There were five sheets in the fax machine when Annika got home. She dropped her outdoor clothes in a heap on the hall floor; she was going to have to go out to pick up the children later anyway.

She settled onto the wooden chair by the hall table, surrounded by piles of bills, and looked quickly through the doc.u.ments the woman at the Norrland News Norrland News archive had faxed through, in the order they had been published in. archive had faxed through, in the order they had been published in.

The first cutting indicated that Karina Bjornlund had been a promising athlete as a teenager. The article was a report from the NC, which Annika presumed meant either Norrland Championship or Norrbotten Championship. The picture was grainy, with too much contrast; Annika had to screw up her eyes to make out the skinny young girl with a ponytail and the number 18 on her chest, waving a bunch of flowers jubilantly towards the photographer. There was something ecstatic about the picture that was still almost tangible, thirty-five years after it had been taken. Karina Bjornlund was a success, she won all the sprint distances at the championship and was predicted a glorious future.

For some reason it made the register detailing the minister's post feel even more shameful.

Annika put the picture of the athlete at the bottom of the pile and went on.

The second cutting was an article about the Working Dogs' Club in Karlsvik, and showed Bamse the golden retriever and his owner Karina Bjornlund, along with five other dogs and owners, getting ready for a display in the sports hall that weekend. The picture was smaller than the last one, and she could only really make out the minister's white teeth and the dog's dark tongue.

The third was stamped 6 June 1974, and showed a group of new graduates from the medical secretarial course at Umea University. Karina Bjornlund was third from the left in the top row. Annika glanced across the h.o.m.ogenous group on the picture, no men, no immigrants, most of them with their hair in a page-cut, one side curled to form a wing over one eyebrow.

The fourth cutting was the smallest, a note from 1978 under the heading Names & News Names & News, in which the Norrbotten County Council announced that Karina Bjornlund had been appointed as secretary to the commissioner of the council.

The fifth was a report of what had evidently been a turbulent public meeting in the county council offices in the autumn of 1980. The picture showed four men discussing the coordination of healthcare in the district, with expansive gestures and presumably raised voices. In the background stood a woman in a flowery skirt, with watchful eyes and folded arms.

Annika looked at the sheet more closely and read the small print of the caption.

Council Commissioner Christer Lundgren defended the position of politicians on the issue of a new central hospital for Norrbotten in discussions with the Medical Council and the pressure group Protect Our Health. His secretary Karina Bjornlund listens.

Okay, Annika thought, letting the paper drop. So that's how she did it. She got a job with Christer Lundgren, who eventually became Trade Minister, clung on to his coat-tails and followed him all the way into government.

She looked at the cutting again, and saw it had been published on page twenty-two, a long way back for a local paper, and read the start of the article, which was about some technicality in the political decision-making process. She skimmed the rest of the piece until her eye caught the picture byline at the bottom right corner.

Hans Blomberg, council reporter.

She blinked, looked again. Yes, it was definitely him, a much younger and thinner version of the archivist at the Norrland News Norrland News.

She let out a snort, suddenly picturing the archivist's background as clearly as the messy table in front of her. There were people like him on every paper, conscientious but unimaginative reporters who covered Important Things, political decisions and social developments, the sort of person who wrote dull texts and defended the fact with reference to the seriousness of the subject, looking down derisively on journalists who wrote engaging, committed articles. He had probably been union representative at some point, fighting for all the hopeless cases, but never for people like her, because they could look after themselves.

And now he was sitting in the archive and counting the days until his misery was finally over.

Little Hans, she thought, twisting her arm to check the time.

Time to pick up the rugrats.

Ellen rushed towards her, arms open wide, Tiger dangling from her left hand. The joy that welled up within Annika was so hot that something melted, the sight of tights and pigtails and the red dress with a chequered heart on it made something hard and sharp give way and disappear.

She caught her daughter as she jumped at her, astonished at the child's utter trust, and stroked her straight little legs and arms, her soft shoulders and stiff back, inhaling the divine softness of her hair.

'I made a sweet machine,' Ellen said, struggling to get down. She took Annika by the finger and pulled her over to the craft corner.

'We'll show Daddy,' the child said, about to pick up her cardboard creation, as the top swayed disconcertingly and Annika leaped forward.

