‘With different men, you mean?’
Lilian presses her lips together. ‘I don’t gossip.’
‘But she does come here sometimes?’ says Jan. ‘To Bill’s Bar?’
‘She comes with me sometimes, but she prefers the Medina Palace.’
‘The Medina Palace?’
‘The big night club here in town. It’s almost as luxurious as St Patricia’s.’
‘You think St Patricia’s is luxurious?’
‘Absolutely — it’s a luxury hotel.’
Jan looks at her with a blank expression; he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Lilian quickly goes on: ‘Listen... Every room at St Psycho’s costs four thousand per night. Four thousand kronor! Those who are in there don’t have to pay, of course, but that’s what it costs the taxpayer. Doctors, guards, cameras, medication... it all costs money. The patients don’t know how well off they are.’
‘And you and I work there... next door to the luxury hotel.’
‘We do indeed,’ says Lilian. ‘Let’s drink to that!’
Jan carries on chatting to her for another fifteen minutes or so, then stretches and fakes a little yawn. ‘Time for me to head home, I think.’
‘One last beer?’ says Lilian, with a slow wink.
Jan shakes his head. ‘Not tonight.’
Starting to party now would be a big mistake; he will be taking on extra responsibilities next week. On Thursday he will have a timetabled evening shift at the pre-school; for the first time he will be completely alone with the children.
12
‘So how are you feeling, Jan?’ asks Marie-Louise. ‘Would you like to tell us?’
‘Of course... but there isn’t much to say, really. I feel fine.’
‘Is that all? No problems fitting in with the team?’
‘No.’ Jan looks around the table at Andreas, Hanna and Lilian. ‘No problems at all.’
‘We’re all very pleased to hear that, Jan.’
Monday’s feelgood meeting for the staff takes place before the children begin to arrive.
This is Jan’s first time. They are all looking at him, the new boy, but he finds it difficult to relax and talk at the same time.
‘This is an important job,’ he says. ‘I’m well aware of that.’
They stop staring, and a few minutes later the feelgood meeting is over. Thank goodness.
Just before story time, Jan finds a sign of life from Alice Rami. Perhaps.
Little Josefine is helping him. She was one of the children who tormented the mouse in the forest, but Jan is trying to forget that incident, along with Leo’s unsettling words about his father. And today Josefine is just like any other little girclass="underline" she is playing with a doll when Jan comes to fetch a book.
‘Is there any particular story you’d like to hear today, Josefine?’
She looks up and nods, several times. ‘The one about the lady who makes animals!’
Jan looks at her. ‘What’s it called?’
‘The Animal Lady!’
Jan has never heard of it, but Josefine goes straight over to the book boxes, rummages through them and pulls out a thin white book, about the size of an LP record. She’s right; the title is The Animal Lady.
‘OK. Fine.’
The book is similar to all the others in the box, but there is no author’s name, and the picture below the title is barely visible; it is just a faint pencil drawing of a small island and a slender lighthouse. It looks as if it is handmade; when Jan looks more closely he can see that someone has cut the pages and stuck them together with ordinary sticky tape.
He flicks through it. The text is written on the right-hand page. On the left-hand page there are pencil drawings, but like the one on the cover they are so faint they are hardly visible.
Jan is curious; he wants to read The Animal Lady. ‘Come along, everyone!’ he shouts. ‘Story time!’
The children settle down among the cushions.
Jan sits down on the chair in front of them and holds up the book. ‘Today we’re going to read about an animal lady.’
‘What does that mean?’ Matilda asks.
Jan looks to Josefine for help, but none is forthcoming.
‘Well... let’s see.’ He opens the book and begins to read:
Once upon a time there was a lady who knew how to make animals, and her name was Maria Blanker. Maria was very lonely. She had moved to a little island right in the middle of the sea, with a lighthouse that never flashed its bright light. She was living on the island in a little house made of driftwood.
Apparently someone lived in the lighthouse too. There was a name on the mail box: THE GREAT MR ZYLIZYLON. Maria could hear heavy footsteps echoing through the lighthouse every night as someone with big feet stomped up and down the stairs.
Maria wanted to be polite, and had knocked on the door of the lighthouse several times when she first arrived on the island, but she was actually quite pleased that no one opened the door.
Jan stops for a moment; he seems to think he recognizes the name Maria Blanker. But where from?
And the word Zylizylon sounds medical. Perhaps it’s some kind of medication?
He looks at the drawing. It shows a little cottage with a tall lighthouse in the background. The house is pale grey, like driftwood bleached by the sun. The lighthouse is as slender as a matchstick.
‘Don’t stop!’ shouts Josefine.
So Jan carries on:
The lighthouse never flashed its bright light because the ships didn’t need it any more. There were tracks laid out all over the sea these days, so the ships never drifted off course. But there were no tracks near the lighthouse. Maria never saw any ships, and she felt even more lonely.
There were no animals on the island. Maria didn’t like making them any more.
The next picture shows the inside of the cottage: a bare room containing only a table and a chair. A skinny woman with spiky hair and a wide mouth is sitting on the chair, the drooping corners of her mouth protruding like black twigs.
Instead Maria grew carrots and potatoes in the back garden. She drank taminal tea and looked for pretty pebbles on the shore. She still felt lonely, but she never knocked on the door of the lighthouse again. She didn’t want to meet Mr Zylizylon, because the sound of his heavy footsteps on the stairs grew louder and louder every day.
The third drawing shows the thin, grey figure of the animal lady standing in front of the closed iron door of the lighthouse. The picture is so blurred that it is impossible to make out her face. Is she unhappy, or perhaps afraid?
At night Maria dreamed of all the animals she used to make when she was young and happy. People liked to watch her make them; they used to clap when the animals appeared from inside her clothes.
But the animals had got bigger and bigger, stranger and stranger. Maria had been unable to control them. In the end she had been too frightened to make them any more.
The fourth drawing is dark. The animal lady is sleeping in a narrow bed, like a grey shadow. Above her other shadows crawl and writhe around each other as they emerge from a dark tunnel in the wall.
The atmosphere in the drawing is menacing; Jan turns the page and carries on reading:
Then one day something happened that had never happened before. While Maria was gathering pebbles down on the shore, she suddenly saw a ship on the horizon. It seemed to be coming closer, the waves nudging it nearer to the island. Maria realized it had come off track.