Frozen Moment (10 page)

    The
day old man Gren showed her and Martin around the cottage right at the top of
Stenaredsbacken (he called the place the Glade), she had seen the horse in a
vision of how their future would look. He had been standing just where the
glade turned into forest and small pine trees clambered up a moss-covered hill
behind the house; he was eating grass and drinking out of an old bathtub. Since
then she had fenced in that particular patch as Lukas's exercise area. The
bathtub was still there among the trees, the surface of the water covered with
a sheet of ice strewn with pine needles. At least that part of the vision had
come true.

    With
her cheek pressed against Lukas's warm neck she could usually push away
thoughts of Martin, but today it was difficult. In her mind's eye she replayed
the scene that had made her so happy until a few months ago. They were sitting
in the kitchen of their tiny cluttered one-room apartment on Mariaplan and had
spotted a small advert in the newspaper,
Goteborgsposten:
'Cottage,
needs modernising, going cheap for quick sale.' They had arranged to go over
straight away, caught the bus as they didn't have a car, and had reached the
end of the line as it was starting to get dark. They had to walk from there to
the Glade, up all those hills and into the forest.

    A
taxi was waiting by the gravel track and an old man climbed out of it on weak
trembling legs.
Old man Gren.
Six months earlier he'd
had a stroke, he told them, and it looked as if he was going to have to stay in
the nursing home down in Olofstorp, so he'd decided to sell up.

    In
order to get to the house they had walked past a marshy area, the old man
moving with infinite slowness and caution along the track. The cottage had
neither an indoor toilet nor a shower. The outside toilet was joined to the
shed, and at the back there was an outdoor kitchen with a showerhead and warm
water. They got the place for next to nothing.

    Many
times she had asked herself what had happened.
When it had
all started to go so wrong.
If there had been signs that Martin didn't
feel as if he had found his home out here. That it was only she who felt a
sense of calm spreading through her body as she toiled up the hill, got to the
top of Stenaredsvägen and turned off into the forest, with its powerful scent
of earth, pine needles and rotting leaves. There must have been signs, of
course there must.

    The
fact that he chose to stay in their crash pad in town more frequently was one
sign. He would be working late, meeting up with a friend, or just felt like a
hot bath rather than a shower in the glow of the outside light behind the
cottage. Increasingly she found herself alone in the house, along with Lukas
and the cat she had acquired when she was buying some things at one of the eco
farms over in Stannum. Each time Martin left the cottage, he took a few more of
his possessions with him. One morning he drove into town and never came back.

    He
explained over the phone: he couldn't take the sense of restlessness the place
gave him.
The silence.
The walls were closing in on
him. The quiet that she loved was for him like taking a huge stride towards
death. The boredom was killing him, he said.
What about me,
she wanted
to say,
am
I
a part of that boredom?

    He
had once said that he never understood how someone could live with the same
partner for their whole life. Live in the same place, work at the same thing.

    'I
didn't understand it until I met you,' he said, smoothing things over when he
saw her surprised expression, but doubt had already sunk its claws into Seja.
Perhaps in some way she had sensed that things would turn out like this. Martin
was an uneasy soul: he always wanted to be moving on, travelling, meeting new people,
trying new things. From this very basic point of view they were different.
Internal journeys were enough for Seja, and for those outer calm was essential,
a frame within which dreams could flow. Riding in the forest early in the
morning, the ice-cold autumn dip in the mountain pool, these were events. This
was enough.

    Since
Martin's disappearance she had developed a close relationship with her sorrow
and all its stages. To a certain extent it was a matter of what you did. Most
of the time it was perfectly possible to keep that small amount of control
necessary to stop her from losing her grip altogether.
At
least this far down the line, when the sharpest edges of her grief had been
worn down.
These days her sorrow only made its presence felt at night,
and in situations that specifically reminded her of what she had lost.

    Several
months after clearing out all his things she found the battered red Converse
trainers in a box in the stable. She had been searching for fuses; she still
hadn't learned that it wasn't possible to do the vacuuming, make coffee and
have the computer on standby all at the same time, and suddenly the shoes were
there in her hand. Despite the fact that she could hardly even see her hand in
front of her in the darkness she knew that there were holes in both soles and
that the logo on the ankle was so worn you could barely read it. The memory of
a sleety afternoon, scrupulously divided between two different shops selling
household goods and clothes, had come back to her. The wet had seeped in
through the holes, and Martin's feet had lost all feeling because of the cold,
which he had not been slow to point out.

    'I'm
going to catch a cold, I just know it. I haven't got time to be ill - can't we
go home now? What the hell do we need more pillows
for,
we've already got one each. How much stuff are you going to pack into that
little house, anyway? I can't afford all this.'

    'What
you can afford is irrelevant, Martin,' she had said. 'It's always me who pays
when it comes to the home we share. It's a question of priorities. Your
priority is going into Gothenburg several times a week and drinking beer. At
the moment my priority is this.
Fine.
For God's sake
stop moaning. The only thing I ask of you is that you walk alongside me and pretend
to be happy and interested.
lust
for today?'

    
Had
she said that, felt like that?
It seemed to be characteristic of the
furious harangues involved in their marital squabbles: the lack of constructive
clarity. Over and over again they went off the point, lost their focus in a
struggle that, in the end, was all about breaking the other person, scoring
points in a kind of verbal combat.

