Why get rid of all your books? she wondered.
Lisa Stöckel stood at the kitchen window watching Anna-Maria’s car disappear down the hill in a cloud of oily smoke. Then she sat down on the kitchen sofa next to the sleeping Labrador. She stroked the dog’s throat and chest just as a bitch licks her puppies to calm them. The dog woke up and thumped her tail affectionately a few times.
“What’s the matter, Majken?” asked Lisa. “You don’t even get up to say hello to people anymore.”
Her throat constricted in a painful knot. Her eyelids prickled. There were tears in there. She wasn’t going to shed them.
She must be in terrible pain, she thought.
She got up quickly.
Oh God, Mildred, she thought. Forgive me. Please forgive me. I’m… trying to do the right thing, but I’m afraid.
She had to get some air, suddenly felt ill. She made it out onto the porch and threw up a little pile of vomit.
The dogs were there at once. If she didn’t want it, they could take care of it for her. She pushed them away with her foot.
That bloody policewoman. She’d got right inside her head and opened it up like a picture book. Mildred on every single page. She just couldn’t look at those pictures anymore. Like that first time, six years ago. She remembered how she’d been standing by the rabbit hutches. It was feeding time. Rabbits, white, gray, black, spotted, got up on their hind legs and pushed their little noses through the chicken wire. She doled out pellets and shriveled bits of carrot and other root vegetables in little terra-cotta dishes. Felt a little bit of sorrow in her heart, because the rabbits would soon be in a stew down at the pub.
Then she’s standing behind her, the priest who’s just moved in. They haven’t met before. Lisa hadn’t heard her coming. Mildred Nilsson is a small woman, about the same age as her. Somewhere around fifty. She has a small, pale face. Her hair is long and dark brown. Lisa often hears people call her insignificant. They say “She’s not pretty, but…” Lisa will never understand it.
Something happens inside her when she takes the slender hand that’s being held out to her. She has to tell her own hand to let go. The priest is talking. Even her mouth is small. Narrow lips. Like a little red lingonberry. And while the lingonberry mouth talks and talks, the eyes sing a beautiful song. About something else altogether.
For the first time since-well, she can’t remember when-Lisa is afraid the truth will show on her face. She could do with a mirror just to check. She, who has kept secrets all her life. Who knows the truth about being the prettiest girl in the village. She might have told people what it felt like to hear “look at the tits on that” all the time, how it made her stoop and gave her a bad back. But there are other things, a thousand secrets.
Daddy’s cousin Bengt when she was thirteen. He’s grabbed her by the hair and twisted it around his hand. It feels as if it’s going to come out by the roots. “Keep your mouth shut,” he says in her ear. He’s forced her into the bathroom. Slams her head against the tiled wall so she’ll understand he means it. With his other hand he unbuttons her jeans. The family is sitting downstairs in the living room.
She kept her mouth shut. Never said a word. Cut her hair off.
Or the last time she ever drank spirits, midsummer’s eve 1965. She was well gone. They were three boys from town. Two of them still live in Kiruna, it wasn’t long ago she bumped into one of them in the supermarket. But she’s dropped the memory like a stone down a well, it’s as if she dreamed it long ago.
And then there are the years with Tommy. That time he’d sat drinking with his cousins from Lannavaara. Late September. Mimmi can’t have been more than three or four. The ice hadn’t taken hold. And they’d given him an old fishing spear. Completely worthless, he’d never realized they were only playing a joke on him. Toward morning he’d rung her for a lift. She’d picked him up in the car, tried to get him to leave the spear there, but he’d managed to get it into the coupe somehow. Sat there with the window down and the spear sticking out. Laughing and stabbing out into the darkness.
When they got home he decided they had to go out fishing. It was two hours until daylight. She had to come with him, he said. To row and hold the torch. The girl’s asleep, she said. Exactly, he said. She’d sleep for more than two hours. She tried to get him to put a life jacket on, the water was freezing cold. But he refused.
“You’ve turned into a real fucking Goody Two Shoes,” he said. “I’m married to Goody fucking Two Shoes.”
He thought that was very funny. Out on the water he kept repeating it to himself quietly. “Goody Two Shoes.” “Steer her a bit nearer the point, Goody Two Shoes.”
Then he fell in the water. Plop, and a second later he was clawing at the rail trying to find something to hang on to. Ice-cold water, dark night. He didn’t scream or anything. Puffed and panted with exertion.
Oh, that split second. When she seriously wondered what she should do. Just one little push with the oar away from him. Just let the boat drift out of reach. With all that booze inside him. How long would it take? Five minutes maybe.
Then she pulled him up. It wasn’t easy, she nearly fell in the water herself. They didn’t find the spear. Maybe it sank. Maybe it floated away in the darkness. He was cross about it anyway. Furious with her too, although it was thanks to her he was alive. She could feel how much he wanted to hit her.
She never told anybody about that cold desire to watch him die. Drown like a kitten in a sack.
And now she’s standing here with the new priest. She feels quite peculiar inside. The priest’s eyes have climbed inside her.
Another secret to drop in the well. It falls down. Lies there sparkling like a jewel among all the rubbish.
It was almost three months since his wife had been found murdered. Erik Nilsson got out of his Skoda in front of the priest’s house. Still warm, although it was September. The sky bright blue, not a cloud in sight. The light piercing the air like sharpened knives.
He’d been to call in at work. It had felt good to see his colleagues. They were like another family. He’d go back soon. Give him something else to think about.
He looked at the pots and containers lining the steps and the veranda. Wilted flowers drooped over the edges. He thought vaguely that he must take the pots in. Before you knew it the grass would be crisp with frost, and the cold would crack them.
He’d been shopping on the way home. Unlocked the door, grabbed the carrier bags and pushed down the door handle with his elbow.
“Mildred,” he called out once he was inside.
He stopped dead. You could have heard a pin drop. The house consisted of two hundred and eighty square meters of silence. The whole world was keeping quiet. The house was drifting through a silent dazzling universe like an empty spaceship. The only sound was the earth, creaking around on its axis. Why on earth was he calling out to her?
When she was alive he’d always known whether she was at home or not. As soon as he got through the door. Nothing odd about that, he always used to say. A newborn baby could recognize the smell of its mother, even if she was in another room. You didn’t lose that ability when you grew up. It just wasn’t part of the conscious mind. So people talked about intuition or a sixth sense.
Sometimes it still felt like that when he got home. As if she was somewhere in the house. In the room next door all the time.
He dropped the bags on the floor. Walked into the silence.
Mildred, the voice in his head called out.
At the same moment the doorbell rang.
It was a woman. She was wearing a long fitted coat and high-heeled boots. She didn’t fit in, couldn’t have stood out more if she’d been dressed in just her underwear. She took off her right glove and held out her hand. Said her name was Rebecka Martinsson.