Italian Shoes

Chapter 1

The first frost came in the early hours of 3 October.

I checked through my old logbooks and found that there had never been minus temperatures as early as this all the years I had lived on the island. I was still waiting to hear from Louise. I hadn’t even received a postcard from her.

That evening the telephone rang. A woman asked if I was Fredrik Welin. I thought I recognised both her dialect and her voice, but when she said her name was Anna Ledin, it said nothing to me.

‘I’m a police officer,’ she said. ‘We’ve met.’

Then the penny dropped. The woman lying dead on her kitchen floor. Anna Ledin was the young police officer with her hair in a ponytail under the cap of her uniform.

‘I’m ringing in connection with the dog,’ she said. ‘Sara Larsson’s spaniel. We couldn’t find anybody to adopt her, so I took her in. She’s a lovely dog. But unfortunately I’ve met a man who’s allergic to dogs, and I don’t want to have her put down. Then I thought about you. I had made a note of your name and address, and so I’m phoning to ask if you could possibly consider taking the dog on. You must be fond of animals, otherwise you wouldn’t have stopped as you did when you saw her by the roadside.’

I had no doubt when I replied.

‘My dog died just a few months ago. I can take on the spaniel. How will you get her here?’

‘I can bring her in my car. I discovered that Sara Larsson used to call her Ruby. Not exactly a common name for a dog, but I continued using it. She’s five years old.’

‘When would you come?’

‘At the end of next week.’

I didn’t dare to try and ferry the dog over in my own boat as it was so small. I made an arrangement with Jansson. He asked me all kinds of questions about what kind of dog it was, but all I told him was that I’d inherited it.

Anna Ledin arrived at the harbour with the dog at three in the afternoon on 12 October. She looked quite different when she wasn’t in uniform.

‘I live on an island,’ I said. ‘She’ll be the sole ruler.’

She gave me the lead. Ruby sat down beside me.

‘I’ll leave right away if you don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll get upset if I don’t. Can I ring now and then to see how she’s getting on?’

‘Of course you can.’

She got back into her car and drove off. Ruby didn’t start pulling at the lead in an attempt to run after the car. Nor did she hesitate to jump down into Jansson’s boat.

We sailed back home through the dark waters of the bay. Cold winds were blowing up from the Gulf of Finland.

When we had landed and Jansson had left again, I let the dog loose. She disappeared among the rocks. Half an hour later she returned. Already the loneliness felt less oppressive.

It was now well and truly autumn.

I still wondered what was happening to me. And why I’d heard nothing from Louise.

Chapter 2

I didn’t like the dog’s name.

It didn’t seem that she thought much of it either, as she seldom responded when I called her.

No dog can possibly be called Ruby. Why had Sara Larsson given her that name? One day, when Anna Ledin rang to ask about how the dog was doing, I asked her if she knew how the dog had acquired the name.

I was surprised by her answer.

‘Rumour has it that when she was a young woman, Sara Larsson had a job as a cleaner on a cargo ship that often visited Antwerp. She was paid off there and got a job as a cleaner in a diamond-cutting workshop. Maybe it was her memories of her time there that inspired her to give the dog that name.’

‘Diamond would have been better.’

I suddenly heard lots of banging and clattering in the background. I could hear distant voices yelling and screeching, and somebody apparently banging away at a sheet of metal.

‘I’ll have to hang up now.’

‘Where are you?’

‘We’re about to arrest a man who’s running amok in a scrapyard.’

The line went dead. I tried to conjure up the scene: delicate little Anna Ledin with her pistol drawn, and her ponytail jumping up and down behind her uniform cap. I certainly wouldn’t have liked to be on the receiving end of whatever she dealt out in circumstances like that.

I decided to call the dog Carra. Obviously, part of the reason for that name was a reference to my daughter, who never kept in touch, but was interested in Caravaggio. Why does anybody give a pet a particular name? I don’t know.

It took several weeks of intensive training to persuade her to forget all about Ruby, and instead become a Carra who would run up somewhat reluctantly when I called for her.

October passed by with changeable weather — some days very hot, a sort of delayed Indian summer, but others characterised by bitterly cold winds from the north-east. Sometimes when I looked out to sea I could make out the flocks of migrating birds gathering, before suddenly setting off on their long journey southwards.

There is a special sort of melancholy that accompanies a flock of migrating birds. Just as we might feel uplifted when they return. Autumn is closing its books. Winter is approaching.

Every morning when I woke up, I could feel the aches and pains of approaching old age manifesting themselves. I sometimes worried that I could no longer pee as forcefully as I used to be capable of. There was something especially humiliating about the thought of imminent death because I could no longer pee properly. I found it hard to accept that the ancient Greek philosophers or the Roman emperors died of prostate cancer. Even if they did, of course.

I thought about my life and at times made an insignificant entry in my logbook. I stopped making a note of wind directions, or how hot or cold it was. Instead I made up the winds and the temperatures. On 27 October I made a note for future consumption that my island had been hit by a typhoon, and the temperature in the evening was plus thirty-seven degrees.

I sat in my various thinking places. My island was so marvellously formed that it was always possible to find a spot sheltered from the wind. I found such a place, sat down there and wondered why I had chosen to become the person I was. Some of the basic reasons were not difficult to find, of course. I had taken the opportunity to flee the poverty-stricken environment in which I grew up, where the daily reminder of the vulnerable life led by my father gave me sufficient strength to make the effort. But I also realised that I could be grateful for the fact that I had been born into an age in which such flights were possible. A time when the downtrodden children of humble waiters could go to university and even become doctors. But why had I become a person who always looked for hiding places instead of companionship? Why had I never wanted to have children? Why had I lived a life like a fox, with so many alternative exits from its lair?

That confounded amputation that I didn’t want to accept responsibility for was just one of those things. I wasn’t the only orthopaedic surgeon in the world to whom something like that had happened.

There were moments that autumn when I was struck by panic. It led to endless nights stuck in front of the mind-numbing television, and sleepless nights during which I both regretted and cursed the life I had lived.

In the end a letter from Louise finally arrived as a sort of lifebuoy for a drowning man. She wrote that she had spent many days emptying Harriet’s flat. She enclosed several photographs she had found among Harriet’s papers, snaps she had known nothing about. I sat staring in astonishment at the pictures of Harriet and me taken almost forty years ago. I recognised her, but was put out, almost shaken by what I looked like. In one of the photographs, taken somewhere in Stockholm in 1966, I had a beard. It was the only time in my life that I’d grown a beard, and I’d forgotten all about it. I didn’t know who’d taken the picture, but was intrigued by a man who was standing in the background, swigging vodka straight from the bottle.

I remembered him. But where had Harriet and I been going to? Where were we coming from? Who had taken the picture?

I thumbed through the photographs and was fascinated. I had locked my memories away in a room that I had sealed, and then thrown the keys away.

Louise wrote that she had rediscovered a lot of her childhood during the days and weeks she had spent emptying the flat.

