Fire (70 page)

Anna-Karin can’t help smiling. This kid has got dark hair and brown eyes, but there is a lot about her that reminds her of Ida.

‘I’d better go now,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Take care.’

The girl doesn’t say anything more until Anna-Karin has stepped out of the loose box.

‘Are you going to the funeral today?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Anna-Karin says, scraping bits of straw from her shoes.

‘Could you, I don’t know, like, say hello from me? What I mean is, up there by the coffin. Or whatever. Just say that Lisa is looking after Troja and that he’s fine.’

‘I promise,’ Anna-Karin says.

‘Though I always use a water brush for the tail. It’s
loads
better.’

It is early in the morning and the shadows of the trees are still long as they fall across the playground. But the sun is warm on Vanessa’s face. Spring has come once more to Engelsfors.

She pushes Melvin’s swing a little harder and he laughs so happily she has to smile.

‘More!’ he shouts. ‘More!’

The Easter holidays have started and Vanessa has taken Melvin off to play so that her mum can sleep in. But Vanessa’s reasons for coming here aren’t entirely noble.

Wille answered her text at once. He’s on his way here from Riddarhyttan. And the fact that he’s even awake at this time in the morning is a clear sign of change. Perhaps there is hope for the two of them.

He’s going to break with Elin. Soon. He would have preferred to do it at once when he came home from Stockholm, but Elin cracked up so badly about the way he’d just upped and left. His conscience was bothering him about that. Wanted to give her some space, just a couple of weeks before inflicting another shock.

A couple of weeks has passed by now.

‘More, Nessa!’ Melvin cries and she laughs.

‘You can’t go any higher,’ she says. ‘You might fly all the way to the moon!’

‘I
want
to the moon,’ Melvin says.

She loves him so much it hurts. Being with Melvin is like taking medicine. He is so full of life. Nowadays, she needs to be reminded that life really does goes on. That there are joys, that it is not forever dark and difficult.

‘Did you see that Ida was going to die?’ she asked Mona the day after the equinox. ‘Did you lie to her, too?’

For once, Mona had no pat answer to trot out. She only shook her head, looking genuinely concerned.

‘I said exactly what I saw,’ she said. ‘I can’t explain it. Normally, I wouldn’t miss this kind of thing.’

But apparently she had. In only a few hours, Vanessa will be attending Ida’s funeral.

She still hasn’t grasped that Ida really is dead. Even though she saw her die, that fact has not yet sunk in. During the last few weeks, when she has met up with the other Chosen Ones, she has now and then wondered when Ida would turn up. There are only four of them left now.

‘I want down now,’ Melvin announces, so she stops the swing and helps him wriggle out of it. He runs over to the sandpit and she goes along to see that there aren’t any discarded syringes or other charming surprises buried in the sand. Melvin starts digging with his red spade.

Vanessa looks up when she hears a car drive across the gravel and pull up. Wille parks in exactly the place where she once saw Nicke with Paula. He climbs out and walks over to them.

‘Hi there, kiddo,’ he greets Melvin.

Melvin looks indifferently at him and goes back to playing with his plastic bucket and spade.

‘Seems he doesn’t remember me,’ Wille says.

‘Don’t take it personally.’

Wille smiles. He is wearing a dark, woolly sweater and is so good-looking it takes her breath away. As always.

‘Do I get a hug?’ he says.

‘Of course,’ she says and wipes her sandy hands on her jeans.

She crawls into his arms.

Wille’s smell is enriched with thousands of memories. She knows it so well.

Yet still, there’s something that feels different.

‘How are things with you?’ he asks and kisses the top of her head before letting go of her.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘You?’

He shrugs.

‘It’s so bloody difficult, dealing with Elin.’

‘We’re just going to walk over to the swings,’ Vanessa tells Melvin.

He nods, not very interested, because he’s engrossed in making sand cakes which he crushes to a mess afterwards. Vanessa and Wille start walking towards the swings, but she doesn’t feel ready to start talking about Elin just yet.

‘How’s your mum?’ she asks.

‘She’s off work completely. They’re investigating whether she can be treated with surgery.’

‘I hope so,’ Vanessa says.

