However, Elsa sets about the task with such enthusiasm that Laura has no choice but to steel herself and get on with it. By the time the skip arrives, they’ve made good progress.
The truck driver is a sullen individual who appears to be as kindly disposed to Laura as the ironmonger was, but Elsa jollies him along, and he ends up helping them to carry out two of the old fridges, a bed and a rusty sink unit that are blocking the way into the living room.
When the driver has left, they decide to take a break. They brush the snow off the top step and sit down on two faded garden chairs with a can of Coca-Cola Zero each and a packet of cinnamon buns to share.
‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’
‘Christmas holidays.’
‘Come on, Elsa – it’s not even Lucia yet.’
‘Are you going to tell my dad?’
‘That depends on how well you clean.’
Elsa tries not to smile, but fails.
‘You had a little gang when you were kids, didn’t you?’
‘Mmm. Your dad used to call us the Goonies. Like in the film,’ Laura adds, realising from Elsa’s expression that her generation are probably not interested in comedies from the Eighties.
‘What was she like?’ Elsa asks after a pause.
‘Who?’
‘Iben Jensen. Dad never wants to talk about her. Was she as amazing as everyone says?’
‘She was smart – really smart. Top marks in everything . . .’
Elsa waves a dismissive hand.
‘I already know all that. Tell me something else, something nobody knows.’
Laura thinks for a moment.
‘Iben was very competitive. She always had to win – she got really angry if she didn’t. She’d even get mad playing Uno.’
Elsa looks slightly more interested.
‘That must have been annoying.’
Laura shrugs. ‘We all have our hang-ups.’
‘Did you ever fall out?’
‘I guess so.’
‘What about?’
Laura tosses the question straight back at her.
‘What do you and your friends usually fall out about?’
‘What makes you think I have a lot of friends?’ Elsa stands up, makes a point of looking at her phone. ‘I have to go home. I might stop by tomorrow.’
‘Fine.’
Laura stays where she is while Elsa puts on her helmet, kick-starts the bike and disappears.
It feels a little sad to be left alone, not least because twilight is falling. On the other hand, it suits her very well. She doesn’t want curious teenage eyes watching her when she’s searching for Tomas’s letters.
The studio/office is probably the best place to start. She removes the cardboard boxes containing the accounts for the holiday village, a couple of old lamps and a broken chair, but the room still feels cluttered. The shelves are crammed with more boxes, folders and piles of papers, and the floor space is filled by three ill-matched filing cabinets, a large desk and a lathe. Oil paintings of various sizes are stacked against the walls; some are finished, some are not. Most are in the naïve style using bright colours, and they’re really not very good. Nowhere near the same class as the one Hedda has been using as a noticeboard.
Laura goes over to the desk, flicks through some of the papers. Most are old, and seem to be related to the accounts. Dust whirls around the room, and for what must be the fiftieth time she presses her fingers against her mouth to make sure the mask is as tight-fitting as possible.
But maybe the dust can help her.
She moves to the bookshelves and looks closely at the layer of dust that covers everything like a grey mat. On the top middle shelf there are six shoeboxes with a much thinner coating of dust. She lifts them down, places them on the desk.
The first contains slides, the next photographs. She picks up a couple. Hedda when she was young, at a pavement café somewhere with palm trees in the background. She is surrounded by happy, smiling people, raising their glasses in a toast to the photographer. From a purely statistical point of view, at least half of them must be dead by now, just like Hedda. She hears Steph’s voice in her head:
What a little ray of sunshine you are, Laura!
The next box is full of bundles of postcards and letters. She tips them out onto the desk, immediately recognises the handwriting in the thickest bundle.
Her own.
She skims through some of the correspondence. The tone is so childish. Steph would call it needy.
Dear Hedda, I can’t wait to see you. I’ll be there soon. What are you doing? What are the others doing?
The same dear Hedda who saved all these letters suddenly stopped writing to her.
Laura is slightly ashamed of herself. The whole thing was her fault, after all. If she hadn’t done what she did, Iben would have lived, had a family of her own. Maybe Laura and Jack would have found their way back to each other, maybe Peter and Tomas’s lives would have been different, maybe . . .
She puts down her old letters, turns to the postcards. The first one makes her heart leap.
I’ve arrived in Hamburg. Don’t worry, everything’s fine.
Happy Christmas, by the way.
Jack
The card is dated 21 December 1987. A week after the fire. Five days after he kissed her goodbye at the hospital.
There are five postcards from Jack in total, all with equally brief messages, sent at intervals of a few months. First a couple from Hamburg, then one from Munich. All saying the same thing: I’m fine, don’t worry. No contact details. No address, no post box number, no phone number.
The last two were sent from Berlin in 1989. The final one is dated in October, less than a month before the wall came down. This time there is an addition that makes her heart leap again.
I hope you’ve heard from Princess, and that she’s doing OK.
Jack was thinking about her. Almost two years after the fire, he was still thinking about her.
She tries to focus, move on, but an irritating sliver of happiness remains.
At the bottom of the box she finds letters from her father. The handwriting is clear and plain, the tone matter-of-fact. They’re mostly about money, shares from Laura’s grandfather, a property they inherited that Jacob has sold.
He ends the letters to his sister with Yours sincerely, which doesn’t surprise her. More surprising is the discovery of a couple of letters from her mother in the same bundle. They deal with practical details – Laura’s term dates, planning for summers and winters at Gärdsnäset. The tone is polite, nothing more.
One single letter is tucked down the side of the box. The envelope is stamped 1995, which makes it considerably more recent than the rest. The handwriting is rounded, almost childish.
Dear Hedda,
Thank you for your letters.
I often think about what happened. Sometimes I see her face before me. No one was meant to get hurt. But things didn’t turn out the way we expected.
Tomas Rask
She reads the letter several times, trying to interpret the clipped sentences. Tomas seems to be admitting that he was behind the fire. That he has regrets. It’s somehow reassuring, but the last sentence leaves her shaken.
Things didn’t turn out the way we expected.
We? Who else was involved? What had Tomas and this other person expected?
Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. Automatically she reaches for her mobile, then remembers that she turned it off because she wanted to be left in peace, plus there’s hardly any coverage out here.
The ringing continues; it’s coming from the living room. On the floor between the sofa and the wall she tracks down a dusty old push-button phone.