Free Sacrifice by Karin Alvtegen

besides Lasse and me. We slept wherever there was room to lie down, on sofas and beds and everywhere. Lasse slept upstairs in Liselott’s room and I was downstairs.’
    Her newly won boyfriend had gone home. Lasse had already fallen asleep in Liselott’s room. Monika, dizzy with infatuation and beer, went to lie down on the sofa right outside their closed door.
    On the second floor.
    On the hallway at the top of the stairs.
    She had never admitted to anyone where she had slept that night.
    â€˜I woke up around four, I think, because I couldn’t breathe, and when I opened my eyes the house was already in flames.’
    The terror. The panic. The terrific heat. Only one thought. To get out of there. Two steps over to the closed door but she hadn’t hesitated. She simply rushed down the stairs and left them to their fate.
    â€˜There was smoke everywhere and even though you think you can find your way around a house, it’s a whole different matter when you can’t see a thing.’
    The words gushed forth in a desperate attempt to finish this task as quickly as possible and escape.
    â€˜I crept over to the stairs and tried to go up but itwas already burning too fiercely. I tried to scream to wake them but the noise of the fire was deafening. I don’t know how long I stood there by the stairs trying to climb them. Time after time I was forced to retreat a couple of steps and then try again. The last thing I remember is a fireman carrying me out of there.’
    She couldn’t go on. To her dismay she could feel herself blushing, felt the colour of shame spreading across her cheeks.
    She had stood there in safety outside on the lawn and watched how the heat made the glass in Liselott’s window explode. As if turned to stone, she had slowly but surely realised that he would never get out. That he would remain inside in the trap she had set. She had stood there, alive, and watched the malicious flames destroy the house and those who were left inside. Her handsome, happy big brother who was supposed to be so much braver than she was. Who never would have hesitated to take those two steps to save her life.
    Who should have lived instead of her.
    And then all the questions. All the answers that even then were distorted by her despair over the truth. She had been sleeping in the living room on the ground floor! Liselott had promised to turn off the sauna heater! Weeks of terror that one of the kids who had gone home might have heard her promise to turn off the sauna or seen her upstairs on the sofa. But her statement was allowed to stand unchallenged, and with time it had become the official story about what happened.
    â€˜What happened to your brother?’
    Monika couldn’t get the words out. She hadn’t been able to then either, when her mother came rushing across the lawn with only a robe over her night-gown.The top floor had collapsed and the firemen did their best to extinguish the flames that refused to be brought under control. Someone had called her and she had rushed out and jumped into her car.
    The clearest image that remained in Monika’s mind was her mother’s face when she spat out her question, her eyes wide with terror because of what she already knew but refused to comprehend.
    â€˜Where’s Lasse?’
    It was impossible to answer. Impossible to utter the necessary words. It couldn’t be true, and as long as nobody said it, it was still not reality.
    She felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders, the fingers making her sick to her stomach as her mother tried to shake an answer out of her.
    â€˜Answer me, Monika! Where is Lars?’
    A fireman came to her rescue and it only took him a couple of seconds to say the words that made everything irretrievable, that meant nothing would ever be the same again.
    â€˜He didn’t make it.’
    Each syllable slashed down between then and now, irrevocably. The past, so unsuspecting and naïve,