‘Do you want to take a closer look?’ asked Julia. ‘We could go over and see if anyone’s home.’
Gerlof shook his head. ‘I already know them. They’re rich, irresponsible city folk.’
‘Not everybody who buys a house comes from the city,’ said Julia.
‘No, no … But I have no doubt they’re rich and irresponsible.’
3
‘Do you want me to open the window?’ said Per Morner.
His daughter Nilla nodded, her back to him.
‘Are there any birds out there?’ she asked.
‘Loads,’ said Per.
That wasn’t true; he couldn’t see a single one outside the hospital. But there were trees by the car park, and maybe some little birds were sitting in them.
‘In that case you can open the window,’ said Nilla, and explained: ‘My nature studies homework this week is to count different species of birds.’
Nilla was in Year 7, and all her school books were on the table next to her hospital bed. She had placed her favourite cuddly toy and lucky stones by her pillow, then climbed on the bed so that she could hang a big piece of fabric with NIRVANA on it on the wall above her head.
Per opened the window, and the faint sound of chirruping drifted into the room. But it was mixed with the whine of revving engines, and no doubt the birds would soon fall silent anyway; it was almost evening, after all, and shiny cars were leaving the car park as doctors and nurses set off for home. His own brown Saab was down there too, but it was nine years old and definitely not shiny.
‘What are you thinking about?’ said Nilla behind him.
Per turned his head. ‘Guess.’
‘You’re thinking about the spring.’
‘Spot on,’ said Per, even though he’d actually been thinking about his old car. ‘You’re getting better and better at this.’
Mind-reading, that was his daughter’s latest project. Before that she’d spent several months practising until she could write just as well with her left hand as with her right, but over Christmas she had seen a television programme about telepathy and had started experimenting with her twin brother Jesper and her father, sending thoughts to them and attempting to read theirs. It was Per’s task to send a special thought to Nilla every evening at eight o’clock.
He stood by the window, watching the setting sun glinting on the car windows.
It was probably spring now, in spite of the cold, but Per hadn’t really had time to notice. The birds were returning home from the Mediterranean and the farmers were beginning to sow their crops. Per thought about his father, Jerry, who had always looked forward to the spring. That was when his work really took off. Didn’t people say that spring was the time of youth? Youth, and love.
But Per had never had any real feeling for the spring. Not even when he and Marika had got married on a sunny day in May, after meeting at a marketing seminar fifteen years ago. It was as if he had sensed even then that she would leave him, sooner or later.
‘Did Mum say when she was coming?’ he asked over his shoulder.
‘Mm-hmm,’ said Nilla. ‘Between six and seven.’
It was almost five o’clock now.
‘Do you want me and Jesper to wait until she gets here?’
Nilla shook her head. ‘I’ll be OK.’
That was the answer Per had been hoping for. He had nothing against seeing Marika, but she was only coming to visit her daughter, and there was a risk that she would have her new husband with her – Georg, with his substantial income and his expensive presents. Per had got over Marika, but he had a problem with the fact that she had met a man who spoiled both her and the twins.
Nilla was in a private room, and seemed to be well looked after. A young male doctor had been in half an hour earlier, and had explained which tests they would be doing over the next few days, and in what order. Nilla had listened with her eyes lowered; she hadn’t asked any questions. She had glanced up at the doctor occasionally, but not at Per.
‘See you soon, Pernilla,’ the doctor had said as he left.
She had two long, hard days of tests and medical examinations ahead, and Per couldn’t come up with anything encouraging to say.
She carried on arranging her things, and Per helped her. It was never possible to make a hospital room look cosy – it was too bare and full of tubes and call buttons – but they tried. Along with her own pink pillow, Nilla had brought a CD player and some Nirvana CDs, a couple of books, and more trousers and tops than she really needed.
She was dressed in jeans and a black top, but soon she would be in the usual hospital garb: a white suit that was easy to fold back for all the examinations.
‘Right,’ said Per. ‘We’ll be off, then, but Mum will be here soon … Shall I go and get Jesper?’
‘OK.’
His son was sitting on a sofa in the waiting room. There were some books and magazines on a shelf, but Jesper was bent over his Gameboy, as usual.
‘Jesper?’ Per said loudly.
‘What?’
‘Nilla wanted to say goodbye.’
Jesper paused the game. He went into his twin sister’s room alone, and closed the door. Per wondered what they were talking about. Did Jesper find it easier to talk to Nilla than to his dad? Did they talk about her illness? He hardly spoke to Per at all.
When they were small, just a few years old, the twins had had their own language that nobody else could understand. It was a sing-song language, consisting almost entirely of vowels. Nilla in particular had found it difficult to start speaking Swedish; she preferred this secret language she shared with Jesper. Until Per and Marika found a speech therapist who was able to sort out the problem, it had sometimes felt as if he had fathered two aliens.
A door opened further down the corridor. The doctor who had spoken to Nilla earlier emerged, and Per went over to him. Per had always admired the medical profession – when his mother had refused to tell him what his father did for a job, Per had got the idea that Jerry worked abroad as a doctor. He had believed that for several years.
‘I’d like to ask a question,’ he said. ‘About my daughter, Nilla.’
The doctor stopped. ‘What would you like to know?’
‘She looks a bit swollen,’ said Per. ‘Is that normal?’
‘Swollen? Where?’
‘Her face – her cheeks, and around her eyes. It started on the way here. Does it mean anything?’
‘Maybe,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll have a good look at her. ECG, ultrasound, a CAT scan, X-rays, blood tests … The works!’
Per nodded, but Nilla had already had so many tests for her mysterious pains. The results just seemed to lead to more tests, more waiting.
The door to her room opened and Jesper came out. He headed for the waiting room with his Gameboy, but Per raised a hand to stop him.
‘Don’t start playing again,’ he said. ‘We’re going up to the summer cottage now.’
When they drove off the Oland bridge quarter of an hour later and turned north on the flat island, the countryside around them was a kind of yellowish brown, a landscape on the borderline between winter and spring. The evening sun was shining across the ditches by the roadside where wood anemones and coltsfoot were beginning to raise their heads, but there were still drifts of sparkling snow on both sides of the road. The snow that had melted in the sun had begun to form large pools out on the alvar, with narrow spring streams bubbling along as