They pick one tyre-swing each and sit down.

‘I’m nervous about the funeral today,’ she says. ‘I’ve never been to one.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ Wille says. ‘I didn’t know what to expect when I went to Jonte’s. But … well, it works. You’re made to kind of stop and think about what’s happened.’

Vanessa nods. She was probably being selfish, but she hadn’t been able to face Jonte’s funeral.

‘Not that I understand a thing about what went on the night he died,’ Wille says.

Vanessa looks away.

‘I don’t either,’ she says.

‘What are we going to do, Nessa?’ he says gently.

She turns her face to the sun again. Shuts her eyes.

‘What do you mean?’ she asks, even though she knows.

‘About you and me.’

She slides her fingers along the cold chains of the swing.

‘When are you going to speak to Elin?’

Wille sighs heavily.

‘I’ve got to wait for the right time,’ he says. ‘But what about you? Will you be there for me afterwards?’

Something stirs inside Vanessa now. An insight she would rather not have.

She wants to believe Wille. She wants to believe in
them
. She wants something good to hold on to now this world’s turning out so fucking awful.

But Linnéa’s voice sounds inside her head, the memory forces itself on her.

You know very well that Wille can’t stand being alone.

She looks at him.

He needs someone to look after him.

Suddenly she understands. Wille’s smell isn’t different. There is nothing about Wille that is different in the slightest.

‘So you won’t break up with her until you’ve got some kind of guarantee from me. That’s right, isn’t it?’ she says.

Wille looks confused, as if he can’t see the point of the question.

‘You aren’t prepared to risk being single. Rather than chance it, you’ll stay with Elin. Even though you don’t love her. At least, until you find someone else.’

‘Where’ve you got all that from?’

‘That’s what you did to me, wasn’t it? You confessed that you’d been unfaithful first, when you were sure that Elin would have you if I left you.’

‘That’s so bloody unfair,’ he says.

‘It’s true, though.’

Wille sighs.

‘I thought you loved me,’ he says and looks away.

I thought so, too, Vanessa wants to say.

Instead she holds on, leaning over and looking up at the sky. Something she heard in a junior school lesson comes back to her. The earth, they were told, spins at more than 1,600 kilometres per hour. Vanessa almost had an attack of vertigo where she was sitting.

Everything can change suddenly, quickly. In a single instant, everything around you can be different. And maybe
it is an effect of being in constant motion, even when you don’t notice it.

‘I don’t get it,’ Wille says. ‘What are you trying to do, test me or something?’

‘No, Wille. I don’t need to.’

She looks at him again. Every detail of his face, his body, his mind is familiar to her. And yet, she feels that she is looking at him with new eyes.

Sure, they would be happy again together. At least, until he met someone new. This realisation, the fact that she dares to realise this, changes everything.

She doesn’t love him any more. She hasn’t loved him for a long time.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘But it will never work out for the two of us.’

He gets up from the swing and looks angrily at her.

‘So it’s all over now? Finished, just like that?’

Vanessa could easily scream at him that it was all over when he started screwing Elin behind her back, but she doesn’t have the energy. Already, it feels completely at an end. Totally sodding finished. Wille doesn’t belong in her life now.

‘Go home to Elin,’ she says.

‘What a bitch you are,’ he says.

She looks at him as he gets into the car and drives off with the engine roaring. She probes deep inside herself, to see if she finds any upset, any regret or sadness.

All she finds is relief.

She watches Melvin who is absorbed by whatever his sandpit adventure is all about.

She thinks that she will never, ever again share her life with someone who she constantly hopes will change. Instead, she wants someone to respect, someone who can inspire her
and who understands her without always going along with everything. A person who challenges her and makes her challenge herself. Someone to laugh and cry with, in whose company she wants to discover the world.

And, if that someone should also happen to look fantastic, that would of course be perfectly acceptable.

Time to go home. Time to get ready for the funeral.

Vanessa jumps off the swing. And stands still on the spot.

She already knows someone who fits exactly with her description of the person she wants.

Vanessa remembers her first visit to the Crystal Cave.

The love of your life isn’t the one you think, but it’s someone you’ve already met.

