Drowned (7 page)

I nod, although I know nothing about heather. I gently press the green moss surrounding the orchids with my forefinger, it is damp, springy. I try to remember when I last felt moss.

“But what are they for?” I say. “They can’t go in the containers around the town, surely?”

“No, these are mine. I bought them with my own money, I’m just borrowing a little bit of space for them in here. But I’m sure I can come up with something. They’d make a good present when somebody on the council has a birthday, or retires or something.”

She sets off again, I follow, past pots of small palms along one wall, Stella says they will stand in the square outside the town hall next summer, then she glances at her watch.

“I’m going to be late for my meeting, I must dash. Are you coming?”

We stay together until we reach the pedestrian area in the town center. I don’t know anybody who walks as fast as Stella when she’s in a hurry, I have to break into a trot to keep up.

“Are you going home now?” she says.

“I don’t know.”

“Or do you want to come back with me later?”

“I don’t know,” I say again.

“I’m in a hurry.”

“I’ll come with you later.”

She nods.

“I’ll be leaving at quarter to five, see you then,” she says quickly before cutting across the square toward the council offices.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself for a whole afternoon all alone in town, I wander around aimlessly. First of all I go back to the café where Stella and I had lunch, but there’s nowhere to sit. Families on holiday are eating ice cream with strawberries, decorated with little paper parasols, some of the people are speaking German. The center is concentrated around the town hall square, and I spend a few hours in the shopping mall beside it, a depressing concrete structure that looks as if it could be in just about any Swedish town. The same retail chains as everywhere else, the same messy summer sales. I try on a dress in a deserted H&M that is chilly from the air-conditioning, decide to buy it. I had only one dress with me and I’ve worn it virtually every day, washing it in the hand basin at night and pegging it out so that the sun has dried it by the time I get up. The new dress is shorter, made of a light, floral fabric, intertwining stems and leaves.

Then I find a small library on a side street, there is a sofa in the poetry section and I flop down, pulling out odd books and reading in a vaguely preoccupied
way until half past four, when I head back to the council offices. Stella is already waiting outside even though it’s only twenty to.

She raises her eyebrows at me by way of a greeting.

“Did you finish early?” I say.

“No, we said quarter to,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Yes?” she repeats.

“Is your watch fast?” I say.

I see the furrow appear between her eyebrows.

“Maybe your watch is slow?” she says.

I sigh.

“Okay, sorry if I’m late.”

She shrugs her shoulders, I follow her across the square to the car.

Stella’s mood rapidly improves when we get home. Gabriel compliments her on the skirt she is wearing, and she does a little pirouette in the hallway, laughs, doesn’t get changed as she usually does after work. Instead she ties an apron around her waist and starts to help him with dinner. He is peeling carrots, he grabs hold of her as she walks past, tips her backwards and kisses her quickly, she laughs again. Then she gets a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and opens it, pours three glasses and puts one on the kitchen table in front of me. Gabriel interrupts his peeling to raise
a glass to her. I sit and flick through an interior design magazine Stella subscribes to, I have to look away when she walks behind him and runs one hand along his arm. A quick caress, a gesture that is ordinary and tender at the same time, I feel a stabbing pain in my stomach.

There is condensation on the outside of my glass, my fingers get damp when I pick it up to take a sip even though I don’t feel like drinking wine tonight. I stare at an article about swimming pools, it’s full of beautiful photographs of spectacular houses. One of them has a pool with the shorter side made of glass, overlooking a steep cliff, way down below is the sea, hissing waves breaking on black, jagged rocks. If that glass wall shattered you would die, I think. I think about Gabriel’s hand on the back of my neck in the car, the way he pulled me toward him just as he did with Stella a few moments ago, the same firm movement. What did I actually imagine? That he would stop liking her just because he had kissed me? Even though I can see how unreasonable that idea is, watching them cook together makes me feel ill, the fact that they obviously enjoy each other’s company. There is something between them that far outweighs a kiss, I think, there is a history, plans for the future, shared confidences, an entire existence. I’ve never had that kind of thing with anyone, and I definitely
don’t have it with Peter. With him it’s like a delayed teenage relationship, where nothing feels safe or secure for more than the moment, where everything is replaceable, open to renegotiation. A kiss doesn’t count for much against what Stella and Gabriel have; it was just a mistake, anyone can make a mistake.

I can feel my cheeks burning at the realization of how childish I am, mixed with disappointment, it feels as if my temperature has suddenly shot up. Somehow I had thought that things would be different, in some small way at least, but nothing is different, Gabriel has barely looked at me, not in anything but a perfectly correct way, friendly yet distant, as if I were no more than the visiting relative I am.

I have to get up from my place at the kitchen table and go and sit on the sofa on the patio, with the kitchen out of sight. I can hear Stella laughing, I close the door carefully behind me. I have brought my glass and the magazine with me, the water in the pool is a chilly turquoise, I stare at it and try to calm my thoughts. What is the matter with me? Can you do such a thing if there’s nothing the matter with you? Perhaps there’s something wrong in my brain, like with murderers, psychopaths, a basic lack of empathy. Although it isn’t empathy I lack, it’s more that I have the ability to close things off, push them away, block my brain from grasping the consequences of my actions, it’s always been
that way. I have always thought of it as an extension of my lively imagination, but perhaps it’s something else, some kind of mental disorder, a fault. Something that ought to be treated: there are watertight bulkheads between the different parts of my brain, I think, where there should be no dividing walls at all.

