Authors: Sara B. Elfgren & Mats Strandberg
Fire (72 page)
Everything feels so strange.
Someone shuts the large church doors and the bells begin to toll above their heads. The whispering in the pews is dying away.
She turns and looks at the vicar. He is a young man and she doesn’t recognise him.
He says that they have all gathered here to say goodbye to a beloved daughter, sister and friend. She scans the congregation and sees familiar faces everywhere.
Julia sits with her head bent low. Large tears are dropping into the open hymnbook in her lap. Erik sits next to her. One of his arms is wrapped around her. The expression on his face is strange. As if he, too, is dreaming.
Felicia and Robin sit hand in hand, next to Julia and Erik. Kevin is there as well, but he is sitting so far back from the rest of the gang that you might think he doesn’t know them.
Sobs are echoing against the stone walls of the church. Erik’s family and Robin’s parents are also here. Åsa is discreetly patting some tears away with a paper hankie.
She walks towards the front of the church, seeing people she has known all her life. Her auntie, who she hasn’t met for many years. And her little cousins. They aren’t so little any more.
But there are also loads of people she doesn’t know well at all, and some she has never seen before. They seem to weep just as much as everyone else.
Suddenly, she hears a voice she knows only too well.
When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree.
Alicja. She is standing at the altar and singing.
Be the green grass above me, With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.
Mum and Dad. They’re in the front pew and she runs up to them.
‘What’s happening here?’ she asks.
Mum is crying so much her whole body is shaking. Dad is staring straight ahead while the tears run down his cheeks. Rasmus and Lotta sit on either side of Dad, curled up close to his big body.
‘Hello?’ she says.
They are ignoring her. They still haven’t forgiven her.
She turns towards the altar again.
The coffin. Its shiny, light wood. Its polished brass handles. The sea of flowers.
And there, the photograph of herself. It has been propped up on a large easel.
There have been times when Ida wondered who would come to her funeral, but she has never dreamed about it before. Now she wants to wake up.
‘This is no dream.’
Ida turns around. Matilda is standing very close. It’s so strange to see her like this. She looks so real, almost more so than the people in the church. She is wearing a long, white smock. Her face is serious.
‘This is no dream,’ Matilda repeats.
‘Has to be,’ Ida says. ‘Or else I’d be dead.’
Matilda doesn’t reply.
And Ida remembers.
The gym. Olivia. Gustaf. The kiss.
It wasn’t a kiss.
She turns back.
‘Mum!’ she cries. ‘Mummy!’
Mum is hiding her face in her hands and Dad has put his arm around her and Rasmus.
‘Dad?’
‘They can’t hear you,’ Matilda says.
Ida runs down the aisle. The Chosen Ones will hear her. She tries to give Minoo’s shoulder a good shake but can’t get a proper grip.
‘Minoo,’ she pleads. ‘Minoo, I’m here! I’m here!’
Minoo doesn’t answer her. She is sitting close to Gustaf. He doesn’t notice her either.
Ida shuts her eyes tightly and concentrates as hard as she can.
Linnéa! Linnéa! I’m not dead! I’m here!
Linnéa doesn’t react. Nor does Vanessa. Nor Anna-Karin.
She observes the faces of the Chosen Ones. None of them are weeping all that much, there are others in the church who cry more loudly. But no one can fail to see how genuine their grief is.
People are rising from the pews and starting to walk silently towards the altar to leave their flowers on the coffin and say their goodbyes. Among the Chosen Ones, Minoo is the first to get up.
Ida reaches her hand out towards Minoo, but she walks straight through it.
‘Come now,’ Matilda says.
‘I want to stay!’
‘You can’t. We must hurry away.’
‘What are you saying?’ Ida says. ‘Where are we going? Into the tunnel of light? Or what?’
‘No,’ Matilda says. ‘That is not where we are going. But we must leave. Before they find us.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I will explain everything,’ Matilda says. ‘Now, take my hand.’
Ida looks at her coffin. Then at all the people who have played different roles in her life. Then at the Chosen Ones again.
They were the friends who knew her best.
‘I don’t want it all to be over,’ Ida says.
‘It isn’t over,’ Matilda says. ‘Trust me.’
Ida takes the hand Matilda holds out to her and a dazzling light fills her.
As we write this, we have just finished the last set of changes in the
Fire
manuscript. Almost a year has passed since we wrote the first chapter. And, what a year it has been! We have been in touch with so many fantastic people. If we were to mention all of them, the acknowledgements would be as big as the book itself.
Extract from ‘
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
’ (‘
Blinka lilla stjärna
’, Swedish text by Betty Ehrenborg-Posse)
Extract from ‘
Amazing Grace
’ by John Newton
Extract from ‘
Ellens dritter Gesang
’ (‘
Ave Maria
’
) by Franz Schubert
Extract from
Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
Extract from ‘
When I am Dead, My Dearest
’ by Christina Rossetti
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446474877
Published by Arrow Books in association with Hammer 2013
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Copyright © Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg, 2013
The authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in Great Britain in 2011 by Arrow Books
in association with Hammer
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099568544