    During
the shock at being left alone, she ascribed all her pain to this one upsetting
fact: that the break-up had been so unexpected.
They'd just bought a house,
just made a new start; everything was going so well…
As if change should be
thought of in terms of children or perhaps marriage. The fact that he had let
her down and with that one action destroyed what they had begun to build
together was completely impossible to grasp at first. And the idea that time
heals all wounds felt like complete nonsense.

    However,
she had to admit that, as time passed, the ability to have some kind of
overview had grown. The pain was still there, but it was fading. In moments of
clarity she could look at the failed relationship in a more sober light,
remember days like the shopping trip and add to them other, similar days: early
evenings in smoky bars with drunken strangers and an array of different beers,
Seja waiting crossly by the door with her coat on while Martin struggled with
his separation anxiety - just one more large strong one, just one more. But it
wasn't really about the booze for Martin. It was more the fear of missing out:
those smoky bars with drunken strangers and all those different beers, so much
more attractive than the greyness of everyday life and the frightening
emptiness of being just the two of them.

    She
checked the thermometer. It was a little milder, so she decided to let Lukas
out for a while. She slipped the halter over his head and led him out on to the
grass. Outside the stable lay rolls of fencing she had intended to use to make
an alleyway leading to the exercise area, so that Lukas could move in and out
as he wished, depending on the weather.
A project that had
come to nothing when Martin disappeared - like everything else.

    'You
don't really need me,' he'd said.

    
Yes
I do,
she wanted to say.
I bloody do need you.
But she had said
nothing. Instead she had cried for a week.

    She
cried in the mornings on the way to pick up the newspaper from the mailbox. Åke
Melkersson had tilted his head to one side, had even been
so
bold as to offer her the use of their bathroom if she needed it - the message
had come from Kristina. And she only had to say the word if she needed help.
A girl like you shouldn't be living in these conditions, all alone in the
forest.
He seemed genuinely worried.
And certainly not
in old man Gren's cottage.
Isn't it cold at night?
When
Kristina had instructed Åke to ask Seja at their daily meeting whether she
wouldn't like to rent a room in their modern, fully equipped bungalow, Seja had
politely but firmly declined. She would cope. Time would heal the wounds. And
after all, she had Lukas.

    But
since Åke had taken her to the place where the man was murdered, she had needed
to keep her distance. It was to do with
her own
conflicting emotions. A sense of unease had taken over, despite the eagerness
with which she had begun to describe the scene of the crime; when she got home
after being interviewed by the police, she had sat down at the computer
straight away. The dead man's eyes still came back to her in unguarded moments,
and in her nightmares she was the one lying there on the gravel. But something
else was wrong. Part of her was drawn to the place where it had happened. She
needed more time.
To absorb the atmosphere.
Take
photographs. She felt a morbid pull towards the junction where one of the roads
led to Thomas Edell's workshop. Thomas Edell.

    She
had tried to deceive that inspector, and she was certain he wasn't going to
forget it. Yet she felt guilty of something far more serious than lying. It was
the motive behind the lie she was unable to defend or explain. Something had
made her want to stay, to see the dead man at close quarters, to immortalise
him in her mind. It wasn't only her journalistic ambition; it had something to
do with an event that had happened a long time ago, in a completely different
reality.

    We
will contact you again in order to complete your statement, he had said, the
detective with the crooked front tooth.
And the strong hands.

    She
had intended to spend the day writing. Her article about dedicated individuals
working in various clubs and organisations had ground to a halt, despite the
fact that she had chosen the topic herself, albeit with the ulterior motive of
perhaps selling it to one of the newsletters produced by local organisations.
The work she had put in at the beginning of her training, building up contacts
with people who might possibly give her work at a later stage, had to a certain
extent paid off. From time to time, although it didn't
happen
all that often, she was asked to report on the opening of a sports hall, for
example. There was fierce competition for even the most trivial jobs, and she
hadn't even finished her training yet.

    Seja
had realised at an early stage that she would need sharp elbows to succeed in a
profession where the idea of a permanent post seemed Utopian. Sometimes she
wondered if she had made the right choice, if a safe position in a boring job
wasn't better than a lifelong struggle to do something you enjoyed. When she
sat there editing a piece about broken windows in a lighting shop or the result
of an enquiry into domestic services, the idea that this was her passion was
difficult to sustain. Sometimes she was afraid the urge to write that had been
part of her since she was a child - letters, diaries, stories - would simply
dry up and eventually disappear amid the constant stress and the need to
compromise.

    However,
any assumptions about her future professional life were no more than
speculation; she knew nothing yet, after all. She had embarked on a particular
course, and in order to see the consequences of her choice she would have to
travel to the end of the line.

    The
cat rubbed against her shins and Seja was brought back to earth with a bump;
she threw the last shovelful of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow and took it
round the back of the stable to the manure heap. She decided to leave the horse
outside as long as it was daylight; the rain had definitely chased away the
worst of the cold and the air felt mild against her skin.

    She
went inside and changed into jeans and a sweater that didn't smell of the
stable, and hid her hair in a scarf. Once again she was lost in thoughts:
memories of the dead man tempted her, insisted on attention,
were
treacherous when she lowered her guard. She was therefore unprepared when fear
took her unawares, when it suddenly flooded her body and made her wish that she
had never gone along with Åke to the garage. That she had put the phone down
instead and gone back to sleep.