Anna woke feeling better and more rested than she had for some time even since being back at Viggso, she felt exactly like she remembered feeling when Bjorn was there to watch over her and keep her safe. In her fanciful mind she smiled at the thought that the house and its memories, the ghost of the young Bjorn was looking after her. Maybe the young Bjorn didn't know what would happen yet and still loved her even though she was old and wrinkly now. She rolled to look out of the window and it was yet another beautiful day. Today she wanted to clean ready for winter, it would not be so long before she could start decorating the house for Christmas, All Saints Day was tomorrow and because she was an old fashioned girl who needed to keep traditions alive and close to her heart she would start decorating then like she used to, she'd saved all the old decorations. Bjorn hadn't wanted them and when he'd moved out of Lidingo to move in with Lena she had gone to rescue them knowing she would use them one day, over the years she had used one or two of them but this year they were all coming out and she was going to decorate just how she wanted, she'd make it look amazing. No one would see it to laugh at her or judge her, she was going to Ekero and go with them for Lucia. Signe and Esther were both singing this year and she wanted to see them sing very much and then as was her habit she would be alone for Christmas here, every year there were arguments but she refused to change her mind. Linda and Christian were of course used to it but it did not mean they had to like it, Boxing day she would drive herself to Ekero and join them all then and she would not be persuaded otherwise.
This day she cleaned and tidied as she had planned, she made lists ready for the Christmas she'd been waiting for for so many years and she spent time shopping online for Christmas presents, she'd always shied away from technology but the advent of the internet and online shopping had revolutionised her world and she learnt quickly how to use it. It gave her perversely more freedom because she no longer felt forced to go out so when she did it was just for lovely things and not things that worried her. Nowadays she wasn't the recluse the world thought her to be, there was a time when she had been for many reasons but now it was different. She'd got old and had been silent for so many years that she'd been forgotten, she was an irrelevant dinosaur now and she felt every inch her age. She couldn't really imagine where the years had gone, on the one hand everything that had happened to her seemed like an eternity ago and on the other it was a close to her as yesterday was but it did mean that on the rare occasions she wanted to go out she wasn't bothered anymore because no one remembered her or saw her and it suited her well. Time waited for no-one and age had made her invisible. She battled with her unexpected melancholy, she had much to be grateful for but still she had become restless and sad today despite her good start of the morning and all her hard work since, she found herself wondering if music would help her, she put some music on to listen to but found after a while this failed to hold her attention so she decided to wrap up and head up to the cabin, perhaps a read through her diaries would calm her mind, perhaps she would play the piano, she didn't know.
The snow had come in the past week and the peace that it bought in those hours before dusk was like nothing else she'd ever experienced and she looked forward to the snow every year for this reason and others. It seemed to suit her frozen soul but it also muffled the noise of the world that bothered her so, giving her the endless quiet that she craved. She used to be a summer girl, thriving in the short but beautiful swedish summers, that had been back when she'd been warm and loved. It was so different now, she was not loved. All those things Bjorn had told her would happen had come true, all the things that he had said she was had turned out to be true too. Perhaps he had been the last person to have been truly honest with her, she had been stubborn and too harsh with him. She knew that now and she wished very much to be able to turn the clock back and tell him she was sorry but it was an impossible dream. The years had made her face up to her own failings, the young Agnetha had thought herself right and to a certain extent she was but the older Anna knew that there was more she should have done to save their marriage, the older Anna knew that she and Bjorn were more alike than she'd cared to admit at the time, the older Anna had wished that her younger self had had the wisdom to let Bjorn fly high and come back to her when he was done, to realise that ABBA had magnified their issues and made them worse, that their issues hadn't been insurmountable. So many years she had asked herself the questions why hadn't she waited? Why did she have to be so impatient? Why couldn't she have forgiven him his indiscretion? She hadn't been approachable after Christian had been born, she'd turned him away, she'd been confused and unable to cope with the pressures of the new baby and ABBA. It had been no wonder really with Bjorn being the man that he was. Bjorn had begged her to wait until ABBA was less pressured but she had been set on another baby because she'd thought it would help bring them back together and at the time she couldn't see an end to Abba, she thought they'd go on forever, like the Stones or Queen and in her way she didn't want ABBA to end either, she did love it. Although she could never ever wish Christian different, she'd die for every one of her children or grandchildren she wondered that if she'd have just waited a little, took on board Bjorn's concerns, been less demanding things may have been different, she couldn't swear to it but she'd never know.
