Tell Me You're Mine: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elisabeth Noreback lives in Stockholm with her husband and three children. She holds a Master of Science in Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She started her writing on a psychological thriller during her maternity leave, and now is a full-time novelist. Tell Me You're Mine is her first novel.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Elisabeth Norebäck

Stella

I’m lying on the floor.

Legs pulled up, arms around my knees.

Inhale. Exhale.

My heart’s still pounding in my ears, the pain in my stomach has turned to nausea, but at least I’ve stopped shaking.

My name is Stella Widstrand now, not Johansson. I’m thirty-nine, not nineteen. And I don’t get panic attacks anymore.

A gray autumn light streams in. I still hear rain pouring down outside. My office at the clinic looks the same as always. Tall windows, moss green walls. A large landscape painting and a wooden floor with a handwoven rug on it. My old, battered desk, the armchairs in the corners, just inside the door. I remember decorating this room, how carefully I chose every detail. I no longer recall why that felt so important.

I always imagined that I would find her. Not that she would track me down. Maybe she was driven by curiosity, wanting to see who I am. Maybe she’s come to accuse me, so I won’t ever forget.

Maybe she’s here for revenge.

It’s taken me so many years to rebuild my life, to get to where I am today. But even though I’ve left what happened in the past, still I’ve never forgotten. There are things you can’t forget.

I’m lying on the floor.

Legs pulled up, arms around my knees.

Inhale. Exhale.

Henrik kissed me on the cheek before he left for work this morning. I ate breakfast with Milo and dropped him off at school, then headed to Kungsholmen. Just a normal day. Fog on the windows, traffic over the Traneberg Bridge, mist hanging above the gray waters of Lake Mälaren, and no place to park when you get to the city.

Her appointment was an hour before lunch. She knocked, I opened the door, and I knew immediately. We shook hands, introduced ourselves. She called herself Isabelle Karlsson.

Does she know her real name?

I took her wet jacket. Said something about the weather and asked her to come inside. Isabelle smiled and sat down in one of the armchairs. She has dimples.

As I usually do when I meet a patient for the first time, I asked her why she sought help. Isabelle was prepared. She played her role very well and claimed she’s been suffering from a sleep disorder since her father’s death. She needs help dealing with grief. She said she felt lost and insecure, that she found social situations difficult.

It all felt extremely practiced.

Why?

Why didn’t she just say what she wants? There’s no need to hide her real reason for coming.

She’s twenty-two now. Medium height, an hourglass figure with a narrow waist. Short, unpainted nails. She has no visible tattoos or piercings, not even in her ears. Her straight black hair hangs down her back. Still wet from the rain, it glistened against her pale skin, and it struck me how beautiful she is. More beautiful than I ever could have imagined.

The rest of the conversation is a haze. It’s difficult now to remember what I said. Something about the dynamics of group therapy, or something about communication, or how our self-image determines how we see others.

Isabelle Karlsson seemed to listen attentively. She tossed her hair and smiled again. But she was tense. She was on guard.

At first, I felt sick to my stomach, then came the dizziness and the pressure on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I recognized the symptoms. I apologized and left the room, went into the lavatory in the hallway. My heart raced, a cold sweat ran down my back, and the throbbing behind my eyes sent flashes of light through my head. My stomach knotted up, and I dropped down on my knees in front of the toilet and tried to vomit. I couldn’t. I sat on the floor, leaning against the tile, and closed my eyes.

Stop thinking about what you did.

Stop thinking about her.

Stop thinking.

Stop.

After a few minutes I went back in, told her she was welcome at group therapy next Wednesday at one o’clock. Isabelle Karlsson pulled on her jacket, lifted her hair from her neck, and tossed it. I wanted to stretch out my hand and touch it, but I stopped myself.

She noticed.

She saw my doubt, my desire to make contact.

Maybe that was exactly what she’d hoped to accomplish? To make me feel unsure?

She slung her bag over her shoulder, I opened the door for her, and she left.

I’ve dreamed of this day. Fantasized about how it would happen. How it would feel, what I would say. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And it hurts more than I ever could have believed.

I’m lying on the floor.

Legs pulled up, arms around my knees.

Inhale. Exhale.

She’s come back.

She’s alive.

Isabelle

“Isabelle!”

I hear Johanna’s voice and turn around. I’m back in the M-building at the far end of campus. The lunch hour is almost over, the room is full of students, and every table and chair is occupied. It’s always packed here at lunchtime. I spin around, but don’t see Johanna until she stands up and waves.

“Come over here,” she calls out.

I have no desire to do so. I’ve spent the last hour on pins and needles. It felt like I might explode from holding all those feelings inside.

Grief. Rage. Hate. And the struggle to hide all of it. To smile and act nice. Be someone I’m not.

I’d much rather eat my sandwich alone before the next lecture starts. Think through what happened at the therapist’s office. But I always have a hard time saying no. I pull my bag up on my shoulder, then start winding my way through all those people, all those backpacks on the floor, all those green tables and red chairs, until I arrive.

Johanna’s the closest thing I have, have ever had, to a friend. And she has been ever since that first horrific period at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, when she took me under her wing and let me move in with her. Why, I don’t know. We’re not at all alike. She’s done so much, traveled all over the world. She has purple hair, pierced ears and nose, also a tattoo on her lower back and another on her forearm. It’s of a unicorn spraying fire. She’s cool, confident, knows what she wants.

Susie and Maryam, who are sitting next to her, are also very nice. But I can relax with Johanna, actually be myself.

“Where’d you go?” Maryam says. “I didn’t see you at the mathematics lecture.”

“I wasn’t there,” I say.

“Did something happen?” Susie puts a hand over her heart. “You never miss anything.”

“I had to take care of something.” I pull out the chair next to her, hang my jacket over the backrest, and sit down. It still surprises me when people even see that I’m here. When somebody notices me. Maybe even misses me. I’m so used to being invisible.

I open my bag and take out a sandwich I bought at 7-Eleven. It’s seen better days, so I throw it back in again.

“Is it still raining?” Johanna says.

“Same as this morning,” I answer.

“Ugh, Mondays.” Susie sighs while flipping through a textbook on mechanics. “Do you understand any of this?”

“I wrote down a bunch of stuff about momentum last time,” Johanna says, “but I can’t make sense of it.”

They laugh. I laugh, too. But part of me feels like I’m in a glass cage looking out. I feel like two different people. One is the person people see. But the other one, only I see. She’s the real...