‘How come you speak with a northern accent? Your mum speaks with a Stockholm accent.’
Joel had no idea how to answer that one.
‘It’s a sort of illness,’ he said, and recognised at the same time that he had just come out with the daftest thing imaginable.
‘What kind of an illness?’
‘It’s the same as with eyes,’ he said. ‘You can inherit your grandmother’s dialect. Or your grandfather’s.’
‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘I didn’t know either,’ said Joel innocently. ‘Not until a doctor explained it to us. Only a few weeks ago.’
The man shook his head.
‘I think we’d better fetch your mum even so,’ he said. ‘This business seems so peculiar. What are you doing out on the streets at this time of night?’
‘It’s the summer holidays. And I’ve left school.’
The man seemed to be thinking. He was still on his guard. And very suspicious.
‘I was under the impression that Jenny only had two daughters.’
Joel felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. So it was wrong after all.
The wrong mother.
Then the man shook his head.
‘I suppose I’d better believe you. Take the key. I won’t say anything.’
Joel walked shakily back to the handbag and felt around in it. But he could find no trace of a key.
Even so he pretended to put something into his pocket. Then he put the handbag back in the locker and closed the door.
‘How did you get in?’
‘There was an unlocked door at the back.’
The man sighed.
‘The caretakers are careless,’ he said. ‘It’s always the same.’
‘A thief could get in,’ said Joel.
The man nodded.
‘You can leave through the front entrance,’ he said. ‘Jenny’s drinking coffee at the moment. Upstairs.’
The man escorted him to the door.
‘I hope you’re not having me on,’ he said.
Joel could feel pangs of his bad conscience.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not having you on. It happened once before. I was forced to take a room at the Raven Hotel.’
Then he went out into the courtyard.
He could have bitten his tongue off. Why did he have to mention the name of the hotel where he and Samuel were staying? He felt like kicking himself.
But there was nothing he could do about it now. He stood in front of the gate with the make-believe key in his pocket. The key to the building his mother didn’t live in. But where two daughters of a woman called Jenny Rydén were presumably lying asleep.
He felt relieved. But also dejected. Relieved at having got away. Dejected because things weren’t as he’d thought after all.
Or as he’d hoped.
He knew the facts now. He really had hoped that the green coat would be the same one. The one Mummy Jenny had been wearing when she went away. But now when he thought he’d found her again, he’d only found somebody called Jenny Rydén.
He started walking back to the hotel. He felt really tired now. The clock on a church tower said turned one.
The streets were deserted. Hardly any traffic.
If I wait a bit longer I’ll be completely alone, he thought. Just as alone as I’ve always been when I wandered around the streets at home during the night. On my bike. Looking for a dog that had gone off, heading for a distant star.
The last thing he felt like was somebody who was now fifteen years old.
He glanced up at the sky.
A drop of rain hit him in the face.
It’s that dog, he thought. Sitting up there somewhere, spitting at me.
Before long it started raining properly. Joel speeded up. Then it started bucketing down. He couldn’t run that fast. So he slowed down again. It made no difference. He’d be soaked through by the time he got to the hotel, no matter how fast he walked.
And needless to say, he took a wrong turning. He soon hadn’t the slightest idea where he was. He didn’t recognise any of the streets. It took him ages to find the right way again. He was so wet by then that his shoes were full of water.
And needless to say, it stopped raining the moment he reached the hotel entrance. He opened the door slowly. The woman was still asleep behind the desk. He walked up the stairs. When he reached the door of his room, he paused to listen. All quiet.
He opened the door carefully.
But things weren’t as he’d expected. Samuel wasn’t asleep.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his stomach.
His face was ashen.
And he didn’t ask where Joel had been.
‘I have a terrible stomachache,’ was all he said. ‘I think I’m going to die.’
Nothing else.
I have a terrible stomachache. I think I’m going to die.
7
Joel would look back on that night as the moment when he grew up once and for all. When he slowly opened the door of his hotel room, it was as if he were really opening the door to his future.
He left his childhood behind him in the corridor.
He would never forget it. Never ever.
Samuel sitting on the edge of the bed holding a hand over his stomach. His pyjama jacket unbuttoned. His face ashen.
And the words:
I have a terrible stomachache. I think I’m going to die.
It was several seconds before it sank in. Before he grasped properly that nothing was as he’d thought it would be. A dark room and Samuel snoring in his bed.
Instead he was sitting on the edge of the bed and was in pain.
He had so much pain that it hurt Joel as well.
And then he felt scared.
What he had felt when he’d been caught red-handed with Jenny Rydén’s handbag was nothing compared to this. Now he was seriously scared. His heart started pounding, like a fist beating at a door.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, and could hear his voice trembling.
Samuel shook his head.
He really was in agony. Joel could see the pain oozing out from his father’s eyes, from his nose, from his tousled hair and his worn-out pyjamas.
‘I woke up,’ said Samuel. ‘I’d been dreaming that I had a stomachache. But when I woke up I found it wasn’t just a dream.’
Joel had sat down beside Samuel. He’d started to feel cold now. He didn’t know if it was due to his wet clothes or because he was scared. But it didn’t matter either way. The important thing was that Samuel was in pain.
Samuel was rocking back and forth. The pain came and went.
‘Perhaps you ought to go to the lavatory?’ said Joel.
Samuel shook his head again. Joel could see that he was in so much pain that he was sweating.
‘It’ll pass,’ said Samuel. ‘But it hurts something awful.’
They sat for a while in silence. The pain wandered back and forth between them. Joel tried to think. What could he do? What did Samuel generally do when Joel had a stomachache? Give him something to drink. Or say he should try to be sick.
‘Perhaps you ought to be sick?’ he said.
Samuel shook his head for the third time.
‘It’s not that. This is different.’
Then he lay down gingerly, holding on tight to the bed frame with one hand. Joel stayed sitting where he was. He was now so cold that he started shivering.
More than ten minutes passed. Joel counted the minutes by Samuel’s watch, which was lying on the bedside table.
‘It feels as if it’s easing off a bit,’ said Samuel.
Joel’s pain immediately started to ease as well.
Samuel closed his eyes. Joel stood up carefully and took off his wet clothes. When he looked at Samuel again he saw that his dad had opened his eyes.
‘Is it any better?’
Samuel nodded.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘In the middle of the night?’