Dead of Winter

44

Why did you never get married, Aunt Hedda?

Because I’m too difficult. People like me live alone.

Laura heats the water for tea in the grubby microwave, then stands by the window gazing out across the lake. It’s about half an hour before daybreak, and Johnny Miller’s lamp is glowing as always. Johnny Miller, Peter’s father-in-law.

She remembers how people thought he was crazy, spending so much money to live all alone on the northern side of the lake, behind his high walls.

Maybe that was why she and Iben made up the story of the troll? Fantasised about rowing across the water and stealing his treasure, buying Vintersjöholm Castle and living happily ever after. Two princesses, no princes.

Now she’s the only one left. Alone with her questions. But one of them at least seems to have been answered. Everything points to the fact that it was Christian who lit the grave lantern in the forest. At first, she thought it was a lovely gesture from a big brother to his little sister, but then she remembers the trick with the photograph at Källegården. She is finding it difficult to shake off the feeling that the Jensens are still trying to manipulate her.

At exactly eight o’clock she calls Ola at the office from Hedda’s landline. Stops him as soon as he starts reeling off a list of problems.

‘Marcus will have to take care of that. You have spoken to him?’

‘I have . . .’

Ola’s tone of voice tells her everything she needs to know: Marcus isn’t at all happy about being held accountable.

She tries not to smile, but it’s impossible.

‘I need your help,’ she says. ‘Can you check out the finances of a company called Jensen & Sons Construction from Vedarp in Skåne?’

‘No problem – can I ask why?’

‘It’s to do with a piece of land I’ve inherited down here.’

‘OK.’

She hears the rasp of his pen.

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes . . .’ She hesitates, then makes up her mind. ‘Can you also check out Vintersjöholm Development?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Good. Don’t call my mobile, the coverage isn’t great. I’ll contact you later.’

‘OK.’

She hears the motocross bike as she puts down the phone. She feels both irritated and pleased. She wanted to carry on digging through Hedda’s things, but at the same time there’s nothing wrong with some company. And she likes Elsa.

She turns Hedda’s noticeboard around, makes sure it looks like a perfectly innocent painting before she lets the young woman in.

‘I thought you might like some breakfast!’

Elsa holds up a paper bag of fresh pastries.

After breakfast they focus on the task in hand, carrying out rubbish bags full of junk mail, cardboard, newspapers and magazines, and bills that are long out of date. Then they move on to empty bottles, plastic containers and broken furniture. Elsa eventually manages to free up the record player in one corner, and much to their surprise, it works. Elsa blows the dust off the record on the turntable and reads the label.

‘It’s one of Grandad’s,’ she says, sounding both startled and proud. She puts it on; the music is discordant rock, which isn’t Laura’s style at all. But she doesn’t say anything to Elsa.

When Laura returns after what must be her twentieth trip to the skip, she finds Elsa sitting on the sofa. On the coffee table in front of her are the photographs from Hedda’s shoeboxes.

‘Is this you and Dad?’ Laura and Peter must be eight or nine years old, screwing up their eyes at the sun and the photographer. ‘It’s obvious he was in love with you even then.’

Elsa puts down the picture, selects another.

‘And this is Iben Jensen. There’s a photo of her in school.’ She moves on so quickly that Laura hardly sees it. ‘But who’s this? There are lots of pictures of him.’

Jack, standing on the roof of one of the cabins holding a hammer. He is bare-chested and tanned.

‘That’s Jack,’ Laura says, keeping her tone as neutral as possible.

‘He’s fit. Were you together?’

Laura shakes her head.

‘Was he with someone else?’

She avoids the question. Sits down beside Elsa, rummages through the photos. She finds several more of Jack, usually with a paintbrush or a hammer in his hand. Always smiling at the camera, with a glint in those blue eyes she once loved.

Elsa carries on looking for pictures of her dad, while Laura is absorbed in a pile of considerably older images.

Hedda as a young woman, from various places around the world. Hedda on the roof of a dusty jeep, with the savannah in the background. Riding a camel in a red desert. Holding a koala in her arms.

Sometimes other people are there, dressed for an adventure or a party. One of the faces catches Laura’s attention: a blond, dark-eyed young man with a beard. She finds more pictures of him. In one he has his arm around Hedda, in another she is kissing him on the cheek. In spite of the fact that these pictures are at least forty-five years old, and the colours have faded, there is no mistaking their love. Why does he seem so familiar?

Laura imagines him as he might look today, with a grey beard. It’s not difficult. She knows exactly who he is; she met him only the other day. She remembers something Hedda told her a long time ago, about someone she was in love with – a relationship that didn’t end well.

A guy with a guitar.

She quickly gathers up the photos before Elsa catches sight of them and takes them into the studio.