‘What struck me most of all was that I had never really known anything about my mother,’ she wrote. ‘I came across letters, and occasional diaries that she’d never kept going for very long, containing her thoughts and experiences that she had never passed on to me. For instance, she’d dreamt about becoming a pilot. She always used to tell me that she was scared to death whenever she was forced to take a flight. She wanted to create a rose garden on Gotland, and she’d tried to write a book but never been able to finish it. But what affected me most was that I discovered she had told me so many untruths. Memories from my childhood kept cropping up, and over and over again I realised that she had lied to me. Once she told me that one of her friends was ill and she had to visit her. I remember crying and begging her to stay, but she said her friend was so seriously ill that she really had to go and see her. I now realise that, in fact, she went to France with a man she hoped to marry — but he soon disappeared out of her life. I won’t bore you with all the details of what I’ve discovered here, but one lesson I’ve learned is that it’s essential to sort out your belongings and throw away a lot of stuff before you die. I’m surprised that Harriet didn’t do that when she’d known for such a long time that she was going to die. She must have known what I would find. The only explanation I can think of is that maybe she wanted me to realise that, in so many ways, she wasn’t who I thought she was. Was it important to her that I should know the truth, despite the fact I would see that she had lied to me so often? I still can’t make up my mind if I ought to admire her for that, or despise her. Anyway, the flat is now empty. I shall post her key through the letter box and go away. I’m going to visit those caves, and will take Caravaggio with me.’

The last sentence of her letter confused me. How could she take Caravaggio with her? Was there something between the lines that I couldn’t detect?

She had not given me an address to which I could send a reply. Nevertheless, I sat down that very same night and started writing. I commented on the photographs, told her about how my own memory had let me down, and also told her about my walks with Carra around the rocks. I tried to explain how I was feeling my way through my past life, a bit like battling through thick, thorny bushes that were almost impassable.

Most of all I wrote that I missed her. I repeated that over and over again in my letter.

I sealed the envelope, stuck a stamp on it and wrote her name. Then I left it on the desk, hoping that she might one day send an address.

I had only just gone to bed that night when the telephone rang. I was frightened, my heart was pounding. Anybody ringing me at that time of night couldn’t have good news for me. I went down to the kitchen and picked up the receiver. Carra was lying on the floor, watching me.

‘It’s Agnes. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I sleep too much anyway.’

‘I’m coming now.’

‘Are you standing on the quay?’

‘Not yet. I’m intending to come out tomorrow, if it’s all right with you.’

‘Of course it’s all right with me.’

‘Can you collect me?’

I listened to the wind and the sound of the breakers crashing on to the rocks at Norrudden.

‘It’s too windy for my little boat. I’ll arrange for somebody else to fetch you. What time will you be on the quay?’

‘Around midday.’

She ended the call just as abruptly as she’d started it. She sounded worried and evidently wanted to see me urgently.

I started cleaning at five the next morning. I changed the bag in my ancient vacuum cleaner and realised that my house was covered in a layer of dust. It took me three hours to get it anywhere close to clean. After my usual bath, I dried myself, turned up the heating and sat down at the kitchen table to phone Jansson. But I rang the coastguard instead. Hans Lundman was out, doing something with one of the boats, but rang me back a quarter of an hour later. I asked if he could pick somebody up from the harbour and ferry them out to me.

‘I know you’re not allowed to take passengers,’ I said.

‘We can always send out a patrol past your island,’ he said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘It’s a she. You can’t miss her. She only has one arm.’

Hans and I were very similar in some ways. Unlike Jansson we were people who concealed their curiosity and didn’t ask unnecessary questions. But I doubt if Hans poked around in his assistants’ papers and belongings.

I took Carra with me and went for a walk round the island. It was 1 November, the sea was growing greyer and greyer, and the last of the leaves had fallen from the trees. I was really looking forward to Agnes’s visit. I realised to my surprise that I was excited at the prospect. I imagined her standing naked on my kitchen floor, with her one arm. I sat down on the bench by the jetty, and dreamt up an impossible love story. I didn’t know what Agnes wanted. But I didn’t think she was coming here to tell me about her love for me.

I carried Sima’s sword and her suitcase from the boathouse to the kitchen. Agnes hadn’t said anything about staying overnight, but I made up the bed in the room with the anthill.

I had decided to relocate the anthill to old pasture, which was now overgrown and covered in shrubs. But, like so much else, I’d never got round to it.

At about eleven I shaved but couldn’t settle on what to wear. I was as nervous as a teenager at the thought of her visit. I eventually decided on my usual clothes: dark trousers, cut-down wellington boots and a thick jumper that was threadbare in places. Earlier in the morning I’d already taken a chicken out of the freezer.

I went around dusting in places that I’d already dusted. At noon I put on my jacket and walked down to the jetty to wait. It wasn’t a post day, so Jansson wouldn’t turn up to disturb us. Carra was sitting on the edge of the jetty and seemed to sense that something was in the offing.

Hans Lundman came into sight in the big coastguard patrol boat. I could hear the powerful engine from a long way away. As the boat glided into the inlet I stood up. It was quite shallow by the jetty, so Hans merely nudged against it with the boat’s bows. Agnes emerged from the wheelhouse with a rucksack slung over her shoulder. Hans was in uniform. He was leaning over the rail.

‘Many thanks for your help,’ I said.

‘I was passing by anyway. We’re heading for Gotland to look for a sailing boat with nobody on board.’

We stood and watched the big patrol boat reverse out of the inlet. Agnes’s hair was fluttering in the wind. I had an almost irresistible desire to kiss her.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to imagine your island. I can see now how wrong I was.’

‘What did you imagine?’

‘Lots of trees. Not just rocks and the open sea.’

The dog came towards us. Agnes looked at me in surprise.

‘I thought you said your dog was dead?’

‘I’ve got another one. From a police officer. It’s a long story. The dog’s name is Carra.’

We walked up towards the house. I wanted to carry her rucksack, but she shook her head. When we entered the kitchen, the first things she saw were Sima’s sword and her suitcase. She sat down on a chair.

‘Was it here it happened? I want you to tell me. Right away. Now.’

I gave her all the details that I would never be able to forget. Her eyes glazed over. I was giving a funeral oration, not a clinical description of a suicide that reached its climax in a hospital bed. When I’d finished she said nothing, just went through the contents of the suitcase.

‘Why did she do it?’ I asked. ‘Something must have happened when she came here, surely? I’d never have imagined that she would try to take her own life.’

‘Perhaps she found a sense of security here. Something she hadn’t expected.’

‘Security? But she took her own life.’

‘Maybe her situation was so desperate that she needed to feel secure in order to take the final step and commit suicide? Perhaps she found that feeling of security here in your house? She really did try to kill herself. She didn’t want to live. She didn’t cut herself as a cry for help. She did it because she no longer wanted to hear her own screams echoing inside herself.’

Agnes wondered if she could stay until the following day. I showed her the bed in the room where the ants lived. She burst out laughing. Of course she could sleep there. I said there would be chicken for dinner. Agnes went to the bathroom. When she reappeared she had changed her clothes and put her hair up.

She asked me to show her round the island. Carra came with us. I told her about the time when she had come running after the car, and then led us to Sara Larsson’s dead body. Agnes seemed disturbed by my talking. She just wanted to enjoy what she could see. It was a chilly autumn day, the thin covering of heather was crouching down in an attempt to avoid the harsh wind. The sea was blue grey, old seaweed was draped over the rocks, smelling putrid. Occasional birds flew out of rocky crevices as we approached, and soared on the upwinds that always form at the edge of the cliffs. We came to Norrudden where the bare rocks of Sillhällarna can just be seen breaking the surface of the water before the open sea begins. I stood slightly to one side, watching her. She was captivated by the view. She turned to look at me, and then shouted into the wind.

