Page 72 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

Svedala

Lina picks me up on the other side of the flight, and seeing her makes the physical illness I feel at being away from Blade

subside. I stand still and straight with my bags in my hands as she hugs me.

‘Cornflakes is with Tim,’ she explains when I scan the car for him.

‘Can you pass by an address in Malm o ?’ I ask. ‘I need to collect something. For Edith and Blade.’

The manager is young and keen.

‘There’s been quite a search for you,’ he says, when I tell him what I’m there for. He shows me which safe is Edith’s, then

hovers next to me as I carefully put the key inside. The key is small and insignificant; it reminds me of a bicycle-lock key

or the small silver ones you get on a rubber wrist band at public pools. There’s a wooden box inside. Nothing else.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ The man’s disappointment is obvious.

I press it to my chest and breathe in the smell of earth, still there in the wood after years inside a square, metal space.

‘Not just yet.’

I call Blade as soon as I’ve got the contents.

‘This is what was inside,’ I say, showing him. It’s an intricately carved wooden box, much like a jewellery case or where

someone might put their sewing needles and thread.

‘Did you open it already?’ he asks.

‘Not yet.’ He watches me carefully as I unclasp the metal latch. The lid doesn’t immediately spring open, and it takes me

a second attempt and more force for it to comply.

‘It’s letters,’ I say. ‘Hundreds of letters organised according to year. There are Post-its separating them. It’s my uncle’s

writing’

‘I’ll get Mum,’ Blade says.

Edith is on crutches now, starting to bear weight on her legs. She shuffles over to the sofa and Blade holds up the screen

so she can see me.

‘It’s letters. All letters,’ I tell her when she’s sitting down. ‘He wrote to you.’

‘Are they stamped?’ she asks and I flick through a pile again to confirm.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not a single stamp.’

Edith closes her eyes as if she’s on a rollercoaster or a high cliff she doesn’t want to look down from.

‘I’ll read them all when I get there. One by one.’

‘They span twenty years, Edith,’ I say. ‘From 1996 to 2016 when he died. All these years you were both writing to each other,

but never sending the letters.’

I get my laptop up and ready and wait for it to be four o’clock. I log on five minutes early and then sit there, staring at

the virtual waiting room with my heart beating fast, until one, two, three, four members of my family finally arrive. I can do this.

‘Hi, Sophia,’ they all say in different tones and pitches.

‘Thanks for tuning in,’ I say, as if I’m hosting a radio show.

‘We’re listening.’

I take a deep breath that stretches my insides to the point of being almost painful. Ready.

‘I’d like to keep the shop,’ I say. ‘I don’t have the money to buy you out up front but I’m happy to pay instalments. Or have

you all be shareholders and you get a part of the profit. But the shop is my life. It’s what kept me going when things in

my childhood and its various components almost killed me. I can’t lose it.’

There, I said it.

‘I think a shareholder agreement sounds very wise,’ Mattias says, the first one to speak.

‘If that’s what Sven wanted, then why didn’t the will say so? He meant for you to use the shop as a gateway to life. Your

first five years was sorted. Then you’d have to stand on your own two legs like everyone else,’ Hampus says.

‘Or maybe he thought the five years would be sufficient for me to learn to stand my ground and fight for what I want in life.’

Pontus’s head is constantly bobbing off to the side.

‘Sorry, how long do you think this will take? Djurg?rden is playing MFF.’

‘As long as it takes to find a solution,’ I offer.

‘Listen, I don’t need money upfront,’ Pontus says. ‘Not a problem if it comes as small payments from profit.’

‘That’s assuming Sophia can make a profit,’ Hampus argues.

‘And that’s where I have almost five years’ experience and trading history to show you,’ I counter. ‘You’ve also seen my work

and are familiar with it.’ I’m grateful for Vincent’s decision to invite them to see it firsthand despite me telling him not

to.

‘I say let’s get an agreement drafted and then take a final decision,’ Mattias suggests.

‘That sounds reasonable,’ Hampus says.

Pontus has gone off-screen completely now, the sound that emits tells us that either his team just scored or he has witnessed

a murder in his living room.

‘He’d sign over his own mother to watch the game. Don’t worry, he’s in,’ Mattias says.

‘Great,’ I say, avoiding the words ‘thank you’ because I want to have authority and women in general need to say ‘thank you’

less. ‘I will handle this.’

When we hang up I’m surprised at how easy it was—one conversation that undid years of worrying. I think perhaps there will

be other things in life I can approach head-on and solve, and that I’m capable. Sometimes conversation and communication are

good things that I don’t need to be afraid of.

