The wind is eating its way in under her clothes, and even though she’s wearing both a cardigan and a jacket, she’s shivering before she gets round the house.
She continues towards the railway line and follows the track out onto the headland. At regular intervals she passes the remains of pillboxes and concrete bunkers from the Second World War. The headland gets narrower, and soon she can see water on both sides, and when the railway swings off towards the bridge she can see the lighthouse a few hundred metres ahead.
She goes down to the beach and realises that she’s alone. She lies down in the grass next to the little red-and-white lighthouse and looks up at the clear blue sky. She recalls how she once lay like this, and heard voices from inside the forest.
Then, as now, it had been windy, and one of them had been Martin’s burbling voice.
Why had he vanished?
She doesn’t know, but she believes that someone drowned him. He had disappeared down by the jetty at the same time as Crow Girl got there.
But her memories are vague. There’s a black hole.
She rolls a blade of grass between her fingers and sees the rotating seed head change colour in the sun. At the top of it is a drop of dew, and beneath it sits an ant, completely still. She can see that it’s missing one of its back legs.
‘What are you thinking about, little ant?’ she whispers, then blows on the seed head.
She lies back on her side and puts the grass straw down carefully on a stone next to her. The ant starts to move, crawling down the stem. It doesn’t appear to be troubled by the fact that it’s missing one leg.
‘What are you doing here?’
A shadow falls across her face as she hears his voice. A flock of birds passes above his head.
She gets up and goes with him to the pillbox. It takes ten minutes, because he doesn’t have much stamina.
He tells her about the war, and all the suffering the Danes had to endure during the German occupation, and how the women were raped and dishonoured.
‘And all the randy little German bitches,’ he sighs. ‘They were whores. Fucking five thousand of the swine.’
He’s told her several times about the Danish women who voluntarily embarked on relationships with German soldiers, and she has long since worked out that he himself is a German kid, a German bastard.
As they walk back she stays a few steps behind him, adjusting her dirty clothes. Her top is torn and she hopes they don’t meet anyone. She aches all over, because he was more heavy-handed than usual, and the ground out here is very stony.
Denmark is hell on earth, she thinks.
Karolinska Hospital
‘BLOODY AWFUL WEATHER,’ Sofia Zetterlund says as she walks into the hospital room. She has an uncertain smile on her lips, and Jeanette Kihlberg nods warily. She’s pleased to see Sofia again, but there’s something different about her face, something new that she can’t read.
The rain is beating against the windows, and every so often the room is lit up by lightning. They stand there facing each other.
Sofia looks anxiously at Johan, and Jeanette goes over and strokes her back.
‘Hello, you, good to see you,’ she whispers, and Sofia reciprocates and gives Jeanette a hug.
‘What’s the prognosis?’ she asks.
Jeanette smiles. ‘If you mean the weather, pretty lousy.’ Her lighthearted tone is unforced. ‘But as far as Johan’s concerned, things look good. He’s started to come round. You can see his eyes moving under his eyelids now.’ Johan’s face has finally got some colour back, and she strokes his arm.
The doctors have finally dared to give an unambiguously positive assessment of his condition. And it’s nice to have the company of someone she doesn’t work with. Someone she’s not expected to behave like a boss towards.
Sofia relaxes and becomes herself again.
‘There’s no way you should blame yourself for what happened,’ Jeanette says. ‘It wasn’t your fault he disappeared.’
Sofia stares at her sombrely. ‘No, maybe not. But I’m ashamed that I panicked. I want to be reliable, but I’m clearly not.’
Jeanette thinks back to how Sofia reacted. She had been distraught. In pieces, crying, with her face to the ground.
‘I hope you can forgive me for leaving you there,’ Jeanette says. ‘But Johan was still missing at the time, and –’
‘Goodness, yes,’ Sofia interrupts. ‘I can always take care of myself.’ She looks Jeanette right in the eye. ‘Remember that: I can always look after myself, you never have to take responsibility for me, no matter what.’
Jeanette is almost alarmed by how serious Sofia appears and sounds.
‘If I can handle blubbing company directors, I can handle myself as well.’
Jeanette is relieved to see Sofia smiling.
‘Well, evidently I can’t even handle a drunk,’ Jeanette says. She laughs and points to the bandage on her brow.
‘And what’s your prognosis?’ Sofia asks. Her eyes are smiling now as well.
‘A bottle to the head. Four stitches that’ll be taken out in a couple of weeks.’
The room is once again lit up by lightning. The window rattles and Jeanette is blinded by the bright flash.
White walls, white floor and ceiling. White sheets. Johan’s pale face. Her eyes are out of focus.
‘But what actually happened to you?’ Jeanette hardly dares look at Sofia as she asks the question. The red lights on the heart-lung machine flash. She rubs her eyes and the colours return. Now she can see Sofia’s face properly.
‘Well.’ She sighs, then looks up at the ceiling as though searching for words. ‘It turned out that I was considerably more scared of dying than I ever thought. Simple as that.’
‘You didn’t think you were beforehand?’ Jeanette looks at her inquisitively, and immediately feels her own fear of the inevitable clutch at her chest.
‘Yes, but not like that. Not as strongly as that. It’s like the idea of death doesn’t really become obvious until you have children, and then I had Johan with me up there, and …’ Sofia falls silent and puts her hand on Johan’s leg. ‘Life suddenly took on a different meaning, and I wasn’t prepared for the fact that it could feel like that.’ She turns to look at Jeanette with a smile. ‘I suppose it came as a shock, suddenly realising the point of life.’
Jeanette realises for the first time that Sofia isn’t just a psychologist who’s easy to talk to.
She’s also bearing something herself, a loss or a longing, possibly a sorrow.
And she too has experiences to work through, gaps to fill.
She feels ashamed at not having known sooner. That Sofia is a person who can’t just give all the time.
‘Always being strong is the same as not living,’ she says, hoping Sofia realises that her words are intended as a comfort.
Suddenly Johan makes a whimpering sound, and for a fraction of a second they look at each other in surprise before realising what they’ve just heard. The weight inside Jeanette eases, and she leans over him.