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8

Joel searched.

He searched frantically. He eventually thought he’d found what he was looking for. Around her eyes. They were similar to his.

But he was staring at her in horror. When he looked back later, he could distinctly remember thinking that this wasn’t how he’d imagined it was going to happen. Meeting Mummy Jenny.

How many times had he experienced this meeting in his imagination? Conjured up the circumstances? He didn’t know. He had pictured them meeting in a street. Or on a beach. Or in the depths of a forest.

But never like this, in a hotel called The Raven, opening a door and expecting to see Samuel standing there.

She had walked into the room and closed the door behind her. Joel was still staring at her.

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

Her voice was dry and tense.

That was also something Joel had wondered about many times. What was his mum’s voice like?

Now he knew. Dry and tense.

‘Samuel isn’t here,’ Joel said.

‘Where is he? When will he be coming?’

Joel decided on the spur of the moment not to tell her the truth. Not to say that Samuel had stomach pains and had gone to the hospital.

‘He’s gone out. I don’t know when he’ll be back.’

Then there was a question he wanted answering right away.

‘Was it you who phoned?’

‘Yes. But I wanted to meet you in person rather than on the telephone.’

Well, that’s one way in which we are similar, at least, Joel thought. I don’t like speaking on the phone either.

She was in the middle of the room now. Joel had backed away towards the window. He was still staring at her all the time. Even so, he wasn’t at all sure that he could really see her. She was a sort of mirage. Something that existed and yet didn’t exist.

She sat down on the very edge of the chair. It struck Joel that she might be just as scared as he was.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said, studying her hands.

Joel immediately looked at his.

Silence.

What can I say if she doesn’t know what to say? Joel thought. He’d stopped staring at her now. He was embarrassed instead. He glanced surreptitiously at her as she studied her hands.

He’d always imagined that this occasion would be full of joy. When he met his mum at long last. Not a time for stares and embarrassment.

All the pictures he’d imagined had been a waste of time. Nothing had turned out as he’d expected.

He kept on looking surreptitiously at her. All the time looking for similarities. Her hair was soft and curly. Not tufty like his. Her eyes were blue, the same as his. But she was small in stature. And thin. In a way, she was like Samuel.

Then it occurred to Joel that she was also pretty. If Jenny Rydén really was his mum, he’d been lucky. He had a good-looking mother. The question now was whether she wanted a son looking like Joel.

At that moment she looked up from her hands.

‘I don’t know what I should say. But I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry.’

Her eyes were moist, Joel got a lump in his throat immediately.

She stood up and turned her back on him. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag. Joel recognised it from the previous night.

She turned round again. Now she was smiling. Joel could see that her teeth where white and regular. Not like his own, that seemed to point in various directions.

‘I wish Samuel was here,’ she said. ‘But at the same time, I’m glad he’s not.’

She sat down on the chair again. And looked at him. All the time she was slowly shaking her head.

Joel broke into a sweat. She doesn’t like me, he thought. She’d expected something completely different.

That made him feel angry. He didn’t know where the anger came from, but he had no say in the matter. He suddenly wanted to tell her about how it had been. All those years. All those thoughts, dreams, fantasies.

She interrupted his train of thought.

‘You are so big,’ she said. ‘But you were so little then.’

‘It was Elinor who sent Samuel a letter,’ said Joel. ‘But we couldn’t find a grocer’s shop.’

‘I stopped working there when it closed down,’ she said. ‘But how did you manage to find me at Autumn Light?’

Joel shrugged. But he said nothing.

‘When Arne came and told me you’d been there, I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. I thought he was making it up. But when he said that you spoke with a northern accent, I realised it must be you. No matter how unlikely it seemed. And he remembered the name of the hotel. The Raven. So I rang. And now I’m here.’

‘I’ve just left school,’ said Joel. ‘It was that letter from Elinor. Samuel thought we ought to come here. So that I could find out what you looked like.’

He regretted that last sentence the moment he’d said it. But she wasn’t annoyed. Instead, she stood up.

‘Can’t we go out? It’s so hot in here. And I want to talk to you on your own, before Samuel comes back. I don’t even know if I want to see him.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. So much of this is hard to cope with.’

‘I think he wants to see you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

She shook her head again.

‘Let’s go out,’ she said.

Joel looked at the Celestine.

‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘From Samuel as well.’

He pointed.

‘I remember that,’ she said slowly. ‘It was in the kitchen.’

‘Yes,’ said Joel. ‘It’s always been on the kitchen wall. And it’s for you.’

He produced the cardboard box they’d kept it in, that had been stashed away under the bed.

‘It’s for you,’ he said again.

‘Why should it be for me?’

‘We couldn’t think of a better present for you,’ said Joel. ‘Samuel thought you should have an elk steak. But I didn’t agree. And so this is what we agreed on.’

‘An elk steak?’

‘Yes — but to get one at this time of year Samuel would have had to go poaching.’

She burst out laughing.

‘Nobody but Samuel would ever have thought of an elk steak,’ she said. ‘Nobody but him.’

Joel wasn’t sure how he ought to interpret what she had said. Was it positive or negative? He didn’t know.

She suddenly took hold of his arm. It was the first time she’d touched him. The first time he’d felt her hand. He’d been so little all that time ago that he had no memories of it at all.

It also made him feel a bit scared. Was this really his mother, standing there in front of him? This Jenny Rydén? Or could it be somebody just pretending to be his mum?

‘There’s such a lot I’d like to explain,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where to start. And I don’t even know if I can.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Joel. ‘That’s life.’

‘That’s what Samuel used to say: “That’s life.”’

Joel seemed to recall that it was really Geegee who’d said that. But perhaps it was something everybody said when they were grown up.

That’s life.

She was still holding on to his arm, and more or less whisked him to the door. She was holding the cardboard box in her other hand.

‘I can carry that for you,’ said Joel.

She gave him the box.

Joel locked the door. Jenny Rydén pressed the button for the lift.

I’m about to travel in a lift with my mum, Joel thought. If the lift crashes and we’re killed, at least I’ll have met her. Assuming she really is my mum.

‘Why are you called Rydén?’ he asked.

The words just came tumbling out of his mouth. He ought to have bars there, just in front of his teeth, to prevent words from jumping out whenever they felt like it.