The drafted shareholder agreement arrives back signed by all three brothers within a few days after I sent it off to Mattias.

I skim it fast and then sit in stillness.

I have no payments to make at the end of next year. It’s mine.

‘How did you convince them to sign so quickly? I didn’t even know that you wanted it to turn out this way,’ I ask Mattias

as soon as he answers my call.

‘I didn’t want you to have to wait another minute. You’ve been in limbo for way too long. You needed that closure fast,’ my

brother says. ‘I can’t just stay out of things all my life. I’ve been in a surprise-party planning group chat for four months,

and so far I’ve contributed the word “Great.” I need to get involved with life and what happens to people. So—here the right

thing is easy. Much easier than whether we buy helium balloons which are bad for the environment or go for confetti that has

to be hoovered off the floor for hours.’

I pull the corners of my mouth into a smile.

‘The problem was never yours. It was that you didn’t have enough people standing up for you. I followed Mum and Dad, and for some reason they couldn’t see what harmed you. They couldn’t relate to you.’

That hurts. But he’s right. I was so different, not the girl they’d dreamt of after three boys. I didn’t like dresses and

would wail when my mum tried to do my hair. Karin told them she had solutions. That I was treatable. If you don’t understand

something perhaps you’d believe anyone who says they do? They couldn’t relate to me, so they couldn’t stop what was happening

to me.

Mattias continues.

‘Honestly, it didn’t take much. You’ve stayed away, and they haven’t seen you in action. They’ve imagined you holed up in

your uncle’s old flat selling some flowers now and again. When they saw you handling a big project and what you created in

their town, it was an eye-opener. What would they ever be able to do with the business themselves? I think being shareholders

is the perfect solution. They’ll all see firsthand how very capable you are. They’ll profit from something you are doing. Trust me, their relationship with you will change.’

The shop is mine. Forever . I don’t have to sell, and I don’t have to scramble around and find hundreds of thousands of kroners. No more contracts in

market towns that make me feel overwhelmed and anxious. Just me and the flowers in this small space I love so much. If this

past month has taught me something, it is that yes, I can do it if I have to, but I don’t want to. I want my home, Cornflakes, Lina and the same pasta salad every lunchtime. On top of those joys, I get to email my brothers

a quarterly profit statement and witness their reaction to the fact that Sophia, the one who no one believed in, is doing

well.

Then I write to my parents. My parents who now follow Autistic accounts on Twitter and like their posts.

I love you , I write. Because I have a lot of love in my life, and I’m not stingy.

I am happy enough to give love even when it’s not fully earned yet.

And I think that maybe love is worth something, maybe even a lot.

We don’t get each other but I’m no longer an annexe to the family home.

I’ve moved out, broken free and found a plot of land to build myself on.

I’m a cottage now. With wonky windows and a messy bedroom.

Mum can come and visit as long as she’s happy to see a cottage.

She may never go shopping with me or say, ‘My daughter is my best friend.’ But there is love, and in the end a person you love and who loves you is sometimes enough.

I can cut strings and end my relationship, or I can build on the little we have and give them a chance.

I love you, Mum , I write a second time . Tell Dad I love him too.

To add to my feelings of lightness that evening I get an email from my dad a few hours later, whose email address I didn’t

even know before. I mean, I must have known he had one, just like I know he has a shoe size, but it’s never been relevant

to me to know it before.

FROM: Harald (Dad)

SUBJECT: Interior design changes you may approve of

Hi Sophia,

Spoke to Mum. Just to let you know the framed picture of you and Santa which has been on the mantelpiece has been replaced

with a group shot of you and your brothers in the Azores anno 2012. I hope you will come and see the changes soon.

Dad

I think that maybe I could go back there soon. That things won’t magically change overnight but perhaps they will have in some small way. Perhaps next

time I’ll try to not take any sauce with my potatoes—to say, No thank you, I’d like them plain, please— and see what happens.

That evening I log onto my Twitter, and instead of lurking around and following hashtags I make my own post.

@TheGrassFlower: Unmasking is a terrifying prospect but I think it will be worth it in the end. #ABA-ptsd.

I think I might finally be finding myself. It wasn’t about getting a boyfriend, about adding that one missing piece. It was

about shaping and attending to all the small pieces in my life, making sure they fit as smoothly as possible. It’s a process

I have to continue all my life, but that’s okay, I know how to do it now.