‘There’s one thing I shall never forgive you for. I can’t applaud any more. It’s natural to feel jubilation inside and then give expression to it by clapping the palms of your hands together.’

There was nothing I could say, of course. She knew that. She came up to me and turned her back on the wind.

‘I used to do that even when I was a child.’

‘Do what?’

‘Applaud when I went out into the countryside and saw something beautiful. Why should you clap only when you’re sitting in a concert hall, or listening to somebody talking? Why can’t you stand out here on the cliffs and applaud? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than this. I envy you, living out here.’

‘I can applaud for you,’ I said.

She nodded and led me to the highest and outermost rock. She shouted bravo, and I applauded. It was an odd experience.

We continued our walk and came to the caravan behind the boathouse.

‘No car,’ she said. ‘No car, no road, but a caravan. And a pair of beautiful red high-heeled shoes.’

The door was open. I’d placed a piece of wood there to prevent it from closing. The shoes were standing there, shining. We sat down on the bench out of the wind. I told her about my daughter and Harriet’s death. I avoided mentioning how I had abandoned her. But Agnes wasn’t listening to me, her mind was elsewhere, and I realised that she had come here for a reason. It wasn’t only that she wanted to see my kitchen, and collect the sword and the suitcase.

‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘Perhaps one-armed people feel the cold more than others. Their blood is forced to take alternative routes.’

We went back to the house and sat down in the kitchen. I lit a candle and placed it on the table. Dusk had already started to fall.

‘They’re taking my house away from me,’ she said out of the blue. ‘I’ve been renting it, never been able to afford to buy it. Now the owners are taking it away from me. I can’t continue with my work without a house. Obviously, I could get a job at another institution; but I don’t want to do that.’

‘Who owns the house?’

‘Two rich sisters who live in Lausanne. They’ve made a fortune from selling dodgy health products — they’re always being forced to withdraw adverts for them because they contain nothing but worthless powder mixed with various vitamins. But no sooner does that happen than they resurface with the same things in different packs and with a different name. The house belonged to their brother who died with no other heirs apart from his sisters. They’re going to take it away from me because the local residents have complained about my girls. They’ll take the house away, and the girls will be taken away from me as well. We live in a country where people think that anybody who is a bit different from them should be isolated in the depths of the forest or on an island like this one. I needed to get away in order to do some thinking. Perhaps in order to mourn. Perhaps to dream that I had enough money to buy the house. But I haven’t.’

‘If I had enough money, I’d buy it for you.’

‘I haven’t come here to ask for that.’

She stood up.

‘I’m going out,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk round the island one more time before it gets too dark.’

‘Take the dog with you,’ I said. ‘If you shout for her, she’ll follow you. She’s good to be with. She never barks. I’ll make the dinner while you’re out.’

I stood in the front doorway and watched them walk off over the rocks. Carra sometimes looked round to see if I was calling her back. I started to make dinner while imagining that I had kissed Agnes.

It occurred to me that I had stopped daydreaming years ago. I’d had just as few daydreams as I’d had erotic experiences.

Agnes seemed brighter when she came back.

‘I have to confess,’ she said before she had even taken off her jacket and sat down, ‘that I couldn’t resist trying on your daughter’s shoes. They fitted me perfectly.’

‘I can’t give you them, even if I’d like to.’

‘My girls would beat me up if I appeared wearing high-heeled shoes.’

She curled up on the kitchen sofa and watched me laying the table and serving the meal. I tried talking but she was reluctant to answer. We finished the meal in silence. It was dark outside. We had coffee and I started a fire in the old wood-burning stove that I only ever use in the depths of winter. I was a bit affected by the wine we’d drunk with the dinner. Agnes didn’t seem to be a hundred per cent sober either. When I’d filled our coffee cups, she broke her silence. She started talking about her life, and the difficult years.

‘I was searching for some kind of consolation,’ she said. ‘I tried drinking, but it only made me sick. So I started smoking dope. That only made me sleepy and ill and increased my angst about what had happened. I tried to find lovers who could handle the fact that I had only one arm, and I took up sport and became quite a good but increasingly less enthusiastic middle-distance runner. I wrote poetry, and sent letters to various newspapers, and I studied the history of amputation. I applied for jobs as a presenter on all the Swedish television channels, and a few foreign ones as well. But nowhere could I find any consolation, the ability to wake up in the morning without thinking about the intolerable tragedy that had taken place. Obviously I tried using an artificial arm, but I could never make it work properly. The only other possibility open to me was to try God. I searched for consolation on bended knee. I read the Bible, I made an effort to acquaint myself with the Koran, I went to Pentecostal camp meetings and even tried a dangerous sect called the Word of Life. I dabbled in various other sects, and considered taking the veil. I went to Spain that autumn and walked the long route to Santiago de Compostela. I followed the route the pilgrims had taken, and placed a heavy stone in my rucksack as one is supposed to do, ready to throw it away once I had found a solution to my problems. I used a chunk of limestone weighing four kilos, carted it with me the whole way and didn’t take it out until I’d reached my destination. All the time I hoped that God would appear to me and speak to me. But He spoke too softly. I never heard His voice. Somebody was always shouting in the background drowning Him out.’

‘Who?’

‘The Devil. He was yelling at me. I learned that God whispers, but the Devil shouts. There was no place for me in the battle. When I closed the church door behind me, there was nothing else left. But I realised eventually that this emptiness was a sort of consolation in itself. And so I made up my mind to devote myself to those less fortunate than myself. That’s how I came into contact with the girls that nobody else wanted to know about.’

We drank what was left of the wine and became even more drunk. I found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying because I wanted to take hold of her, make love to her. We became giggly after all the wine, and she told stories of the reactions caused by her stump of an arm.

‘I sometimes pretended it had been gobbled by a shark off the Australian coast. At other times it was a lion that bit it off on the Botswana savannah. I was always careful to be convincing and people seemed to believe what I told them. When I was talking to people I didn’t like for one reason or another, I used to go out of my way to describe really nasty, blood-soaked incidents. I might say that somebody had sawn it off with a power saw, or I might have got my arm caught in a machine that sliced it off inch by inch. I once even managed to make a big, strong man faint! The only thing I’ve never claimed is that it ended up with cannibals who cut it up and ate it.’

We went outside to look at the stars and listen to the sea. I tried to make sure I was so close to her that I kept rubbing up against her. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘There’s a kind of music you can never hear,’ she said.

‘Silence sings. You can hear it.’

‘That’s not what I mean. I’m imagining the existence of music that we can’t hear with our ears. At some point a long way into the future, when our hearing has become more refined and new instruments have been invented, we shall be able to appreciate and play that music.’

‘It’s a beautiful thought.’

‘I think I know what it will sound like. Like human voices when they are at their absolute purest. People who sing with no trace of fear.’

We went back inside. I was so drunk by now that I couldn’t walk straight. When we were back in the kitchen, I poured out some brandy. Agnes put her hand over her glass and stood up.

‘I need to get some sleep,’ she said. ‘It’s been a remarkable evening. I’m not so depressed now as I was when I came.’

‘I want you to stay here,’ I said. ‘I want you to sleep with me in my room.’

