Louise noticed that I was awake. She turned to me, still holding onto the curtain.
‘Thanks for not snoring,’ she said. ‘I’ve slept away those terrible days in prison.’
‘You were certainly in a deep sleep,’ I said. ‘I woke up and thought you were far, far away.’
‘I dreamed about a dog. It was wet, and its fur almost looked like a coat of rags. Every time I tried to get near it, it started howling as if it was frightened of me.’
She crawled back into bed, while I got up, shaved and had a wash. I dressed and went down to the breakfast room. Louise joined me after half an hour. Now I recognised her. That washed-out pallor had gone, and she ate with a good appetite.
‘Why haven’t you asked me where I live?’ she said.
‘You usually complain when I ask you questions.’
‘That’s just your perception. What are you going to do today?’
‘That’s entirely up to you, but maybe we should go back to Sweden?’
She looked at me searchingly, as if my words had taken her by surprise.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I want to show you where I live. If you’re interested?’
‘Of course I am.’
I thought I ought to tell her that Lisa Modin was in Paris, but I decided to leave it for the time being. If there was one thing I didn’t want right now, it was my daughter storming out of the hotel in a temper.
I told her about Jansson’s calls and showed her the pictures he had sent.
‘Weird,’ she said. ‘Creepy. Where’s this island?’
I tried to explain but without success. She said she understood, but I was pretty sure she hadn’t a clue which island I was talking about. However, she was relieved that I could no longer be suspected of arson.
‘Did you believe it?’ I asked. ‘Did you believe I set fire to my grandparents’ house?’
‘Not really, but you have to remember that I don’t know you particularly well.’
‘The torch,’ I said. ‘Why did you deny that it was you flashing the torch?’
At first she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, then she shook her head with a smile.
‘It amused me, messing with your head.’
‘But why?’
‘Perhaps because you treated Harriet so badly.’
‘But I looked after her when she was sick!’
‘Maybe, but not before. Not when you were together. She told me.’
‘You made me row across from the skerry in the middle of the night — wasn’t that enough?’
‘No. I thought about you and Harriet a lot that night.’
I didn’t want to hear what Harriet had said about me, so I changed the subject.
‘Did you steal my watch when you brushed against me?’
‘If I have a speciality, it’s taking people’s watches.’
‘You must be very skilful; I didn’t notice a thing. But you could have told me it was you.’
‘I knew you’d realise eventually — that’s why I left it behind.’
She got to her feet, even though she didn’t appear to have finished her breakfast.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’
We went upstairs and put on our outdoor clothes. I allowed myself to be led by my daughter, just as I had followed Lisa Modin the previous day.
We took the Metro and changed trains at Châtelet, using the same line on which I had travelled to Jourdain all those years ago. I wondered if it really was such a small world — would we end up getting off there? However, Louise didn’t move until Télégraphe, two stations further on. Many of those who disembarked were North Africans. Around me I could hear just as much Arabic as French. The station was terribly run-down, with the alcoholics who had always been there sitting or lying on several of the benches. They looked like statues that had fallen over.
When we emerged from underground, I thought of Morocco or Algeria.
Louise glanced at me with an unexpected smile.
‘Some people feel scared when they arrive here,’ she said.
‘Not me. I might not know for sure, but I have a good idea of what the world really looks like.’
We followed a winding street lined with old buildings, with crumbling plaster facades and layer upon layer of graffiti, which somehow managed to intensify the greyness rather than brightening the place up. A woman in a full hijab came towards us carrying a screaming child. A group of men sat smoking in a doorway. When I peered into the darkness I saw an elderly man feeding another man with a soup spoon, his movements slow and measured.
Louise was walking quickly. She seemed to be in a hurry to get home, but I thought she was also running away from the time she had spent in that subterranean cell.
She turned into a cul-de-sac and stopped at the last building, which was next to a high wall. It was a four-storey apartment block, just as dilapidated as everything else I had seen on our way from the Metro.
‘This is my island,’ she said, pushing open the door.
The stairwell was filled with the aroma of exotic spices. From one apartment I could hear music that mostly consisted of the sounds of a monotone flute, beautiful and melancholy. We went all the way up to the top floor; it annoyed me that I was out of breath. Louise waited for me on the landing.
‘This is where I live,’ she said. ‘But I don’t live alone.’
She had a bunch of keys in her hand and turned towards the door.
‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘I need to know what to expect.’
‘My apartment.’
‘You just said you don’t live alone?’
‘I live with my partner.’
‘Your partner?’
She placed a hand on her belly. ‘My baby has a father.’
‘I’ve asked you about him, and you wouldn’t tell me anything. And now all of a sudden I’m going to meet him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any chance you could tell me what it is? What he does? How long you’ve been together?’
‘Do we have to have this discussion on the landing? His name is Ahmed.’
I waited for her to go on, but instead she unlocked the door. I followed her into a dark hallway; it reminded me of the apartment in which I had lived on Rue de Cadix.
‘Ahmed will be asleep,’ she said, pointing at a closed door. ‘He works nights as a security guard. He’s from Algiers.’ She led me into the kitchen, which was small and cramped. I tried to picture Ahmed, to whom I would be related when the child was born, but nothing came into my head.
The kitchen was freshly painted and smelled of turpentine. The cooker and the fridge were old; the table and chairs could easily have been retrieved from a skip. I realised that Louise and this man called Ahmed were poor. Obviously life as a security guard and a pickpocket wasn’t very lucrative.
Louise made coffee; I sat down on the chair nearest the window. The adjacent block was just a few metres away, and a radio or some kind of stereo was playing loud music in the distance.
‘I have to know,’ I said. ‘Do you really make your living as a pickpocket? You’re clearly not very good at it — you got caught.’
‘You know what I used to be like,’ she said. ‘When we first met.’
I remembered only too well. Louise had turned up in a picture in the newspaper, which Jansson, needless to say, had got hold of. Louise had stripped naked in front of a group of international politicians to protest about something or other — I no longer recall what it was. I had realised then that my daughter was a rebel, as unlike me as it was possible to be. Where I had always been frightened and insecure and put on a front, pretending to be brave, she had burned with a passion for her beliefs and had thought it possible to bring about change through a lone protest.