He walked out on to the jetty, mainly to see if it was strong enough to bear his weight. Oh yes. Some of the planks were rotten and a log had come loose from the lower section, but the jetty would probably last for another couple of years at least.
A light breeze was blowing from the south-west, and he had to cup his hand around his lighter in order to light a cigarette. He blew smoke into the wind, pulled out the plastic bottle of diluted wine, took a couple of swigs and listened to the sighing of the wind in the reeds in the inlet. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning, but he was already pleasantly mellow, able to contemplate without a trace of anxiety the green reeds rippling in the breeze.
Without the wine he would probably have started imagining things. Sigrid's body had been found in the reeds a couple of days earlier. There was no end to what he might have been able to come up with to scare himself witless. Simon had told him it was as he suspected. Sigrid had been lying in the water for less than twenty-four hours when he found her. Where she had been lying before that, no one knew.
A couple of forensic technicians in waders had prodded around in the reeds. Anders had stood at the bedroom window watching them, but it hadn't looked as if they had found anything that might solve the mystery. They had left trampled reeds behind them and returned to the mainland.
After checking the piece of chipboard he had nailed over the broken window, Anders went inside, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The number of beads on the tile had now reached a good hundred. Apart from the very first ones, he hadn't put one single bead there himself. It happened at night, after he had gone to bed.
He was still waiting for a message, and the beads gave him nothing.
Apart from the white patch, only blue beads were used.
He could feel Maja's presence in the house more strongly with each passing day, but she refused to give him a clear indication. He was no longer afraid, but rather comforted by the certainty that something of his daughter lingered on in the world. He had her with him, he talked to her. The constant level of slight intoxication prevented him from gathering his thoughts, made him receptive.
There was a knock at the door. After three seconds it opened, and Anders could tell from the footsteps that it was Simon.
'Anyone home?'
'In the kitchen. Come in.'
Anders glanced around quickly to make sure he hadn't left any wine bottles out. All clear. Just a carton of grape juice, standing innocently on the worktop.
Simon walked into the kitchen and sat down without ceremony. 'Have you got any coffee?'
Anders got up, poured a cup and put it down in front of Simon, who was sitting contemplating the bead tile.
'New hobby?'
Anders made a dismissive gesture and caught his own cup, which wobbled but didn't tip over. Simon didn't notice. His gaze was turned inward, and it was obvious he had something on his mind. He sat there for a while running his finger over the surface of the table, drawing invisible shapes, then asked, 'Do you think you can know another person? Really know another person?'
Anders smiled. 'You ought to be the expert in that field.'
'I'm beginning to think I'm not.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean you can never become another person. However much you might sometimes imagine you can. Have you ever been in the situation where you're so close to someone that sometimes…just for a moment…when you look at that person, you get the impression, just in passing, that…that's me. A kind of confusion, a vacuum where you don't know who is thinking the thought. If this other person is me.
And then you realise. That you were wrong. That I am me, after all. Has that happened to you?'
Anders had never heard Simon talk like this, and he wasn't sure he liked it. Simon was supposed to be uncomplicated and stable-Anders had enough existential uncertainty of his own. However, he said, 'Yes. I think so. I know what you mean, anyway. But why? Is it something to do with Gran?'
'Among other things. It's strange, isn't it? You can spend your whole life with another person. And yet you can't know. Not really. Because you can't become that person. Can you?'
Anders didn't understand what Simon was getting at. 'But I mean, this is obvious. We know all this.'
Simon tapped his index finger on the table. Quickly, crossly. 'That's the point. I don't think we do know it. We take ourselves as the starting point, and we imagine a whole lot of things. And just because we understand what the other person is saying, we think we know who she is. But we have no idea. No idea. Because we can't be that other person.'
When Simon had gone, Anders lay on Maja's bed for a long time, looking up at the ceiling where the cobwebs floated outwards like dirty lines. He had made up a new bottle, and at irregular intervals he sucked away at it. He thought about what Simon had said.
We can't become another person. But we think we can.
Wasn't that what had driven him to ring Cecilia? The fact that he had assumed she would understand, that she would be able to see what he could see, because they had been a part of each other for so many years. Become the same person, almost.
But there was no mystical connection. They separated, and no longer had anything to do with one another. If their affinity had been real, it would not have been so easy to break. They would have soldiered on and understood each other completely, all the way through the hell in which they found themselves.
Anders raised his bottle and made a circular movement with his hand, encompassing the room and the house, and said out loud, 'But I do understand you.'
Or did he?
He thought about all the times he had stood looking at Maja when she was a baby, sleeping in her cot. How amazed he had been at the rapid movements of her eyes beneath her eyelids when she was dreaming. How he had wished he could get inside her head, see what she could see, try to understand what it was that her young mind could possibly have to work through. What the world looked like to her, really.
No. We don't understand.
After Maja's disappearance he had carried her with him all the time. He had talked to her in his head, or out loud. As time passed, he had formed a clear picture of her. Since she was no longer alive, she couldn't change, and he had carried her like a doll, a frozen image to turn to.
'It's not like that any more,' he said out into the room. 'Now I'm wondering what you're doing. What it looks like where you are, what's happening to you. I'm pretty scared, and I wish I could see you again. That's what I wish most of all.' Tears welled up in his eyes, spilled over and ran down on to Maja's pillow. 'Just to see you again. Hold you in my arms. That's what I wish. That's what I wish.'
Anders snuffled the snot back up his nose, wiped his eyes, dried his tears. He sat up on the edge of the bed and drew his shoulders together, cowering like an anxious child afraid of a telling-off. He spotted the heap of Bamse the Bear comics under the bed, and picked up the top one. Issue number 2, 1993. He had bought a whole pile at a flea market so that Maja would have something to read, or rather look at, when they were on Domarö.
The cover showed Bamse and his friends Little Leap the rabbit and Shellman the tortoise on a boat, on their way to an island shrouded in mist. As usual Little Leap looked terribly worried. Anders lay down on his back on Maja's bed and started to read.
The story was about Captain Buster and some buried treasure, which turned out to be a trick. Anders carried on reading, smiling at the familiar dialogue he had read aloud to Maja so many times, in different interpretations:
'Wait, Bamse! I've got some thunder honey.'
'Puff…thank you, Little Leap…puff!'
'Oh no! He's dropped the pipe. Now they're in trouble.'