The Blood Spilt

19


Anna-Maria Mella drove her red Ford Escort into Magnus Lindmark’s yard. According to Lisa St?ckel and Erik Nilsson, this was the man who’d made no secret of the fact that he’d hated Mildred. Who’d slashed her tires and set fire to her shed.
He was washing his Volvo, and he turned off the water and put down the hose as she drove in. Around forty. A bit on the short side, but he looked strong. Rolled up his shirtsleeves when she got out of the car. Probably wanted to show off his muscles.
“You’re driving a steam engine,” he joked.
The next moment he realized she was from the police. She could see how his face changed. A mixture of contempt and cunning. Anna-Maria felt she should have had Sven-Erik with her.
“I don’t think I want to answer any questions,” said Magnus Lindmark before she’d even managed to open her mouth.
Anna-Maria introduced herself. Took out her ID as well, although she wasn’t in the habit of waving it about unnecessarily.
Now what do I do? she thought. There’s no chance of forcing him.
“You don’t even know what it’s about,” she ventured.
“Now let me guess,” he said, screwing his face up into an exaggerated expression of thoughtfulness and rubbing his chin with his index finger. “A slag of a priest who got what she deserved, maybe? And now I’m supposed to feel something or other, well no way, I don’t feel like talking about it.”
My my, thought Anna-Maria, he’s really enjoying this.
“Okay,” she said with an unconcerned smile. “In that case I’ll get back in my steam engine and chug away.”
She turned around and walked to the car.
He’ll call out, she just had time to think.
“If you catch the guy who did it,” he yelled, “give me a ring so I can come in and shake him by the hand.”
She walked the last few steps to her car. Turned toward him, her hand on the handle. Said nothing.
“She was a f*cking slag who got what she deserved. Haven’t you got your notebook? Write that down.”
Anna-Maria pulled a notebook and pen out of her pocket. Wrote down “f*cking slag.”
“She seems to have got on quite a few people’s nerves,” she said, as if she were talking to herself.
He came over to her, positioned himself threateningly close.
“Too f*cking right,” he said.
“Why were you annoyed with her?”
“Annoyed,” he spat. “Annoyed, I get annoyed with the f*cking dog when she stands there barking at a squirrel. I’m not the hypocritical type, I’ve got no problem admitting I hated her. And I wasn’t the only one.”
Keep talking, thought Anna-Maria, nodding sympathetically.
“Why did you hate her?”
“Because she broke up my marriage, that’s why! Because my son starting pissing in his bed when he was eleven years old! We had problems, Anki and me, but once she’d spoken to Mildred there was no more talk of sorting things out. I said ‘do you want to go to family counseling, I’ll do that if you want,’ but no, that f*cking priest messed with her head until she left me. And took the kids with her. You didn’t think the church approved of that sort of thing, did you?”
“No. But you…”
“Anki and I used to quarrel, sure. But maybe you and your old man have words now and again?”
“Often. But you got so angry that you…”
Anna-Maria broke off and leafed through her notebook.
“… set fire to her shed, punctured her tires, smashed the glass in her greenhouse.”
Magnus Lindmark smiled broadly at her and said sweetly:
“But that wasn’t me.”
“So what were you doing the night before midsummer’s eve?”
“I’ve already said, I stayed over with a friend.”
Anna-Maria read from her notebook.
“Fredrik Korpi. Do you often stay over with your little friends?”
“When you’re too f*cking pissed to drive home…”
“You said you weren’t the only one who hated her? Who else?”
He made a sweeping gesture with his arm.
“Just about anybody.”
“Well liked, I heard.”
“By a load of hysterical old women.”
“And a number of men.”
“Who are nothing but hysterical old women. Ask any, excuse the expression, real man and they’ll tell you. She was after the hunting fraternity as well. Wanted to cancel their permit and f*ck knows what else. But if you think Torbj?rn killed her, then you’ve got that f*cking wrong as well.”
“Torbj?rn?”
