*TRIGGER WARNING*

  This chapter contains description of suicide. Readers' discretion is advised.

  Astrid pulled the strings to the wooden blinds, slowly raising them. Slowly, slowly. First, she spotted the elm trees in the street outside. The yellow-brick stone building across the street. Pieces of the dark gray sky. Just in time for the st of the wooden sts reaching their destination at the top edge of the window, there it was: the clock tower of Oscar's Church. She could see the green tin roof above the rough-hewn, gray-white limestone. Astrid had read somewhere about the church being built in a style called Neo-Gothic. It had stuck with her because the word - Neo-Gothic - appealed to her.

  Distracted, she twirled the thin leather straps around her wrist, a habit when her mind was working too fast with too many conflicting thoughts at the same time. There had been a lot of those tely. The ache in her lower back was getting worse, much worse. Probably the rain. Astrid sighed. She gnced at the calendar hanging on the wall above her nightstand. Robert Smith gred back at her with eyeliner-framed eyes. She let her gaze wander to the date boxes and did the count again, even though she knew exactly already. 22 days left. Astrid shifted her weight sitting in the window, suddenly feeling both hot and cold at the same time. What was it with her today? She changed position again, tried pulling her knees up under her chin, but it hurt too much so she gave it up. It seemed today there'd be no point in hoping for any kind of happy thought to find its way into her head. A familiar, gnawing anxiety had set in her stomach, like it had been doing daily for several months now. Quite a special number of months, actually.

  Astrid gave up trying to control her mind and let her thoughts wander freely. She thought about what she'd been like before all of this happened. How she'd been saving money to go to London with Josefine. How she and her father used to write songs together, him on the guitar, and her with the pen, in the study. She hadn't been in that room for a long time now.

  Astrid knew her parents worried about her. They've been trying more often recently, coaxing and prodding. Trying to get her to open up a little. Let them in. They really had no clue.

  She felt that uncomfortable anger bubbling up inside her once again, uncomfortable because, on some level, she knew she was being unfair. But it was there, nonetheless. She wanted to bme them. They were blind, both of them. How could they miss something so damned obvious? It was like a sick joke, a bad movie where she was starring as the unwilling lead. They probably didn't want to know the truth. Bury their heads in the sand, like with everything else in this family.

  Salty, angry tears welled up in her eyes, clinging to her unpainted eyeshes for a brief moment before slowly trickling down her cheeks and neck. Astrid had never felt as alone as she did now, she was sure of that.

  It was there, sitting in the window on Ulrikagatan, early on a rainy Friday morning, that Astrid felt the first of many contractions. She was completely unprepared, something she perhaps wouldn't have been if she'd had the chance to talk to an adult about her condition. But she didn't. She hadn't told anyone. Petite as she was, she was sure it would get obvious right away, but as time passed and not much happened, she lost courage. She'd prepared the speech to give to her parents. But when an escape route presented itself, she couldn't do it.

  She had kept her secret to herself because she was able to.

  She'd gained a few kilos, gotten a little rounder around the hips, and developed a belly that was fairly easy to hide with the current fashion of baggy sweaters over loose jeans or tights. If you didn't take a closer look, it was hard to tell she was eight months pregnant. But right now, with the pain slowly subsiding a bit finally letting her breathe again, she really wished someone had seen. She was close to panicking and had no idea what to do. Get up. She needed to get up, move. She tried raising herself from her window throne, but her legs trembled, and she almost lost her bance. With sweaty palms and a lot of support from the wall she stood fast. But there was no stopping the panic now, nor fear or confusion. What was she supposed to do??

  "I don't want this, I don't want this... Stop, I can't..."

  She stood there for a while, trying to remember what she'd read about this situation — because surely this was that situation, wasn't it? It couldn't be anything else, right? She fixed her gaze on the calendar again, needing to reassure herself that she wasn't wrong. She wasn't. It was more than a month too early. Her mind was a blur, but she tried to remember. She felt sure she'd read somewhere about contractions and what to expect when the time came but in this moment, she couldn't remember a single word of it. She was too scared to think straight. Startled, she realized something: yes, she was terrified. But not for the reason she always thought she'd be. She wasn't scared because she was about to deliver a baby. She was scared that the baby would die. She was too unprepared, too inexperienced. For eight months all she hoped for was this baby to magically disappear from her womb. Even if that meant it would indeed die. Now, suddenly faced with it being a possible outcome, it scared her. She didn't want to lose the baby. She didn't want it to die. She wanted it to be safe, to be ok.

  Making her way to the desk, she felt pain shoot down from her hips to her feet. As if nerve endings protested her movement. She grabbed the phone and dialled the number to the only taxi company she knew of. She struggled keeping calm enough to get her order for a car through, and she could tell the woman taking the call got concerned. She asked Astrid more than once if she could help with anything else, if Astrid was ok, if she was in any danger. Astrid eventually had to hang up on her, unable to keep talking. She needed to move before the next contraction. She grabbed her jacket and sneakers and tiptoed best she could through the hallway. Her mother wasn't a problem — she was in Paris for work — but Astrid wasn't sure about her father. He often left the house early, before seven in the mornings, but he could just as easily be home. She had to take a chance. She walked as quickly as she could through the hall and towards the front door. She made it all the way there without being caught. Carefully, she pced a hand on the door handle and pressed down. Just as the door swung open her body contracted and paralyzed her with pain. It was a cruel force, pressing on her from all directions. Astrid sank to her knees on the floor, and this time there was no stopping the tears welling up again. If her father was home, he would hear her sobbing now. Actually, Astrid wanted him to be home; she didn't want to be alone anymore. She didn't care if they found out everything, as long as they came and helped her.

