way he stopped short. He stood rooted to the spot with a stupid expression on his face