“Torbj?rn Ylitalo, the church’s forest warden and the chairman of the hunting club. They had a terrible quarrel back in the spring. I reckon he’d have liked to stick his shotgun in her mouth. And then she started that f*cking wolf foundation. And that’s a class thing, you know. It’s easy for a load of f*ckers from Stockholm to love wolves. But the day a wolf comes down to their golf courses and their terrace bars and gobbles up their poodles for breakfast, they’ll be out there hunting!”
“But Mildred Nilsson wasn’t from Stockholm, was she?”
“No, but somewhere down there. Torbj?rn Ylitalo’s cousin had his old dog killed by a wolf when he went down to V?rmland to visit his in-laws at Christmas ninety-nine. He sat there in Micke’s crying when he was telling us about finding the dog. Or the remains of the dog, I should say. There was only the skeleton left, and a few bloody scraps of fur.”
He looked at her. She kept her face expressionless—did he think she was going to faint because he was talking about skeletons and scraps of fur?
When she didn’t say anything he turned his head aside, his gaze sweeping away across the pine trees to the ragged clouds scudding across the chilly blue autumn sky.
“I had to get a lawyer before I was allowed to meet my own kids, for f*ck’s sake. I hope she suffered. She did, didn’t she?”
* * *

When Rebecka and Nalle got back to Micke’s bar, it was already five o’clock in the afternoon. Lisa St?ckel was walking down toward the bar from the road, and Nalle ran to meet her.
“Dog!” he shouted, pointing at Lisa’s dog Majken. “Little!”
“We’ve been looking at puppies,” explained Rebecka.
“Becka!” he yelled, pointing at Rebecka.
“Wow, you’re popular,” Lisa smiled at Rebecka.
“The puppies swung it,” Rebecka replied modestly.
“He loves anything to do with dogs,” said Lisa. “You like dogs, don’t you, Nalle? I heard you looked after Nalle today, thanks for that. I can pay if you’ve had any expenses for food and so on.”
She took a wallet out of her pocket.
“No, no,” said Rebecka, waving her hand, and Lisa dropped the wallet on the ground.
All her cards fell out onto the gravel, her library ticket, supermarket loyalty card, her Visa card and her driving license.
And the photograph of Mildred.
Lisa bent down quickly to gather everything up, but Nalle had already picked up the photograph of Mildred. It had been taken during a coach trip the Magdalena group had gone on, to a retreat in Uppsala. Mildred was smiling at the camera, surprised and reproachful. Lisa had been holding the camera. They’d stopped to stretch their legs.
“Illred,” said Nalle to the photograph, and laid it against his cheek.
He smiled at Lisa as she stood there, her hand impatiently outstretched. She had to exercise an iron control not to snatch it off him. It was a bloody good job nobody else was there.
“They were friends, those two,” she said, nodding toward Nalle, who still had the photograph pressed against his cheek.
“She seems to have been a very special priest,” said Rebecka seriously.
“Very,” said Lisa. “Very.”
Rebecka bent down and patted the dog.
“He’s such a blessing,” said Lisa. “You forget all your troubles when you’re with him.”
“Isn’t it a bitch?” asked Rebecka, peering under the dog’s stomach.
“I was talking about Nalle,” said Lisa. “This is Majken.”
She stroked the dog absentmindedly.
“I’ve got a lot of dogs.”
“I like dogs,” said Rebecka, stroking Majken’s ears.
Not so keen on people, though? thought Lisa. I know. I was like that myself for a long time. Probably still am.
But Mildred had got Lisa to do whatever she wanted. Right from the start. Like when she got Lisa to give talks about budgeting. Lisa had tried to refuse. But Mildred had been… stubborn was a ridiculous word. You couldn’t contain Mildred in that word.
* * *

“Don’t you care?” asks Mildred. “Don’t you care about people?”
Lisa is sitting on the floor with Bruno lying alongside her. She’s clipping his claws.
