I Wonder

Chapter 13

A few weeks had gone. Today was Wednesday, the 14th February 1979. ABBA were going to leave for Leysin in Switzerland were the TV special ABBA in Switzerland would be filmed.

The children had just returned from a week at their fathers the evening before and Agnetha was everything but happy that she had to leave them again. AT least she knew that they would be fine.

"How long will you be away?", Linda seemed to miss her mother before that had left.

"Just a week. I'll call you. I promise.", answered Agnetha holding back tears. She couldn't cry now. Not here. Not in front of the children.

"Goodbye my baby. I'm gonna miss you.", after giving Christian a kiss on the forehead and hugging him tight for a few seconds handed Agnetha her now 14 month old son to his nanny.

"Promise me you take care of your little brother.", now Agnetha also hugged her daughter.

"I will. Will you bring me something?"

"Sure. I love you.", after saying that Agnetha realized that she had to leave now or she would break down and start crying: "Goodbye, sweetheart."

Afterward left Agnetha and stood in front of the door for a few minutes trying to clear her mind and stop her emotions from taking over.

When you become a mother they tell you how to hold a baby, how to change a diaper, how to act when they are ill. But nobody tells you how to cope with your emotions. How bad it is when you have to leave them behind. How much it hurts to see them cry. How hard it is how fast time goes by and how fast they grow up.

"Agnetha, stop it. You have to be professional now. This is work. You should leave your children physically and emotionally behind.", tried Agnetha to persuade herself.

She then left in her car to meet the others at the airport. She had Björn met a few times since their conversation in the restaurant but each of this times they were just dropping the children of. Apart from short conversations about how Linda and Christian were doing they shared no words. One time Björn tried to talk about what had happened at lunch the other day.

"Mama!", Linda came rushing towards her mother.

"Hey little angel. How are you doing?"

"Fine", answered Linda simply.

Agnetha sensed that 'fine' was not really the truth so she decided to ask further: "How was time at your fathers?"

"Okay, at first. But then came Lena, that snake."

Hearing her daughter say something like that made Agnetha look at her in shock and disbelieve: "Where do you have that from?"

"Aunt Frida used it when you spoke about that bitch a few days ago."

"'bitch'? Linda, never use words like that again. You know that this is not fair to her. She is just trying to be nice.", tried Agnetha to knock some sense into her daughter.

"Then is Lena failing. I don't like her and Christian neither.", answered Linda dryly.

"Don't influence your brother bad. He should have the opportunity to decide for himself if he likes Lena. But both of you have to accept her as your fathers partner.", Lindas behavior made Agnetha quite angry: "Now go upstairs. I need to talk to your Papa, alone."

After Linda left turned Agnetha towards Björn: "I don't know how you think about this. But I don't think it's good that your children don't respect Lena. They hate her and you should try to change that."