The morning had been dedicated to preparations for the following day. They had rung around and invited the people they wanted to invite, the community hall had been booked for a small reception and a buffet had been ordered from a caterer in Norrtälje. In the morning, before the wedding, Anna-Greta would travel across to a friend in Nåten who used to work as a hairdresser, and still knew a fair bit about how to make a person look their best.
'So what shall I do, then?' Simon asked.
Anna-Greta had laughed. 'Well, I suppose you'd better make the most of your last few hours of freedom. Practise doing up your bow tie.'
Simon had called Göran to invite him and they had also decided that Simon would make use of his time to come over and sort out Göran's well at last. He had to do something, otherwise he would just end up wandering around and getting nervous.
Despite the way Anna-Greta had fast-tracked the whole process, as if she just wanted it out of the way, things had changed when it was clear it was really going to happen. First of all there was the reception, then the buffet and the invitations. Then this idea that she needed to go and get herself done up beforehand. And now the dress.
This sudden burst of activity was not without its effect on Simon. He was sitting here now worrying about whether or not he should wear patent-leather shoes, and whether they still fitted. And even if he should use pomade in his hair.
Everything went quiet out in the hidey-hole as Anna-Girt gathered things together. Then she emerged. Simon straightened his back. To be honest, he thought the whole thing was quite amusing. The wedding and everything surrounding it had brought out a new side of Anna-Gretleather, more feminine than her everyday persona. He liked it, as long as it didn't go too far.
She came into the kitchen with a pile of dresses over her arm and something in her hand, which she put down on the worktop. She held the dresses up in front of her one by one, and Simon expressed a preference for a beige one in a heavyish fabric, embroidered with white flowers. It turned out that this was Anna-Greta's favourite too, and so the matter was settled. When Anna-Greta had put away the rejected dresses, she picked up the item from the worktop and placed it on the table in front of Simon.
'Do you remember this? I found it out there.'
The object lying on the table was a small fishing spear made of metal. Simon picked it up and turned it over in his fingers.
Oh yes, he remembered it all right.
When Johan was eighteen, he and Simon had worked together to dig a herb bed next to Anna-Greta's house. While he was digging Johan had found the fishing spear. They had borrowed books to check it out, and had come to the conclusion that it was at least a thousand years old.
The find aroused Johan's interest, and during that summer he borrowed more books and read up on the subject. What fascinated him most was that their patch of land, the place where their house stood, had once been under water. Deep under water.
He had read about land elevation in school, of course, learned that the islands were rising out of the sea by about half a centimetre per year. But the spear made it real and concrete. A person in a boat, someone who was out spearing fish, had passed directly over their garden a thousand years ago, and dropped their spear. It was a thought that wouldn't let Johan be.
Reading had never been a passion for him, but all that summer he studied the history of the archipelago in general and of Domarö in particular. It went so far that he even considered applying to university to study geology or something similar, but when the autumn came he managed to get a place as an apprentice at the shipyard in Nåten, and his plans for higher education were abandoned.
The fishing spear was forgotten, and finally ended up in the hidey-hole.
Simon balanced the spear on his index and middle fingers. It weighed about half a kilo, and had probably been attached to a stick, which had rotted away long ago. The fish had been speared, lifted out of the water and eaten. The person who had been hunting the fish had probably made a new spear, hunted more fish and eaten them, but to no purpose. He too had eventually fallen to the bottom of the sea or on to the ground and rotted away. Only the spear still existed.
'Anna-Greta?' asked Simon. 'What actually happened to Johan?'
Anna-Greta folded the bridal gown carefully and placed it in a plastic bag to protect it. Simon didn't know if it was a stupid question, but in a way she had brought the topic up herself by bringing him the spear.
He had begun to think he wasn't going to get an answer when Anna-Greta laid the plastic bag on the kitchen sofa and said, 'Have you heard of something called Gunnilsöra?'
'Yes,' said Simon. 'It's that island you can only see sometimes. The one that appears and disappears. Why?'
'What do you think about it?'
Simon didn't understand where the conversation was going, but replied as best he could. 'I don't know that I think anything about it, really. I know it's been interpreted as everything from the shores of Paradise to the dwelling of the Evil One. But it's some kind of optical phenomenon, surely? Something to do with the weather.'
Anna-Greta ran her finger over the spear, which was clean and smooth after Johan had cleaned it. 'It called to him. He caught something he shouldn't have caught.'
'Called to him? What called to him?'
'He said it was an island over towards Gåvasten. But that it wasn't Gåvasten. That it kept moving. One night it was just off the Shack, he said. And it was calling to him. Don't you remember how frightened he was, Simon? How frightened he was all the time?'
'Yes,' said Simon. He remembered both the enthusiastic boy who had dug up the spear, and the increasingly confused and distant man the boy had become. 'But this sounds crazy. An island? Hunting a person?'
Anna-Greta leaned towards him and lowered her voice to a whisper. 'Haven't you heard the sea? Heard it calling?'
Only a week ago Simon would have been concerned about Anna-Greta's mental health if she had asked him a question like that with such quivering earnestness. A week ago he hadn't seen the depths, hadn't sunk a body into those same depths.
'I don't know,' he replied. 'Maybe. Have you heard it?'
Anna-Greta looked out of the window and her gaze reached far into the distance, to the outermost shipping lanes. 'Have I told you about Gustav Jansson?' she asked. 'The lighthouse keeper? On Stora Korset?'
'Yes. You knew him, didn't you?'
Anna-Greta nodded. 'It all started with him. For me.'
The keeper
Stora Korset is the last outpost facing the Aland Sea. The island is so remote that the lighthouse keeper there receives what is known as an isolation supplement in addition to his normal pay. A little bonus for enduring the loneliness.
From the end of the 1930s to the beginning of the 1950s, it was Gustav Jansson who ran the whole show out there. He originally came from Domarö, but found it difficult to get on with people, and when the post of lighthouse keeper became available he took it as an opportunity to be left in peace at last. Then he spent thirteen years there with four hens as his only company.
He did not like the war. The din of practice firing and drift mines that had to be rendered harmless was one thing, but the worst thing was that visitors came to the island. Military personnel knocking on his door and asking questions about this and that, boats mooring at his jetty on reconnaissance missions. For a while there was talk of some kind of fortification on Stora Korset, but fortunately the plan came to nothing.
How terrible would that have looked! A tower with a gun emplacement down on the rocks below, soldiers stomping around smoking and frightening the hens. No, if that had happened he would have demanded to leave forthwith.
However, the war did bring one good thing.
Gustav Jansson had never been married. Not because he had anything in particular against women, no, he disliked men just as much. He was a solitary soul by nature and not suited to the companionship of marriage.