Majken is standing beside them like a nurse, supervising. The other dogs are lying in the hallway hoping it will never be their turn. If they keep really still and quiet, maybe Lisa will forget about them.
And Mildred is sitting on the sofa in the kitchen and explaining. As if the problem was that Lisa didn’t understand. Magdalena, the women’s group, wants to help women who’ve gone adrift in purely financial terms. Long term unemployed, those on benefit because they’re signed off sick for a long time, with the authorities after them and the kitchen drawers stuffed full of papers from debt collecting agencies and God knows who else. And Mildred just happens to know that Lisa works as a debt counselor and budgeting advisor for the council. Mildred wants Lisa to run a course for these women. So they can get their private finances sorted out.
Lisa wants to say no. Say that she doesn’t actually care about people. That she cares about her dogs, cats, goats, sheep, lambs. The female elk that turned up the winter before last, thin as a rake, so she fed her and looked after her.
“They won’t turn up,” Lisa replies.
She clips Bruno’s last claw. He gets a pat and disappears to join the rest of the gang in the hall. Lisa gets up.
“They’ll say ‘yeah, yeah, brilliant’ when you invite them,” she goes on. “But they won’t turn up.”
“We’ll see,” says Mildred, narrowing her eyes. Then her little lingonberry mouth widens into a smile. A row of tiny teeth, like a child’s.
Lisa goes weak at the knees, looks away, says “okay, I’ll do it” just to get rid of the priest before she collapses completely.
Three weeks later Lisa is standing in front of a group of women, talking. Drawing on a whiteboard. Circles and pieces of pie, red, green and blue. Glances at Mildred, hardly dares look at her. Looks at the rest of her audience instead. They’ve got dressed up, God help us. Cheap blouses. Bobbly cardigans. Gold colored costume jewelry. Most of them are listening obediently. Others are staring at Lisa, almost with hatred in their eyes, as if the way their lives have turned out might be her fault.
Gradually she’s drawn into other projects with the women’s group. She just gets carried along. She even attends the Bible study group for a while. But in the end it just doesn’t work anymore. She can’t look at Mildred, because it feels as if the others can read her face like an open book. She can’t avoid looking at her the whole time, that’s just as obvious. She doesn’t know where to turn. Doesn’t hear what they’re talking about. Drops her pen and makes a fuss. In the end she stops going.
She keeps away from the women’s group. Her restlessness is like an incurable illness. She wakes up in the middle of the night. Thinks about the priest all the time. She starts running. Mile after mile. Along the roads at first. Then the ground dries out and she can run in the forest. She goes to Norway and buys another dog, a Springer spaniel. It keeps her busy. She renews the putty in all the windows and doesn’t borrow the rotovator from her neighbor for the potato patch as she usually does, but turns it over by hand instead during the light May evenings. Sometimes she thinks she can hear the telephone ringing in the house, but she doesn’t answer it.
“Can I have the picture, Nalle?” said Lisa, trying to make her voice sound neutral.
Nalle was holding on to the picture with both hands. His smile went from one ear to the other.
“Illred,” he said. “Swinging.”
Lisa stared at him, took the picture off him.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said in the end.
She spoke to Rebecka, a little too quickly, but Rebecka didn’t appear to notice anything:
“Nalle was confirmed by Mildred. And her confirmation classes were quite… unconventional. She understood that he was a child, so there was plenty of playing on the swings and boat trips and eating pizza. Isn’t that right, Nalle, you and Mildred, you used to have pizza. Quattro Stagione, wasn’t it?”
“He had three helpings of meat soup today,” said Rebecka.
Nalle left them and set off toward the henhouse. Rebecka shouted a good-bye after him, but he didn’t seem to hear.
Lisa didn’t seem to hear either when Rebecka said good-bye and went off to her chalet. Answered distractedly, staring after Nalle.
* * *

Lisa padded after Nalle like a fox stalking its prey. The henhouse was at the back of the bar.
She thought about what he’d said when he saw the picture of Mildred.