'We can't really take it with us today,' she said, taking hold of the cardboard, 'because we have to go into town and buy new shoes for Kalle. We'd better not take the sweet machine with us in case it gets broken.'

She put the contraption back on the worktop. The girl's mouth fell open, her eyes welled up with tears, her lip starting to quiver.

'But,' she said, 'that means Daddy won't get to see it.'

'Yes he will.' Annika crouched down beside her. 'The machine's safe here, and we can get it tomorrow instead. Maybe you could paint it?'

Ellen looked down at her feet, shaking her head and making her pigtails dance.

'What lovely pigtails you've got,' Annika said, taking hold of one of them and tickling her daughter's ear. 'Who did those for you?'

'Lennart!' Ellen said, giggling and shrugging to escape the tickling. 'He helped me with the sweet machine.'

'Come on, let's go and get your brother,' Annika said, and the battle was over, Ellen put on her overalls, hat and gloves, and even remembered to take Tiger home with her.

Kalle's school was on Pipersgatan, two blocks away. Annika held Ellen's warm little hand in hers as they carefully negotiated the puddles, singing nursery rhymes.

Kalle was sitting in the reading corner concentrating on a book about Peter No-Tail. He didn't look up until Annika crouched down next to him and kissed the top of his head.

'Mummy,' he said, 'where's Uppsala?'

'Just north of Stockholm,' she said. 'Why?'

'Can we go and see Peter and the other cats one day?'

'Definitely,' Annika said, remembering that there were special cat walks where you could follow in the author Gosta Knutsson's footsteps around the churches, castle and university.

'I think she's prettiest,' Kalle said, pointing to a white cat and slowly spelling out 'Ma-ry Cream-nose'.

Annika blinked. 'Can you read?' she said, astonished. 'Who taught you to do that?'

He shrugged. 'On the computer,' he said. 'Otherwise you can't play.'

He stood up, closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Then looked sternly down at her sitting on the red cushion.

'Boots,' he said. 'You promised. My old ones have got a hole in.'

She smiled, caught hold of one trouser leg and pulled him to her, he laughed and struggled, and she blew on his neck.

'We'll get the bus to the shops,' she said. 'Go and get your clothes on. Ellen's waiting for us.'

The number one pulled up just as they reached the bus-stop, and the three of them found seats right at the back.

'Army green,' Kalle said. 'I don't want blue again, only babies have blue boots.'

'I'm not a baby,' Ellen said.

'Of course you can have green,' Annika said. 'As long as they've got some.'

They got off at Kungstradgarden and hurried across the street between the showers of slush thrown up by the cars driving past. They tugged off their hats and gloves and scarves when they were inside the shopping centre, stuffing them into Annika's roomy bag. In a shoe shop on the upper floor they found a pair of army-green, lined rubber boots in the right size, tall enough and with reflective patches. Kalle refused to take them off. Annika paid and they took the old ones home in a bag.

They got out in the nick of time, Ellen had got too hot and was starting to whine, but she fell silent again once they were out in the cold and darkness of Hamngatan, quietly walking along with her hand in Annika's. Annika took Kalle's hand as well as they went to cross the road by the department store, concentrating on fending off the cascades of dirty water from the cars, when the silhouette of a person on his way out of the shop across the street caught her eye.

That's Thomas, she thought without realizing she was thinking it. What's he doing here? What's he doing here?

No, she thought, it isn't him it isn't him.

The man took a couple of steps forward, his breath lit up by a streetlamp, yes, it was him!

Her face broke into a broad smile, the warm joy that melted things came back. He was out buying Christmas presents! Already!

She laughed; he was such a Christmas freak. Last year he started buying presents in September she remembered how angry he got when she found them at the bottom of his wardrobe and had wondered what those parcels were and what they were doing there.

A violent spray of slush hit them and Ellen screamed. Annika pulled the children back from the kerb and yelled angrily at the taxi. When she looked up again Thomas was gone, she searched the crowd for him, and saw him again, he was turning to face someone, a woman with blond hair and a long coat went up to him and he put his arm round her. Thomas pulled the other woman to him and kissed her. There was complete silence and everyone else vanished. Annika was staring down a long tunnel and at the other end her husband was kissing a blonde woman with a pa.s.sion that made her insides freeze and shatter.

