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She picked up a packet of Prince, tapped out a cigarette and lit it.

‘He sat a bit too close to me on the sofa when we were watching TV, wanted me to rest my head on his knee. “Just happened”’ – Milla held the cigarette in the corner of her mouth as she drew quotation marks in the air – ‘to come into my room when I’d had a shower. In the end he said he was in love with me. Wanted us to run away together.’

She took a deep drag.

‘So what did you do then?’

Milla’s brutal honesty surprised Laura, but at the same time she felt privileged that Milla had chosen to confide in her.

‘I called social services, of course, and asked to change families. Your aunt offered, so here I am. But only temporarily. I’ll be eighteen in January, and then I’m out of here.’

‘Where will you go?’

Milla blew a smoke ring at the ceiling.

‘Copenhagen, Berlin, London. Or maybe somewhere warmer. Anywhere’s better than fucking Sweden. My passport’s already in my suitcase. That slimy bastard Kjell signed my passport application. The stupid idiot really believed we were going to run away together.’

Milla leaned forward.

‘Can you keep a secret? You have to promise not to tell anyone!’

Laura nodded, realised she was holding her breath.

‘The passport wasn’t the only thing I got from Kjell. He gave me what you might call travelling expenses too.’

‘How come?’

Milla smiled. ‘I promised to say we just didn’t get along, rather than telling social services what he’d done. They would have reported him to the police.’

‘So he paid you to keep quiet?’

‘Exactly.’

Milla looked very pleased with herself. She got up to fetch the boiling water.

Laura didn’t really know what to say. Milla’s story was unpleasant, but she was pleased to have been given a piece of the puzzle that told her something about the girl. A piece Milla presumably didn’t give to just anyone.

Milla filled their cups, replaced the pan on the hob and sat down on the sofa once more.

‘You’re pretty,’ she said. ‘I can do your makeup if you like. Make you look a bit older – like your best friend, the one with the funny name.’

‘Iben? We’re not best friends.’

‘No? Peter said you were. That the whole gang had more or less grown up together.’

Laura stared down at the table.

‘A boy,’ Milla said. ‘It has to be a boy. That’s the only thing girls fall out about so fast. You’re both in love with the same person. Not Peter, he’s too much of a clown. And Tomas is too weird. Which leaves Jack, the guy with the guitar.’

Laura clamped her lips together.

Milla shook her head, amused and annoyed at the same time.

‘I told you about slimeball Kjell,’ she said.

Laura hesitated for a few seconds. Milla was a stranger, someone she didn’t really know. Then again, she was also the only person who was interested in Laura. Who wasn’t preoccupied with her own secrets. Who treated her like an adult.

‘It’s all Iben’s fault,’ Laura muttered.

20

In the dream Hedda is sitting at the far end of the pontoon with a cigarette in her hand. It is a summer’s evening, the water is dark and still, shining like a mirror. Hedda has her back to Laura, her eyes are fixed on the lamp on Johnny Miller’s boathouse on the other side of the lake. Somewhere far away a bird calls, a plaintive, melancholy cry.

Laura really wants to run and throw herself into her aunt’s arms, tell her how much she’s missed her. But in the dream she is the grown-up Laura, the Laura who is angry with Hedda. Who doesn’t talk about her feelings, but locks them away in little boxes and dulls them with pills.

Hedda takes a long drag on her cigarette. It is one of the ones she rolls herself, it smells of magic herbs. The glow flickers in the darkness.

The pontoon bobs beneath Laura’s feet. She looks down at the grey, split wood. Catches a glimpse of the black water below.

When she looks up again, everything has changed. The trees have lost their leaves and the lake is partially frozen. Hedda’s long hair is grey, her back is bent, and two fingers are missing from the hand holding the cigarette.

‘I knew you’d come,’ Hedda says without turning her head. ‘She told me.’

‘Who told you?’

Hedda points out across the lake. ‘Who do you think?’ She takes a final drag and tosses the butt into the water. The glowing tip draws an arc in the darkness before it is extinguished.

‘Do you really think I’d fall off my own pontoon?’ Hedda says.

‘No.’

The bird calls again, its melancholy cry filling the air.

‘A black swan. You know what that means?’

‘That nothing is impossible,’ Laura replies. ‘Not even the impossible.’

Hedda turns and smiles sadly.

‘I’m glad you were listening, my princess.’

The soft voice makes Laura choke up. Her eyes fill with tears, but she still can’t move.

The swan calls once more, but the sound is different now, more like the crows’ warning cries.

There is a movement out in the lake, a wave surging towards the pontoon, turning into a black pillar of water looming over Hedda.

Laura opens her mouth to warn her, but before she can make a sound the pillar has metamorphosed into a young woman with long blue-black hair. She is the nymph from Laura’s painting, yet at the same time she is someone much more familiar.

As Laura says Iben’s name, the beautiful young woman changes into a horrific, blackened creature with empty eye sockets. It stinks of soot, charred hair and burned flesh. The creature flings its claw-like arms around Hedda, digs its long nails deep into her chest before dragging her down into the dark water with an ear-splitting shriek.

* * *

Laura sits up, breathes in sharply. The nymph’s shriek lingers in her mind, and her pyjamas are soaked with sweat. She is shivering, chilled to the bone, and she has to stand in the shower for over fifteen minutes to warm up. The nightmare refuses to let go.

This is her punishment for being careless with her happy pills. Not that they make her happy.

She orders breakfast from room service. Puts her pyjamas in one of the hotel’s plastic laundry bags.

Hedda has been buried, Håkansson will take care of both George and the sale of the holiday village. She doesn’t really care who buys it – the council or the castle, it makes no difference to her.

She has completed her task, and she can put all this behind her with a clear conscience.

So what is it that is still nagging away at her?

Why can’t she accept the most logical explanation? That a seventy-two-year-old woman with a weak heart who’d been smoking a joint slipped in the darkness on an icy pontoon, and fell into the water.

Is it because a part of her still sees Hedda and the lake through the eyes of a child? Believes the tales she told about nymphs and black swans, and that the lake cannot harm anyone who trusts it.

Or is she just looking for an excuse? A reason to stay, to wait a little longer for someone who obviously isn’t coming?

On the way down to the car park, she goes over the timeline.

Hedda suffers a heart attack in September. As soon as she recovers, she defies the doctor’s orders and continues to put her damaged heart under strain with a daily sauna and swim. She doesn’t stop until 12 November. That’s when the major change in her behaviour occurs. According to Kjell Green, that was just before she received the offers on Gärdsnäset.

Maybe Hedda simply decided to take better care of herself so that she’d be able to enjoy the money. However, something else happens at around the same time. Something which suggests that Hedda had other plans.