He took her bag and gave her a glass of champagne and a room key in return. Rebecka looked at the key ring. It was a piece of wood painted red and white, attached to the key with a clever little knot.
For when the guests get drunk and drop them in the water, she thought.
They exchanged a few remarks. Gorgeous weather. Ordered it especially for you, Rebecka. She laughed, asked how things were going. Bloody great, just last week he’d landed a big client, something in biotechnology. And they were about to start negotiations on a merger with an American company, so it was all go at the moment. She listened and smiled. Then another latecomer arrived, and Erik had to carry on with his duties as host.
A lawyer from the criminal cases department came over to her. He greeted her as if they were old friends. She searched frantically through her mind for his name, but it had vanished into thin air. He had two new employees trailing after him, a girl and a boy. The boy had a tuft of blond hair above the kind of brown face you only get from sailing. He was a bit short, with broad shoulders. Square, jutting chin, two muscular arms protruding from the rolled-up sleeves of his expensive jumper.
Like Popeye the sailorman, styled by experts, she thought.
The girl was blonde as well. Her mane of hair firmly anchored by a pair of expensive sunglasses on top of her head. Dimples in her cheeks. A cardigan that matched her short-sleeved jumper was hanging over Popeye’s arm. They said hello. The girl chirruped like a blackbird. Her name was Petra. Popeye was called Johan, and he had some sort of elegant surname, but Rebecka couldn’t remember it. That’s how things had been for the last year. Before, she’d had compartments in her head where she could file information. Now there were no compartments. Everything just tumbled in, and most of it tumbled straight out again. She smiled and managed a handshake that was just firm enough. Asked who they were working for at the office. How they were settling in. What they’d written their essays about and where they’d done their articles. Nobody asked her about anything.
She moved on between the groups. Everybody was standing there at the ready, a ruler in their pocket. Measuring each other. Comparing everybody else with themselves. Salary. Where they lived. Name. Who you knew. What you’d been doing during the summer. Somebody was building a house in Nacka. Somebody else was looking for a bigger flat now they’d had their second child, preferably on the right side of Ostermalm.
“I’m a complete wreck,” exclaimed the house builder with a cheerful smile.
Somebody who had just become single again turned to Rebecka.
“I was actually up around your home turf back in May,” he said. “Went skiing from Abisko to Kebnekaise, had to get up at three in the morning while the snow was still firm enough. During the day it was so wet you just sank right through it. All you could do was lie in the spring sunshine and make the most of it.”
The atmosphere was suddenly strained. Did he have to mention where she came from? Kiruna forced its way into the circle like a ghost. All at once everyone was gabbling the names of other places they’d been. Italy, Tuscany, parents in Jonkoping, Legoland, but Kiruna just wouldn’t disappear. Rebecka moved on, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.
The older associates had been staying in their summer cottages on the west coast, or in Skane, or out in the archipelago. Arne Eklof had lost his mother, and told Rebecka quite candidly how he’d spent the summer quarrelling about her estate.
“It’s bloody true,” he said. “When the Lord turns up with death, the devil turns up with the heirs. Can I get you another?”
He nodded toward her glass. She refused. He gave her a look that was almost angry. As if she’d refused further confidences. Presumably that was exactly what she’d done. He stomped off toward the drinks table. Rebecka stayed where she was, gazing after him. It was a strain chatting to people, but it was a nightmare standing there on her own with an empty glass. Like a poor pot plant that can’t even ask for water.
I could go to the bathroom, she thought, glancing at her watch. And I can stay in there for seven minutes if there isn’t a queue. Three if somebody’s waiting outside the door.
She looked around for somewhere to put her glass down. Just at that moment Maria Taube materialized at her side. She held out a little dish of Waldorf salad.
“Eat,” she said. “Looking at you frightens me.”
Rebecka took the salad. The memory of last spring flooded through her when she looked at Maria.
Harsh spring sunshine outside Rebecka’s filthy windows. But she has the blinds pulled right down. In the middle of the week, on an ordinary morning, Maria comes to visit. Afterward Rebecka wonders how come she opened the door. She should have stayed under the covers and hidden.
But. She goes to the door. Hardly conscious of the doorbell ringing. Almost absentmindedly she undoes the security lock. Then she turns the catch of the lock with her left hand while her right hand pushes down the door handle. Her head isn’t connected to anything. Just like when you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, wondering what you’re doing in the kitchen anyway.
Afterward she thinks that maybe there’s a sensible little person inside her. A little girl in red Wellingtons and a life jacket. A survivor. And that little girl had recognized those high heels tip-tapping along.
The girl says to Rebecka’s hands and feet: “Ssh, it’s Maria. Don’t tell her. Just get her up and make sure she opens the door.”
Maria and Rebecka are sitting in the kitchen. They are drinking coffee, just on its own. Rebecka doesn’t say much. The pyramid of dirty dishes, the drifts of post and junk mail and newspapers on the hall floor, the crumpled sweaty clothes on her body say everything there is to say.
And in the middle of all this her hands begin to shake. She has to put her coffee cup down on the table. They are flailing about like mad things, like two headless chickens.
“No more coffee for me,” she tries to joke.
She laughs, but it comes out more like a discordant hacking noise.
Maria looks her in the eyes. Rebecka feels as though she knows. How Rebecka sometimes stands out on the balcony looking down at the hard asphalt below. And how she sometimes can’t make herself go out and down to the shops. But has to live on whatever she happens to have in. Drink tea and eat pickled gherkins straight from the jar.
“I’m no shrink,” says Maria, “but I do know things get worse if you don’t eat and sleep. And you have to get dressed in the mornings and go out.”
Rebecka hides her hands under the kitchen table.
“You must think I’ve gone mad.”
“Honey, my family is crawling with women who’ve got Nerves. They faint and swoon, have panic attacks and hypochondria the whole time. And my aunt, have I told you about her? One minute she’s sitting in a psychiatric ward with somebody helping her get dressed, the next she’s starting up a Montessori nursery. I’ve seen it all.”
The following day one of the partners, Torsten Karlsson, offers to let Rebecka stay in his cottage. Maria used to work with Torsten in the business law section before she moved over and started working for Mans Wenngren with Rebecka.
“You’d be doing me a favor,” says Torsten. “It would save me worrying whether somebody had broken in, and driving up there just to do the watering. I ought to sell the place really. But that’s a load of hassle as well.”
She should have said no, of course. It was so obvious. But the little girl in the red Wellingtons said yes before she’d even opened her mouth.
Rebecka ate some of the Waldorf salad dutifully. She started with half a walnut. As soon as she got it into her mouth, it grew to the size of a plum. She chewed and chewed. Got ready to swallow. Maria looked at her.
“So how are things?” she asked.
Rebecka smiled. Her tongue felt rough.
“Actually, I have absolutely no idea.”
“But you’re okay about being here this evening?”
Rebecka shrugged her shoulders.
No, she thought. But what can you do? Force yourself to go out. Otherwise you’ll soon end up sitting in a cottage somewhere with the authorities after you, terrified of people, allergic to electricity and with a load of cats crapping indoors.