I stood up and put my arms round her. She didn’t resist when I drew her close to me. It was only when I tried to kiss her that she started struggling. She told me to stop it, but for me there was no stopping any longer. We stood there in the middle of the floor, pushing and pulling at each other. She yelled at me to let go of her, but I pushed her against the table and we slid down on to the floor. She managed to work her hand free and scratched my face. She kicked me so hard in the stomach that I lost my breath. I couldn’t speak, I searched for a way out that didn’t exist, and she was holding one of my kitchen knives as a weapon.

I eventually struggled to my feet and sat down on a chair.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. The loneliness I have to put up with here is driving me mad.’

‘I don’t believe you. You may well be lonely, I don’t know anything about that. But that’s not why you attacked me.’

‘I hope you can forget it. Please forgive me. I shouldn’t drink alcohol.’

She put the knife down and stood in front of me. I could see her anger and her disappointment. There was nothing I could say. Suddenly I felt truly ashamed.

Agnes sat down in the corner of the kitchen sofa. She had turned her face away and was gazing out of the dark window.

‘I know it’s unforgivable. I regret what happened, and wish I could undo it.’

‘I don’t know what you imagine you were doing. If I could, I’d leave here immediately. But it’s the middle of the night, it’s not possible. I’ll stay here until tomorrow.’

She stood up and left the kitchen. I heard her jamming the door handle with a chair. I went outside and tried to look in through the window. She had switched the light off. Perhaps she sensed that I was standing outside, trying to see her. The dog appeared out of the darkness. I kicked her away. I couldn’t cope with her just now.

I lay awake all night. At six o’clock I went down to the kitchen and listened outside her door. I couldn’t make out if she was asleep or awake. At a quarter to seven she opened the door and stepped out into the kitchen, rucksack in hand.

‘How do I get away from here?’

‘It’s dead calm at the moment. If you wait until it gets light I can take you to the mainland.’

She started to pull on her boots.

‘I want to say something about what happened last night.’

She raised her hand immediately.

‘There’s nothing else to say. You are not the person I thought you were. I want to get away from here as quickly as possible. I’ll wait down by the jetty until it gets light.’

‘Can’t you just hear what I have to say at least?’

She didn’t answer but hung her rucksack over one shoulder, picked up Sima’s suitcase and sword, and vanished into the darkness.

It would soon be light. I could see that she wouldn’t listen if I went down to the jetty and tried to talk to her. Instead I sat down at the table and wrote her a letter.

‘We could move your girls here. Leave the sisters and the village in peace. I have planning permission to build a house on the stone foundation of the old barn. The boathouse has a room attached that can be insulated and furbished. There are empty rooms here in the main house. If I can accommodate one caravan here, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have another. There’s plenty of room on the island.’

I walked down to the jetty. She stood up and clambered down into the boat. I handed her the letter without saying anything. She hesitated before accepting it and stuffing it into her rucksack.

The sea was as smooth as a mirror. The sound of my outboard motor ripped open the stillness, scattering a few ducks, which flew out to sea. Agnes sat in the bows with her back towards me.

I hove to by the lowest part of the quay and switched off the engine.

‘A bus goes from here,’ I said. ‘The timetable is over there, on the wall.’

She climbed up on to the quay without saying a word.

I returned home and went to sleep. In the afternoon I dug out my old Rembrandt puzzle and tipped the pieces on to the kitchen table. I started from the beginning, knowing I would never finish it.

A north-easterly gale blew up the day after Agnes had left. I was woken up by a window banging. I got dressed and went to check that the boat was securely moored. It was high tide and waves were breaking over the jetty and slapping against the boathouse wall. I used a spare piece of rope to doubly secure the stern. The wind was howling around the walls. When I was a boy the howling gales used to scare me stiff. Inside the boathouse during a storm the noise is tremendous: like the voices of people screaming and fighting. Nowadays, strong winds make me feel secure. As I stood there I felt beyond the reach of anything and everything.

The storm continued to rage for two more days. On the second day, Jansson managed to reach the island. For once, he was late. When he finally arrived, he told me his engine had cut out between Röholmen and Höga Skärsnäset.

‘I’ve never had any problems before,’ he said. ‘Typical that the engine should conk out in weather like this. I had to throw out a drag anchor, but even so I very nearly ended up on the rocks at Röholmen. If I hadn’t managed to get the engine going again, I’d have been wrecked.’

I’d never seen him so shaken. For once, I asked him to sit down on the bench while I took his blood pressure. It was a bit on the high side, but nothing like what one might have expected, given what he had been through.

He got back into his boat, which was bumping and scraping against the jetty.

‘I haven’t got any post for you,’ he said, ‘but Hans Lundman asked me to bring you a newspaper.’

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t say. It’s yesterday’s.’

He handed me one of the national dailies.

‘Didn’t he say anything at all?’

‘He just asked me to give it to you. He doesn’t waste words, as you know.’

I pushed out the bows as Jansson started reversing into the teeth of the gale. As he turned he very nearly ran aground in the shallows. But at the last moment he squeezed enough power from the engine to get out of the inlet.

As I left the jetty I saw something white floating just off the shore where the caravan was standing. I went to investigate and saw that it was a dead swan. Its long neck slithered like a snake through the seaweed. I went back to the boathouse, placed the newspaper on the tool bench and put on a pair of working gloves. Then I picked the swan up. A nylon fishing line had dug deeply into its body and become entangled in its feathers. It had starved to death as it hadn’t been able to search for food. I carried it up and laid it on the rocks. It wouldn’t be long before the crows and sea gulls ate the carcass. Carra came to investigate and sniffed at the bird.

‘It’s not for you,’ I said. ‘It’s for other hungry creatures.’

I suddenly grew tired at the prospect of the jigsaw puzzle, walked to the boathouse and fetched one of my flat-fish nets, sat down in the kitchen and started to repair it. My grandfather had taught me how to splice ropes and mend nets. The techniques and know-how were still there in my fingers. I sat there working until dusk fell. In my head I conducted a conversation with Agnes about what had happened. Reconciliation is possible in the world of the imagination.

That evening I ate the rest of the chicken. When I’d finished, I lay down on the kitchen sofa and listened to the wind. I was just going to switch the radio on and listen to the news when I remembered the newspaper Jansson had brought with him. I took my torch and walked down to the boathouse to get it.

Hans Lundman rarely did anything without a specific purpose. I sat at the kitchen table and started to scrutinise the newspaper to find what he wanted me to see.

I found it on page four, in the section devoted to foreign news. It was a picture from a top-level meeting for leading European statesmen — presidents and prime ministers. They had lined up to be photographed. In the foreground was a naked woman holding up a placard. Underneath the picture were a few words about the embarrassing incident. A woman wearing a black raincoat had succeeded in entering the press conference, using a forged pass. Once inside, she had taken off the raincoat and lifted up her placard. Several security guards had quickly hustled her away. I looked at the picture, and felt a pain in my stomach. I had a magnifying glass in one of the kitchen drawers. I examined the picture again. I became increasingly worried as my suspicions were slowly confirmed. The woman was Louise. It was her face, even if it was slightly averted. There she was, making a triumphant and challenging gesture.

The text on the placard was about the cave, where the ancient wall paintings were being ruined by mould.

Lundman was a sharp-eyed individual. He had recognised her. Perhaps she had told him at the midsummer party about the cave.