Instead of which Lena had got the results of her loss, a Bjorn that was done with ABBA, done with her, ready to focus on something else other than fame and fortune, a Bjorn that had learned his lessons and it hurt her every day. The world would laugh, a pathetic old woman who deserved nothing less than what she'd got. She'd left, he'd moved on, she didn't know what she'd been expecting, she snorted to herself as she climbed the hill through the snow, of course she remembered what she'd expected she just didn't like to think of it often. What she'd expected was a desperate Bjorn chasing after her, pleading with her to return, declaring his undying love for her, wanting his children, she'd been proving her point, that they couldn't live without each other. She'd accused him of arrogance but her own arrogance had been breathtaking and the realisation that he could live without her had come hard. What she'd got was nothing more than her just desserts, a Bjorn that had been clearly delighted to be free of her, free of her mental health issues, free of her weight around his shoulders, free of their marriage. He'd written his best work without her and she'd been forced to come to the conclusion that she'd been holding him back all this time and he didn't love her anymore, he'd been briskly polite with her, nothing of the passion that had been their mainstay and she had frozen within days to shield herself from the hurt. She'd stayed with ABBA to be near him, he had still needed her voice then, it was the closest thing she had to home and then suddenly he had not even needed her for that anymore either and ABBA had ceased to be. The others had decided, not her never her in fact Benny and Bjorn had decided, if she were honest Frida hadn't had much to do with it either. The boys had decided they were bored and wanted to do something different and that was the end of that.
Anna sighed impatiently where on earth had all that come from? she questioned as she found herself stood still on the hill, those thoughts hadn't plagued her for a long time, he was better off without her and she was happy for him, she was. He'd managed a 30 year marriage, Lena had been the one born for him it seemed and as always she loved him enough to want him to be happy. She had her time and her chance and she'd blown it, their destinies were not what she had always imagined but she had a little piece of him back and she'd hold onto it with everything she had, with this she was content. She smiled as she looked back down at the house and then looked back up to the cabin. This was her world now and she could make it whatever she wished, she continued the walk up to the cabin and let herself in making haste to light the wood burner because it was cold in there and she felt the need to settle.
She did not touch her old diaries to begin with, she didn't feel that revisiting those times would help yet so she concentrated on writing today's feelings down, it sometimes helped her when she wrote it all down so she could clear her mind and it seemed that today was no different. Her clarity of mind once she had poured it all out into the pages of her diary was crystal clear and for the first time since she'd been back Anna felt the desire to play the piano, it was a new piano never played but an absolute copy of the original. She rested her hands on the keys and her eyes closed, how long had it been she wondered how long had she been silent? Her brain wouldn't let her remember but her fingers remembered what to do and she found herself playing her way through her back catalogue, she didn't sing because she dreaded to think what she sounded like now, age was not kind to voices but the feeling of making music was soothing her soul.
The time went fast then and before she knew it the dark had come, she stoked up the wood burner and made it roar, no point in being cold. She did love a fire and even though she had finished playing for now she thought that she might read her 1971 diary before she went back down to the house, self indulgent it may be but she couldn't care less and no one would know, even the children did not know of her diaries and when she died in the unlikely event of someone findimg them no one would care by then anyway. It gave her a freedom that she hadn't felt for many a year having a place where she didn't have to hide from anyone or even herself.
She turned the fairy lights on that she had strung round the room yesterday and there were a few outside too. Christian would have been horrified to see her up a ladder in the snow but what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him would it and the multi coloured glow made her smile, it was All Saints day tomorrow and that meant she could spend the next few days decorating the house for Christmas. She wanted it to be just the same as it had always been, it would be hard work without Bjorn to help her but she would do it, it wasn't like she had anything else to occupy her time and she had been dreaming of this for what felt like forever.
These thoughts and the reading of her wedding day diary did enough to lift her invisible melancholy and she found her peace, enough to wander down the hill to the house with her ever faithful dogs with a smile on her face and a lightness in her step looking forward instead of back for the first time in forever.
