During the evening of her last day Mia was so weak that Mum decided to ring the hospital. The situation was acute; Mia was dying. However, Mum never reached the phone and neither did I. We both lost consciousness. When I awoke I was lying on the hard floor but Mum luckily fell on a sofa. And Mia had disappeared. The last we saw of her, she was trying to push the mirror into her mouth. Perhaps she wanted to swallow it in a last desperate attempt to escape her horrible fate. Although Mia had gone, the mirror remained. We found it in her bed. You can imagine how we screamed when we saw what had happened; her face seemed to be alive in the glass. We heard her laugh and cry and shout for help. Even her tears were there; they moistered the glass and made it dull. But after a while we saw she had stiffened and she never moved again. All that remained of her was a little round portrait. Life is hard and hopeless in Kiruna. Poor Mia!

[THE END]