“She’s moving in here? But she can’t.”

“She can’t? Did my ears deceive me?” His father had raised himself up. His body was swaying backward and forward. “Why can’t my fi ancée move in here?”

“We’ve only got two rooms. We live here. I live here.”

“There are bigger apartments.”

Oh, sure. Who would have them as tenants?

“But we’ve only got one sofa.”

His father slept in the sofabed in the living room.

“You’ll have that.”

“What?”

“We need your room. Fuck it, it’s not your damn room. We need this room. You’re never at home anyway so you can manage with the sofa.”

Patrik could feel the sweat on his brow. He looked at his CD collection, his magazines. Posters.

“You mean I have to move out of my room?”

“She’s coming tomorrow.” His father stood up. “That’s that.” He left the room, and Patrik heard him unscrewing the bottle top again.

The party had started before he’d even closed the door behind him. Where could Patrik go now when he needed to be at home?

Then again, he didn’t need to be at home. He didn’t know where he would go, but he didn’t need to be at home. He looked at his CDs again. Could Ria keep them? Could he rent a room there, sort of for the time being? He laughed so as not to burst into tears.

Angela kicked off her boots and put on some water for tea. The sun was blazing down on the buildings across the street. The light out there was so bright, brighter than in any winter she could recall. It was winter, all right. The year had decided that it was winter long before it should really have started for real.

She felt a movement in her stomach, then another. She sat on a kitchen chair. She looked around: everything in this room had become hers. That felt good. She’d brought her things with her, but nothing looked the same in this bachelor apartment. Not that it could be called that any longer. It was a part of her life now.

We’ll repaper the place and change a few things, she thought. Or we’ll move to that house by the sea. Parties in the garden, under sun umbrellas. The sound of children’s voices, toys strewn all over the lawn.

Erik at the barbecue wearing his chef’s hat. A smile as broad as the sun is hot.

The telephone rang. She stood up with difficulty and went to answer it.

“Hello?” No answer. She looked at the clock over the door: five-fifteen. “Hello?” A wrong number, she thought.

DECEMBER

27

It was like when he was a child. The sun in his eyes. All the smells inside his nose, where they stayed until well into the evening. You could smell all the scents in your clothes even when you were indoors. A little smoke and a lot of snow. What did snow smell like?

He bent down and scooped up a handful of snow. The sun transformed it into brightly sparkling powder, and he sniffed at it. What was it like? It smelled like a memory he had, but couldn’t pin down. That’s exactly what it was like. A memory of something special.

He threw the memory away and it disappeared into thin air. He moved into the shadow of the buildings and the sun was gone.

The snow was piled up like a wall and he could see it nearly all the way to the crossroads. The shop was on the corner. A minimarket, as they’re called. It had changed its name, but he knew what it used to be called. Had he described it, perhaps? He had mentioned what it used to be called. Not directly, but he couldn’t tell everything, could he? Not now.

He was well known in there. He thought he was, at least. He had done his duty there. His d-u-t-y. He was her friend and he had seen her looking at him in a special way, but he didn’t think it was that way. He was only a friend.

Once he had been on the point of saying it. I’m only a friend.

I’m just somebody who is here. Just somebody who was here. In the right place at the right time. But that wasn’t true. He’d been there at the wrong time. Or, rather, that applied to the other person, to be absolutely correct. To be correct. A-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-1-y c-o-r-r-e-c-t…

Some children were running around in the playground between the building where he used to live and the road. A lot of children. Now there was snow to play in. It wasn’t wet snow, because there was no sign of any snowmen or snow lanterns. He scooped up another handful and tried to pack it into a ball, but he couldn’t. Children knew when it was possible to use it for making things.

They’d sprayed water and made a skating rink as well. He almost wished that he still had his ice skates. But what would that look like? His feet were twice as big now as they were then, weren’t they?

The road had been cleared, but it could have been done more efficiently. The apartment buildings didn’t look up to much. It was like a depopulated area in the middle of the city. Depopulation in the middle of the city! There was less and less on the minimarket shelves every day. They boasted that they still had an assistant serving at the meat counter, but he’d never seen anybody there. Never. He hadn’t been there all that often, but still.

A car drove past and he had to stand on the piled-up snow. It was dirty here. He didn’t want to touch it. He stepped down again. Soon it would be time to go home and get something to eat and then go to work for a long evening shift, and he’d go home again and not be able to go to sleep, and he’d sit in front of the TV, watching videos.

Suddenly the shop was there without him noticing that he’d gone into it. He had the films under his arm. Two posters outside advertised films. One of the actors looked familiar, but he didn’t waste time there because he knew what kind of videos he wanted.

There was somebody else behind the counter, somebody he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t say anything when he paid for the videos. Now he was crossing the street. He looked at the tall buildings that looked like a row of huge building blocks.

Later this evening he would drive past the tall buildings in the center of town.

One morning he’d been waiting outside and watched her get onto the tram. He’d followed behind, although he knew where she was going. Nevertheless, he wanted to see her get off the tram and then disappear among all the thousands of others who were going in and out of the hospital doors.

28

Winter turned off the main road. He drove past the seven-story buildings on the right, turned into the parking area, and found a place directly opposite the huge apartment buildings marked with a housing association sign.

They seemed to be in good condition. The entrance had a sort of superstructure, and stone paving slabs on the floor.

Bengt Martell answered the intercom and Winter was let in. The entrance hall was attractive, painted in soft pastel colors not yet disfigured by graffiti. Perhaps there weren’t any young people here. Winter hadn’t seen a soul outside.

The man opened the apartment door. There was a smell of coffee in the hall. The sun shone right through the apartment, which presumably had windows facing in different directions. The man was a little shorter than Winter, about the same age, dressed in gray trousers and a cardigan that might have been green. He held out his hand.

“Martell.”

“Winter.”

“My wife’s popped out to get something for us to eat with the coffee.”

He showed Winter into the apartment. Through the window Winter could see the hill and the streets down below. Several clouds had appeared during the few minutes since he’d entered the building and taken the elevator.