“Illred. Swinging.” But Nalle didn’t go on the swings. She’d like to see the swing he could fit into. So they can’t have gone to the playground together to go on the swings.
Nalle opened the henhouse door. He usually collected the eggs for Mimmi.
“Nalle,” said Lisa, trying to attract his attention. “Nalle, did you see Mildred swinging?”
He pointed above his head with his hand.
“Swinging,” he replied.
She followed him inside. He stuck his hand under the hens and collected the eggs they were sitting on. Laughed when they pecked angrily at his hand.
“Was she high up? Was it Mildred?”
“Illred,” said Nalle.
He stuffed the eggs in his pockets and went out.
My God, thought Lisa. What am I doing? He just repeats whatever I say.
“Did you see the space rocket?” she asked, making a flying movement with her hand. “Whoosh!”
“Whoosh!” smiled Nalle, taking an egg out of his pocket with a sweeping movement.
Out on the road Lars-Gunnar’s car stopped, and the horn sounded.
“Your daddy,” said Lisa.
She raised a hand and waved to Lars-Gunnar. She could feel how stiff and awkward it was. Her body betrayed her. It was completely impossible for her to meet his eyes or even exchange a word.
She stayed behind the bar as Nalle hurried off toward the car.
Don’t think about it, she said to herself. Mildred’s dead. Nothing can change that.
* * *

Anki Lindmark lived in an apartment on the second floor at Kyrkogatan 21D. She opened the door when Anna-Maria rang the bell, and peered over the security chain. She was in her thirties, maybe a bit younger. She’d bleached her hair herself, and the roots were showing. She was wearing a long sweater and a denim skirt. As Anna-Maria looked at her through the narrow opening, it struck her that the woman was quite tall, at least half a head taller than her ex-husband. Anna-Maria introduced herself.
“Are you Magnus Lindmark’s ex?” she asked.
“What’s he done?” asked Anki Lindmark.
Suddenly the eyes behind the security chain widened.
“Is it to do with the boys?”
“No,” said Anna-Maria. “I just want to ask a few questions. It won’t take long.”
Anki Lindmark let her in, put the chain back on and locked the door.
They went into the kitchen. It was clean and tidy. Porridge oats, O’Boy drinking chocolate powder and sugar in Tupperware containers on the worktop. A little cloth covering the microwave. On the windowsill stood wooden tulips in a vase, a glass bird, and a little miniature cart made of wood. Children’s drawings were fastened to the refrigerator and freezer with magnets. Proper curtains with tiebacks, a pelmet and frilled edges.
At the kitchen table sat a woman in her sixties. She had carrot-colored hair and was staring angrily at Anna-Maria. Shook a menthol cigarette out of its packet and lit up.
“My mother,” explained Anki Lindmark when they’d sat down.
“Where are the children?” asked Anna-Maria.
“At my sister’s. It’s their cousin’s birthday today.”
“Your ex-husband, Magnus Lindmark…” Anna-Maria began.
When Anki Lindmark’s mother heard her former son-in-law’s name she blew out a cloud of smoke like a snort.
“… he’s said himself that he hated Mildred Nilsson,” Anna-Maria went on.
Anki Lindmark nodded.
“He caused damage to her property,” said Anna-Maria.
The next second she could have bitten off her tongue. “Caused damage to her property,” what kind of official jargon was that? It was the smoking carrot-woman’s narrow eyes that were making her be so formal.
Sven-Erik, come and help me, she thought.
He knew how to talk to women.
Anki Lindmark shrugged her shoulders.
“Anything we discuss is just between you and me,” said Anna-Maria in an attempt to push the continental shelves together. “Are you afraid of him?”
“Tell her why you live here,” said her mother.
“Well,” said Anki Lindmark. “In the beginning, after I left him, I lived in Mum’s cottage in Poikkij?rvi…”
“It’s been sold now,” said her mother. “We can’t go out there anymore. Carry on.”