From the window she can see the whole lake – and Miller’s house, far away on the northern shore.

Johnny Miller, Elsa’s maternal grandfather, the troll on the other side of the water. He’s the guy with the guitar, the man Hedda once loved. The man for whose sake she did something crazy and ended up in jail.

Suddenly, it’s as if several pieces of the puzzle fall into place. The binoculars on the kitchen windowsill. Johnny Miller’s appearance at the funeral. Hedda, sitting by herself at the end of the pontoon on summer evenings. The melancholy painting that doubles as a noticeboard, the painting that features that solitary, yearning lamp on Johnny Miller’s boathouse. The music coming from the record player.

She shuffles through the pile and finds more pictures of Hedda and Johnny. Happy pictures of two people who love each other.

A couple of the photos have stuck together, and when Laura eases them apart she finds a flat object that she immediately recognises.

A plastic ID bracelet, the kind you’re given in hospital. It was once white, but now it’s yellowed with age. Hedda’s name is at the top, followed by a series of numbers, then three words that take Laura’s breath away.

ÄNGELHOLM MATERNITY UNIT.

Laura manages to get rid of Elsa before lunch, making the excuse that she has a couple of errands to take care of. Elsa is disappointed, but she accepts the lie. Laura hasn’t exactly been good company. The bracelet has occupied all her thoughts, and she’s barely answered when spoken to.

It can only mean one thing, and there’s someone who can confirm her suspicions. She picks up the receiver and dials the long Spanish number.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me.’

The reproaches rain down on her immediately.

‘Why have you given out our contact details? The office is calling every five minutes – poor Marcus hasn’t had any peace!’

Laura doesn’t answer the question, but allows herself a little smile.

‘We were starting to think you’d had some kind of breakdown. Why aren’t you answering your phone?’

‘I’m fine, Mum.’

A brief pause. The rustle of a cigarette packet.

‘Are you at home?’

Laura is a fraction too slow with her response, which gives her mother time to work out what’s going on.

‘Tell me you’re not still in that dump.’

‘There are a few things I need to sort out.’

‘Like what? Taking all Hedda’s empty bottles to the recycling centre?’

Laura is taken aback.

‘How did you know that Hedda drank? Who told you?’

Silence, the click of a cigarette lighter. A weary exhalation, then a quick change to martyr-mode.

‘Is that why you’re ringing, to cross-examine me? Even though I’ve been worrying about you for days?’

Laura doesn’t take the bait.

‘Hedda had problems for as long as I knew her,’ her mother continues. ‘Spirits, marijuana, more serious stuff when she was young.’

‘And you still let me stay with her?’

‘That was your father’s idea. If it had been up to me, you’d never have set foot in that ghastly holiday village. Hedda ruined your life—’

Her mother breaks off, takes an irritated drag on her cigarette. Laura decides to change the subject, ask the question which is the real reason why she called.

‘Did Hedda ever have a child of her own?’

‘Why do you ask?’

The counter-question comes immediately.

‘I found an old maternity unit bracelet among her things. I know she ended up in jail in France for attacking her boyfriend, and I know Dad helped her. I think she was pregnant when she came back to Sweden, and maybe Dad bought Gärdsnäset for her so that she’d have somewhere to go.’

She pauses, waits for a response. For a few seconds all she can hear is her mother’s breathing.

‘Hedda knew exactly how to manipulate Jacob’s feelings, and he walked straight into her trap every single time. Cleaned up after her, got her back on her feet.’

Laura had expected a denial, or at least some kind of delaying tactic.

‘So I was right? Hedda fell pregnant?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened to the baby?’

Her mother blows out more smoke, or maybe it’s another sigh.

‘Hedda was in no state to look after a child, so your father helped her to have it adopted, as discreetly as possible.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t really remember – it’s such a long time ago.’

That’s a lie, but it doesn’t matter. Laura’s already worked it out.

‘Nineteen sixty-nine?’ she says, writing down the number on the pad in front of her and drawing circles around it. She’s on the fourth loop when her mother answers.

‘Possibly.’

She sounds tired, almost defeated.

After the call Laura sits down on the sofa and places the pad on the table. She stares at the ringed date.

1969 – Hedda moves to Gärdsnäset. Gives birth to a child in Ängelholm Maternity Unit. Laura’s father helps her to have the baby adopted.

She leaves a couple of lines blank, then writes down another date.

1979 – Hedda’s got her life in order, and ten-year-old Jack Olsson arrives at Gärdsnäset. He has finally found a place where he is loved.

Laura looks for more photographs of Jack, finds one of him sitting with a guitar resting on his knees. Her heart is beating so hard that it hurts.

A guy with a guitar.