The Darkest Room

Joakim nodded. Gotland sounded better than Stockholm. He never wanted to go there again.

Lisa and Michael got into the car, and Joakim took a step back as they drove off.

When the car had pulled out onto the road and the glow of its lights had disappeared, he turned and looked down toward the lighthouses.

Out on its little island the southern tower flashed its red light across the water. But the northern tower, Katrine’s tower, was just a black pillar in the darkness. He had only seen a light in it once.

After a few attempts he found the path down to the shore and followed the same route he had taken with Katrine and the children several times during the fall.

He could hear the sea in the darkness, feel the bitterly cold wind. Carefully he made his way down to the water, across the tufts of grass on the shore and the strip of sand, out onto the big blocks of stone that protected the lighthouses from the waves.

The waves were like slow breaths in the darkness tonight, thought Joakim. Like Katrine when they were making love-she would pull him down toward her in bed, holding him tight and breathing in his ear.

She had been stronger than him. It was Katrine who had decided they were moving here.

Joakim remembered how beautiful it had been on the coast when they came here for the first time. It had been a clear, sunny spring day at the beginning of May, and the manor house had looked like a wooden palace up above the glittering water.

When they had finished looking at the house, they had walked down to the shore, hand in hand along a narrow path through a field of wood anemones in full bloom.

Beneath the open sky on the coast the flat islands in the north seemed to magically float out at sea, covered in fresh

grass. There were birds everywhere: flocks of flycatchers, oystercatchers, and larks, soaring and diving. Small groups of black-and-white tufted ducks were bobbing along beyond the lighthouses, and closer to the shore swam mallards and grebes.

Joakim remembered Katrine’s face in the bright sunshine.

I really want to stay here, she had said.

He shivered. Then he clambered cautiously out onto the furthest block in the jetty and looked down into the black water.

This is where she’d stood.

The footprints in the sand had shown that Katrine had gone out onto the jetty alone. Then she had fallen or thrown herself in the water, and quickly sunk beneath the surface.

Why?

He had no answers. He only knew that at the moment when Katrine drowned, he had been standing in a cellar in Stockholm and heard her come in through the door.

Joakim had heard her calling. He was sure of it, and that meant that the world was even more incomprehensible than he had thought.

After half an hour or so in the cold, he went back up to the house.

His mother, Ingrid, was the only member of the family left after the funeral. She was sitting at the kitchen table and turned her head with a start when Joakim came in, a furrow of anxiety across her forehead. The furrow had got deeper and deeper over the years, first of all during her husband’s illness and then with every new crisis Ethel brought home.

“They’ve all gone now,” said Joakim. “Have the children gone to sleep?”

“I think so. Gabriel finished his bottle and fell asleep straightaway. But Livia was restless… she raised her head and called out to me when I crept out the first time.”

Joakim nodded and went over to the counter to make a pot of tea.

“She plays possum sometimes,” he said. “She pretends to be asleep to fool us.”

“She talked about Katrine.”

“Right. Do you want some tea?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you. Does she often do that, Joakim?”

“Not when she’s going to sleep.”

“What have you told her?”

“About Katrine?” said Joakim. “Not much. I’ve told her… that Mommy’s away.”

“Away?”

“That she’s gone away for a while… just like when I stayed in Stockholm while Katrine and the children were here. I can’t cope with telling her any more right now.” He looked at Ingrid and suddenly felt uneasy. “And what did you tell her tonight?”

“Nothing. That’s your job, Joakim.”

“I will tell her,” he said. “When you’ve gone… when there’s only me and the children here.”

Mommy’s dead, Livia. She drowned.

When would he be ready for that? It was just as impossible as the idea of slapping Livia across the face.

“Will you move back now?” asked Ingrid.

Joakim stared at her. He knew she wanted him to give up, but he still pretended to be surprised.

“Back? Back to Stockholm, you mean?”

Leave Katrine? he thought.

“Yes… I mean, I’m there after all,” said Ingrid.

“There’s nothing for me in Stockholm,” said Joakim.

“But you could buy back the house in Bromma, couldn’t you?”

“I can’t buy anything,” he said. “I haven’t got the money, Mom, even if I wanted to. All the money went into this place.”

“But you could sell…” Ingrid stopped and looked around the kitchen.

“Sell Eel Point?” said Joakim. “Who’d want the place in this state? It needs fixing up first… and Katrine and I were going to do that together.”

His mother said nothing as she gazed out of the window, her expression morose. Then she asked, “That woman at the funeral, the one who arrived late… was that Katrine’s mother? The artist?”

Joakim nodded. “That was Mirja Rambe.”

“I thought I recognized her from your wedding.”

“I didn’t know if she would turn up.”

“Well, of course she was going to turn up,” said Ingrid. “Katrine was her daughter, after all.”

“But they hardly had any contact with each other. I haven’t seen her once since the wedding.”

“Had they fallen out?”

“No… but I don’t think they were exactly friends. They called each other from time to time, but Katrine hardly ever talked about Mirja.”

“Does she live here?”

“No. She lives in Kalmar, I think.”

“Aren’t you going to get in touch with her?” said Ingrid. “I think you should.”

“I don’t think so,” said Joakim. “But we might bump into each other sometime. This is a small island, after all.”

He looked out of the window at the darkness of the inner courtyard. He didn’t want to see anyone at all. He wanted to lock himself in here in the manor house at Eel Point and never go out again. He didn’t want to look for a new teaching post, nor did he want to carry on working on the house.

He just wanted to sleep for the rest of his life, next to Katrine.

9

The November night was dry, but it was cold, dark, and foggy. The only light in the sky came from a pale half- moon behind a film of cloud as fine as silk.

Perfect weather for break-ins.