The Disappeared (Kristina Ohlsson) by Kristina Ohlsson

Author:Kristina Ohlsson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2013-08-01T06:00:00+00:00

33

The one thing with which Diana Trolle was unable to come to terms was her daughter’s pregnancy. She thought she would be able to live with the rest of it in time, to reconcile herself.

But she couldn’t deal with the thought that she had misjudged the level of trust Rebecca had had in her. Diana had been under the illusion that she and her daughter had shared everything. Things had always been different with her son; he chose to confide in his father. Diana had never questioned this; she had simply accepted it as the natural order.

She and the children’s father had realised at an early stage that they were not meant for one another. While other couples gradually grew apart, Diana and her ex-husband discovered that they had never really been close enough. The split was far from dramatic: one day her ex-husband moved out and took their son with him. He rented a place not far away and lived there until the children started high school, then he moved to Gothenburg. They saw each other less and less often.

Rebecca had always occupied a special place in Diana’s heart. Not a better place than the one reserved for her son, but somehow more important. People say that every parent has a particularly strong bond with their first-born, and for Diana, this was an absolute truth. The daughter she had once carried was special, a perfect mosaic of qualities and characteristics inherited from her parents, mixed with her own unique personality. This applied to both the physical and the spiritual elements.

The night she was born, Diana and Rebecca’s father had stood gazing at the child as she slept.

‘She looks like both of us,’ Diana had said.

‘She’s an individual.’

‘It doesn’t do any harm to have an inheritance.’

How those words had hurt her over the past two years, when Diana suddenly discovered that was all she had left. During the first twenty-four hours of the search, she had managed to remain calm. She had phoned her ex and explained what had happened, told him there was no need to come to Stockholm. Rebecca would soon be back.

The following morning he was on her doorstep. He stayed for ninety days. Slept on her sofa and wept in her arms when the pain got too much for him.

Ninety days. That was how long the search for their daughter had remained active. After that, there was a change. When Diana went to see Alex Recht at police HQ, she could feel that things were different. There were fewer officers still searching. Far fewer. Alex placed his big hands on her shoulders and said:

‘We’ll never stop looking. But we have to accept that the chances of finding her alive are now minimal. At least the police have to take that view.’

The consequences of his comments were implicit: he had to re-prioritise the deployment of his staff. He would be leading a new team.

‘I don’t care whether you find her alive; I just want to know what’s happened to her,’ Diana said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.