I took a kitchen towel and wiped away the sweat from under my shirt. My hands were shaking.

I went out into the wind, shouted for the dog and sat down on Grandma’s bench in the darkness.

I smiled. Louise was out there somewhere, smiling back. I had a daughter I could really be proud of.

Chapter 3

One day in the middle of November, the letter I had been waiting for arrived at last. By then the whole of the archipelago knew that I had a daughter who had caused a stir in front of Europe’s leading statesmen.

No doubt Jansson had contributed to spreading and exaggerating the rumours: Louise was alleged to have performed a striptease and wiggled back and forth in erotic fashion before being led away. Then she had viciously attacked the security guards, bitten one of them, apparently splashing Tony Blair’s shoes with blood. And then she was eventually sentenced to prison.

Louise was in Amsterdam. She wrote that she was staying at a little hotel near the railway station and the city’s red-light district. She was resting, and every day visited an exhibition at which the works of Rembrandt and Caravaggio were compared. She had plenty of money. Lots of anonymous people had given her gifts, and the press had paid vast sums for her story. She had not been punished at all for her demonstration. The letter ended with the news that she intended coming back to the island at the beginning of December.

Her letter contained an address. I wrote a reply without further ado, and handed it to Jansson together with the letter I had been unable to send earlier. He was curious when he saw her name, but he said nothing.

The letter from Louise gave me the courage to write to Agnes. There had been no word from her after her visit. I was ashamed. For the first time in my life I was unable to find an excuse for my behaviour. I simply couldn’t brush aside what had happened that evening.

I wrote to her and begged for forgiveness. Nothing else, only that. A letter containing nineteen words, each one carefully chosen.

She rang two days later. I had dozed off in front of the television and thought it must be Louise when I picked up the phone.

‘I received your letter. My first thought was to throw it away without opening it, but I did read it. I accept your apology. Assuming you really mean what you wrote?’

‘Every word.’

‘You probably don’t realise what I’m referring to. I’m asking about what you wrote regarding your island and my girls.’

‘Of course you can all come here.’

I could hear her breathing.

‘Come here,’ I said.

‘Not now. Not yet. I have to think things over.’

I replaced the receiver. I felt the same kind of exhilaration as I’d felt after reading Louise’s letter. I went out and looked up at the stars, and thought that it would soon be a year since Harriet had appeared on the ice, and my life had begun to change.

At the end of November the coast was hit by another severe storm. The easterly gales reached a peak on the second evening. I walked down to the jetty and noticed that the caravan was swaying alarmingly in the wind. With the aid of a few rocks normally used for anchoring the nets, and some logs that had been washed ashore, I managed to stabilise it. I had already installed an old electric fire in the caravan, to make sure it was warm and cosy when Louise got back.

When the storm had passed I went for a walk round the island. Easterly gales can sometimes result in a lot of driftwood littering the shore. This time I didn’t find any big logs, but an old wheelhouse from a fishing boat had been blown on to the rocks. At first I thought it was the top of a vessel that had been sunk by the storm, but when I investigated more closely I found that it was this battered old wheelhouse. After a moment’s thought I went back home and rang Hans Lundman. After all, what I had found might have been the remains of a sunken fishing boat. An hour later, I had the coastguard on my island. We managed to drag it ashore and secure it with a rope. Hans confirmed that it was not a new wreck and that there had been no reports of missing fishing boats.

‘It has probably been standing on land somewhere, but the gales have blown it into the sea. It’s rotten through and through, and can hardly have been attached to a boat for many years. I should think it’s thirty or forty years old.’

‘What shall I do with it?’ I wondered.

‘If you’d had any little children, they could have used it as a playhouse. As it is, I don’t think it’s of much use for anything apart from firewood.’

I told him that Louise was on her way home.

‘Incidentally, I’ve never been able to understand how you noticed her in the newspaper. It was such a poor picture. But even so, you could see that it was her?’

‘Who knows how and why we see what we see? Andrea misses her. Not a day passes without her putting on those shoes and asking after Louise. I often think about her.’

‘Have you shown Andrea the picture in the newspaper?’

Hans looked at me in surprise.

‘Of course I have.’

‘It’s hardly a suitable picture for children to look at. I mean, she was naked.’

‘So what? It’s bad for children not to be told the truth. Children suffer from being told lies, just as we adults do.’

He went back to his boat, and engaged reverse gear. I fetched an axe and started chopping up the old wheelhouse I’d been lumbered with. It was quite easy as the wood was so rotten.

I had just finished and straightened up my back when I felt a stinging pain in my chest. Since I had often diagnosed coronary spasms during my life, I realised what the pain indicated. I sat down on a large stone, breathed deeply, unbuttoned my shirt and waited. After about ten minutes the pain went away. I waited for another ten minutes before walking very slowly back to the house. It was eleven in the morning. I phoned Jansson. I was lucky: it was his day off. I said nothing about my pain, simply asked him to come and fetch me.

‘This is a very quick decision,’ he said.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You normally ask me to pick you up a week in advance.’

‘Can you collect me or can’t you?’

‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

When we had reached the mainland, I told him I’d probably be returning the same day, but I couldn’t say precisely when. Jansson was ready to burst with curiosity, but I said nothing.

When I arrived at the health centre I explained what had happened. After a short wait I underwent the usual examinations and an ECG, and spoke to a doctor. He was probably one of the locums who nowadays move from one surgery to another because they can never manage to attract a doctor on a long-term basis. He gave me the medication and instructions I had expected, as well as a referral to the hospital for a more detailed examination.

I called Jansson from reception and asked him to collect me. Then I bought two bottles of brandy and returned to the harbour.

It was only later, when I was back on the island, that the fear kicked in. Death had taken hold of me and tested my powers of resistance. I drank a glass of brandy. Then I went out and stood on the edge of a cliff and yelled out over the sea. I was shouting out my fear, disguised as anger.

The dog sat some distance away, watching me.

I didn’t want to be alone any longer. I didn’t want to be like one of the rocks on my island, observing in silence the inevitable passage of days and time.

I had a hospital appointment for 3 December. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with my heart. Medication, exercise and an appropriate diet should keep me going for a few years yet. The doctor was about my own age. I told him the facts, admitted that I had once been a doctor, but had then gone to look after an old fisherman’s cottage on an offshore island. He displayed a friendly lack of interest, and as I was about to leave, told me that I had a slight touch of angina.

Louise arrived on 7 December. The temperature had dropped, and at last autumn was giving way to winter. Rainwater in the rock crevices began to freeze at night. She had phoned from Copenhagen and asked me to arrange for Jansson to pick her up from the harbour. The connection was cut before I had time to ask her any more questions. I switched on the electric fire in her caravan, polished her shoes, cleaned up, and remade the bed with fresh sheets.

I hadn’t had a recurrence of the heart pains. I wrote a letter to Agnes and asked if she had finished thinking about my suggestion. She sent a picture postcard with her answer. The picture was of a painting by Van Gogh, and the text comprised two words: ‘Not yet.’

I wondered what Jansson had thought when he read the card.

Louise stepped on to the jetty carrying nothing but the rucksack she had taken with her in the first place. I had expected her to be struggling with large suitcases containing all the things she’d collected during her expedition. If anything, the rucksack seemed to be emptier now than it was when she set out.

