were doing between ’77 and ’78. I’ll talk with them, but first I want to have a little more to go on. I don’t want them to have a chance to wriggle out of this.’
Annika leaned back and smiled slyly. ‘So when are we going to hear those wedding bells ringing?’
Patrik saw that she had no intention of dropping this juicy subject anytime soon. He would have to resign himself to being the station’s source of entertainment for a while.
‘Well, it might be a bit early for that. We should probably be together for at least a week before we book a church.’
‘So-o-o-o, you’re together, are you?’
He realized that he’d fallen right into that trap feet-first with eyes wide open.
‘No, er yes, maybe we are…I don’t know, we get along so far, but it’s all awfully new and maybe she’s going back to Stockholm soon…oh, I don’t know. You’ll have to be satisfied with that for the time being.’ Patrik was squirming like a worm in his chair.
‘Okay then, but I want to be kept up to date on what’s happening, do you hear me?’ Annika wagged her finger at him.
He nodded in resignation. ‘All right, I’ll keep you posted. I promise. Satisfied?’
‘Well, that will have to do for now, I suppose.’
She got up, came round the desk, and before he knew it he was caught in an exuberant bear-hug, crushed against Annika’s ample bosom.
‘I’m so glad for your sake. Don’t mess it up, Patrik, promise me.’ She gave him an extra squeeze that made his ribs protest. Since he didn’t have access to any air at the moment he couldn’t reply, but she apparently took his silence as acquiescence and released him, but not until she topped it all off with a firm pinch on the cheek.
‘Go home and change your clothes now, you hear? You stink!’
And with that comment Patrik found himself sent back out to the corridor, with a sore cheek and ribs. He felt his rib-cage cautiously. He liked Annika a lot, but sometimes he wished that she would be a bit more careful with a poor thirty-five-year-old guy whose physique was on a downhill slope.
Badholmen, the bathing island, looked deserted and forsaken. In the summer it was packed full of happy bathers and noisy children, but now the wind howled desolately across the snow that had fallen like a thick blanket overnight. Erica stepped carefully through the snow covering the rocks. She had felt a great need to get a little fresh air, and here from Badholmen she had an uninterrupted view of the islands and the seemingly endless white ice. Cars could be heard in the distance, but otherwise it was mercifully silent; she could almost hear herself think. The diving tower loomed next to her. Not as high as she had thought it was when she was little-then it seemed to reach all the way to heaven-but still high enough that she would never dare jump from the top platform on a warm summer’s day.
She could have stood there forever. Wrapped up in furs she felt the cold trying in vain to penetrate her clothes. Inside herself, she felt the ice thawing. She hadn’t realized how lonely she had been until the loneliness was gone. But what would happen with her and Patrik if she had to move back to Stockholm? It was many miles away, and she felt much too old for a long-distance relationship.
If she was forced to go along with selling the house, was there any possibility that she would stay here? She didn’t want to move in with Patrik before their relationship had been properly tested over a period of time. So the only alternative was to find some other place to live in Fjallbacka.
The problem was that nowhere else appealed to her. If they sold the house she would rather cut all ties to Fjallbacka than come here and watch strangers tramping about in her childhood home. Nor could she really imagine renting a flat here; that would feel very strange. She felt her happiness slipping away as she piled all these negative thoughts on top of each other. Of course, it would be possible to solve this dilemma, but she had to admit that even if she wasn’t exactly ancient, so many years of living alone with only herself to think of had taken their toll, and she didn’t feel very flexible anymore. After much deliberation she had decided that she was ready to leave her life in Stockholm, but only if she could keep living in the familiar setting of her childhood home. Otherwise, it would simply be too much change in her universe all at once. She wouldn’t be able to face it, no matter how much in love she was.
Perhaps her parents’ death had also made her less inclined to make big changes. That change was enough for many years to come. Right now, she wanted to sink into a safe, secure and predictable life. Previously, she had been afraid to commit herself to a relationship. Now she wanted nothing more than to include Patrik in that secure and predictable life. She wanted to be able to plan for all the usual stages: living together, engagement, marriage, children, and then many ordinary days, one after another, until one day they could look at each other and discover that they had grown old together. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.
For the first time Erica felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of Alex. It was as if she only now grasped that Alex’s life was irrevocably over. Even though their paths had not crossed for many years, she had still thought of her from time to time. And she had always known that Alex’s life was running parallel to her own. Now she was the only one who had a future, who would get to experience all the sorrows and joys that the years ahead would bring. Every time she thought about Alex now, and for the rest of her life, the image that would appear to her would be that of Alex’s pale corpse in the bathtub. The blood on the tiles and her hair that looked like a frozen halo. Maybe that was why she had decided to start writing the book about her. It was a way to relive the years when they were so close to each other, and at the same time get to know the woman Alex had become after they parted ways.
What had worried Erica the past few days was that the material felt a little too flat. It was as if she were looking at a three-dimensional model from only one side. The other sides were equally important if she was going to get an idea of how the figure looked, but she hadn’t yet been allowed to see them. What she decided was that she needed to start looking more at the people around Alex, not only the main actors, but all the bit players who had been part of her life. Then Erica’s thoughts had gravitated primarily to what she had sensed and intuited as a child but had never clearly understood.
Something had happened the year before Alex moved away, and nobody had ever bothered to tell Erica what it was. The whispering had always stopped as soon as she came near; she had been shielded from something that she now desperately needed to understand. The problem was that she didn’t know where to start. The only thing she remembered from her attempts to eavesdrop on conversations that were conducted in whispers by the adults, was that she heard the word ‘school’ mentioned more than once. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all she had. Erica knew that the teacher she and Alex had had in middle school was still living in Fjallbacka. That was probably as good a place to start as any.
The wind had picked up and despite her thick layers of clothing the cold began to creep in. Erica felt that it was time to start moving. She glanced one last time at Fjallbacka nestled in its protected position with the mountain towering behind. In the summer it was usually bathed in golden light, but now it was grey and bare; yet Erica thought it was even lovelier like this. In the summertime the area was more reminiscent of an anthill with its constant activity. Now a quiet peace had settled over the little town, and she could almost imagine it hibernating. At the same time she knew that the peace was illusory. Under the surface there was just as much evil as anywhere else inhabited by human beings. Erica had seen a good deal of that in Stockholm, but she believed that it was even more sinister here. Hatred, envy, greed and revenge, all of it concealed underneath a huge lid that was created by sentiments such as: ‘what would people say?’ All the evil, pettiness and malice was quietly allowed to ferment beneath a surface that always had to look so neat and clean. Now that Erica was standing on the rocks of Badholmen and looking back at the snow-covered little town, she wondered in silence what secrets it was guarding.
She gave a shiver, stuck her hands deep in her pockets and headed back towards town.
Life had become more and more threatening with each year that passed. Axel Wennerstrom was always discovering new dangers. It had started when he became acutely aware of all the billions and trillions of bacilli and bacteria swirling around him. Having to touch anything became a challenge; if he was forced to do so, he saw armies of bacteria rushing over him, threatening to bring along a myriad of known and unknown diseases that would surely cause him a long and painful death. Then his very surroundings became a threat. Big surfaces presented certain dangers, small surfaces presented others. Ending up in a crowd of people made sweat seep from all the pores on his body, and his breathing would get fast and shallow. The only environment Axel could even partially