“… but Magnus kept giving me articles out of the evening paper about fires and so on, and in the end I didn’t dare live there anymore.”
“And the police can’t do a thing,” said the mother with a mirthless smile.
“He’s not bad to the boys, you mustn’t think that. But sometimes when he drinks… well, he sometimes comes up and shouts and yells at me… whore and all sorts… kicking the door. So it’s best to live here where we’ve got neighbors and no windows at ground level. But before I got this apartment and found the courage to live on my own with the boys, I stayed with Mildred. But she got her windows smashed and he… and slashed tires… and then her shed caught fire.”
“And that was Magnus?”
Anki Lindmark looked down at the table. Her mother leaned over to Anna-Maria.
“The only people who don’t believe it was him are the bloody police,” she said.
Anna-Maria refrained from explaining the difference between believing something and being able to prove it. She nodded thoughtfully instead.
“I just hope he’ll find somebody new,” said Anki Lindmark. “Preferably have children with her. But things have been better lately, since Lars-Gunnar talked to him.”
“Lars-Gunnar Vinsa,” said her mother. “He’s a policeman, or he was—he’s retired now. And he’s the leader of the hunting club. He talked to Magnus. And if there’s one thing Magnus doesn’t want, it’s to lose his place with the hunt.”
Lars-Gunnar Vinsa, Anna-Maria knew who he was. But he’d only worked for a year after she started in Kiruna, and they’d never worked together. So she couldn’t say she knew him. He had a mentally handicapped son, she remembered. She remembered how she’d found that out too. Lars-Gunnar and a colleague had arrested a heroin user who was playing up down at the Cupola club. Lars-Gunnar had asked if she had any needles in her pockets before he searched her. No bloody chance, they were at home in her apartment. So Lars-Gunnar had stuck his hands in her pockets to go through them and had jabbed himself with a needle. The girl had come into the station with her upper lip like a burst football and blood pouring from her nose. His colleagues had talked Lars-Gunnar out of owning up, that’s what Anna-Maria had heard. That was in 1990. It took six months to get a definite result from an HIV test. After that there was a lot of talk about Lars-Gunnar and his six-year-old son. The boy’s mother had abandoned the child and Lars-Gunnar was all he had.
“So Lars-Gunnar spoke to Magnus after the fire?” asked Anna-Maria.
“No, it was after the cat.”
Anna-Maria waited in silence.
“I used to have a cat,” said Anki, clearing her throat as if she had something stuck in it. “Puss. When I left Magnus I shouted for her, but she’d been gone for a while. I thought I’d come back later to collect her. I was so nervous. I didn’t want to meet Magnus. He kept ringing me. And my mother. In the middle of the night, sometimes. Anyway, he rang me at work and said he’d hung a carrier bag with some things of mine in it on the door of the apartment.”
She stopped speaking.
Her mother blew a cloud of smoke at Anna-Maria. It drifted apart in thin veils.
“Puss was in the bag,” she said, when her daughter didn’t speak. “And her kittens. Five of them. They’d all had their heads chopped off. It was just blood and fur.”
“What did you do?”
“What could she do?” her mother went on. “You lot can’t do anything. Even Lars-Gunnar said the same. If you report something to the police, it has to be a crime. If they’d suffered, it could have been cruelty to animals. But as he’d chopped their heads off, they wouldn’t have suffered at all. It could have been criminal damage if they’d had any financial value, if they’d been pedigree cats or an expensive hunting dog or something. But they were just farm cats.”
“Yes,” said Anki Lindmark. “But I don’t think he’d kill…”
“Okay, what about later then?” said her mother. “After you’d moved here? Don’t you remember what happened with Peter?”
Her mother stubbed out her cigarette, got out a new one and lit it.
“Peter lives in Poikkij?rvi. He’s divorced too, but such a nice, kind guy. Anyway, he and Anki started seeing each other now and again…”
“Just as friends,” Anki interjected.