34.

'Mummy, it's green!'

But she didn't move. People jostled her, she saw their faces talking to her but their voices were mute. She saw Thomas go off, vanishing with his arm round the blonde woman's shoulders, the woman's hand round his waist, they walked slowly away with their backs to her, enclosed in their coupledom, swallowed up by the sea of people.

'Why aren't we going, Mummy? Now it's red again.'

She looked down at her children, their faces looking up at her, eyes clear and questioning, and realized that her mouth was wide open. She swallowed a scream, snapped her mouth shut, looked at the traffic.

'Soon,' she said, in a voice that came from deep within her. 'We'll go next time.'

And the lights went green and the bus came and they had to stand all the way to Kungsholmstorg.

The children started singing as they climbed the stairs, the tune was familiar but she couldn't place it, she couldn't find the right door-key and had to try several times.

She went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, dialled his mobile number but got the message service. He had turned it off. He was walking with his arm round a blonde woman somewhere in Stockholm, not answering when she called.

So she called his office, and Arnold, his tennis partner, and no one anywhere answered.

'What are we having for tea?'

Kalle was standing in the door in his shiny new boots.

'Coconut chicken with rice.'

'With broccoli?'

She shook her head, feeling a panic attack bubbling up. She clutched the sink, looking into her son's eyes and decided not to drown.

'No,' she said. 'Water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and baby sweetcorn.'

His face relaxed, he smiled and came a step closer.

'Do you know what, Mummy?' he said. 'I've got a wobbly tooth. Feel!'

And she reached out her hand, saw that it was trembling, she felt his left front tooth and, yes, it was definitely loose.

'That'll come out soon.'

'Then I get a gold coin from the tooth fairy,' Kalle said.

'Then you get a gold coin from the tooth fairy,' Annika said, turning away; she had to sit down.

Her insides had turned into razorblades and shards of ice, cutting her when she breathed. The kitchen table was swaying. There's no point There's no point, it sang, there's no point there's no point. And the angels tuned up in the background.

Suddenly she felt that she was about to be sick. She dashed into the toilet behind the kitchen and her stomach turned inside out, half-digested pasta from 7-Eleven tore at her throat, making her tears overflow.

Afterwards she hung across the toilet, the stench revolting her. The angels sang at full volume.

'Shut up!' she yelled, slamming the toilet lid.

She walked angrily into the kitchen, pulling out all the ingredients for dinner, burned herself on the flame when she put the rice on, cut herself when she sliced the onion and cut up the chicken, shaking as she opened the tins of coconut milk and baby sweetcorn and Asian chestnuts.

Was she wrong? It wasn't impossible. Thomas looked like a lot of other Swedish men tall and fair and broad-shouldered, with the beginnings of a stomach, and it had been dark and they were quite a long way away; maybe it wasn't him standing there with the blonde woman at all. It wasn't impossible. Thomas looked like a lot of other Swedish men tall and fair and broad-shouldered, with the beginnings of a stomach, and it had been dark and they were quite a long way away; maybe it wasn't him standing there with the blonde woman at all.

She gripped the stove, closed her eyes and took four deep breaths.

Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe she'd seen wrong.

She straightened up, relaxed her shoulders, opened her eyes and heard the door open.

'Daddy!'

The children's cries of joy and st.u.r.dy welcoming hugs, his deep voice expressing a mixture of happiness and cautious fending-off; she fixed her gaze on the extractor fan and wondered if it showed, if there was something in his face that would give her the answer.

'h.e.l.lo,' he said behind her back, kissing her on the back of her head. 'How are you feeling? Better?'

She breathed in and out before turning round and setting her eyes on him.

He looked the same as usual. He looked exactly like he usually did. Dark-grey jacket, dark-blue jeans, light-grey shirt, shimmering silk tie. His eyes were the same, they were a bit tired and slightly disillusioned, his hair thick and brush-like above his bushy eyebrows.

She noticed she was holding her breath and took a deep, greedy breath.

'Oh,' she said, 'a bit better.'

'Are you going to work tomorrow?'

She turned round to stir the chicken, hesitating.

'No,' she said. 'I've just been sick.'