Jansson appeared unwilling to leave. I gave him an envelope containing the fee he’d asked for his ferrying activities, and thanked him for his help. Louise greeted the dog. They seemed to get along like a house on fire. I opened the door to the caravan, which had become nicely warm. She deposited her rucksack there, then accompanied me to the house. Before we went in, she paused for a moment by the little mound marking the grave under the apple tree.

I grilled some cod for dinner. She ate it as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. I thought she looked paler and perhaps even thinner than she was before. She told me that the plan to gatecrash the summit meeting had been hatched before she left the island.

‘I sat down on the bench by the boathouse and worked it all out,’ she said. ‘I didn’t feel there was any point in writing the letters any more. It had dawned on me that they might never have been meaningful for anybody apart from myself. So I chose another way.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I don’t know you well enough. You might have tried to stop me.’

‘Why should I have done that?’

‘Harriet always tried to make me do what she wanted. Why should you be any different?’

I tried to ask her more questions about her expedition, but she shook her head. She was tired, needed to get some rest.

At midnight I saw her to the caravan. The thermometer outside the kitchen window was showing plus one degree. She shuddered in the cold and took my arm. That was something she had never done before.

‘I miss the forest,’ she said. ‘I miss my friends. But this is where the caravan is now. It was kind of you to heat it up for me. I shall sleep like a log, and dream about all the paintings I’ve seen during the past few months.’

‘I’ve brushed your red shoes for you,’ I said.

She kissed me on the cheek before vanishing into the caravan.

Louise kept out of the way for the first few days after her return. She came to eat when I shouted for her, but she didn’t say much and could become irritated if I asked too many questions. One evening I went down to the caravan and peered in through the window. She was sitting at the table, writing something in a notebook. She suddenly turned to look at the window. I crouched down and held my breath. She didn’t open the door. I hoped she hadn’t seen me.

While I was waiting for her to become accessible again, I went for long walks with the dog every day, to keep myself in shape. The sea was blue-grey, fewer and fewer seabirds were around. The archipelago was withdrawing into its winter shell.

One evening I wrote what was to be my new will. Everything I owned would go to Louise, of course. What I had promised Agnes kept gnawing away at me, but I did what I’ve always done in such circumstances: pushed nagging worries to the back of my mind and convinced myself that things would sort themselves out if and when they came to a head.

In the morning of the eighth day after her return Louise was sitting at the kitchen table when I came downstairs at about seven.

‘I’m not tired any more,’ she said. ‘I can face other people now.’

‘Agnes,’ I said. ‘I’ve invited her to come here. Maybe you can convince her that she ought to move here with her girls.’

Louise looked at me in surprise, as if she hadn’t heard properly what I’d said. I had no idea of the danger that was creeping up on me. I told her about Agnes’s visit, but needless to say didn’t mention what had happened between us.

‘I thought I’d let Agnes and her girls come to live here when they no longer have the house where she runs her care home.’

‘You mean you’re going to give the island away?’

‘There’s only me and the dog here. Why shouldn’t this island start being useful again?’

Louise was furious and slammed her fist down on the coffee cup on the table in front of her. Bits of cup and saucer splattered into the wall.

‘So you’re going to give away my inheritance? Aren’t you going to leave me anything when you’ve gone? — I haven’t had a thing from you so far.’

I found myself stuttering when I replied.

‘I’m not giving her anything. I’m just letting her stay here.’

Louise stared at me long and hard. It felt as if I was confronted by a snake. Then she stood up so violently that her chair fell over. She took her jacket and stormed out, leaving the door open. I waited and waited for her to come back.

I closed the door. At last I understood what it had meant to her that day when I turned up outside her caravan. I had given her a possession. She had even given up the forest for the sea, for me and my island. Now she thought I was taking all that away from her.

I had no heirs apart from Louise. I had once entertained the thought of giving the island to some archipelago trust or other. But that would only mean that, at some point in the future, greedy politicians would sit on my jetty and enjoy the sea. Now everything had changed. If I fell down and died that very night, Louise would be my direct heir. What she did with it then would be entirely up to her.

She didn’t appear at all the next day. In the evening, I went to the caravan. Louise was lying on the bed. Her eyes were open. I hesitated before knocking on the door.

‘Go away!’

Her voice was shrill and tense.

‘We must talk this over.’

‘I’m getting out of here.’

‘Nobody will ever take this island away from you. You don’t need to worry.’

‘Go away!’

‘Open the door!’

I tried the handle. It was unlocked. But before I could move she had flung it open. It smashed into my face. My bottom lip split open, I fell over backwards and hit my head on a stone. Before I could get up she had thrown herself on top of me and was hitting me about the face with what remained of an old cork lifebelt that had been lying nearby.

‘Stop it. I’m bleeding.’

‘You’re not bleeding enough.’

I grabbed hold of the lifebelt and wrenched it from her grasp. Then she started punching me. I eventually managed to wriggle out of her clutches.

We faced each other, panting.

‘Come up to the house. We have to talk.’

‘You look awful. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard.’

I went back to the kitchen, and was shocked when I saw my face covered in blood. I could see that not only my lip but also my right eyebrow had been split open. She knocked me out, I thought. She’d made good use of her boxing skills, even if it was the caravan door that had landed the most telling blow.

I wiped my face and wrapped some ice cubes in a towel which I pressed on my mouth and eyebrow. It was some time before I heard her footsteps approaching the door.

‘How bad is it?’

‘I might live. But new rumours will spread around the islands. As if it weren’t enough that my daughter undresses in front of the men who rule the world, she comes back home and behaves like a violent madwoman towards her ageing father. You’re a boxer, you must know what can happen to a face.’

‘I didn’t mean it.’

‘Of course you did. I think what you really wanted to do was to kill me before I could write a will that disinherited you.’

‘I got upset.’

‘You don’t need to explain. But you’re wrong. All I want to do is to help Agnes and her girls. Neither she nor I can say how long the arrangement will last. That’s all. Nothing else. No promises, no gifts.’

‘I thought you were going to abandon me again.’

‘I’ve never abandoned you. I abandoned Harriet. I knew nothing about you. If I had done, everything might have been different.’

I emptied the towel and refilled it with new ice cubes. My eye was by now almost totally closed.

Things had started to calm down. We sat around the kitchen table. My face hurt. I stretched out my hand and placed it on her arm.

‘I’m not going to take anything away from you. This island is yours. If you don’t want her to come here with her girls while they are looking for another home, then of course I shall tell her that it’s not possible.’

‘I’m sorry you look like you do. But earlier this evening, that’s what I looked like inside.’

‘Let’s go to bed,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to bed, and tomorrow I’ll wake up with a perfect set of bruises.’

I stood up and went to my room. I heard Louise closing the front door behind her.

We had been on the edge of a storm. It had passed by very close to us, but hadn’t enveloped us completely.

Something is happening, I thought, almost cheerfully. Nothing earth-shattering, but still. We’re on our way to something new and unknown.

The December days were chilly and oppressive. On 12 December I noted down that it snowed for a while in the afternoon — nothing much, and it didn’t last long. The clouds were motionless in the sky.

My bruised face was painful and took a long time to heal. Jansson’s jaw dropped when I met him on the jetty the morning after the fight. Louise came to say hello. She was smiling. I tried to smile but failed. Jansson couldn’t resist asking what had happened.

‘A meteor,’ I said. ‘A falling star.’

