No answer. From Marcus’s room upstairs she could hear music. No point in asking him to go out and clear the snow. That would just mean half an hour’s discussion, in which case she might as well do it herself. But she couldn’t manage it. The snow had wedged itself in the door frame and she had to slam the door to shut it. Robert had probably gone off somewhere with Jenny and Petter. To his mother’s, perhaps.
Marcus had friends round. Presumably some of the hockey team. His sports bag was lying on the hall floor swimming in melted snow from his outdoor shoes, along with two bags she didn’t recognize. She climbed over their indoor hockey sticks and carried the wet sports bags into the bathroom. Took Marcus’s sports gear out of his bag. Dried the hall floor and placed the shoes and sticks in a neat row by the door.
On the way to the laundry room with her arms full of wet sports kit she passed the kitchen. On the table stood a carton of milk and a tin of O’boy chocolate. From this morning? Or Marcus and his mates? She shook the milk carton carefully and sniffed at it. It was okay. She put it in the fridge. Just looking at the overloaded draining board made her feel tired, and she went down to the cellar. Two banana boxes full of Christmas decorations were just inside the door to the cellar stairs. Robert was supposed to be carrying them downstairs to put away.
She went down to the cellar. Kicked dirty clothes chucked down the stairs by the family in front of her as she went, carried them into the laundry room and sighed. It felt like a lifetime since she’d had the strength to stand there ironing and folding everything. The mountain of clean laundry as high as Tolpagorni in front of the workbench. Dirty laundry in stale heaps on the floor in front of the washing machine. Fluff in every corner. Well established, perfectly happy there. Wet, black, grubby suds around the drain.
When I’m on maternity leave, she thought. Then I’ll have time.
She stuffed a load of white kneesocks, underclothes, some sheets and hand towels into the machine. Turned it to sixty degrees, program B. The washing machine began to hum with exertion, and Anna-Maria waited for the usual click, like a short burst of Morse code, as the program started up, followed by the sound of the water gushing into the drum, but nothing happened. The machine kept up its monotonous hum.
“Oh, come on!” she said, banging the top of it with her fist.
Not a new washing machine. That would cost thousands.
The machine hummed painfully. Anna-Maria switched it off and then back on again. Tried a different program. In the end, she kicked it. Then the tears came.
When Robert went down to the laundry room an hour later she was sitting in front of the workbench. Folding clothes like a mad thing, tears pouring down her face.
His gentle hands moving over her back and her hair.
“What’s wrong, Mia-Mia?”
“Leave me alone!” she snapped.
But then, when he put his arms around her, she sobbed into his shoulder and told him about the washing machine.
“And everything’s such a bloody tip,” she sniveled. “As soon as I get through the door all I can see is things that need doing. And now this…” She fished a pair of blue-and-white-striped rompers out of the pile of clean washing. The blue had faded and frequent washing had made the fabric bobbly.
“Poor kid. He’s going to be wearing faded hand-me-downs for the rest of his life. He’ll get bullied at school.”
Robert smiled into her hair. After all, there hadn’t been too many storms this time around. When she’d been expecting Petter things had been worse.
“And then there’s this case,” she went on. “We’ve got a list of everyone who’s involved in the Miracle Conference. The idea was to blitz them all. But Sanna Strandgard was arrested today, and now von Post wants all resources concentrated on her. So I’ve promised Sven-Erik I’ll go through the list, because officially I’m not part of the investigation. I just don’t know when I’m going to get it done.”
“Come on,” said Robert. “Let’s go up to the kitchen and I’ll make some tea.”
They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. Anna-Maria moved her spoon around listlessly in her mug, watching the honey dissolve in the chamomile tea. Robert peeled an apple, cut it into small pieces and passed them to her. She pushed them in her mouth without even noticing.
“Everything will work out okay,” he said.
“Don’t say everything will work out okay.”
“We’ll move, then. You and me and the baby. We’ll leave this untidy house. The kids’ll be all right for a while. And then I’m sure society will intervene and find them some decent foster parents.”
Anna-Maria laughed out loud, then blew her nose loudly on a rough piece of kitchen roll.
“Or we could ask my mother to move in here,” said Robert.
“Never.”
“She’d do the cleaning.”
Anna-Maria laughed.
“Never in a million years.”
“Empty the dishwasher. Iron my socks. Give you good advice.”
Robert got up and threw the apple peel in the sink.
Why can’t he just throw it straight in the bin? she thought tiredly.
“Come on, let’s take the kids and go for a pizza. We can drop you at the station afterward and you can go through the Miracle lot this evening.”
When Sara and Rebecka walked into Sivving’s kitchen on Friday afternoon, he and Lova were busy waxing skis. Sivving was holding a white cake of paraffin wax up against a little travel iron, letting it drip onto the skis, which were held in a waxing clamp. Then he carefully spread the paraffin the whole length of the ski with the iron. He put the iron down and held his hand out to Lova without looking at her. Like a surgeon looking down at his patient.
“Scraper,” he said.
Lova passed him the scraper.
“We’re waxing skis,” Lova explained to her older sister as Sivving shaved away the excess paraffin in white curly flakes.
“I can see that,” said Sara, bending down to pat Bella, who was lying on the rag rug in front of the window and playing a tune on the radiator behind her as she wagged her tail.
“So,” Rebecka said to Sivving, “you’ve moved into the kitchen.”
“Well,” he said, “this particular job takes up a lot of space. It might be an idea if you say hello to Bella as well before she wriggles out of her skin. I’ve told her to stay put, so she doesn’t knock the skis over or run around among the flakes of paraffin. Okay, Lova, now you can pass me the glide wax.”
He picked up the iron from the draining board and melted more paraffin onto the skis.
“Right, chicken, now you can take your skis and put on one layer of blue kick wax.”
Rebecka stooped down to Bella and scratched under her chin.
“Are you hungry?” asked Sivving. “There’s cinnamon buns and milk.”
Rebecka and Sara sat on the wooden sofa with a glass of milk each, waiting for the microwave to ping.
“Are you going skiing?” asked Rebecka.
“No,” said Sivving, “you are. The wind’s going to drop tomorrow. I thought we could take the snowmobile and follow the river up to the cabin in Jiekajarvi. Then you can do a bit of skiing. You haven’t been up there for years and years.”
Rebecka took the cinnamon buns out of the microwave and placed them straight on the pine table in a pile. They were much too hot, but she and Sara tore off chunks and dunked them in the cold milk. Lova was rubbing away at her skis.
“I’d love to go up to Jiekajarvi, but I’ve got to do some work tomorrow as well,” said Rebecka, blinking.
The headache was like being stabbed behind the eyes with a chisel. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Sivving glanced at her. Looked at the half-eaten bun next to her glass of milk. He passed Lova the cork and showed her how to smooth out the wax under her skis.
“Listen,” he said to Rebecka, “you go upstairs and lie down for a bit. The girls and I will go out with Bella, then I’ll sort out some food.”
Rebecka went up to the bedroom. Sivving and Maj-Lis’s double bed stood there in the silent room, neatly made and empty. The big rounded knobs on the pine headboard had grown dark and shiny with many years’ use.
