the brief pauses in the conversation felt comfortable, and it was at those moments he had to keep himself from leaning forward and kissing Erica. He refrained, and the opportunity passed.
He was watching when they carried her out. He wanted to wail and throw himself over her covered body. Keep her forever.
Now she was truly gone. Strangers were going to poke and dig at her body. None of them would see her beauty the same way he had done.
For them she would only be a piece of meat. A number on paper, without life, without fire.
With his left hand he stroked the palm of his right hand. Yesterday it had caressed her arm. He pressed his palm against his cheek and tried to feel her cold skin on his face.
He felt nothing. She was gone.
Blue lights were flashing. People were rushing back and forth, in and out of the house. Why were they in a hurry? It was already too late.
No one saw him. He was invisible. He had always been invisible.
It didn’t matter. She had seen him. She could always see him. When she fixed her blue eyes on him he felt that he was seen.
Now there was nothing left. The fire had been put out long ago. He stood in the ashes and watched as his life was carried off, covered by a yellow hospital blanket. At the end of the road there were no choices. He had always been aware of that, and now the hour had finally arrived. He had been longing for it. He embraced it.
She was gone.
Nelly had sounded a bit surprised when Erica called. For a moment, Erica wondered whether she was making a mountain out of a molehill, although she still couldn’t help thinking that it was very odd for Nelly to show up at Alex’s funeral reception. Not to mention the way she had talked almost exclusively to Julia. It’s true that Karl-Erik had worked for Fabian Lorentz as the factory’s office manager until the family moved to Göteborg, but as far as Erica knew they had never associated socially. The Carlgrens were far below the Lorentz family’s requirements for acceptable social class.
The drawing room she was ushered into was exquisitely beautiful. The view stretched from the harbour at one end to the open horizon beyond the islands at the other. On a winter day like this, when the sunshine was reflecting off the snow-covered ice, the view could compete with even the sunniest summertime panorama.
They sat down on an elegant sofa group and Erica was served small canapés from a silver tray. They were fantastic, but she tried to control her appetite so she wouldn’t look unrefined. Nelly ate only one. Afraid to add a gram of flesh to those knobbly bones.
The conversation flowed slowly but politely. In the long pauses between the words, only the ticking of a clock could be heard along with the dainty slurping as they sipped their hot tea. They kept the topics of conversation neutral. The flight of young people from Fjällbacka. The lack of work. How distressing it was that more and more of the lovely old homes were being bought up by tourists and turned into summer houses. Nelly talked a little about how it used to be, when she came to Fjällbacka as a young woman, newly married. Erica listened attentively, politely asking a question now and then.
It felt as if they were circling round the subject they both knew that they would have to broach sooner or later.
It was Erica who finally got up the courage.
‘Well, the last time we saw each other it was under rather sad circumstances.’
‘Yes, so tragic. Such a young woman.’
‘I didn’t realize that you knew the Carlgrens so well.’
‘Karl-Erik worked for us for many years, and of course we met his family on numerous occasions. It seemed only right to express my condolences in person.’ Nelly lowered her eyes. Erica saw that her hands were fidgeting nervously in her lap.
‘I got the impression that you also knew Julia. She wasn’t even born when the Carlgrens lived in Fjällbacka, was she?’
No more than a stiffening of her back and a slight movement of her head indicated that Nelly found the question uncomfortable. She waved a hand covered with gold jewellery.
‘No, Julia is a new acquaintance. But I think she’s a very enchanting young lady. Yes, I know that she may not have the same outer beauty as Alexandra, but unlike her sister, she has a strength of will and a courage that makes me view her as considerably more interesting than her foolish sibling.’
Nelly clapped her hand to her mouth. Besides the fact that, for an instant, she forgot she was talking about a dead person, for a fraction of a second she had revealed a crack in her façade. What Erica saw in that brief moment was pure hatred. Why would Nelly Lorentz hate a woman she could hardly have met except when Alex was a child?
Before Nelly had a chance to smooth over her faux pas, the telephone rang. With obvious relief, she excused herself and went to answer it.
Erica took the opportunity to snoop around the room. It was beautiful but impersonal. The invisible hand of an interior decorator hovered over the entire room. Everything was colour co-ordinated down to the smallest detail. Erica couldn’t help comparing it with the simplicity of the furnishings in her parents’ house. There nothing had been included for the sake of appearances; all the objects had been purchased over the decades based on their usefulness. Erica thought that the beauty of worn and personal items far surpassed this polished showroom. The only personal thing Erica could find was a row of family portraits on the mantelpiece. She leaned forward and studied them intently. They seemed to be in chronological order from left to right, beginning with a black-and-white portrait of an elegant couple in their wedding finery. Nelly was really radiantly beautiful in a white sheath dress that hugged her figure, but Fabian looked uncomfortable in his tuxedo.
In the next photo the family had grown; Nelly was holding a baby in her arms. At her side, Fabian still looked stiff and serious. Then there was a long row of portraits of children at various ages, sometimes alone, sometimes together with Nelly. In the last picture in the row, Nils Lorentz looked to be about twenty-five. The son who had vanished. After the first portrait of the whole family, it was as though Nils and Nelly were the only members left. Although perhaps Fabian wasn’t so eager to be in the picture and instead stood behind the camera. Photos of Jan, the adopted son, were conspicuous in their absence.
Erica turned her attention to a desk in one corner of the room. Made of dark cherrywood, with lovely inlays that Erica traced with her finger. It was completely bare and looked as if it served no other function than decoration. She was tempted to peek in the drawers but wasn’t sure how long Nelly would be gone. The phone conversation was apparently taking some time, but she could come back into the room at any moment. The wastebasket attracted Erica’s attention instead. There were some crumpled papers in it. She took out the paper ball on top and gently smoothed it out. She read it with growing interest. Even more astonished than before, she carefully replaced it in the wastebasket. Nothing in this story was what it seemed.
She
