Suddenly a voice calls from the yard. It’s Fredrik. The word ‘dessert’ has all the boys stampeding back to the kitchen. Elin smiles when she sees Marianne and Alice walking together towards the door, side by side, arm in arm.
Elin hangs back. She moves towards the wall, holding up the camera and trying to get a wider angle on the little barn and all the cows inside. Suddenly she stumbles over a sharp edge on the floor, wobbles for a moment and steadies herself against the wall. She stares at the floor. Her trousers and shoes are covered in dust and pieces of hay.
She bends down and slowly draws her hand over the boards, which are coarse and full of splinters that scrape the palm of her hand. She stops at a raised part, carefully wiggling the board. The liquor is still under there, the same liquor Lasse left so many years ago. She lifts the bottles out, one by one, untwisting the caps and letting the contents trickle out onto the packed dirt underneath the floorboards. The liquid gurgles hollowly against the glass, the smell so strong it tickles her nostrils. The liquor soon drains away, leaving only damp, dark earth.
Under the bottles is a jar, buried so deep that she can barely see the gold lid catching the light. She takes hold of it and tries to pull it out, but it’s lodged, so she unscrews the lid instead, sticking in her hand and fishing out the small, carefully folded notes she wrote all those years ago. The writing on them is so pale it’s barely visible, swallowed up by the paper’s greedy fibres. She can only see half-words, the odd letter or two. What was it she hid here, so long ago? What were the secrets she didn’t want to share with anyone? She can’t remember.
She takes all the notes out of the jar and stuffs them in her jacket pocket.
It feels as though she’s sitting in a bubble. Elin looks at the people around the table, her eyes wandering from one to the next, but she can’t make out what they’re saying. They’re all talking, all moving, all smiling. Small hands reach for the big bowl of ice cream, meringue, banana and chocolate sauce. The children squabble over who’s going to have the last of the sweet mixture, spoons scraping the china. Laughter rises above the other sounds.
It’s the same table, the same walls. Even the picture they once painted together hangs in the same frame, in the same spot. The dog, the tree, the tractor tracks, the birds. There were four of them painting it, now Erik is missing.
Edvin looks so happy, not at all stressed that there are so many of them around the table. His head and hands jerk, but he looks as though he’s listening and his lips are stretched into a smile.
At one end of the table, Erik and Alice are talking about something they find amusing. They are laughing, and Alice is gesticulating. They look like they’re the same age. She leans over to Fredrik.
‘How old is Erik?’
He looks over at them.
‘He’ll be eighteen soon. And Alice?’
‘Seventeen.’
The two teenagers get up from the table at the same time. Alice stops at Elin’s side.
‘He’s going to show me something outside quickly. We’ll be back soon.’
She nods and sees them disappear. Elin goes over to the kitchen window and watches their backs retreating slowly up towards the road in the low light from the yard lamp. They stop and look up at the sky for a long time. Perhaps he’s showing her the constellations. She smiles.
Marianne stands by the sink where there are towering piles of plates and bowls, rinsing one after another in running water. Elin stands beside her and passes them to her.
‘My little helper,’ Marianne says without looking at her.
‘Not so little any more.’
‘No. It’s been a few years.’
The plates rattle and clatter. Elin doesn’t know what else to say, and they stand side by side in silence. The youngest children have grown tired of sitting still and are careering noisily around the house, and Fredrik and Miriam are sitting at the table with glasses of wine. They call to Elin and she looks over her shoulder, her hands still in the washing-up bowl.
‘Elin, leave the washing-up, Marianne can do that! Come and tell us about New York. Are all the buildings really tall? Is it true there are no trees?’
‘You’ll have to come and visit some time.’ She sits down beside Fredrik. He puts his hand on her shoulder.
‘We were best buds, me and Elin,’ he says to Miriam.
‘Friends forever,’ Elin murmurs, so quietly that she’s really only mouthing it.
‘Forever ago,’ Fredrik says, as though he heard her anyway.
