Saturday February 20

Mark:

We barely move from the room today. Maja’s at the very beginning of a journey which is all about recovery. I know that she’s felt tense and almost emotionally hunted for a long time. She’s now out of that situation but the effects and feelings run deep and do not disappear just like that. But she says that last night was the best night’s sleep she’s had since she can remember. Actually the first time since she can remember that she slept all the way through the night. A notable event in itself. She was just restful and relaxed, for the first time since she can remember. With that she has a wake up call of just how much she needed to get out of her situation in Sweden. So yes. Right now is about rest with absolutely no obligations to do anything. For a full ten days. In fact, she’s essentially legally obliged to do practically nothing for the next ten days anyway, or at least not to go anywhere. It’s also about processing. Lots and lots of processing. I spend the whole day listening as Maja talks about what she’s been through over the past year or so. As she talks, it’s clear that she’s doing so to fathom things out for herself as much as engaging me in her thoughts. There are so many branches and avenues down which we can drive and I gently nudge her into a few of them, leading us to explore, in detail, quite a few smaller parts of the big picture. Through all this I basically just try to put pieces together and make sense of it all. It helps that we’ve spoken so much on the phone over the past week and I’ve at least got a handle on some of it, especially the more up to date stuff which I’ve lived or heard about more or less in real time.

We also touch on a few tiny details of our phone calls in the past week, including some of the little hints we dropped to each other which led to bigger hints, which have all led to where we are now.

In between, Maja gets to meet Cris, the leader and vocalist in Wild Child, the Italian heavy metal band I play and travel with, and Sam. The guys are massively friendly and welcoming to her, and when they talk I do my best to stay firmly on the sidelines and let their own conversations develop. Basically, I want these interactions to be organic, with no input from me, and they are indeed organic as Maja charms them with her enthusiasm of being in a whole new environment with new people to hang out with.

These little interludes aside, the two of us talk so much that we totally forget about eating until it hits something like 8pm and we realise we’ve made no plans. The last thing Maja ate was breakfast yesterday morning. I’m not that much different, although I did manage to grab a small thing at the airport once I realised the security holdup was happening. She asks if it’s possible to get takeout sushi at this time in London. Yes it is. But I have to leave now to get to Camden before the place closes. One mad dash later and we have something resembling dinner and the first thing Maja has eaten in almost 36 hours.

Maja:

I wake up alone in the small bed, looking around myself in dislocated confusion. Where am I? It’s hard to remember just what happened last night. I turn around and look at the room, it’s tiny. The walls are white and have specks of dirt on them, the ceiling is white and somewhat patterned, like someone’s been painting it with a drippy paint that wouldn’t quite stick on. There’s a closet that’s small, but proved to fit all my clothes without any problems. By my feet I find a little shelf, over the bed next to the window. Under the bed there’s three drawers. I rest my eyes a little more, squeezing my face down in the pillows, looking up again. Yeah. The room is the same. It’s not my room in Stockholm. This is a minimal room, that would barely be enough for a child’s room. But. It’s mine. The bed feels wonderful, it’s soft. And from it I can see out of the window. Outside there’s a beautiful tree, and it’s in full bloom right now. I feel exhausted, but also rested in a strange way. I’ve slept through the night for the first time in a long time, which is a noticeable event in itself. The room is small, but I don’t care; I’m so happy that I’m here.

I search for my toiletries, and try out the shower. It’s a nice shower, shared with all the other tenants, of course, but it even has a bathtub and I’m pleased to see that it is kept clean. Showered and dressed I go down to the kitchen, where I meet Mark.

Goodmorning, we say as we sheepishly look at each other, and soon afterwards we go back to my room to get to know each other a little bit better. 

In the evening, I ask Mark for sushi, and when he gets back with it I’m very careful eating only a little bit of it.