I walk over to the desk instead, kick away the chair, squat in front of it, and start tearing open the drawers.
There’s nothing in the top drawer. It’s empty except for a pen and a small coin with an unfamiliar face.
I have to give the next drawer down a good pull.
It opens in small jerks, as though something is stuck. It’s full to the brim, mainly old-fashioned paper folders, brown and thin, labeled in neat, boxy handwriting.
I pull out the top one.
KRISTINA LIDMAN
I open it automatically.
For a few seconds my eyes stare, unseeing, at the contents. My stiff, bungling fingers flick through the perfectly preserved, square Polaroid images.
A sound rises in my throat. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle it. The insane laugh tears and scratches at my mouth, trying to force its way through my fingers. I’m afraid of what’ll happen if I move my hand, if I let it come swinging out.
Here it is. Finally.
The breakthrough I’ve been looking for. An unparalleled scoop.
I just never could have guessed the price I would have to pay.
THEN
She hears it before they even make it to the end of the street.
It’s a terrible sound, like an animal in unbearable pain, a muffled bellow that hardly seems like it could come from a human throat.
But Elsa can hear where it’s coming from.
It’s coming from Birgitta’s hut.
Dagny has slowed her jog slightly. She looks around, breathless and red in the face.
“It started a few hours ago,” she says, in response to the question Elsa has not yet asked.
“At first I thought it was just one of her outbursts, but then it got worse. And when she started making those noises I thought it was best to fetch you.”
Elsa nods. Her mouth feels dry as dust and her heart is pounding, but still she manages to say:
“You were right to do so. Thank you.”
Dagny has never helped her with Birgitta, has never offered, but Elsa still feels a wave of gratitude that she has come to her. She is one of the few left.
Elsa doesn’t know what would have happened had the pastor’s followers got there first. Perhaps they’re already on their way.
Elsa stops sharply outside the door.
“Birgitta?” she cries.
No reply. The bellows have quietened.
There’s no time for the normal ritual. Elsa opens the door. Birgitta is curled up in the fetal position on the bed, her arms clasped around her stomach. Her bellow has sunk to a whimper. She is turned away, and her hair is covering her face. This isn’t one of her outbursts. Nothing is broken. The table is where it should be, as are the chairs. Yesterday’s basket is standing exactly where Elsa left it. She doesn’t seem angry or upset; she doesn’t even seem to have noticed Elsa come in.
“Birgitta?” she says.
The whimper dies down to nothing.
The fear in Elsa comes into full bloom.
“Birgitta, may I come closer?” Elsa asks cautiously. “It’s Elsa.”
Birgitta doesn’t reply. She’s lying completely quiet and still.
Elsa goes to Birgitta’s side. She doesn’t want to scare her. She has been standing there for a minute or so when Birgitta starts up again.
It starts as a low humming sound, then Elsa sees her clasp her stomach tighter and fold her head down into her chest. In the dim light of the window it’s difficult to see much, but Elsa squints and leans in a little.
The edge of Birgitta’s loose brown dress is darker. She has soiled herself.
“Birgitta,” Elsa says, putting her hand on her side.
That’s when she feels it.
Elsa snatches her hand back in horror and pulls away. Birgitta curls up even tighter. Her guttural moan rises in volume.
“What’s wrong?” Dagny asks anxiously from behind Elsa’s back.
Elsa just shakes her head.
The space seems to have contracted down to Birgitta’s dark figure and her rolling, muffled laments.
Elsa leans in over Birgitta again. How could she not have noticed? How could she not have realized?
Such a thing would have been impossible to imagine. Unthinkable. It can’t be.
Elsa puts her hand on Birgitta’s belly. Beneath her palm she feels those familiar contractions.
“Dagny,” says Elsa, and her voice sounds almost strangely calm to her own ears. It shouldn’t be audible over Birgitta, but somehow it reaches Dagny anyway. “Birgitta is giving birth. We must get her to Ingrid.”
Elsa hears Dagny inhale sharply behind her.
“But how…” she says, and Elsa just shakes her head. She reaches over and strokes Birgitta’s sweaty hair. Normally Birgitta would recoil at Elsa’s touch, but this time she doesn’t react.
Her voice has started to quiet again. How far apart were the bellows coming? Not long. Four, five minutes at the very most.
They don’t have much time.
“I don’t know,” says Elsa. “But her waters have already broken. We must hurry.”
NOW
I’m still sitting on the floor when Max comes in.
“Alice?” he says.
“Over here,” I reply.
I’m holding the photos. The top one now bears my thumbprint, which stands out on the shiny surface.
The light outside has started to change in character, grow softer, warmer. It rounds out the room’s corners and glistens in the shards of glass in the windows. When I look up at Max, he, too, is more beautiful than he was in the hard glare of the morning sun, despite his deep, sunken eyes, despite the cut on his jaw, despite the grubby clothes hanging from his slender frame.
“Look,” I say listlessly, spreading out the images like a fan in front of me.
There are four Polaroids. The child in them appears to be a newborn. Two of the images are sharp, and two are blurred. You can tell that the baby has been dried off, but there are still traces of something dark and sticky on her chubby arms. In one of them she is naked, shot clinically from above. In another she is lying in familiar arms.
Elsa’s face is visible up to the hairline. She looks like she has aged thirty years since the photograph Grandma left me; her eyes sit deep in her
