A Question Mark is Half a Heart Read online

  She leaves the lights off in the room and sits down on the sofa. It’s hard to switch off and rest when all the sounds and smells are so familiar. One of the windows is ajar, and gusts of cool sea air sweep in. It smells of salt and seaweed. It’s so quiet.

  Malin. Of course she remembers her. A quiet, kind girl who used to cast wondering glances at Fredrik now and then. How many more faces from the past will she see during these days on the island? Do they all still live here? Are they all friends?

  A shudder goes through her body, and she falls to one side and curls up in a foetal position.

  There’s a knock on the door and Elin reaches for her telephone in a daze. Only half an hour has passed, but she still slept deeply. Alice must have lost the extra key already. She sighs as she goes down the spiral staircase of the duplex suite to open the door. She jumps when she sees who’s standing outside. It’s Malin. She has a tray in her hands, with a cup of coffee and a plate with a piece of golden-yellow saffron pancake.

  ‘I thought you’d probably be hungry and tired after your journey,’ she smiles, holding the tray out.

  Elin hesitates.

  ‘You did recognise me, right?’ Malin says.

  Elin nods and eventually takes the tray.

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ she says quietly.

  ‘I want you to feel welcome, we all missed you after you left. It was awful, what happened, and even more awful that she sent you away.’

  Elin shook her head.

  ‘Who? Mama? No, that wasn’t what happened, she didn’t send me away,’ she says.

  ‘There were rumours that you lived in the attic, that you were so badly burned that she hid you away!’ Malin tells her.

  Elin shakes her head again and laughs.

  ‘Oh my god, no, of course that wasn’t what happened. I went to live with my Papa.’

  Malin laughs too.

  ‘Yeah, I guess we knew that really. But you know how children talk. We never heard anything, so our imaginations ran wild.’

  Neither says anything, and they stand there awhile until Malin gives a little shrug.

  ‘Well, I guess I’d better be going. I just wanted to check on you quickly, make sure you were doing OK.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s kind of you,’ Elin repeats.

  Malin hesitates, as though she’s hoping Elin will ask her to come in. But she doesn’t. She slowly pushes the door closed, and when it’s open no more than a crack she raises her hand in a wave.

  ‘I expect I’ll see you soon,’ she says.

  Malin cranes her neck to see her through the gap.

  ‘I could invite a few people round to my place if you want, we could have a reunion. That would be fun, right?’

  Elin shakes her head vehemently and closes the door, sinking down with her back against it, her heart pounding.

  It’s still night. Even though the clock insists it’s early morning. Elin has barely slept a wink, and has given up trying. The black sky above her feels almost as though it’s pressing her down into the cobblestones as she walks. She hasn’t thought about the darkness for a long time, had forgotten how black everything could be here. All those times she walked home from school in darkness and stormy weather, along the main road with a weak torch in her hand, the cold and wind her only companions. They would find their way in through every fibre of her clothes, her jackets that were always too flimsy, the trousers that grew stiff from the cold and the shoes too thin-soled to protect her from the ice. She remembers the white fingers and toes that she had to slowly thaw out in front of the stove. They used to sting as the cold let go, sometimes hurting so much she would cry.

  In the harbour the moorings gape emptily and thin floes of ice drift on the still surface, shielded from the waves by the breakwater further out. She walks towards the park in Almedalen, past houses she’s never seen before. New buildings, beautiful architecture with great gleaming windows. It’s completely deserted and the sparsely distributed street lights don’t provide enough illumination. She feels the cold cut through her leather shoes and clenches and unclenches her toes to warm them up. Her thick down jacket is insulating, and she only wishes she had something just as warm for her feet.

  Elin walks further up the promenade. Light starts to filter over the horizon: dawn is breaking. The wind takes hold of her, her upper body forced to push forward, far ahead of her legs. The sea is ridged with large waves and the sea gulls are playing in the headwind. She sees them stop flying and float back, then fly again. Like a never-ending dance.

