Because She Loved Him

Suddenly I See.

Anna couldn't have tried any harder to appear outwardly content with the world that had been forced upon her, on the increasingly rare occasions that she was in company she was at least peaceful if overly bright and compensating for what was missing and with the children she was bubbly, happy, a reassuring presence for them but if they had even been a touch older they would have known that something was deeply wrong with her and the world that she was building for them. When she was alone, her grief and distress, far from diminishing felt like it was eating her very soul away and her time without the children consisted of her trying to hold herself together and make the best of what she had. She was happy with her little cottage, it was tucked away from prying eyes and the children were at least thriving there now. She had made it cosy with things that she could afford, mostly second hand but she found that it didn't matter and as Autumn turned the trees to gold she slowly made the garden ready for spring and relearnt skills that she had loved but had become rusty through lack of use. Cooking and baking from scratch had proved both to be cheaper and a kind of therapy, Anna found great satisfaction in both and they became a simple therapy. The irony did not escape her that she had spend many thousands of Kronor on 'proper' therapy and yet here she was cooking and gardening, Bjorn would have been appalled she thought.

Those early months had been truly brutal when the children cried for their Papa and she was all that they had. She had explained until she thought she would go quite mad to Linda that Papa was busy and he would see them when he was ready. Her prayers for the inexorable passage of time and the continued innocence of the children had finally been answered and they were at least settled and thriving if not always happy, it was the best that she could hope for right now. Thankfully she hadn't needed to find a job as yet, living frugally meant that she could make her solo income stretch, she had been true to her own word and paid every penny of her share of the ABBA money into a trust account for the children from the account that Benny had been religiously paying it into. It was a trust that she couldn't touch until the children had each turned 18. She had no intention of taking anything at all from Bjorn or ABBA for she knew he believed that he and ABBA were one and the same thing and she in turn believed that he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with her or with the children, he didn't want them, had never wanted them and she carried huge guilt that she had forced him to have them. She was forced to take the money though despite her stubbornness for she knew that Benny would not rest if she did not and neither would Frida, the less scrutiny she had to endure the better.
In amongst the agony and grief of losing Bjorn she was growing heavy with this new child of theirs who she already loved with a fierce passion, as much as she loved Linda and Christian and as much for their own little self, she loved them for being the last bit of Bjorn she would ever have. She had a beautiful bump now and she was sorry that Bjorn would not share in this.
Her agonies of mind had taken their hold of her and it was fair to say that her need to protect the children and disappear had overwhelmed any thoughts of reconsidering her position, she had no plan except to survive and stay hidden, she had no need of the noise anymore and she couldn't bear to face the hatred in Bjorn's eyes, neither could she bear to watch him being happy without her, she was selfish when it came to Bjorn and as far as she was concerned she would never need to face it all again, he would be glad she was gone and living the life that he'd dreamed of.
Regardless, it appeared that she had a traitorous heart because she thought of Bjorn every minute of the day, closely followed by thoughts of ABBA, in spite of what Bjorn thought she loved ABBA and found that she missed it more than she thought she would, the thought of being replaced in every way that mattered bothered her more than she cared to admit and she wondered if they missed her at all. She had spoken to Benny and Frida regularly but had studiously avoided any mention of Bjorn, she had asked after ABBA but Benny and Frida had both been cagey about how well it was going and as time went on talked less and less of ABBA being much more concerned about Anna and her welfare. Despite much pleading and bargaining Anna had never let on where she was believing that everyone was better off not to know, even her parents had to be content with a phone call twice a week. It was frighteningly easy to disappear Anna thought but as with everything nothing was quite as she supposed.
Benny and Frida were indeed missing her, the work towards the tour was one long slog for one thing, nothing was really coming together as it should, it was not the fault of Inger, far from it for she had worked very hard and sounded amazing but the ABBA flame had well and truly been extinguished but they had not wanted to share this with Anna because they knew that her guilt would overwhelm her. They were frustrated at Anna's constant and stubborn refusal to tell them where she was and just as frustrated at the whole tragic, crazy drama that they all found themselves living in. Stig and Bjorn were at constant exhausting loggerheads, if it wasn't so awful both Benny and Frida would have been both vindicated and amused at the total about turn in Bjorn's attitude towards Stig to whom he seemed to apportion his fair share of the blame and despite her very best efforts he'd frozen Lena out with clinical precision much to her frustration. That was not to say that Bjorn wasn't a changed man, he was. He had been humbled and shamed, much changed from the Bjorn that Anna had left behind.
He wasn't close to knowing who was responsible for what, his frustration at every dead end he met was monumental but he didn't give up, he became quieter and introspective. His engagement with those beyond ABBA was minimal and his eyes grew dark and cold. Bjorn worked on the tour like an automaton, like the marionette that he and Benny had once written of so eloquently, he worked to quiet his tortured mind and he worked in some way to make it up to Benny and Frida. He had wanted this tour for his own selfish reasons and had taken precious time from them, now instead of selfish he was selfless to such a point that even Benny lectured him on going too far the other way.
It was late one night in the studio when Bjorn finally admitted to Benny that he had no choice, if he didn't work like an automaton the vagaries of his mind overwhelmed him and the darkness came, if he didn't work robotically then he wouldn't be able to finish this tour, then none of this would have been worth it and he would have lost Anna and his children for nothing, that was just not to be borne. What he would do after the tour was finished he didn't know and couldn't bear to think about for he already knew that ABBA was in its death throes, indeed none of his actions had served to make anyone else want to continue. His search for Anna was kept private, no one other than the people that already knew were permitted to know. He wanted to repair the damage and get her back before the world knew what a monumental fuck up he'd really made and he wanted to give her the respect now that he had not given her before, wherever she was he was sure that she didn't want to see their story and her missing face all over the papers. It meant that the search was painfully slow, it had to be so as not to spook her but there were so many dead ends, he harangued Benny endlessly knowing that essentially he had been last to see her, to talk to her and although Benny had wracked his brains in the face of Bjorn's monumental regret and never ending heart break Benny just didn't know anything else, truth be told he and Frida wanted to know where Anna was and if she and kids were ok as much as Bjorn did but it seemed that even the might of Abba and limitless money was not enough to find her.