Marianne’s hands are still damp with dishwater when she suddenly grabs Elin and pulls her away from the conversation at the table. Elin goes with her up the stairs, into the room that was once hers. It’s pink now: pink walls, pink quilt, pink curtains trimmed with pink lace. Even the wardrobe doors are pink.
‘How lovely you’ve made it,’ she lies, suppressing a shudder.
It smells musty with old perfume and hairspray. On the dressing table, dusty bottles stand in neat rows on a crocheted doily. The oval mirror is mottled and shabby. Elin bends towards it and looks at her face. It’s covered in black patches where the surface of the mirror is damaged.
‘You can’t put your make-up on here. We’ll have to get you a new mirror,’ she says.
‘Are you going to help me now?’ says Marianne. ‘Is everything going to be OK again?’ She smiles, but seems confused, her gaze darting around the room as she clutches the end of the bed.
‘What do you mean?’ says Elin. ‘It wasn’t that good when I was last here, was it?’
‘It was better.’
Elin sinks down onto the bed and sits in silence, staring at the floor, studying the stained lino and scruffy skirting boards. She remembers.
‘Could it get any worse?’ she mutters.
She reaches out and takes Marianne’s hand, tries to get her to sit down beside her.
‘No, come with me, I want to show you something.’ Marianne lets go of her hand and goes over to one of the wardrobes. When she opens the door Elin gasps. Her things are still in there. Shelf after shelf of puzzles. Marianne takes out a thick bundle of drawings. She holds them out to Elin.
‘Here, you did these. I’ve never stopped looking at them. They’re so lovely, you were so talented, even though you were so young.’
Elin takes the pile out of her hands and smiles as she looks at her work. Dogs, cats, trees, flowers, her beloved wildflowers. Drawings of the natural world, things that were so close then and are now distant.
‘I carried on drawing flowers. I miss all the flowers we had here.’
Elin holds up a sketch that’s almost identical to the one she drew for Fredrik in New York just a few weeks ago.
‘Just like the bouquets you used to pick for me. Do you remember that?’ Marianne takes the picture from her.
‘Yes, Yellow for joy, blue for peace and pink for love. You had some funny ideas, didn’t you?’
‘It’s ideas like that that keep you alive out here in the country.’ Marianne laughs suddenly.
‘Hmm, ideas and dreams,’ Elin says, still flicking through the pile.
‘I’ve only ever had one dream.’
‘And what’s that?’ Elin looks up, meets her mother’s gaze.
‘That you would come back,’ she whispers, as a tear escapes from her eye and runs over her cheek.
Marianne lowers herself onto the bed beside Elin, her breath whistling in her lungs, and Elin strokes her back.
‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t you try to contact me?’
‘Why did you leave me? Why did you never ring?’ counters Marianne.
They fall silent. All the sounds in the room grow, the walls creaking, the wind whining outside the window, the children romping about downstairs. Marianne leans her head against Elin’s shoulder, and Elin runs her hand over her mother’s hair.
‘I’m here now, Mama, I’m here. Let’s try and forget, and start over,’ she whispers.
In the end it’s Fredrik who interrupts t
hem, opening the door and sticking his head in.
‘It’s getting late. The kids need to get home and into their beds. The littlest ones, anyway, otherwise they’ll start grizzling soon.’
‘The littlest ones,’ Elin and Marianne chorus, laughing at the shared memory of Aina’s obsession with elves and imps.
They go down together. Miriam is all ready to go, with the youngest boy in her arms. Elin strokes his head.
‘It was lovely to meet you, all of you. We’d best head back to the hotel too. It’s so dark all the time, I don’t know how you stand it.’
Elin takes her black coat from the bench in the hall and buttons it carefully, right up to the throat. Marianne follows her out into the hallway, standing very close. She’s smaller than Elin remembers and her hair is so thin, it looks almost brittle. Her cheeks and nose are covered in small broken veins. She reaches a hand out, hesitantly, and Elin immediately takes it in both of hers.
