The Girl in the Woods. Camilla Lackberg
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could still feel the touch of his hand.
‘What else can you cure?’ asked Preben, leaning against one of the stalls.
She scraped her toe on the ground, pausing before she answered.
‘Most things as long as the pain is not too far gone.’
‘Both people and animals?’ asked Preben curiously.
‘Yes,’ replied Elin.
It surprised her that Britta had never mentioned this to her husband. Yet the boy Lill-Jan had heard rumours about Elin’s skills. Perhaps that was not so strange, after all. When they lived together under their father’s roof, her sister had always spoken scornfully about Elin’s grandmother and her wisdom.
‘Tell me more,’ said Preben as he headed for the door.
Elin followed reluctantly. It was not proper for her to be chatting with the master of the house in this manner, and it was all too easy for gossip to begin spreading on the farm. But Preben was the one in charge, so she had no choice but to follow him. Britta was standing outside, her arms hanging at her sides, a dark look on her face. Elin’s heart sank. This was what she had feared. He risked nothing, but she could easily land in disfavour. And Märta along with her.
Her trepidation about how it might be to live at the mercy of her younger sister had been fully realized. Britta was a stern and unkind mistress, and both she and Märta had felt the sting of her sharp tongue.
‘Elin has been helping me with Stjärna,’ said Preben, calmly meeting his wife’s eye. ‘Now she is on her way to set the dinner table for us. She suggested that we might spend some time together, you and I, since I have been away so much lately, tending to church business.’
‘Did she now?’ said Britta, still suspicious, though not quite as stern as usual. ‘Well, that was a good suggestion.’
She briskly took hold of Preben’s arm.
‘I have been missing my lord and master terribly, and I think he has been neglecting his wife of late.’
‘My dear wife is perfectly right about that,’ he replied, heading for the house along with Britta. ‘But we will now make amends. Elin said we might sit down at the table in half an hour’s time, which suits me well, as I will have time to wash and dress properly so I will not appear like a shabby ruffian next to my beautiful wife.’
‘Oh, come now, you can never look shabby,’ said Britta, slapping him on the shoulder.
Elin walked behind them, forgotten for the moment, and sighed with relief. The darkness she had glimpsed in Britta’s eyes was all too familiar. She knew her sister would not hesitate to do harm to anyone she thought had wronged her. But this time Preben had saved her and Märta, and she would remain eternally grateful to him for that, even though he should not have placed her in this situation to begin with.
She picked up her pace and hurried to the kitchen. She had only half an hour to set out the food and ask the cook to prepare something special. She smoothed her apron, feeling again the warmth of Preben’s hand.
‘What are you doing, Pops?’
Bill had been so immersed in the text he was writing that he gave a start when his son spoke. He almost knocked over his cup, and some of the coffee sloshed over the side on to his desk.
He turned to look at Nils, who was standing in the doorway.
‘I’m working on a new project,’ he said, turning the computer screen so Nils could see.
‘“Nicer People”,’ read Nils aloud.
Underneath the text was a picture of a sailboat ploughing its way through the water.
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Don’t you remember that documentary we saw? The Filip and Fredrik film, Nice People?’
Nils nodded.
‘Oh, yeah. Those black guys who wanted to play bandy.’
Bill grimaced.
‘The Somalis who wanted to play bandy. Don’t call them “black guys”.’
Nils shrugged.
Bill peered at his son standing there in the dim light of the room with his hands in his pockets and his blond fringe hanging in his eyes. Nils had come along late in their lives. Unplanned and, to be honest, not particularly welcome. Gun had been forty-five when Nils was born, while he was almost fifty, and Nils’s two older brothers were in their late teens. Gun had insisted they keep the child, saying there had to be some meaning behind her pregnancy. But Bill had never developed the same connection with Nils as he had with the older boys. He hadn’t really tried. He hadn’t wanted to change nappies or sit in the sandbox or read the first-grade maths book for the third time.
Bill turned back to the computer screen.
‘This is a media presentation. My thought is to do something that will be a positive way of helping the refugees in the area become part of Swedish society.’
‘Are you going to teach them how to play bandy?’ asked Nils, his hands still in his pockets.
‘Don’t you see the sailboat?’ Bill pointed at the screen. ‘They’re going to learn to sail! And then we’ll compete in the Dannholmen regatta.’
‘The Dannholmen regatta isn’t exactly the same thing as the bandy world championship those blacks competed in,’ said Nils. ‘Not the same league at all.’
‘Don’t call them blacks!’ said Bill.
Nils was undoubtedly trying to provoke him.
‘I know the Dannholmen regatta is a significantly smaller event, but it has great symbolic importance around here, and it will attract a lot of media attention. Especially now they’re making that film here.’
Nils snorted. ‘I don’t know if they’re really refugees at all. Only people who have money can make their way up here. I read that on the Internet. And those so-called refugee kids have beards and moustaches.’
‘Nils!’
Bill looked at his son, whose face was now flushed with indignation. It was like looking at a stranger. If he didn’t know better, he’d think his son was … a racist. But that wasn’t possible. Teenagers knew so little about the ways of the world. All the more reason to promote this type of project. Most people were basically good at heart. They just needed to be educated, given a little push in the right direction. Nils would soon realize how wrong he was.
Bill heard his son leave the room and close the door behind him. Tomorrow was the start-up meeting, and he needed to have everything ready for the press. This was going to be big. Really big.
‘Hello?’ called Paula as she and Johanna came in the door with three suitcases and two prams. She was carrying the baby, balanced on her hip.
Paula smiled at Johanna as she set down the heaviest suitcase. A holiday on Cyprus with a three-year-old and an infant probably hadn’t been the smartest plan, but they’d survived.
‘I’m in the kitchen!’
Paula relaxed as soon as she heard her mother’s voice. If Rita and Bertil were home, she could leave the kids with them so she and Johanna could unpack in peace and quiet. Or else they could forget about unpacking until tomorrow and instead stretch out on the bed to watch a film until they fell asleep.
Rita gave them a smile as they came into the kitchen. There was nothing strange about her cooking in their kitchen as if it were her own. Rita and Bertil lived in the flat upstairs, but ever since the