  She breathes, slow, deep breaths. Fresh air fills her lungs. It smells just like she remembers. It’s over thirty years since she last walked here, and yet everything is just the same.

  She turns in through the Love Gate, the little opening towards the sea. She stops there and leans against the wall. She smiles at the memory of the times she stood there with Fredrik, how they joked about getting married one day.

  If neither of us is married when we’re fifty. Then we’ll do it. You and me. We’ll get married at sunset.

  He’d say it like that, just like that, and she’d laugh at him. It feels so long ago. As far as she can remember they never actually shook on it. But now they were about to turn fifty; Fredrik in one year, Elin in two.

  Fredrik. She walks away from the gate, but his face doesn’t leave her thoughts. She sees his freckles, his big front teeth, his smile. His front teeth made his lip turn up towards his nose when he laughed.

  She pulls her hat down over her ears and whistles a melody, their melody. She remembers every note, and her heart races as the memory washes over her. They always used to run, wherever they were going. They ran fast and barefoot, over stones and roots.

  She starts to run, feeling the wind almost snatching her hat off her head. She runs fast along the shore, as though someone is chasing her. She loses control of her arms, lets them flail. She runs until the wall ends and is replaced by deep trenches, she runs past the great field that lies behind them. At the jetty by the hospital she stops. The long, ugly jetty where the outflow from the hospital was said to have coloured the water red with blood at one time. She carefully balances her way along it. The surface is covered with a thin layer of ice and every step requires total concentration. The waves’ peaks throw up small showers of seawater over it. Everything around her is swaying. The surface of the sea is black and menacing. She sits down right at the end, and the endless sea surrounds her.

  Her telephone vibrates in her pocket, but she lets it ring. Her trousers are wet and she’s so cold her lips and shoulders are trembling.

  How easy it would be just to fall to one side. To let the down in her coat become wet and heavy, and carry her and all her memories to the bottom of the sea. To lay her soul and her body to rest.

  A man is shouting at her, but the roar of the waves and the wind drown his words. She hears him, and yet doesn’t hear him. Her trousers are wet through now, her jacket too. She’s shaking from the cold. The place she’s sitting in is slippery and inhospitable. She daren’t turn around, daren’t stand up for fear of slipping.

  She feels a hand on one shoulder, and then the other.

  ‘You can’t sit here, you’ll freeze to death,’ he says, gently.

  His hands go under her arms and pull her carefully up to standing. Crying, she walks slowly backwards, led by him. He seems strong, and she feels safe. As they reach land, and the water either side of the jetty becomes shallow, she turns around and collapses into his arms. He holds her close and pats her back soothingly. She realises that he’s a policeman, in uniform, his car parked by the roadside and his colleague waiting on the beach.

  ‘That could have ended really badly,’ he says sternly, pushing her away.

  ‘I just thought … I just wanted to …’ She stumbles over the now-unfamiliar language; she can’t find a proper explanation.

  ‘You’re completely soaked through. Where do you live? I think it’s best we drive you home.’

  She nods and follows
him to the car. His colleague puts a protective hand on her head as she bends down to get into the back seat. It’s a Volvo. She strokes the seat.

  ‘My step-father had a Volvo,’ she murmurs, but the policemen act as if they haven’t heard her.

  They want to know where she’s going and when she tells them the Visby Hotel they chuckle as though she were from another planet.

  ‘Fancy,’ one says.

  ‘In the summer we have our fair share of crazy tourists here, but it’s not so common in the winter,’ the other laughs.

  ‘I’m not drunk, I promise, you can test me. I just needed to breathe a little,’ Elin protests.

  They come into the lobby with her. Her lips are blue and her face is pale. Her trousers are clinging to her legs and water drips onto the stone floor, leaving a narrow trickle behind her. Her shoes squeak from the moisture. She sees Alice, who shouts so loud it echoes around the lobby.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  She looks to the policemen for a response, her eyes entreating them. They let go of Elin’s arms and let her walk on her own.

