no. When she finally put all her weight on the scale, it mercilessly read seventy-three. Okay. As she had feared, over one kilo worse. She had guessed about one, but the scale showed over two kilos more than the last time she weighed herself, which was on the morning she found Alex.
Since then, she had felt it was very, very unnecessary to weigh herself. Not because she hadn’t noticed from her waistband that she had gained weight, but up until the moment when she saw it in black and white, denial was a welcome companion. Dampness in the closet or shrinkage due to excessive washing temperature had served her well as excuses countless times in the past. Right now it merely felt hopeless, and she had a good mind to cancel dinner that evening with Patrik. When she saw him she wanted to feel sexy and pretty and thin, not bloated and fat. She gloomily looked at her stomach and tried sucking it in as far as she could. Useless. She looked at herself in profile in the full-length mirror and tried instead to pooch out her stomach as much as she could. There, that’s the image that matched how she felt right now.
With a sigh, she pulled on a pair of loose jogging trousers with a forgiving stretch waistband and put on the same T-shirt she’d slept in. She promised herself that on Monday, she’d do something about her weight again. Starting now was no good, she’d already planned to serve a three-course dinner tonight and she had to admit: if you want to dazzle a man with your cooking, then cream and butter are essential ingredients. Besides, Monday was a good day to start a new life. For the hundred-thousandth time she made a solemn promise to herself that on Monday she would start exercising and stay on her Weight Watchers diet. But not today.
A bigger problem was the reason why she’d almost worried herself sick since yesterday. She had turned over all the options, pondering what she should do, but without coming up with any solution. She suddenly knew something that she sincerely wished she had never found out.
The coffee began to smell good from the coffeemaker, and life seemed a shade brighter. Amazing what a little of that hot beverage could do. She poured a cup and drank it black with great enjoyment as she stood by the kitchen worktop. She had never been much for breakfast; that would save her a few calories for this evening.
When the doorbell rang she was so startled that she spilled a little coffee on her T-shirt. She swore out loud, wondering who it could be at this hour of the morning. She glanced at the kitchen clock. Eight-thirty. She set down the cup and opened the door. There on the porch stood Julia Carlgren slapping her arms to keep warm.
‘Hi.’ Erica’s voice was inquisitive.
‘Hi.’ Then silence from Julia.
Erica wondered what Alex’s little sister was doing on her front porch so early on a Tuesday morning, but her good breeding asserted itself and she asked Julia to come in.
Julia tramped briskly inside, hung up her coat and scarf, and preceded Erica into the living room.
‘Do you think I could have a cup of that wonderful coffee I smell?’
‘Oh, sure, I’ll get you one.’
Safely out of Julia’s sight in the kitchen, Erica poured a cup of coffee and rolled her eyes. Something wasn’t quite right with that girl.
Erica handed the cup to Julia and asked her to have a seat on the wicker sofa on the veranda. They drank their coffee in silence. Erica decided to wait her out. Julia was going to have to broach the subject herself and explain why she was here. It took a couple of tense minutes before Julia spoke.
‘Are you living here now?’
‘No, actually. I live in Stockholm but I’m here straightening out everything with the house.’
‘Yes, I heard. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you. My condolences to you too.’
Julia gave an odd little laugh that Erica found surprising and misplaced. She recalled the document she had found in the wastebasket at Nelly Lorentz’s house and wondered how the pieces fit together.
‘You’re probably wondering why I’m here.’ Julia looked at Erica with her strange, steady gaze. She blinked very seldom.
It struck Erica again how diametrically opposite she was to her big sister. Julia’s skin was pitted with acne scars, and her hair looked as if she’d cut it herself with nail scissors. Without a mirror. There was something unhealthy about the way she looked. A sickly pallor had settled like a dirty grey film over her skin. Nor did she appear to share Alex’s interest in clothes. Her outfits looked as though they had been bought in shops catering to little old retired ladies. Her clothes were as far from the style of the day as they could get without crossing the line to become masquerade costumes.
‘Do you have any photos of Alex?’
‘Excuse me?’ Erica was startled by the direct question. ‘Photos? Yes, I suppose I do. Quite a few, even. Pappa loved taking pictures, and he took a lot of us when we were kids. Alex was over here so often that she’s probably in a lot of the pictures.’
‘Could I see them?’ Julia gave Erica a reproachful look, as if admonishing her for not going to fetch the photos already. Grateful for any excuse to escape Julia’s penetrating gaze for a moment, Erica went to get the photo albums.
The albums were in a chest up in the attic. She hadn’t had a chance to clean there yet, but she knew exactly where the chest was. All the family photographs were stored inside; she had shuddered at the thought of sitting down to go through them. A large part of the photos were in unsorted piles, but she knew that the ones she was looking for had been carefully put into albums. She paged through them systematically, starting at the top of the stack. In the third album she found what she was looking for. The fourth album also had pictures of Alex, and clutching both albums she cautiously climbed down the attic stairs.
Julia was sitting in exactly the same position as before. Erica wondered whether she had moved at all while she was gone.
‘Here’s something that should interest you.’
Erica was out of breath. She dropped the thick photo albums on the coffee table so hard that dust flew.
Julia eagerly began looking through the first album while Erica sat down next to her on the sofa to describe what was in the pictures.
‘When was this one taken?’
Julia was pointing at the first photo she found of Alex, two pages into the album.
‘Let me see. This must be …1974. Yes, I think that’s right. We were about nine then, I think.’
Erica ran a finger over the photo and felt a strong sense of melancholy in her stomach. It was so long ago. She and Alex stood naked in the garden on a warm summer day. If she remembered correctly they had been naked because they were running back and forth through the water spraying from the garden hose. What seemed a bit odd about the picture was that Alex was wearing winter mittens.
‘Why does she have mittens on? This looks like it’s in July or something.’ Julia turned an astonished face to Erica, who laughed at the memory.
‘Your sister loved those mittens and insisted on wearing them, not only all winter long but also for large parts of the summer. She was as stubborn as a mule, and nobody could convince her to put away those darn disgusting mittens.’
‘She knew what she wanted, didn’t she?’
Julia