Louise was still smiling. Jansson asked no more questions.

I wrote to Agnes and invited her to the island to meet my daughter. She replied after a few days and said it was too soon. Nor had she decided whether or not to accept my offer. She knew that she would have to make her mind up before long, but hadn’t done so yet. I could tell that she was still offended, and disappointed. Perhaps I felt relieved that she wasn’t going to come. I was still not convinced that Louise wouldn’t launch another attack on me.

Every day I walked round the island with the dog. I listened to my heart. I had got into the habit of taking my pulse and my blood pressure once a day. Every other day after resting, every other day without resting. My heart was beating calmly and steadily inside my ribcage. My steadfast companion on my journey through life, to whom I had not devoted many thoughts. I went round and round the island, tried not to lose my footing on the slippery rocks, and occasionally paused to contemplate the horizon. If I had to leave this island, what I would miss most would be the rocks, the cliffs and the horizon. This inland sea, which was slowly turning into a bog, didn’t always produce pleasant smells. It was an unwashed sea that sometimes smelled of a hangover. But the horizon was pure and clean, as were the rocks and the cliffs.

As I made my daily round of the island in my cut-down wellington boots, it was as if I were carrying my heart in my hand. Even if all my readings were good, I sometimes felt panicky. I’m dying, my heart will stop beating a few seconds from now. It’s all over, death will strike before I’m prepared for it.

I thought I ought to talk to Louise about my fears. But I said nothing.

The winter solstice was approaching. One day Louise sat down on a chair in the middle of my kitchen and asked me to hold a mirror. Then she used a pair of kitchen scissors to cut off her long hair, dyed what remained red, and laughed contentedly a couple of hours later when she examined the result. Her face became clearer. It was as if a flower bed had been cleared of weeds.

The following day it was my turn. I’d tried to resist, but she was adamant. I sat on a kitchen chair and she cut my hair. Her fingers seemed dainty round the unwieldy scissors. She said my hair was beginning to thin out on top, and also suggested that a moustache would suit me.

‘I love having you here,’ I said. ‘Somehow or other everything has become clearer. Before, when I looked at my face in a mirror, I was never quite sure what I saw. Now I know that it’s me, and not just any old face that happens to be going past.’

She didn’t answer. But I could feel a drop on my cheek. She was crying. I started crying too. She continued cutting my hair. We both wept silently, she behind the chair with the scissors, me with a towel round my neck. We never said a word about it afterwards, perhaps because we were embarrassed; or because it wasn’t necessary.

That is a trait I share with my daughter. We don’t speak unnecessarily. People who live on small islands are seldom loud or loquacious. The horizon is far too big for that.

One day Louise tied a red silk ribbon round Carra’s neck. Carra didn’t seem to think much of it, but didn’t try to remove it.

The evening before the winter solstice, I sat up late at the kitchen table and thumbed through my logbook. Then I made a note.

‘Calm sea, no wind, minus one degree. Carra is wearing a red ribbon. Louise and I are very close.’

I thought about Harriet. It was as if she were just behind me, reading what I wrote.

Chapter 4

Louise and I decided we would celebrate the fact that the days were now going to start getting longer. Louise would do the cooking. In the afternoon I took my medication, then lay down on the kitchen sofa to rest.

It was half a year since we had all sat round in the brief darkness of the midsummer night. This evening, as we marked the winter solstice, Harriet would not be with us. I missed her in a way I had never done before. Even if she was dead, she seemed closer to me than ever.

I remained on the sofa for a long time before forcing myself up to have a shave and get changed. I put on a suit I had hardly ever worn. Despite being badly out of practice, I knotted a tie. The face I saw in the mirror terrified me. I had become old. I grimaced and went back down to the kitchen. It was starting to get dark in preparation for what would be the longest night of the year. The thermometer showed minus two. I took a blanket and sat down on the bench under the apple tree. The air was fresh, chilly, unusually salty. In the distance birds were crying, increasingly fewer of them, and less often.

I must have fallen asleep on the bench. When I woke up it was pitch dark. I was cold. Six o’clock — I had been asleep for nearly two hours. Louise was at the cooker when I came in. She smiled.

‘You were sleeping like an old lady,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘I am an old lady,’ I said. ‘My grandmother used to sit on that bench. She was always freezing cold except when she dreamt of gently soughing birch trees. I think I might be changing into her.’

It was warm in the kitchen. The hob and the oven were on; the windows had misted over.

Strange and wondrous perfumes began to fill the kitchen. Louise held out a spoon with a taster from a steaming casserole.

The taste was somehow reminiscent of old timber warmed by the sun. Sweet but sour, with a touch of bitterness — foreign, enticing.

‘I mix different worlds into my stews,’ said Louise. ‘When we eat, we pay visits to people in parts of the world we have never visited. Smells are our oldest memories. The wood that our forefathers made fires with, when they sheltered in caves and painted all those bloodthirsty animals on the walls — it must have smelled just the same as firewood does today. We don’t know what they thought, but we know what their wood smelled like.’

‘There’s always something constant in things that change,’ I said. ‘There’s always an old lady feeling cold on a bench under an apple tree.’

Louise was humming away as she prepared the meal.

‘You travel around the world on your own,’ I said. ‘But up there in the forest you are surrounded by men.’

‘There are lots of nice blokes around. But it’s not so easy to find a real man.’

I was going to continue, but she raised her hand in warning.

‘Not now, not later, not any time. If I ever have something to tell you, I’ll do so. Of course there are men in my life. But they are my business, not yours. I don’t think we should share everything. If you dig too deeply into others, you can risk destroying a beautiful friendship.’

I handed Louise some pot-holders. They had always been in the kitchen — I remembered them being there when I was a child. She took a large pot out of the oven and removed the lid. There was a strong smell of pepper and lemon.

‘This should burn your throat. No food is properly cooked if it doesn’t make you sweat when you eat it. Food lacking in secrets fills your belly with disappointment.’

I watched her stirring the pot and mixing the contents.

‘Women stir,’ she said. ‘Men hit and cut and tear and stab. Women stir and stir and stir.’

I went out for a walk before we started eating. When I got as far as the jetty, I suddenly felt that burning pain in my chest. It hurt so much that I nearly collapsed in a heap.

I shouted for Louise. When she got to me, I thought I would pass out. She squatted down in front of me.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘My heart. Vascular spasms.’

‘Are you going to die?’

I roared through my pain: ‘No, I’m not going to die. There’s a jar of blue tablets at the side of my bed.’

She hurried away. When she came back, she gave me a tablet and a glass of water. I held her hand. Then the pain eased. I was soaked in sweat, and shivering.

‘Has it gone?’

‘Yes, it’s gone. It’s not dangerous, But it’s painful.’

‘Perhaps you ought to go to bed.’

‘No way.’

We walked slowly back to the house.

‘Fetch a few cushions from the kitchen sofa,’ I said. ‘We can sit out here on the steps for a while.’

She came back with the cushions. We sat close together, and she laid her head on my shoulder.

‘I don’t want you to die. I couldn’t cope with seeing both my parents dying so soon, one after the other.’

‘I’m not going to die.’

‘Think of Agnes and her girls.’

‘I don’t know if that’s going to happen.’

‘They’ll come.’

I squeezed her hand. My heart had calmed down again now. But the pain was lurking in the background. I had received my second warning. I could live for quite a few years yet. But the end would come eventually, even for me.

