Dead of Winter

11 Winter 1987

Iben’s father’s truck was parked right outside the cabin. Laura didn’t really want to leave her room, but she knew that Hedda and the others would find it strange if she didn’t come to say goodbye, so she dried her tears, splashed her face with cold water, pulled on her jacket and went out.

Ulf Jensen was tall and muscular, with an angular face. As usual he was wearing a tracksuit and a woolly hat with the athletics club logo.

‘Hi, Laura – welcome home,’ he said. ‘Are you still trying to teach people how to talk properly?’

Laura smiled dutifully. One summer when they were little, she’d tried to teach Iben to speak Swedish without a Skåne accent. Ulf clearly enjoyed the memory. Unlike Laura, who was finding it difficult to look at Iben right now.

Ulf had an air of confidence, something that made everyone listen to him without any need to raise his voice. People liked him, but at the same time they were a little afraid of him. He owned a construction company, was a member of the local council, and also worked as a trainer in the athletics club. No one ever talked about Iben’s mother; Laura didn’t know why. She’d heard Hedda say that Sofia Jensen had left the family when Iben was little, and never contacted them again.

Ulf had built a small training facility for Iben and her half-brothers at home at Källegården: a running track, a long-jump pit, a concrete circle for discus and shot put. Laura had occasionally wondered what it would be like to have Ulf Jensen as a dad instead of her own.

‘OK, Iben – time to go home.’

Laura stiffened as Iben put her arm around her.

‘We haven’t had the chance to talk properly, just you and me.’

‘No . . .’ Laura tried to sound normal.

‘I’ve got training tomorrow evening, but maybe we could meet at Wohlin’s after school? Four o’clock?’

‘Great.’

‘Thanks for this evening, Hedda,’ Ulf said as he got in the truck. ‘And don’t hesitate to call me if you see or hear anything. We have to catch that bastard.’

‘What did he mean by that?’ Laura asked when they’d left.

Her aunt took a deep breath.

‘There have been a couple of fires around the lake during the winter,’ she said. ‘Ulf and a few others have got the idea they weren’t accidental.’

‘What, you mean somebody started them deliberately?’

‘That’s what they’re saying.’ Hedda shrugged. ‘But there’s no evidence. Just a lot of talk.’

She put her arm around Laura and led her towards the house.

‘Time for bed, I think. Jack’s going to lock up the cabin for me. You must be worn out, my little princess.’

Laura looked around for the others. She could hear Jack moving around inside the cabin, keeping out of Ulf Jensen’s way as usual. She didn’t know why, but right now it felt kind of nice.

Peter and Tomas were already on their mopeds. Milla was standing between them; she seemed to be saying something quietly, because both boys were leaning towards her.

‘Goodnight!’ Hedda called out. All three waved in response.

Laura wanted to ask her aunt about Milla – what she was doing here, why Hedda hadn’t mentioned her in her letters, but she felt completely exhausted. All she wanted to do was collapse into her bed and put this evening behind her.

Laura woke in the middle of the night, as she often did after a long-haul flight. She lay there for a few minutes, then realised she wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.

Her mind was racing. She replayed the afternoon and evening, analysed every comment, every glance, every little gesture.

Iben knew how she felt about Jack. Jack knew how she felt about him. And yet they’d gone behind her back. The thought was so painful that she had to get up.

Quietly, she slipped out of bed, taking care not to disturb George, who was curled up in a ball by her feet. She opened the walk-in closet door. There was a piece of foam rubber stuck to the bottom – a relic from the summer when Laura had caught her leg on the sharp corner. Her mother still didn’t know about the incident, or the two stitches she’d needed in her shin.

Under the plastic matting inside was a wooden hatch. When she pulled it open, a gust of cold air struck her.

She’d discovered the crawl space under the house a few summers ago, when Hedda had needed her help to fix a blocked drain. She’d seen the inspection hatch and worked out that it must lead straight into her bedroom.

Ever since then, the crawl space had been her secret hiding place. She lowered her upper body through the hole and directed the beam of her torch at the nearest pillar. She groped behind it and brought out an old cigar box with the word MONTECRISTO on the lid.

The box contained all kinds of treasures: letters that she and Iben had written to each other, a friendship ring that Hedda had helped them to craft out of silver wire. And a long black feather they’d found in the middle of the lake.

‘A swan’s feather,’ Hedda had said. ‘From a black swan. A cygne noir.’

‘What does it mean?’ Laura had asked.

‘That nothing is impossible,’ Hedda had replied with the smile that meant you couldn’t tell if she was joking or serious. ‘I think it’s a present for you from the nymph.’

To be honest, Laura was pretty sure the present was an ordinary crow’s feather. She’d never seen a black swan, not in a zoo or on TV, and certainly not here at Vintersjön. But she kept the feather anyway.

Outside it had begun to snow again, bigger flakes this time. Laura stood by the window contemplating the snowfall for a while, rolling the feather between her fingers as her breath misted up the glass. The lake shimmered faintly, and against the sky by the western shore it was just possible to make out the lights of the village. Opposite the house, far away on the northern shore, the solitary lamp on Miller’s boathouse shone out as usual. Laura breathed on the glass and wrote her initials, then Jack’s, in the condensation with the feather. She just had time to draw a heart around them before the whole thing disappeared. The silent snow was falling more thickly now.

She was about to go back to bed when she saw a movement outside. Some of the exterior lights in the holiday village were still on, and for a second she glimpsed something among the trees – a silhouette with flowing hair, moving almost unnaturally quickly through the shadows before being swallowed up by the darkness. A young woman.

Laura gasped.

Sometimes, especially in the winter, the nymph comes ashore, searching for someone to lure into the deep water. In order to ease her loneliness.

She pressed her face to the glass, but the forest was once again dark and still.