‘So what?’
‘I don’t know. Closed off.’
‘Closed off?’
‘Yes. For God’s sake, you didn’t even take any time off last year when . . .’
As usual he can’t say the words.
‘We got divorced, Andreas. Remember? And yet you keep on calling me.’
‘I still care about you. I worry about you.’
‘In that case I think you should stop. Get on with your own life and let me get on with mine.’
Another silence. There’s something he wants to say, and she thinks she knows what it is. She decides to help him out.
‘I believe you’ve met someone.’
A faint gasp. ‘Who told you that?’
‘My mother, of course. Apparently, you bumped into Marcus the other day.’
‘Well, yes, but . . .’ She can hear how uncomfortable he is. ‘I wanted to tell you myself. She’s a former colleague and . . .’
‘You don’t owe me anything, Andreas,’ she interrupts him. ‘Not a single thing.’
She stops walking, makes a huge effort to sound calm and composed.
‘I’m very happy for you, but please stop running errands for my mother.’
She ends the call outside the door of her apartment block. Swipes her fob over the card reader, passes through the locked doors and pauses briefly beneath the camera in the spacious lobby. In the lift she hesitates, then presses the bottom button instead of the top one.
The storage area in the basement is a little unusual. No wire netting cages with cross-country skis sticking out, no piles of banana boxes crammed with Christmas decorations, offering an unwanted insight into other people’s lives. Instead, there is a series of neatly numbered steel doors each with a keypad, in an air-conditioned corridor monitored by CCTV.
Her own storage unit is empty except for two identical plastic boxes. She hasn’t been down here since she moved in last year.
All the furniture in her apartment is new, ordered from the NK department store on the day she signed the contract. Andreas tried to get her to take a load of stuff with her – things they’d bought together, presents he’d given her – but she said no. All she wanted was the little Guan Yu statuette from her father, and these two boxes.
She runs a hand over the box on the left, caresses it tenderly. Inside it is a tiny sleep suit, a flannel rabbit, and a piece of paper with two small prints on it. A hand and a foot. She doesn’t open the lid, just makes sure that the two plastic clips at the sides are holding it in place.
The contents of the box on the right are much older.
Two frames protected by bubble wrap, two diplomas: a second and a third place in the university swimming championship, which once hung in her student room. A pile of textbooks on behavioural psychology, risk management and interviewing techniques. Beneath them she finds what she is looking for: The Great Gatsby. The cover is battered, the pages yellowing. Inside the front cover is a stamp: ST PAUL’S HOSPITAL HONG KONG. The name makes the skin on her back begin to burn.
She was a patient at St Paul’s for almost three months. She could hardly move her arms and legs; she was in so much pain that she couldn’t bear anyone touching her. In the end they put her in an induced coma for two whole weeks.
An enterovirus, the doctors said. Not uncommon in young women. Presumably the virus had got into her body while she was vulnerable to infection because of the burns she’d suffered in the fire, and it had then led to severe meningitis. Her mother had threatened to sue the hospitals, both the one in Ängelholm and the one in Hong Kong. She said their hygiene routines must have been unsatisfactory.
Laura knows better. Knows exactly where the winter fire came from, and why.
Gently she lifts the back flap of the dust jacket. There is a dog-eared photograph tucked inside. Pressure and age have made the photo stick to the cover, but with a little persuasion she manages to free it.
Six people on a jetty. It is the summer of 1987, and she is fifteen years old. The sun is shining; everyone is happy. No one has any inkling of the catastrophe that is just a few months away. Jack is on the far right. She runs her index finger over his smiling face. His eyes make her heart flutter in a way that she hasn’t experienced since that night in the hospital when she saw him for the last time.
They’re after me. I have to get away from here!
5
Winter 1987
‘What a lovely picture – where was it taken?’
The woman in the adjoining seat was pointing to the photograph in Laura’s hand.
Her name was Ewa, with a w, according to the boarding card she was using as a bookmark. The book didn’t have a dust jacket, and Ewa seemed to be at pains to hide the title. It was probably The Valley of Horses, or the latest Jackie Collins.
‘Vintersjön – it’s a lake in northern Skåne.’
Laura and Ewa had ended up side by side when Laura changed planes in Frankfurt. She had observed the older woman discreetly, just as she assessed her classmates every time she started at a new school. Tried to work out who Ewa was by listening and watching. Committing every detail to memory: clothes, accessories, interests.
If they’d been the same age and in the same class, Laura’s next move would have been to sit near Ewa and her friends in the dining hall. Listen to their conversation, smile in the right places, try to be let into the group. Shed the label of ‘the new girl’. Be accepted.
‘That must be your mother.’
Ewa pointed to the woman on the far left.
‘No, that’s my Aunt Hedda.’
‘Oh – there’s definitely a resemblance. You’ve got the same hair colour. I think it’s lovely,’ Ewa added hastily.
Laura didn’t tell her how many times she’d wished she didn’t have red hair. Her mother had even suggested having it dyed so that she wouldn’t be teased in her next school, but Hedda had persuaded her to leave it.
People don’t like anything that’s different, but that just means they’re idiots, not that there’s something wrong with you. You’re perfect as you are. My little princess.
The flight had seemed extra long this time. Admittedly the first film had been Dirty Dancing, which Mum had refused to let her see in the cinema, but the rest of the films had been soooo boring, and even the paperbacks she’d brought with her hadn’t held her attention.
‘Are any of the others your cousins?’
One of the holidaymakers had taken the picture last year, a few days before Laura flew back to Hong Kong. Aunt Hedda, herself and the whole gang out on the pontoon. Summer colours, big smiles, laughter that you could almost hear.
‘Aunt Hedda calls us her children, but she doesn’t actually have any of her own. She was a childminder – she looked after Iben, Peter and Tomas when they were little, and Jack is her foster son.’ Laura pointed to Jack. ‘He’s lived with her since he was eleven.’
Her finger lingered on his face for a second before she moved it to the dark-haired girl in dungarees in the middle of the group, between her and Jack.
‘Iben’s family live at Källegården, next to Aunt Hedda’s holiday village.’
Iben had put her arms around their shoulders, pulled their heads close to hers so that their cheeks were touching.
‘She looks sporty.’
Laura took a closer look at Iben. How she seemed to be pressing herself a little harder to Jack’s cheek than Laura’s. Unintentionally, of course. She’d been telling herself that ever since Aunt Hedda enclosed the photo with a letter.
‘She is. She’s broken almost every school record in athletics. And she got full marks in her standard achievement tests. In every subject.’