Mike regretted saying what he had.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not at all. I just want you to say how you feel. And what about the sense of loss?’
‘Like a hole, I’m just a shell and there’s an echo inside. That’s how it feels. Though sometimes I wonder if I really do feel that or if that’s just how I am expected to feel. Sometimes it’s like sweat on your forehead. There’s a pressure and dull thumping inside your skull. Not metallic, more … I don’t know, muffled. It’s physical, put it that way. But more often there’s a kind of distance.’
‘Kind of distance? What do you mean?’
‘People’s voices. It’s as if I’m disconnected. I hear them, but I’m wandering around in my own fog, almost like I’m drunk. But not, at the same time. It’s more that I see myself as another person, as though I’m standing outside myself. When I hold out my hand and take someone else’s, it’s as if I’ve got nothing to do with me. The same when I’m talking: it’s not me. The words come out of my mouth like a foreign advert that’s been badly dubbed, my mouth doesn’t synch with the sound. But even more, it’s as if nothing’s changed. Everything is just the way it was before, everything just carries on.’
‘Your daughter,’ the doctor probed.
‘Sanna …’ Mike said. ‘I don’t know. It feels like she’s moved on, done her grieving, accepted. Yes, that’s it. Mummy was there and now she’s not. Doesn’t exist any more. It’s almost frightening.’
‘Is she happy?’
‘You mean, in general? Yes, I think so. No, I know she is. Every day is an adventure.’
‘Has she got friends?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So, what you’re talking about, what you suspect, none of it has spilled over on to your daughter?’
‘No, if it had, I’d go mad.’
Gosta Lundin moved on his chair.
‘So, really, what we’re talking about is something that a drunk and not particularly intelligent woman came out with at a party?’
Mike snorted with laughter. Gosta looked at him intently. Mike shook his head.
‘Did you know that you have to wait five years before someone can be declared dead?’ he asked. ‘And then it’s the tax authorities who announce it first, while you still have to wait another six months. But what then? Do you invite people to a funeral and sit there and look at an empty coffin and talk about a person no one remembers any more? And why the tax authorities? What have they got to do with it?’
‘You confronted the woman,’ Gosta said. ‘Tell me about that.’
‘I went to her house. At first she claimed that she couldn’t remember anything, then her husband said that I’d misunderstood her. She was obviously embarrassed.’
‘But you’re convinced that she said what everyone else is thinking?’
Mike nodded.
‘And if you follow that thought through to its conclusion? Imagine that it’s all your friends and acquaintances talk about, nothing else. Constantly. That they sit around in groups and nod in agreement with every accusation that is voiced or insinuated.’
Mike looked at the doctor, who was smiling at him.
‘Then you realise how ridiculous it is, don’t you?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘I think it’s a good thing that you came here. I suggest that we make another appointment straight away and that we continue to meet regularly until things get easier. Is that okay with you?’
Mike nodded gratefully. Gosta Lundin looked up at him as he leafed through his diary.
‘You look familiar,’ he said. ‘I think I may have seen you in Larod. Do you perhaps live there?’
‘Hittarp,’ Mike said. ‘Grontevagen.’
‘Grontevagen,’ Gosta repeated. ‘That’s what I thought. My wife and I have just moved here from Stockholm. We live some way up Sundsliden.’
Mike looked surprised.
‘Really? And we haven’t met?’
‘I think I’ve seen you,’ Gosta said. ‘But you’ve had other things on your mind, for obvious reasons.’
‘But all the same,’ Mike said. ‘We’re practically neighbours. You mean the white house on the hill? The one that was renovated? With a music studio in the basement?’
Gosta put down the diary and strummed an air guitar while he hummed the intro to ‘Smoke on the Water’.
Mike couldn’t hold back the laughter. A psychiatrist pretending to be a pop star – the unexpected simplicity was beautiful.
‘Though it’s mainly drums,’ Gosta said. ‘That’s my release. Bang, hit, bang, hit. Let go of all the rubbish.’
37
It was important to show feeling, to respond convincingly. Ylva performed her only duty well, she was convincing. It wasn’t hard, she almost looked forward to the visits. Any form of human contact was preferable to the isolation and loneliness. What they had told her was true, she had learned to be content with what she had.
Ylva alternated in her role as mistress, from vampish and challenging to timid and innocent.
It was unbelievably embarrassing. He was over sixty, educated and intelligent, and should know better. But Gosta Lundin was no different from other men. He chose to believe in her lusty moans, chose to believe that she arched her back to increase her ecstasy, chose to believe that she pulled him close to be filled with his manhood.
When he knocked, she stood in front of the door where she could be seen, with her hands on her head. She stood like this until he had come into the room and looked to check that the knives, scissors, iron and kettle were in place on the worktop. All these items were potential weapons and if he couldn’t see them, he would hit her, or, worse, turn in the doorway and not come back for days. Then she had to make do with what she’d got and put up with the smell of old rubbish.
Sometimes Gosta’s wife came down to get him, if she thought that he had been there for too long or she felt obliged to say something. Nothing pleased Ylva more. If Marianne came to get her husband, Ylva tripped around happily in the background, as if she was satisfied.
Marianne pretended not to see, but Ylva knew that it hit home.
Mike Zetterberg had stopped at a red light. He felt good, calm and strong. He always did when he came back from the hospital. He had been there five times now and was already much more stable than the first time he had gone to the clinic.
Gosta Lundin was a good doctor, considerate and kind. He called himself the Florida pensioner. He’d moved away from Stockholm in search of an easier life in his autumn years. Most Stockholmers chose Osterlen, but Gosta and his wife couldn’t see the point in living beside that brackish water where the algae flourished as soon as it was warm enough to swim in.
They were both happy with their choice and neither of them missed the capital. Except when the dialect became a bit too thick or the hostile comments about outsiders got too upsetting. In that sense there was a big difference between Helsingborg and Stockholm, Mike knew that only too well.
The pedestrians crossed the road in front of his car. Bodies moving, people on their way somewhere, a river. Mike was doing pretty well. Life had in some miraculous way taken over. He wouldn’t say that he felt any less grief or that it had gone away, but it wasn’t as all-consuming as before.