  ‘She says she’s OK, but we’re not sure. Do you want us to drive her up to the hospital instead?’ asks one of them, in accented English.

  Alice shakes her head, Elin leans on her.

  ‘I’m so cold, can we go upstairs now?’ she whispers.

  ‘What have you done, Mom?’

  The English-speaking policeman hastily reassures her:

  ‘She hasn’t done anything. We found her at the end of the jetty by the hospital. The waves were splashing up over her legs, there’s a storm outside. She would have frozen stiff if we hadn’t brought her in.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alice says fervently.

  Elin heads for the lift without saying thank you or goodbye to the policemen. Alice apologises to them and then runs after her. Elin is leaning against the wall, looking at her phone.

  ‘Why has Sam called so many times? He never rings me.’

  She holds up the handset. She has eight missed calls from him. Alice shrugs and looks away.

  ‘You could have died, Mom, what were you doing out there?’

  The lift doors open.

  ‘You haven’t talked to him, have you?’ Answering Alice’s question with one of her own, Elin gets in. Her hands are so cold that the phone slips from her grasp and lands on the stone floor, cracking right across the screen. She swears out loud, crouches down and reaches back out of the lift for it, struggling to pick it up with her stiff fingers.

  ‘Yeah, he rang this morning,’ says Alice. ‘He was wondering where I was.’

  ‘He’s already noticed you’re not there?’

  ‘He went to school, to say hello to me, and they said I’d taken some time off for a family emergency. It scared him.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  ‘I told him we were here.’

  ‘But not why?’

  ‘I said I was helping you with a project. He already knew you were born here. How could he know that?’

  ‘You can’t hide everything. We got married, he saw it then. I told him they were just on holiday, my parents, and I just happened to be born here.’

  The lift doors close and it moves upwards. Elin is trembling with cold, and Alice takes her jumper off and puts it round her mother’s shoulders. Elin laughs.

  ‘What are you doing? It’ll only get wet. Just look at me.’

  ‘Wool keeps you warm even when it’s wet. You’re frozen, you’re shaking all over.’

  ‘You’re so sweet, you do so much to help me.’

  They climb into bed, under thick down comforters. Elin has the suite, and the ochre-coloured walls inspire a curious calm. Alice rings down for hot chocolate and biscuits.

  ‘Tell me more about the fire, Mom, what happened?’

  Elin mutters and hides her face in the duvet.

  ‘I saw the body,’ she says, then falls silent.

  ‘Whose body?’

  ‘Edvin was with me, behind me, he was lying there, in the field. I saw Micke, he was dead. And Mama was screaming, she was just bawling. She was on her knees in the farmyard and I can still hear the noises she was making.’

  ‘Was that the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Yeah, we were in the same hospital, but I didn’t get to see her there.’

  ‘But why did you say it was your fault? I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Like I told you before – we always used to make a campfire on the beach, Fredrik and I. That evening I was on my own, he’d gone back to his mother’s place in Visby. I stoked it too high and then I fell asleep. I should never have fallen asleep.’

  ‘And the fire spread,’ Alice filled in.

  Elin nods, her voice growing thick and tears filling her eyes.

  ‘Erik was in their den. The whole building fell down over him. I could have saved him, but I couldn’t manage the both of them, they were too heavy, so I carried Edvin out first.’

  ‘Why did you run away?’

  ‘Everyone I loved was gone and it was my fault.’

  ‘But your mom …’

  ‘You don’t understand, you’ll never understand. She would have killed me, she used to get that angry.’

  ‘I can’t imagine life without you. There’s nothing that would make me leave you.’

  ‘It was different back then. She was young when she had me, she never loved me.’

  ‘How can you say that? About a mother and her child? Of course she did.’

  ‘No, that’s how it was. I never heard her say it. The words. Not a single time.’

  ‘That she loved you?’

  Elin nods and turns towards Alice, edges closer and strokes her hair. She doesn’t say anything.

  ‘You don’t say it to me either,’ Alice says.