‘Well, time for us to say goodbye, then,’ Marianne says. Her gaze wavers, not quite meeting Elin’s.
‘Bye then, Mama. But we’ll see you again soon, we’re staying a few more days, we have a lot to talk about,’ Elin replies.
Releasing her hand, she hugs her but gets no hug in return: Marianne’s arms hang loosely by her sides and Elin can feel her trembling slightly. She lets go of her and embraces Fredrik and Miriam, while Marianne stays rooted to the spot and stares ahead blankly.
They can hear Edvin stamping his foot in the kitchen, the sound growing louder. Elin runs back in. Although the arm he reaches out towards her is stiff and slightly twisted, he’s struggling to get closer to her. She bends forward and gives him a hug. His odour is strong, musty, as though it is a long time since he had a shower. He runs his hand across her back in hard, slow strokes.
‘Bye then, little brother, I’ll see you soon,’ she whispers, wiping a tear from his cheek.
When Elin comes out into the yard, Alice and Erik are nowhere to be seen and don’t reply when she calls for them. It’s uncannily quiet outside, as though she is standing in an endless vacuum. She goes round the corner of the house where it’s pitch-black, impossible to see your hand in front of your face. The ground is uneven. She eyes the back of the house, wondering what it looks like out there now. The light on her phone is too weak, she can only see earth and pine needles and the dense branches of the juniper bushes.
A weak light sways to and fro further along the road. She sees the two teenagers stop a little way from the farmyard, where they think they’re out of sight. She can hear them speaking but can’t make out their words. Alice is given a quick hug and a caress of the cheek before Erik runs over to the waiting car. Alice waves as they drive off, in a minibus with space for all of them. Typical Fredrik, Elin laughs to herself, to make a whole football team.
Elin walks towards Alice across the uneven, wet ground. Alice grins when she sees who it is and reaches her arms out. Elin pulls her close and they stand a moment, looking at the buildings.
‘I like this,’ Alice whispers, her cheek close to her mother’s.
‘What do you mean? The darkness?’
‘Everything, your old life. It’s lovely.’
‘Hmm, but dark. And cold. Let’s get out of here.’
Elin turns up the volume in the car, but Alice turns it down again.
‘Can’t we talk a little?’ she says.
‘About what?’
‘About all the things you were saying in there. I didn’t understand anything. I’ve only been talking to Erik.’
‘It’s not easy to talk about,’ says Elin. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have come, it’s stirred up so many feelings for everyone.’
‘Do you really mean that?’
‘No, I’m glad we came. It’s just so sad. All of it. Don’t you think so?’
‘No, not at all. I love this. The cows and the farm. And Erik was so funny and so kind. He showed me the stars. We can come back soon, right? In the summer? Then I can see all your beautiful flowers for real, and swim in the sea. Erik wants to show me. It feels like I’ve got a new family.’ Alice smiles happily.
‘It’s just that she never called me, she never wrote, it’s so strange. My own mother,’ Elin says softly, the words so sharp they cause her pain deep inside. She turns the volume up again.
Alice sits quietly beside her, strokes her hair now and then. It’s messy from the wind and smells strongly of both farmyard and cooking.
‘I love you, Mom.’
At first Elin doesn’t answer, but when Alice runs her hand over her hair again she whispers:
‘Ditto.’
‘You do exactly the same thing she does, you know?’
‘Who?’
‘Your mom, my grandma. You shut down. You’re exactly the same.’
Elin falls silent, but her head is spinning with thoughts. She puts her foot down and drives ever faster around the bends. It’s not until she turns into Visby through the North Gate that Alice starts to talk again.
‘I bet you’re longing for your camera right now,’ she says.
Elin nods.
‘You must realise that you hide behind it,’ Alice says.
‘It’s been good, working hard is good for you.’
Alice snorts.
‘You sound like an alcoholic.’