“One morning when Peter was on his way to work, Magnus pulled out straight in front of him. Magnus stopped the car and jumped out. Peter couldn’t drive around, because Magnus had parked sort of diagonally across the narrow gravel track. And Magnus jumps out and goes to the trunk and gets out a baseball bat. Walks over to Peter’s car. And Peter’s sitting there thinking he’s going to die and thinking about his own kids, thinking maybe he’s dead meat. Then Magnus just lets out a loud guffaw, gets back in his own car and screeches away with the gravel spraying up around his tires. So that was the end of the dating, wasn’t it, Anki?”
“I don’t want to quarrel with him. He’s very good to the boys.”
“But you hardly dare go to the supermarket. There’s hardly any difference from before, when you were married to him. I’m so bloody tired of the whole thing. The police! They can do sod all.”
“Why was he so angry with Mildred?” asked Anna-Maria.
“He said she’d kind of influenced me to leave him.”
“And had she?”
“No, she hadn’t,” said Anki. “I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. And I’ve told Magnus that.”
“And what did he say?”
“ ‘Did Mildred tell you to say that?’ ”
“Do you know what he was doing the night before midsummer’s eve?”
Anki Lindmark shook her head.
“Has he ever hit you?”
“He’s never hit the boys.”
Time to go.
“Just one last thing,” said Anna-Maria. “When you were staying with Mildred. What impression did you get of her husband? How were things between them?”
Anki Lindmark and her mother exchanged glances.
The talk of the village, thought Anna-Maria.
“She came and went like the cat,” said Anki. “But he seemed happy with things as they were… I mean, they never fell out or anything.”
* * *

The evening was closing in. The hens went into the henhouse and nestled close together on their perches. The wind eased and lay down on the grass. Details were obliterated. Grass, trees and buildings floated away into the dark blue sky. Sounds crept closer, became clearer.
Lisa St?ckel listened to the sound of the gravel beneath her feet as she walked down the track to the bar. Her dog Majken trailed behind her. In an hour the women’s group would be holding its autumn meeting and dinner at Micke’s.
She’d stay sober and take it easy. Put up with all that talk about how everything must carry on without Mildred. How Mildred felt just as close now as when she was alive. All she could do was bite the insides of her lips, hang on to the chair and not stand up and shout: We’re finished! Nothing can carry on without Mildred! She isn’t close! She’s a rotting lump down in the ground! Earth to earth! And you, you can all go back to being home-birds, making the coffee, discussing your fibromyalgia, gossiping like old women. You can read your magazines and serve your men.
She walked in and the sight of her daughter interrupted her train of thought.
Mimmi. Wiping the tables and windowsills with a cloth. Her tri-colored hair in two big bunches above her ears. Pink lacy bra peeping over the neckline of her tight black jumper. Cheeks rosy with warmth, presumably she’d been in the kitchen getting the food ready.
“What are we having?” asked Lisa.
“I’ve gone for a bit of a Mediterranean theme. Little olive bread rolls with dips to start,” answered Mimmi without slowing down her actions with the cloth. It was swishing across the shiny bar counter. She followed it with the hand towel she always carried folded over the waistband of her apron.
“There’s tzatziki, tapenade and hummus,” she went on. “Then bean soup with pistou, it made sense to do vegetarian for everybody, because half of you are grass eaters…”
She looked up and grinned at Lisa, who was just taking off her cap.
“But Mum,” she exclaimed, “what on earth do you look like? Are you letting the dogs chew your hair off when it gets too long?”
Lisa ran her hand over her cropped hair to try and flatten it. Mimmi looked at her watch.
“I’ll fix it,” she said. “Pull up a chair and sit down.”
She disappeared through the swing door into the kitchen.
“Mascarpone ice cream with cloudberries for dessert,” she shouted from the kitchen. “It’s absolutely…”
She finished the sentence with an appreciative wolf whistle.
Lisa pulled up a chair, took off her jacket and sat down. Majken immediately lay down at her feet; just this short walk had worn her out, or she was in pain, probably the latter.