Our celebratory dinner came to an early close. We ate, but didn’t stay on at the table. I went up to my room, and took the telephone with me. There was a socket in my bedroom that I never normally used. My grandfather had installed it towards the end of his life when he and Grandma had started to become ill. He wanted to be able to phone somebody if one or other of them became so frail that the stairs down to the ground floor would be too long and too steep. I wondered if I should ring, but couldn’t make up my mind. Eventually, at about one in the morning, I dialled the number — irrespective of the late hour. She answered more or less straight away.

‘I apologise for waking you up.’

‘You didn’t wake me up.’

‘I just want to know if you’ve made up your mind yet.’

‘The girls and I have discussed it. They shout no as soon as the word island is mentioned. They can’t imagine living without roads or asphalt or cars. They feel scared.’

‘They’ll have to choose between you and asphalt.’

‘I think I’m more important.’

‘Does that mean you’ll be coming?’

‘I’m not going to answer that at this time of night.’

‘Can I think what I think I can think?’

‘Yes. But we must stop now. It’s late.’

There was a click and the line went dead. I stretched out on the bed. She hadn’t said as much in so many words, but I was beginning to realise that she would come after all.

I lay awake for a long time. A year ago I used to lie here and think that nothing more was ever going to happen. Now I had a daughter and angina. Life had taken a new direction.

It was seven when I awoke. Louise was already up.

‘I need to go to the forest for a while,’ she said. ‘But can I leave you on your own? Can you promise me that you’re not going to die?’

‘When will you be back?’ I asked. ‘If you’re not away for too long, I shall keep going.’

‘I’ll be back in the spring. But I won’t be up in the forest all that time. I have somewhere else to go to.’

‘Where?’

‘I met a man after the police had released me. He wanted to talk about the caves and the mouldy wall paintings. We ended up talking about other things as well.’

I wanted to ask who he was. But she put her finger to her lips.

‘Not now.’

The following day Jansson came to fetch her.

‘I drink a lot of water,’ he shouted as the boat started to reverse away from the jetty. ‘But nevertheless I’m always thirsty.’

‘We can talk about that later,’ I shouted back to him.

I returned to the house and collected my binoculars. I watched them until the boat disappeared in the fog behind Höga Siskäret.

Now it was only the dog and me. My friend Carra.

‘It’s going to be just as quiet here as it always is,’ I said to the dog. ‘For the time being, at least. Then we shall build a new house. And girls will play music far too loudly, they’ll be shouting and swearing and sometimes they will hate this island. But they’re coming here, and we shall have to put up with them, A bunch of wild horses is on its way here.’

Carra was still wearing the red ribbon. I untied it and let it float away on the wind.

Late that evening I sat in front of the television with the sound turned down. I listened to my heart.

I had my logbook in my hand. I noted down that the winter solstice had now passed.

Then I stood up, put the logbook away and took out a new one.

The following day I would write something completely different. Perhaps a letter to Harriet, even though it was far too late to send it now.

Chapter 5

The sea in the archipelago didn’t freeze over that winter.

Thick ice formed on the mainland, and in sheltered bays and creeks of the islands, but the navigable channels out to the open sea remained open. There was a period of extreme cold and persistent northerly winds at the end of February, but Jansson was never forced to use his hydrocopter and I didn’t need to put my hands over my ears on post days.

One day, just after the extreme cold had given way to milder weather, something happened that I shall never forget. I had just removed the thin layer of ice over my bathing hole and was having my bath when I noticed the dog lying on the jetty and chewing away at something that looked like the skeleton of a bird. As dogs can wound their throats on bones, I went over to her and removed it. I threw it into the frozen seaweed, and urged the dog to come back to the house with me.

It was only later, when I had got dressed and warmed up again, that I remembered the bone. I still don’t know what made me do it, but I put my boots on, walked down to the jetty and located it. The piece of bone was certainly not from a bird. I sat down on the jetty and examined it closely. Could it be from a mink, or a hare?

Then I realised what it was. It couldn’t be anything else. It was a piece of bone from my old cat. I put it on the jetty at my feet, and wondered how the dog had found it. I felt cold and sad inside at the way in which my cat had turned up again in the end.

I took the dog with me for a walk round the island. There was no sign of any more bones, no tracks. Only that little fragment of bone, as if the cat had sent me a greeting in order to assure me that I no longer needed to wonder or to search. She was dead, and had been dead for a long time.

I wrote about the bone in my logbook. A mere three words.

‘Dog, bone, sorrow.’

I buried the fragment of bone next to Harriet’s and my old dog’s graves. It was a post day, so I went to the jetty. Jansson came chugging up on time as usual. He hove to by the jetty and announced that he felt very tired and was permanently thirsty. He had started to get cramp in his calves during the night.

‘It could be diabetes,’ I told him. ‘The symptoms suggest that possibility. I can’t examine you here, but you ought to go to the health centre.’

‘Is it fatal?’ he asked, looking worried.

‘Not necessarily. It can be treated.’

I couldn’t help feeling a little bit pleased that Jansson, who had always been as fit as a fiddle, had now revealed the first crack in his armour, and was in the same boat as the rest of us.

He thought about what I’d said for a few seconds, then bent down and picked up a large parcel from the deck. He handed it to me.

‘But I haven’t ordered anything.’

‘I know nothing about it. But it’s addressed to you. And it’s prepaid, so there are no postal charges.’

I took the parcel. My name was clearly written in beautifully formed letters. There were no sender’s details.

Jansson backed away from the jetty. Even if he had in fact got diabetes, he would live for many years yet. He would certainly outlive me and my dicky heart.

I sat down in the kitchen and opened the parcel. It contained a pair of black shoes with a hint of violet. Giaconelli had enclosed a card on which he’d written that it had brought him great pleasure to demonstrate his great respect for my feet.

I changed my socks, put on the shoes and walked round the kitchen. They fitted just as well as he had promised they would. The dog was lying on the threshold, watching me with interest. I went into the other room and showed the ants my new shoes.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so happy.

Every day for the rest of the winter I would walk around the kitchen several times in Giaconelli’s shoes. I never wore them outside the house, and always put them back in their box.

Spring arrived at the beginning of April. There was still a little ice in my inlet, but it wouldn’t be long before it thawed.

Early one morning I started to remove the anthill.

It was time to do it now. It couldn’t wait any longer.

I used my spade to remove it bit by bit, carefully placing it into the wheelbarrow.

The spade suddenly hit against something solid. When I had cleared away the conifer needles and ants, I saw that it was one of Harriet’s empty bottles. There was something inside it. I removed the cork and found a rolled-up photograph of Harriet and me, taken shortly before I abandoned her, when we were young.

There was water in the background. We could have been standing by Riddarfjärden in Stockholm. A breeze was ruffling Harriet’s hair. I was smiling straight at the camera. I recalled that we had asked a passing stranger to take the picture.

I turned it over. Harriet had drawn a map. It was of my island. Underneath it she had written: ‘We came this far.’

I sat in the kitchen for a long time, gazing at that photograph.

Then I continued transporting the ants to their new life. It was all finished by the evening. The anthill had been moved.

I walked round my island. Flocks of migrating birds were flying over the sea.

It was just as Harriet had written. We had come this far.

No further than that. But this far.