Borje shakes his head, turns away from the house.
‘I wouldn’t wish what she’s going through on anyone.’
‘That bad?’ Malin says.
‘The nurses are with her now. They come four times a day. Otherwise we manage by ourselves.’
‘Would she like to see us, do you think?’
‘No,’ Borje says. ‘She hardly wants to see me. I see you’ve got a dog in the car? I can’t imagine it’s yours, Fors?’
Malin explains what’s happened, who the dog belonged to, and would he mind looking after it for a while, until they know if there’s a relative or someone else who wants it?
Borje smiles. A smile that gradually breaks through layer upon layer of exhaustion, of grief experienced in advance.
‘A bitch?’
‘No. Male,’ Zeke says.
‘That might be OK,’ Borje replies, then he goes over to the car and the dog bounces about in the back seat, and a couple of minutes later it’s standing to attention beside Borje while the Alsatians sniff all around it.
‘Looks like he feels at home here,’ Malin says. ‘Nice and easy.’
‘Get back to work, I’ll look after the dog. What’s his name?’
‘No idea,’ Malin replies. ‘Maybe you could call him Jerry?’
‘That would just confuse him,’ Borje replies.
‘We’d better get going,’ Zeke says.
Borje nods.
‘I appreciate you dropping by.’
‘Look after yourselves,’ Malin says, then turns away.
The call comes at exactly a quarter past two, as Malin and Zeke are parking the car at the old bus station. There’s not much left of the buildings that stood on the square years ago. Now there’s a car park surrounded by buildings from different eras. Ugly grey-panelled blocks from the sixties, well-maintained buildings from the turn of the last century, with the skeletal black trees of the Horticultural Society Park in the background.
Close to Mum and Dad’s flat now. The damp, dark rooms that no one has lived in for years. The flat is pretentiously large, but it still isn’t a proper apartment. Why have they still got it? So Mum can tell her friends in Tenerife that they’ve got an apartment in the city? Their faces are starting to fade from my memory, Malin thinks as her mobile rings again. Mum’s thin cheeks and pointed nose, Dad’s laughter lines and oddly smooth forehead.
A silent love, theirs. An agreement. Like mine and Janne’s? A lingering love, clinging to the back of our memories, in a room to which we haven’t yet managed to close the door.
The plants they think are still alive.
Dried out.
Not a single damn plant alive any more, but what do they expect when they haven’t been home for more than two years?
She pulls her mobile from the pocket of the GORE-TEX jacket.
Hears the rain drumming on the roof of the car. Zeke wary beside her.
Tove’s number on the screen.
What can I say to her? Is she going to be sad, scared?
How can I talk to her without Zeke realising?
He’ll realise. He knows me too well.
‘Tove, hi. I saw you rang earlier.’
Silence at the other end.
‘I know it all ended weirdly yesterday and I should have called back, but something’s happened and I’ve been busy at work. Is Dad there?’
I hit him, Malin thinks. I hit him.
‘I’m at school,’ she finally hears Tove’s voice say. She’s not sad, not scared, almost sounds angry. ‘If you need to talk to Dad, call him.’
‘Of course, you’re at school. I’ll give him a call if I need to talk to him. Why don’t you come into the city this evening and we’ll have something to eat, OK?’
Tove sighs.
‘I’m going to go back to the house, to Dad.’
‘You’re going back to Dad.’
‘Yes.’
Another silence. It’s as if Tove wants to ask something, but what?
‘Well, you do whatever you want, Tove,’ Malin says, and she knows it’s exactly what she shouldn’t say, she ought to say things like: It’s all going to be OK, I’ll pick you up from school, I want to give you a big hug, I’ll make an effort, how are you, my darling daughter?
‘How are you, Mum?’
‘How am I?’
‘Forget it. I’ve got to go. I’ve got a lesson.’
‘OK, bye then. Talk to you later. Big kiss.’
Zeke looking at her sympathetically. He knows everything, absolutely everything.
‘So you’re living back in the city again? I wondered when I picked you up this morning.’
‘It’s nice to be home.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Malin. We’re only human.’
Tove clicks to end the call and watches her schoolmates hurrying to and fro along the corridor of the Folkunga School, sees the way the high ceiling and the dark light filtering in through the arched windows from the rain-drenched world outside makes the pupils look smaller, defenceless.
Bloody Mum.
The least she could have done is call back. She doesn’t even seem to be considering coming back to the house tonight. Now the pain in her stomach is growing again, below her heart, growing impossibly large. She sounded abrupt and businesslike, it was as if she wanted to finish the call as soon as possible, she didn’t even ask how I am, why did I even bother to call? She probably just wants to go and have a drink.
I know why I called.
I want her to come home. I want them to stand in the kitchen having a hug, and I want to watch.
Don’t think about it, Tove.
She taps her mobile against her head.
Don’t think about it.
Some twenty metres away three of the older boys are grouped around a fat younger boy. Tove knows who he is. An Iraqi who can hardly speak a word of Swedish, and the older boys love bullying him. Bloody cowards.
She feels like getting up, going over and telling them to stop. But they’re bigger, much bigger than her.
Mum sounded disappointed when she said she was going back to Dad’s. Tove had been hoping that would make her want to go as well, but deep down she knows that’s not how things work in the adult world, everything’s so damn complicated there.
Now they’re hitting the boy.
Abbas, that’s his name.
And she puts her pen and notepad on the floor by her locker. She pushes her way through the crowd over to the three bullies. She shoves the tallest of them in the back, yelling: ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size instead?’ and Abbas is crying now, she can see that, and the force of her voice must have surprised the stupid bloody idiots, scared them, because they back away, staring at her. ‘Get lost,’ she yells, and they stare at her as if she’s a dangerous animal, and Tove realises why she frightens them, they must know what happened out in Finspang, what happened to her, and they respect her because of that.
Idiots, she thinks. Then she puts her arms around Abbas, he’s small and his body is soft, and she pretends he’s Mum, that she can comfort her with just a hug and a promise that everything’s going to be all right, from now on everything’s going to be all right.
Axel Fagelsjo’s apartment on Drottninggatan is, to put it in estate-agent jargon, magnificently appointed,
