She looks in the mirror. Notes that she is even paler than usual, if that’s possible.
‘Calm down,’ she murmurs. ‘Just calm down.’
After a while she feels better. The voices in the dining room have died down. A slight draught indicates that someone has opened a window.
With hindsight, she realises it wasn’t a good idea to take Tobias down like that. If she hadn’t been showing off, the woman wouldn’t have set fire to her hair, and she wouldn’t be standing here throwing up in Steph’s marble hand basin.
Her headache has got worse, and all she wants to do is to go home, close the door, not see anyone. But she can’t let Steph down.
She takes out her phone. One text message, two missed calls. The first is from a contact called Andreas ex-husband/stalker.
One of Steph’s little jokes that she hasn’t had the energy to correct. It’s her own fault for leaving her phone unattended for a few seconds. Plus, it’s not entirely untrue.
A year after the divorce, Andreas still calls her almost every day. Over the last few weeks, he’s been calling even more frequently. She ought to ask him to stop, of course. Explain that they both need to move on. And yet she hasn’t done it.
The other missed call is from a number she doesn’t recognise. A landline with an area code that looks vaguely familiar.
She opens a search app. The number belongs to a firm of lawyers called Håkansson in Ängelholm, and as soon as she sees the name of the place, a faint warning bell begins to ring in the back of her mind. She makes the call before she has time to think, not really expecting anyone to answer at eight o’clock on a Friday evening.
‘Håkansson.’
The man on the other end of the line speaks with a rough Skåne accent.
‘Hi – my name is Laura Aulin. I think you tried to contact me about an hour ago?’
‘I did, thank you so much for getting back to me.’
She hears the rustle of papers.
‘It’s about your aunt. Hedda, Hedda Aulin. Have you spoken to her recently?’
The warning bell is louder now, and the nausea comes flooding back.
‘We . . . We’re not in touch.’
‘No?’
‘No, we haven’t been for many years. Has something happened to her?’
The brief silence answers her question. She swallows hard.
‘I’m very sorry, but your aunt has passed away.’
‘When?’
‘At some point during the early hours of Monday morning, we think.’
Without warning the skin on her back begins to crawl, a painful mixture of heat and cold that she hasn’t felt for many years. At least not while she was awake.
‘So anyway . . .’ Håkansson goes on. ‘Your aunt spoke to me not long ago. She wanted to make a will. You’re her only heir.’
He falls silent, waiting for Laura to say something, but she is lost for words.
‘As I’m sure you understand, there are a number of practical decisions that will have to be made concerning her estate,’ he continues.
‘I . . . I understand,’ she manages to say. ‘Can I call you back tomorrow?’
‘Monday will be fine – there’s no hurry. Once again, my condolences. Your aunt was . . .’ He pauses, searching for the right words. ‘A very special woman.’
He ends the call, and Laura stands there with the phone pressed to her ear. The skin on her back is burning like fire, drops of sweat are trickling down towards the waistband of her trousers. The rest of her body is ice-cold.
2
Water is nothing to be afraid of, Laura. Not as long as you respect it.
Hedda’s words echo in Laura’s mind as she swims.
The pool in the apartment block’s spa and gym complex is twenty metres long, and Laura covers a length in fifteen seconds, breathing only after each tumble turn. Her movements are even and economical, using up no more oxygen than necessary. Length after length, usually with nothing else in her head except the sound of the water and her own heartbeat. Today it’s different. Her thoughts are all over the place, bringing up voices, memories.
She was never any good at sport, particularly anything involving teamwork. The expensive private school gave her plenty of opportunity to find that out.
Swimming was different. There were no team mates, no balls. No visible opponents. Just herself and the water.
It was Hedda who taught her to swim properly. She’d already had swimming lessons in Singapore, managing exactly one panic-stricken length of doggy paddle with the teacher beside her in the pool, while her mother sat on a sun lounger flicking through Vogue.
Hedda had seen how afraid Laura was, and one summer’s evening she took her out in the little rowing boat. Laura was seven, but she can still remember every detail. The full moon and the starlit sky above them. The silence when Hedda stopped the oars in the middle of the lake.
‘The water will hold you up,’ she said. ‘If you just have the courage to trust it. And I’ll be right behind you. All the way home.’
She pointed to the shore and the lights of the holiday village.
‘Are you ready?’
Laura inhaled, nodded. Then Hedda capsized the boat.
As always, Laura showers in the cubicle on the far left, where the grouting between the tiles is clean, the stream of water is steady, and the drain operates efficiently. She meticulously sprays the walls and floor before stepping in. The black bottle she has brought with her contains a fifty per cent dilution of chlorine, guaranteed to kill most micro-organisms that could be lurking on the tiles. She keeps her flip-flops on, just in case.
Her swimsuit has long sleeves and bears more than a passing resemblance to a wetsuit. She doesn’t take it off until she has locked the door behind her. No one can see her in here, and she doesn’t need to turn her back to the wall while she showers.
She and Hedda repeated that first swim every single summer. Capsized the boat together, even though there was no need. If the water was really warm, they would take their time making their way back to the shore, floating on their backs while she pointed out the different constellations and told Hedda their names.
The little rowing boat would be bobbing by the shore right outside the house next morning.
The boat knows the lake as well as I do. It can find its own way home.
When she has finished showering she wraps herself in her bathrobe, pulls up the hood and takes the lift straight to her apartment. The cleaner has been in while she was swimming, leaving behind nothing but the faint smell of detergent.
Laura kicks off her flip-flops and walks barefoot across the smooth limestone floor. Straightens the little Guan Yu statuette that protects the entrance against evil spirits; it is a millimetre out of position thanks to the cleaner’s efforts with the duster.
The under-floor heating is on, the thermostat shows twenty-five degrees. There is a stove in one corner, but the fire itself is actually gas, controlled by technology and contained behind reinforced glass. She switches it on with a remote, avoids looking at the flames. Then she slips her feet into her sheepskin slippers.
It is just after three o’clock on Saturday afternoon. The darkness is already beginning to gather over Stockholm’s snow-clad roofs. The apartment is silent; the only sound is a faint hum of traffic from far below. She decides not to turn on the lights just yet. She picks up her phone from its charging dock. No messages or missed calls. Not that she was expecting any, but there is a call she has to make. She should have done it this morning, but she’s put it off for as long as possible.
‘Madeleine Aulin.’