Fucking Mona. Always has to have all the answers.

The yellow sign has already been taken down from the facade. Linnéa watches the empty windows and the dark rooms behind them.

The door has been left open. Now and then, people step outside to throw stuff, books and potted plants and bits of furniture, into a skip. Everything must go.

The centre of Engelsfors has acquired yet another abandoned building, lonely and spooky. The movement it housed might never have existed now.

And that feels like a perfect metaphor for how the topic of PE is treated when people in Engelsfors talk to each other. Their chat has empty, ghostly gaps. They seem to share an intense wish to tidy up and remove all traces. After the ‘electrical accident’, the school was closed for a few days and, when it opened again, all the PE stickers had been scraped off the locker doors.

No one mentions the iron grip in which Helena and Krister held the town. You might well think that everyone has forgotten.

But Linnéa has been listening in, picking up thoughts now and then. Ashamed thoughts. Frightened thoughts.

Helena and Krister were buried yesterday. Apparently, a very small number of mourners turned up to honour them.

Nobody will ever find out the full truth about their crimes, theirs and Olivia’s.

Olivia’s parents have reported her as lost. Her photo is posted on the Internet. Linnéa, too, wonders where Olivia is. Has she been dispatched to some secret headquarters? Or is she being kept by Alexander and Viktor in the manor house? Is she still alive?

Linnéa has stopped blaming herself for not realising that it actually was Olivia who the demons had blessed. But she can’t stop wondering if she might have been able to help Olivia at a much earlier stage. If only she’d listened more to her, taken her more seriously, then perhaps all this might not have happened.

Björn Wallin comes outside. He is carrying a tall stack of plain wooden chairs.

‘Hi,’ Linnéa says.

He looks at her, surprised. Puts the chairs down next to the skip and straightens his back.

‘Hi, Linnéa,’ he says.

She glances at him, looking for signs that he has started drinking again. In the very beginning, there are tiny signs, unnoticeable to anyone who isn’t Linnéa.

‘I’m still staying sober,’ he says.

She looks him in the eye, refusing to be embarrassed. She has every right to doubt him.

‘That’s good,’ she says.

He nods. Then looks at her simple black dress under the spring jacket, her black, opaque tights.

‘Are you going to that girl’s funeral?’ he asks.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Were you close?’

‘You could say that,’ Linnéa says, thinks for a moment and then changes her mind. ‘Actually, yes. We were close.’

‘I’m so sorry. It was a terrible incident.’

Linnéa nods.

She wonders what her father makes of PE today. And if he ever heard the rumour that Linnéa had tried to blacken the names of Robin and Erik. And, if so, what he thought about it. Did he believe the rumour?

She observes him again. It would be so easy to read his mind. But, somehow, it goes against her instincts. Perhaps she doesn’t want to know. Or else perhaps because, if they are ever going to have any kind of relationship, she mustn’t take any short cuts.

‘What are you going to do now?’ she asks.

It is her way of asking if he is about to start drinking again, and she’s sure that he knows that.

‘I’ve got a job at the sawmill,’ he says. ‘A mate of mine in PE fixed me up. I start soon, just after Easter. After that, I don’t know.’

He looks earnestly at her.

‘I will not start drinking again. I realise now that the only way of convincing you is to carry on proving it, day after day, every day. When you feel ready, we’ll talk about everything that has happened. You get in touch, whenever you feel like it. I want to be your father again, but I know I have no right to demand it.’

Too many emotions well up inside Linnéa for her to reply. He has said exactly what she once stopped hoping ever to hear him say. And she knows that hope is dangerous.

‘We’re going to take some of the furniture away in the van soon,’ he says. ‘Would you like a lift to the church?’

‘No, but thanks,’ she says, a little too quickly. ‘I’d like the walk.’

‘All right,’ he says. ‘Take care, Linnéa.’

Linnéa nods, tries to smile and hurries away. After one block, her tears start flowing.

Anna-Karin sits down on the chair next to Grandpa’s bed, taking care not to crease her skirt. She has borrowed her mother’s funeral suit and put up her hair in the same style as Vanessa did for the trial.