Chapter 11 Bosse and Olle

1:31 AM

This time Lena found an immediate plane connection from Warsaw to Uppsala and decided to take a train from Uppsala back to Stockholm as soon as she had finished with her work. There was only one address which she was supposed to visit and she didn’t expect to spend there a long time.

It was one of these stuga houses, red with white window frames and corners, situated in the forest, near nature, close to the water. The woman who opened the door was a stout woman in her fifties. She was happy to let Lena inside, gave her a cup of warm milk and with imperfect English started telling her about her missing son, Bosse.

‘We were happy that he took part in this orientation game. We sent him to many weight-loss camps, we tried various doctor’s diets. Finally, he gave up on junk food, quit fizzy drinks. We are all a bit on the heavy side. But we always tried doing something about it. Bosse was a big boy. He wasn’t bullied at school or anything. But we encouraged him to be slimmer.’

Lena looked at the photos of the whole family and through the years she wasn’t entirely sure if any of them actually had lost weight.

‘So I was really proud when he lost so much of his body weight and started running. I was sure that he would have a normal life, that he would find a girlfriend, have better marks at school.’

‘From losing weight?’

‘Of course! But then, it was this final event, this orientation game. He ran, got lost somewhere in the middle and never came back. How is that even possible? Shouldn’t the people who organize these games monitor the participants better? It’s about finding your way in an unknown area, not about getting lost.’

‘Can I see his toys or things that belonged to him?’

The mother shrugged.

‘Everything is in the children’s room. Stacked on the shelves. It belongs to all of my kids.’

Lena took the pictures of cars, plane models, kids’ magazines, books, and pictures of the family in little picture frames placed on the shelves. She thanked the mother and promised to do her best to help with finding her missing son.

She ate something at the train station’s cafe, getting rid of the thoughts connected with her longing to see someone else during that weekend instead of traveling around Sweden and stepping into people’s private houses. The next day, she was supposed to go to Gothenburg and from there head back to Warsaw.

Olle’s room was different from the rest of the children. It was a book-filled studio, full of scientific magazines, plane and submarine models, solar systems, science-fiction figurines, and maps. Even though small, as it was a nine-square-meter room in the Gothenburg flat, it posed quite a difference to the rest of the apartment, which was a modernly furnished typical flat of a small middle-class family.

‘To be honest with you,’ his mother said shyly over the cup of coffee and the cinnamon roll, ‘We didn’t even know that he was taking part in this orientation game. He was extremely private. He said that he was going to spend the night at his friend’s house and I was really glad about it. He didn’t have any friends, I was happy that colleagues in his life started appearing. But the next day, there was a team of people knocking at my door and telling me that my son got lost somewhere in the middle of nowhere, kilometers from Gothenburg. To this day, I don’t know what to think of it. We searched his room, we looked for some notes in his diary, but there was nothing.

‘Did you look through his computer?’

‘Yes, but there were only his favorite websites, popular scientific blogs, historical online magazines, something about literature. He was reading so much. I usually just buy a TV programme or some tabloid. There was an application form to take part in the orientation game. He faked our consents. We didn’t know that he was planning to run. He wasn’t the best at sport, to be fair. Actually, he had never even practiced physical education at school.’

‘Can I look into his computer?’

Olle’s mother nodded and allowed Lena to take the pictures of the room and to send the search history of Olle’s computer to her own mailbox.

Lena left Gothenburg intrigued. Children left empty spots in their parents’ life, coming from different backgrounds and material status. There were two more kids to look into, her heart was getting heavy at the end of the weekend and more cheerful at the approach of the new week, since she was more and more in love.

First, they just used the office. Karol Markowski closed the door with a key making sure that nobody would enter it out of the blue and disturb them. He sat next to her, smiled, took her hand, placed another hand at her hip and started kissing her passionately. She felt the thickness of his beard against her cheeks, she felt his hand moving in between her legs, making her feel pleasure and fear of being caught at the same time. When they heard the school bell, he stopped, straightened his shirt, put on his jacket, and with a smile said:

‘You will be late for classes,’

She nodded and left the office, making sure that she had all of her hair in the right place. She didn’t think much during the classes. She just made her students fill in the crossword puzzle with names of fruit and vegetables and buried herself in thoughts on what had happened just a few moments before.