Then I get angry, thinking that he ought to understand, he ought to realize he can’t do something like that and then pretend it hasn’t happened, but perhaps that’s the way he works. Perhaps it’s like a game to him. Nothing is a game to me, nothing ever has been. I take everything seriously, I always have. That’s how you end up not being kissed until you’re twenty, I think, not because that’s what you want but because you just can’t mobilize that final lack of control that is necessary, the ability to go with the flow and just let things happen. Stella and I are alike in that way, in our need for control. But she has a purposefulness and a self-confidence that I lack, and that more than compensate, so she gets what she wants anyway.

I take a big gulp of my wine and lean back on the sofa, trying to work out what I have instead, but I can’t come up with anything. I’m like Stella, I think. But not quite as good.

Both Stella and Gabriel are still in a cheerful mood at dinner. Stella seems slightly tipsy and tells us about a
man at the council whom she doesn’t get along with, she and Gabriel analyze him together, laughing, I feel superfluous even though they both make polite attempts to draw me into the conversation.

Stella excuses herself after we’ve eaten, she’s going for a shower, Gabriel excuses himself without giving a reason and follows her up the stairs, I hear her laughing again, telling him to stop doing something although it doesn’t sound as if she wants him to stop at all. I stay on the veranda, trying not to listen for sounds that will give away what they’re doing, but although of course it’s impossible not to listen I don’t hear a thing. I think I ought to do some work on my assignment but I’m a little drowsy from the wine, I’m not used to drinking every night. However, I go and fetch some books from the pile on my bedside table, I open the one with the most attractive cover and flick through it aimlessly, I take another sip of my wine.

“Hi there,” says Gabriel as he steps out onto the patio a while later. “How’s it going?”

He sounds cheerful but friendly, he’s looking at me with an expression I can’t place, I almost think he looks a little bit lost, as if he’s not quite sure how to behave. Maybe he feels the same as I do, I think. Maybe he’s not in control of the situation at all, maybe he doesn’t know how to handle it any more than I do.
The thought makes my anger ebb away, replacing it with a kind of tenderness, I smile at him.

“I thought I might do some work, but it’s not going too well.”

He nods, sits down beside me on the sofa, and reaches for one of the books, he leafs through it without appearing to take any notice of what it says, sighs, puts it down again.

“I guess it’s not going too well for either of us,” he says.

I look at him, at first I think he means the kiss and it’s an invitation to talk about it, then I realize he means his writing. He reaches for his glass of wine, his arm brushes against mine, he’s sitting very close to me. Suddenly all I want is to lean my head against his shoulder, to feel him pull me close and hold me tight. I am aware of his smell, it’s faint but unmistakable once I have picked it up, he smells clean with a slight hint of smoke and then a soft scent of something sweet, like vanilla. I look at his arm where his T-shirt ends and his skin begins, I feel a tremendous desire to reach out and touch him, gently run my fingertips along his arm, along the veins just visible on the inside, it looks so soft.

“Everything will be fine,” I hear myself saying. “I think you’re making too much of an issue of this novel. You should just write.”

He gives me a wan smile, I feel slightly stupid for saying anything at all, I have no idea what I’m talking about, no doubt he realizes that too.

I clear my throat.

“What I mean is, your writing always turns out well. You should trust in that.”

“Kind of you to say so.”

“I didn’t say it to be kind.”

There is a vase of sweet peas on the table now, spreading a perfume that seems to grow more intense as the day goes on. They clamber up a length of chicken wire in the kitchen garden, getting entangled in one another and in the wire, winding their tendrils like lianas around everything they can reach, greedily, clinging on tightly, some are almost impossible to pull free when you’re picking them, I look at Gabriel’s arm again, his hands, his fingers, imagining how it would feel if they touched me, if he reached out his hand and placed it on my leg right now, letting it find its way up my thigh, beneath the thin fabric of my dress. The scent of the sweet peas mingles with the vanilla coming from him, I quickly close my eyes and take a deep breath, it’s a soft scent, powdery, it seems almost improbable that it can simply appear like this, it ought to be possible to extract it from the air somehow, concentrate it, bottle it.

Gabriel looks at me but says nothing, it is quiet now, no music tonight, just the singing of the crickets, his eyes are darting all over the place.

“Perhaps it’s best if we go to bed now,” he says quietly.

“Is that what you think?”

There is a tortured expression on his face now, I recognize it, it’s the same look he had in the car, after he had kissed me, suddenly I realize he might be thinking exactly the same thing as me, perhaps he’s finding this just as difficult as I am.

He nods, gets up slowly from the sofa.

“Yes,” he says. “That is what I think, unfortunately.”

I am woken by the noise of the vacuum cleaner, Gabriel is up early and doing the housework. He nods to me from the living room, where he is vacuuming the old Oriental rug that covers almost the entire floor.

I get myself some breakfast, make a sandwich, put the coffee on. When I open the cupboard door under the sink where the trash bag is kept, a cloud of tiny flies swirls out and a heavy, sweet stench hits my nostrils. This is the time of year they call the dog days, and with the unusual heat as well, everything goes bad straightaway. Stella mentioned it at dinner last night, the fact that it’s barely possible to harvest anything because it’s ruined almost immediately, they’d been talking about it on the news, weary farmers in Skåne with rotting vegetable crops. I wave my hand in the air to disperse the swarm of flies, then I hold
my breath and tie the bag tightly before placing it in the doorway between the living room and the patio so that I won’t forget to throw it out.

I eat my breakfast on the patio, I open Gabriel’s book and begin to read. It’s exciting from the very first page, creepily unpleasant, I think how strange it is that I don’t remember it more clearly. One of the chapters ends with a short sex scene between the principal male character and a younger woman, I read it several times, feeling my cheeks burn.