Alf doesn’t look as if this is concerning him very much. To be entirely honest, he doesn’t look as if he knows exactly what a “spoiler” is, unless it’s a part of a car.
It’s snowing again, and Elsa decides that even if people she likes have been shits on earlier occasions, she has to learn to carry on liking them. You’d quickly run out of people if you had to disqualify all those who at some point have been shits. She thinks that this will have to be the moral of this story. Christmas stories are supposed to have morals.
Alf’s telephone rings from the compartment between the seats. He checks the display, but doesn’t answer. It rings again.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” wonders Elsa.
“It’s Kent. I suppose he wants to mouth off about some crap to do with the accountant and those leasehold conversion bastards, that’s all he ever thinks about. He can bloody go on about it tomorrow,” mutters Alf.
The telephone rings again; Alf doesn’t answer. It rings a third time. Elsa picks it up, irritated, and answers even though Alf swears at her. There’s a woman at the other end. She’s crying. Elsa hands the phone to Alf. It trembles against his ear. His face becomes transparent.
It’s Christmas Eve. The taxi makes a U-turn. They go to the hospital.
Alf doesn’t stop for a single red light.
Elsa sits on a bench in a corridor talking to Mum on the telephone, while Alf is in a room talking to a doctor. The nurses think Elsa is a grandchild, so they tell her that he had a heart attack but he’s going to be all right. Kent is going to survive.
There’s a young woman standing outside the room. She’s crying and she’s beautiful. Smells strongly of perfume. She smiles faintly at Elsa and Elsa smiles back. Alf steps out of the room and nods without smiling at the woman; the woman disappears out the door without meeting his eyes.
Alf doesn’t say a word, just marches back to the entrance and out into the parking lot, with Elsa behind him. And only then does Elsa see Britt-Marie. She’s sitting absolutely still on the bench, wearing her floral-print jacket although it’s below freezing. She’s forgotten her brooch. The paintball stain is shining. Britt-Marie’s cheeks are blue and she’s spinning her wedding ring on her finger. She has one of Kent’s shirts in her lap; it smells freshly laundered and has been perfectly ironed.
“Britt-Marie?” Alf’s voice rasps out in the evening gloom, and he stops a yard from her.
She doesn’t answer. Just lets her hand wander over the shirt collar in her lap. Gently brushes away something invisible from a fold. Carefully folds one cuff link under the other. Straightens out a wrinkle that isn’t there.
Then she lifts her chin. Looks old. Every word seems to leave a little track on her face.
“I’ve actually been absolutely brilliant at pretending, Alf,” she whispers firmly.
Alf doesn’t answer. Britt-Marie looks down into the snow and spins her wedding ring.
“When David and Pernilla were small, they always said I was so bad at coming up with stories. I always wanted to read the ones that were in books. They always said, ‘Make one up!’ but I don’t understand why one should sit there and make things up just like that, when there are books where everything has been written down from the very start. I really don’t.”
She has raised her voice now. As if someone needed convincing.
“Britt-Marie—” Alf says quietly, but she interrupts him coldly.