  Elin starts and pulls her hand back.

  ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘No, you don’t, you almost always say ditto.’

  Elin doesn’t reply. She turns again, so she’s lying on her back. They lie still, side by side, Elin following the white moulding on the ceiling with her gaze, the jumble of patterns someone once carved by hand.

  ‘Would you abandon me too? If you’d done something wrong?’

  Alice’s abrupt question makes her jump. She’s about to say something when she’s saved by a loud knock at the door. Alice disappears downstairs to answer it and Elin expects her to bring back the hot chocolate, but she comes back empty-handed and runs over to the bed.

  ‘There’s a man outside who wants to see you,’ she says.

  Elin sits up hastily.

  ‘Have you let a strange man in here?’

  Alice shakes her head eagerly, dishevelled wisps of her curly hair falling over her face.

  ‘He’s outside, waiting. Hurry.’

  THEN

  PARIS, 1984

  Most days were OK, but not Sundays. Sundays were always the worst. That was the day the loneliness and longing got to her the most. Two weeks in Paris had become four months, the test shoots had turned into real jobs, and the pile of notes she’d earned grew and grew in the inside pocket of her suitcase, where she hid them so her roommates wouldn’t get at them. Elin had quickly learned how to look into the camera to bring out her best features, how to squint a little with her lower eyelid and push her nose down to make her mouth fuller. The shabby clothes she’d brought with her from Farsta had been replaced with new ones.

  There was no sea breeze in Paris – it was just as cramped and stuffy as Farsta. All buildings and asphalt. She went to the park every now and then, the Bois de Boulogne, but there were hardly any wildflowers there, just planted beds and neatly-mown lawns. And someone had told her it was dangerous, that the forest was full of prostitutes and their clients.

  She often walked along the Seine. The boats set the water in motion and the lapping sounds reminded her of everything she longed for. But it smelled sour, and drifts of rubbish collected along the edges.

  This Sunday she was sitting
on a bench, hidden behind the pink sunglasses that reminded her of her old life. The autumn sun was no longer warm, the breeze suddenly felt colder. She was so tired.

  People walked along the pavement in front of her. No one was alone; they walked in pairs or in whole families. Hand in hand, arm in arm. She heard laughter and speech she didn’t understand. French was still a mystery to her. She could say hello and goodbye, simple phrases. But nothing more. The photographers spoke English, with accents as strong as her own. She longed to hear Swedish, she longed for the beach and for Fredrik. For Edvin and Erik. For a chance to let her hair get messy and not to be constantly looked at.

  Thinking about her brothers made something snap inside her, and tears over what she’d lost suddenly flooded down her cheeks. She had coins in her pocket. She used them once a week, when she rang Lasse. He was the one who’d told her school that she wasn’t coming back, who’d given her permission to stay there. He was generally drunk when she rang, slurring, not listening. Perhaps she should ring her instead, Marianne. Maybe next Sunday. She fiddled with the coins. Thinking about her mama made her cry even harder and she hunched over, shaking and sobbing. Her breath came in spasms. More than anything she wanted to talk to Fredrik, to hear his voice. But what would she say? Sorry, maybe.

  Sorry I killed your papa.

  She didn’t see the woman arrive, just felt the thud as she sat down on the bench. She sat there in perfect silence to begin with, but her deep, even breathing still spread some kind of calm. She was wearing a green dress, in thick woollen fabric. Her hands rested on her knees. They were knotty and wrinkled.

  She said something in French. But Elin just shook her head. So she switched to English.

  ‘I’ve seen you sitting here sobbing far too many times. Why are you crying so bitterly? What can be so terrible?’

  Elin didn’t reply, but the question set her off crying again. Then the woman stood up and took her by the hand, pulling her upright.

  ‘Come with me, I can’t let you sit here alone any more. That’s enough now.’

  Elin raised her gaze and was met by bright green eyes and red curly hair. The skin under the woman’s unmade-up eyes was puffy, and when she smiled a fan of wrinkles formed at the corner of each.