Lisa sat as still as in church as Mimmi’s fingers worked through her hair and the scissors evened it all out to the width of a finger.
“What’s going to happen now, without Mildred?” asked Mimmi. “Your hair grows in three circles in a row just here.”
“I suppose we’ll just carry on as normal.”
“With what?”
“Meals for mothers and children, the clean panties and the wolf.”
The clean panties project had begun as an appeal. When it came to the practical help social services offered women who were on drugs, it turned out to be very much focused on men. There were disposable razors and underpants in the clothing pack, but no women’s panties or tampons. Women had to make do with sanitary towels like nappies, and men’s underpants. Magdalena had offered to work with social services, buying panties and tampons as well as things like deodorant and moisturizer. They had also provided a contact list. The name of the contact person was given to a landlord who could be persuaded to let a room to the woman who was using. If there were problems, the landlord could ring the contact person.
“What are you going to do about the wolf?”
“We’re hoping for some kind of monitoring in association with the Nature Conservancy Council. When the snow comes and they can start tracking on scooters, she’s going to be at serious risk if we can’t get something sorted out. But we’ve got some money in the foundation, so we’ll see.”
“You realize you’re stuck with it now, don’t you?” said Mimmi.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the one who’ll have to be the driving force in Magdalena.”
Lisa blew away a few prickly hairs that had settled under her eye.
“Never,” she said.
Mimmi laughed.
“What makes you think you’ve got a choice? I think it’s quite funny, I mean you’ve never actually been one for joining clubs and things, I bet you never thought this would happen. My God, when I heard you’d been elected chairwoman… Micke had to give me first aid.”
“I can imagine,” said Lisa dryly.
No, she thought. I never imagined this would happen. There were a lot of things I’d never have imagined I’d do.
Mimmi’s fingers moved through her hair. The sound of the scissors’ blades against each other.
That evening in early summer… thought Lisa.
She remembered sitting in the kitchen, sewing new covers for the dogs’ beds. The sound of the scissors’ blades against each other. Snip, snip, clip, clip. The television was on in the living room. Two of the dogs were lying on the sofa in there, you could almost imagine they were drowsily watching the news. Lisa was listening with half an ear as she cut the material. Then the sewing machine rattling across the fabric in straight lines, the pedal right down to the floor.
Karelin was lying in the basket in the hallway, snoring. Nothing looks more ridiculous than a sleeping, snoring dog. He was lying on his back, back legs in the air and splayed out to the sides. One ear had flopped over his eye like a pirate’s eye patch. Majken was lying on the bed in the bedroom, her paw over her nose. From time to time she made little noises in her throat and her legs twitched. The new Springer spaniel lay happily beside her.
All at once Karelin wakes up with a start. He leaps up and begins to bark like mad. The dogs in the living room jump off the sofa and join in. Majken and the spaniel puppy come racing in and almost knock Lisa over; she has got up too.
As if she might not have understood, Karelin comes into the kitchen and tells Lisa at the top of his voice that there’s somebody outside, they’ve got a visitor, somebody’s coming.
It’s Mildred Nilsson, the priest. She’s standing out there on the veranda. The evening sun behind her turns the edges of her hair into a golden crown.
The dogs are all over her. They’re ecstatic about the visit. Barking, racketing about, whining, Bruno even sings a note or two. Their tails thud against the door frame and the balustrade.
Mildred bends down to say hello to them. That’s good. She and Lisa can’t look at each other for too long. As soon as Lisa saw her out there, it felt as if they’d both waded out into a fast-flowing river. Now they’ve got a bit of time to get used to it. They glance at each other, then look away. The dogs lick Mildred’s face. Her mascara ends up just below her eyebrows, her clothes are covered in hairs.
The current is strong. It’s a question of standing firm. Lisa holds on to the door handle. She sends the dogs to their baskets. Normally she yells and shouts, that’s how she normally speaks to them and it doesn’t bother them at all. This time the command is almost a whisper.
“Go to your baskets,” she says, waving feebly in the direction of the house.