  No one came. Her father wasn't home.

  When the worst was over, Astrid got back on her feet and made her way down the four flights of stairs to the waiting taxi. The middle-aged man driving the taxi stared in horror at the fifteen-year-old who colpsed into the back seat of his car, gasping that she needed to go to the emergency room, that she was having a baby. A look of sheer terror pstered on her face like a pale shadow. The tears she tried so hard to hold back didn't go him unnoticed, as well as it being a battle she was about to lose. Her arms tightly wrapped around her body, and her copper-red hair with bck streaks starting to curl from the cold sweat glistening in her forehead.

  "But little girl, what you have gotten into?"

  His voice was warm and soothing, like the one of a grandfather, or a concerned teacher. His way of re-arranging the words and his strong accent felt honest and sweet. And it made something in Astrid shatter, at st. The uncontrolble sobs were unstoppable, her body shaking with her jagged breaths. At st, someone knew her secret. At st, she wasn't alone. The driver, who's name was Abbas, was originally from Iran, and had a niece about Astrid's age. He told her this and many more things as he tried to keep her busy with chitchat all the way to Karolinska Hospital.

  Abbas helped Astrid to the front doors, where a nurse met up with them and took her from there. Long after they'd left, Abbas remained there. Staring at the grey doors that the girl and the nurse had gone through. He noticed his feet felt heavy against the pale-yellow linoleum floor, like he could sink right through it at any moment. His body seemed unwilling to move. He wanted to leave but couldn't. So, he stood there. For hours.

  Abbas knew exactly who she was, the girl he'd dropped off and left in the capable hands of the hospital staff. He knew, and what he knew made tears well up in his eyes.

  The day had started to surrender to the darkness of night when Abbas finally left the hospital. He got into his car and drove home to his apartment in Hjulsta. His shift wasn't over, but it mattered little to him now. Back home, he went straight for the Quran in its drawer. He took it out, brought it with him to the kitchen table and id it open in front of him on the table. Minutes passed as he stared at the familiar words, on paper thinned by fingers handling them countless times. Its content had comforted him many times over the years. But now they seemed to blur in his vision, melting together into meaningless scribble. He closed the book and drew a sharp breath, continued to sit in silence for a while more. Eventually he got up and went back to the drawer again. He put the Quran back and instead took out another book, very different to any other book. He didn't return to the table but instead remained there, book in his hand. Carefully he ran his gentle fingers over its pale green velvet covers. The book he had in front of him belonged to his father. Or, it had, before he died. With his death it became Abbas, and Abbas would give it to his own son when the time was right. At least that was what Abbas had pnned up until now. This book was meant to be passed on from one generation to another, from fathers to sons. Abbas didn't know how many generations back this book had been in his family's possession, but he knew the copy he had in front of him was far from the oldest. The texts in it were written thousands of years ago. With something resembling hesitation, he finally opened the book, held it open in front of him. He began to read.

  Abbas's employer was the one to call the police. No one had seen him in days, and he'd disappeared with one of the company cars. They'd tried calling him, even knocking on his door, to no use. After a short discussion with the ndlord the police were let into his apartment to take a look.

  Abbas was there. The blue in his face was so dark it almost seemed bck. A colour most unnatural for a face, not at all like the colour one gets from hyperthermia or choking. This was a deep, wax-like blue-bck shade. Lips, cheeks, even his eyes were swollen. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow and were covered with a yer of something milky and semi-transparent. Blood had pooled and clotted along his lower lids. His once dark-brown eyes now appeared washed-out, almost like amber in colour. As a macabre contrast, the rest of his body was completely drained of any colour at all – with the exception for his calves and feet. They matched his face in colour. It was the rope around Abbas neck that was responsible for the dramatic colour shift between face and body. When his heart stopped pumping the blood in his body gravity took hold. It now miscoloured his feet – but the rope around his neck had prevented some it from leaving his head. Even though no suicide letter was ever found it was determined Abbas had taken his own life. There were no reasons to think otherwise; the door was locked from the inside, the apartment was on the sixth floor, and Abbas's clothes y neatly folded onto a chair next to his body. Nevertheless, a thorough investigation of Abbas's apartment was conducted, as dictated by protocol. His family and friends were shocked and in dismay, Abbas had never shown any signs of as much as the mildest of depression, he had no depts, no quarrels, no circumstances expining his choice to end his life. The investigators searched for fingerprints, checked bank records, phone bills, rummaged through drawers and looked into Abbas's past in Iran. No expnation was ever found.

  Expnations weren't the only thing not to be found. Now, no one knew it was missing to begin with, so it wasn't that hard to understand why such a thing was overlooked. An expnation for Abba's choice was hidden in that lost item, but even if someone had found it, it wasn't likely they known what to do with it. Likely, it would have told them nothing anyway. Likely, they wouldn't have understood the significance of the item.

  The book.

  A book with pale green velvet covers and yellowed pages. A book that Abbas, as a final act in life, had pced in a padded envelope, carefully written down a well-chosen address on it, sealed and stamped it, and then carried it to one of the yellow mailboxes near his home.