Elin stops the car in the middle of the road. Unable to contain her emotions any longer, she bursts into tears and turns to Alice.
‘I love you,’ she sobs. ‘I’m nothing like her, don’t ever say that again.’
Alice reaches over the gearstick and hugs her, and they hold each other close for a long time.
‘Sorry,’ Elin whispers at last.
‘Promise to stop running away now. Promise,’ Alice replies.
They are traipsing through the hotel lobby with muddy shoes and messy hair when Elin stops in her tracks.
‘I have to get something to eat, I hardly touched that stew.’
Alice shakes her head.
‘Not me, I have to sleep. I’m pretty much dead on my feet.’
She yawns and points towards the bar as the lift doors open.
‘Oh look, see that guy over there? It could almost be Dad.’
Alice presses the button for her floor, blows her mother a kiss and lets the lift doors separate them.
Elin stays where she is, her eyes on the bar. Alice is right: the short, thick hair looks like his, brown interspersed with streaks of grey. And his neck, the way he bends it towards the bar as he fingers the rim of his wineglass. The black shirt is tight across the shoulders exactly the way his are, the sleeves sloppily folded. Longing wells up in her, her loneliness suddenly feeling very tangible.
Quiet piano music fills the room and an espresso machine gives off a muffled hum behind the bar. Elin takes a few steps closer, hesitantly. The man is sitting alone at the bar, on a high stool. The other stools, empty, are neatly pushed in alongside his. The winter garden is almost completely empty of guests. Suddenly he turns his head and looks out across the room. Elin’s heart leaps when she sees his profile and she stops in her tracks.
‘Sam, is that you?’
Her voice is too tremulous, he doesn’t hear her. She steps closer.
‘Sam!’
He gets up as soon as he hears her voice, his face serious as he walks towards her. He stops right in front of her and puts his hand on her cheek. They stand in silence, looking at one another.
‘I’ve never seen you cry before. Or seen you looking so untidy. You’re so beautiful,’ he says at last.
‘Why are you here?’
‘You sent the heart.’
‘You never replied when I sent it.’
‘No, but it stirred up some memories. I rang Alice and she told me everything.’
‘So you know now?’
Sam nods and takes a deep breath.
‘Why, Elin? Why have you never told me?’
Elin squirms.
‘I don’t know, it just worked out that way
. But I’m here now, I’m home again,’ she says quickly, on an inhalation.
‘No, you’re not, not quite,’ he whispers, kissing her on the cheek. He pulls her close and strokes her back. ‘Now you’re home.’
~ ~ ~ ~
So much happens in a life.
Events that become memories that are gathered within us.
That build us up. That change the way we are and the things we do. That shape us.
Words someone said to you.
Kind ones.
Stupid ones.
Words you said to someone else.
That you can never forgive yourself for saying.
The first kiss.
The first betrayal.
The times you made a fool of yourself.
The times someone else made a fool of themselves.
We remember the little details. And the memories engrave themselves on us.
Some gain strength, year-on-year. Some affect us forever.
Maybe more than we realise. Maybe without reason.
Can you be sure you remember things as they really were?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To work on a novel is to be invited on a journey through the winding thoughts of your characters. They’re not always clear, not always logical. They’re often easy to hear, but not always easy to understand. Thanks to Karin Linge Nordh and Johan Stridh for helping me navigate and find the right direction. Thanks to Julia Angelin and Anna Carlander for always believing in me, always supporting me in the right way. Thanks to everyone at Forum and Salomonsson Agency for working so hard and so enthusiastically on my books. Thanks to Carl, for inspiration and brilliant thoughts. Thanks to Mama, Papa, Helena, Cathrin, and Linda for being there to support me. And thanks to my wonderful, lovely Oskar, for putting up with an absent-minded mama.
About the Author
Sofia Lundberg, a journalist and former magazine editor, is the author behind the Swedish word-of-mouth and blog sensation The Red Address Book. Sofia lives in Stockholm with her son.
A Question Mark is Half a Heart Page 29