False memories

False memories are a central part of Sofia Zetterlund’s struggle to establish what has happened to her and what she herself has done. Her recollections are not simply absent: some are vivid but assembled from different sources, while other memories return only after a period of confusion. As she begins to separate remembered events from imagined ones, she must reconsider both her own history and the stories she has constructed about other people.

Formation and Recognition

Sofia comes to understand that she has been combining memories from separate experiences into a single account. She compares the process to compressing countless water molecules into one snowball: individual pieces have been pressed together until they seem to form one coherent event. The image captures both the force of the resulting memory and its unreliability. What feels like a continuous personal history may instead be a composite built from fragments that originally belonged to different times and circumstances. The confusion involves her work with Samuel Bai and her time working for UNICEF in Sierra Leone. Sofia had three sessions with Samuel, in which he spoke about his childhood in Sierra Leone and abuses he had committed. In one session, she used a small model motorcycle to call forth one of his many personalities. When he saw it, his behavior changed, and he attacked her. She had not invented every memory connected with him; rather, a real encounter had become entangled with other material and expanded into a false account.

The Return of a Specific Memory

At first, Sofia cannot remember what happened and is overwhelmed by the sense that her understanding is collapsing. Then the full memory of Samuel’s attack returns. The recovery does not establish an unlimited series of encounters: she becomes sure that she saw him only three times, and she can clearly remember those three sessions, no more. The boundary matters. A concrete memory of an attack and a definite count replace an impression of repeated events that she had treated as fact. Sofia recognizes that the other memories associated with Samuel are false and mixed with recollections from her work in Sierra Leone. The narrative thus distinguishes an event she recalls from the larger story her mind formed around it. Her growing clarity is not a return to confidence in every memory. It is a more careful accounting of what she can actually recall, what originated elsewhere, and what she cannot verify.

Consequences for Her Account of the Past

The false memories have extended beyond Samuel. Sofia had believed that she had murdered several children and Lars Magnus Pettersson. When she considers how strongly she believed those events, she is shaken by the possibility that other parts of her past may also be fabricated. She wonders whether memories assembled from what other people have told her can provide a dependable foundation for knowing herself. The problem is not only that one remembered event is wrong; the apparent continuity of her life story has become uncertain. Her search for Lars Magnus Pettersson supplies an independent check. At her computer in the early morning, she finds that he is alive, still associated with the address in Saltsjöbaden, and listed as a participant in a conference in Düsseldorf held three weeks earlier. The discovery confirms that she did not kill him. It also shows that her false narrative had reached beyond her own actions: she had invented alternative lives for other people and drawn them into her internal collapse. Lars Magnus Pettersson may have moved on with his life, perhaps even into another relationship, but that possibility remains speculation rather than something she establishes. What she knows is that he is alive and that his life has continued outside her enclosed understanding of it.

Limits, Relationships, and Significance

Jeanette Kihlberg’s presence accompanies one return to the present. After an hour that Sofia experiences as a gap, Jeanette’s kiss seems to interrupt the forward rush of time; Sofia becomes calm enough to recognize that she remembers three sessions with Samuel, not more. She tells Jeanette she is glad she has come. The scene links restored orientation to another person’s presence without suggesting that closeness can settle every question about the past. Sofia continues to doubt the reliability of her own recollections. She fears that she may never know which parts of her history are real, and recognizes that the memories she once trusted had made her believe she had committed grave acts. With Lars Magnus Pettersson, verification is possible through an address and a recent conference listing. With Samuel, she cannot resolve the remaining questions by searching records; she can only wait to see whether further memories return. The different forms of evidence leave her with an uneven kind of knowledge: one part of the past is checked against an external fact, while another remains incomplete. The sofa episode makes that distinction tangible. Sofia remembers a bloodstain there and hurries to inspect the cushions and upholstery, but finds no stain. She concludes that it had never been there. She also revises her account of the last time she saw Samuel: she now believes she simply threw him out after he began pawing at her. She knows he had enemies and had been beaten up on several occasions, but cannot establish what happened to him afterward; determining whether a fight went too far is a matter for the police, not something her memory can answer. Her recollection therefore ends at a limited, specific point rather than supplying a complete explanation. These episodes make memory an unstable source of both identity and evidence. A compelling recollection can combine real events with information from another context, and emotional certainty alone cannot distinguish the mixture. Sofia’s progress comes through separating what she can remember from what she had inferred or invented, and through recognizing where her knowledge ends. The result is not a fully restored history: it is a more cautious account, in which a recovered memory, an external confirmation, and an unresolved absence remain distinct.