The dogs look at her in bewilderment, isn’t she going to yell at them? But they lope off anyway.
Mildred doesn’t waste any time. Lisa can see she’s angry. Lisa is a head taller than her, Mildred has to stretch her neck slightly.
“Where have you been?” says Mildred furiously.
Lisa raises her eyebrows.
“Here,” she replies.
Her eyes fasten on the marks of summer on Mildred. She’s got freckles. And the light down on her face, on her upper lip and around her jawbone, has turned blonde.
“You know what I mean,” says Mildred. “Why aren’t you coming to the Bible study group?”
“I…” begins Lisa, scrabbling around in her head for a sensible excuse.
Then she gets angry. Why should she need to explain? Isn’t she an adult? Fifty-two years old, surely at that age it’s okay to do what you want?
“I’ve had other things to do,” she says. Her tone is more abrupt than she would like.
“What other things?”
“You know perfectly well!”
They stand there like two reindeer, vying to be leader of the herd. Their rib cages heaving up and down.
“You know perfectly well why I haven’t been coming,” says Lisa in the end.
They’ve waded out up to their armpits now. The priest loses her footing in the current. Takes a step toward Lisa, amazed and angry all at the same time. And something else in her eyes too. Her mouth opens. Takes a deep breath just as you do before you disappear under the water.
The current carries Lisa along with it. She loses her grip on the door handle. Moves toward Mildred. Her hand ends up round the back of Mildred’s neck. Her hair feels like a child’s beneath Lisa’s fingers. She draws Mildred toward her.
Mildred in her arms. Her skin is so soft. They stagger into the hallway entwined around each other, the door is left open, banging against the balustrade. Two of the dogs sneak out.
The only sensible thought in Lisa’s head: They’ll stay in the yard.
They stumble over shoes and dog baskets in the hallway. Lisa is walking backwards. Her arms still around Mildred, one around her waist, one around the back of her neck. Mildred very close, pushing her into the house, her hands beneath Lisa’s sweater, fingers on Lisa’s nipples.
They stumble through the kitchen, land on the bed in the bedroom. Majken is lying there smelling of damp dog, she couldn’t resist a dip in the river earlier in the evening.
Mildred on her back. Off with their clothes. Lisa’s lips on Mildred’s face. Two fingers deep inside her.
Majken raises her head and looks at them. Settles down with a sigh, nose between her paws. She’s seen members of the congregation coupling before. There’s nothing strange about it.
* * *

Afterward they make coffee and thaw out some buns. Eat as if they were starving, one after the other. Mildred gives the dogs tidbits and laughs, until Lisa tells her off, they’ll be sick, but she’s laughing all the time she’s trying to be stern.
They sit there in the kitchen in the middle of the light summer night. Each with a sheet around them, sitting on opposite sides of the table. The dogs have picked up on the party atmosphere and are playing about.
Now and again their hands creep across the table to meet.
Mildred’s index finger asks the back of Lisa’s hand: “Are you still here?” The back of Lisa’s hand answers: “Yes!” Lisa’s index finger and middle finger ask the inside of Mildred’s wrist: “Guilt? Regret?” Mildred’s wrist replies: “No!”
And Lisa laughs.
“I’d better come back to the Bible study group, then,” she says.
Mildred bursts out laughing. A piece of half-chewed cinnamon bun falls out of her mouth and onto the table.
“I don’t know, the things you have to be prepared to do to get people to the Bible study group.”
* * *

Mimmi stood in front of Lisa and examined her work. The scissors in her hand like a drawn sword.
“There,” she said. “Now I don’t have to be ashamed of you.”
She ruffled Lisa’s hair with a quick gesture. Then she pulled the kitchen towel out of the waistband of her apron and vigorously brushed the hairs off Lisa’s neck and shoulders.
Lisa ran her hand over the stubble.
“Don’t you want to look in the mirror?” asked Mimmi.
“No, I’m sure it’s fine.”