“Do you?” asked Sanna.
They fell silent, each lost in her own thoughts. They passed the churchyard and approached a garage with a snack bar.
“Shall we get something to drink?” suggested Rebecka.
Sanna nodded and Rebecka pulled in. They sat in the car without saying a word. Neither of them made a move to get out and buy something, and neither of them looked at the other.
“You should never have moved,” said Sanna unhappily.
“You know why I moved,” said Rebecka, turning her head away so that Sanna couldn’t see her face.
“I think you were the only person Viktor really ever loved, did you know that?” Sanna burst out. “I don’t think he ever got over you. If you’d stayed…”
Rebecka spun around. Rage flared up in her like a burning torch. She was trembling and shaking, and the words that came out of her mouth were broken and jerky. But they came out. She couldn’t stop them.
“Just stop right there,” she screamed. “Just shut the fuck up and we’ll get this sorted out once and for all.”
A woman with an overweight Labrador retriever on a lead stopped dead when she heard Rebecka’s scream, and she peered curiously into the car.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Rebecka went on, without lowering her voice. “Viktor was never in love with me, he was never even keen on me. I never want to hear a single word about it again. I don’t intend to take any responsibility for the fact that he and I didn’t end up together. And I certainly don’t intend to take responsibility for the fact that he was murdered. You’re not fucking right in the head if that’s what you’ve come up with. Please feel free to carry on living in your parallel universe, but leave me out of it.”
She fell silent and pounded on the side window. Then she banged her head with both hands. The woman with the dog looked alarmed, took a step backwards and disappeared.
For God’s sake. I must calm down, thought Rebecka. I’m in no fit state to drive the car. I’ll have us off the road.
“That’s not what I meant,” whined Sanna. “I’ve never blamed you for anything. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me.”
“What for? Viktor’s murder?”
Something inside Rebecka stopped and pricked up its ears.
“Everything,” mumbled Sanna. “The fact that you were forced to move away. Everything!”
“Pack it in!” spat Rebecka, filled with a new rage that swept away the shaking and turned her legs to ice and iron. “I have no intention of sitting here, patting you on the shoulder and telling you none of it was your fault. I’ve done that a hundred times already. I was an adult. I made my choice and I took the consequences.”
“Yes,” said Sanna obediently.
Rebecka started the car and screeched out onto Malmvägen. Sanna raised her hands to her mouth as an oncoming car tooted angrily at them. From Hjalmar Lundbohmsvägen they could see the mining company’s offices glowing in front of the mine. Rebecka was struck by the fact that they no longer seemed so big. When she used to live in the town, the offices had always been massive. They passed the town hall with its stiff tiled façade, its remarkable clock tower outlined against the sky like a black steel skeleton.
What I said was true, thought Rebecka. He was never in love with me. Although I can understand everybody thinking he was. That’s what we let them think, Viktor and me. It began that very first summer. During the summer church with Thomas Söderberg in Gällivare.
I n the end there are eleven young people attending the summer church. They are to live, work and study the Bible together for three weeks. Pastor Thomas Söderberg and his wife, Maja, are leading the group. Maja is pregnant. She has long, shiny hair, doesn’t wear makeup and always looks so sweet and cheerful. But sometimes Rebecka sees her move to one side and press her fist into the small of her back. And sometimes Thomas puts his arms around her and says:
“We can manage without you. Go and lie down and have a little rest.”
She usually looks at him with relief and gratitude. It’s hard work, being the unpaid wife of a pastor.
Maja’s sister, Magdalena, is there too, helping out. She does everything quickly, like a cheerful mouse. She can play the guitar, and teaches them hymns.
Viktor and Sanna are among the eleven. Everyone notices them straightaway. They are very much alike. They both have long, fair hair. Sanna’s is naturally curly. Her snub nose and big eyes give her face a doll-like expression.
She’ll still look like a child when she’s eighty, thinks Rebecka, and forces herself not to stare.
Sanna is the only one of the young people who is a committed Christian. She’s only seventeen, and has a small child with her. Sara, who is three months old.
“Jesus and I have an exciting, loving relationship,” says Sanna with a crooked smile.
They have different kinds of belief, Sanna and Thomas Söderberg. Thomas demonstrates his belief in several different ways.
“The word ‘belief,’ ” he says, “means the same as to rely on, to be convinced of. If I say ‘I believe in you, Rebecka,’ then I mean that I’m convinced you will fulfill my expectations of you.”
“I don’t know,” Sanna protests. “I think that to believe is simply to believe. Not to know. To have doubts, sometimes. But still to invest in your relationship with God. To listen for his whisper in the forest.”
Viktor leans forward and ruffles his big sister’s hair.
“The whispering and sighing is all in your head, Sanna,” he says, and laughs.
He doesn’t believe. But he likes to discuss things. He often wears his long fair hair in a knot on top of his head. His skin is so fair it almost tips over into pale blue. The other girls look at him, but he soon finds a way of keeping them at bay. He plays a game with Rebecka.
Rebecka isn’t stupid. She soon realizes that the way he looks at her doesn’t mean anything, and that she isn’t allowed to reciprocate the quick caresses of her hair or her hand. She learns to sit still and pretend to be the object of his unrequited longing. She doesn’t come out of the game empty-handed. Viktor’s admiration gives her a higher status among the other girls in the group. She has outplayed them, and that brings respect.
During their Bible study the views of Thomas and the participants are quite different at the beginning. The young people don’t understand. Why is homosexuality a sin? How can it be that the Christian faith is the only true faith? What will happen to all the Muslims, for example-will they all go to hell? Why is it wrong to have sex before marriage?
Thomas listens and explains. You have to choose, he explains. Either you believe in the whole of the Bible, or you can pick out different bits and just believe those, but what kind of faith would that be? Insipid and toothless, that’s what.
They sit on the jetty by the lake during the light summer nights and swat the mosquitoes that land on their arms and legs. They discuss and consider. Sanna is secure in her God. Rebecka feels as if she is standing in the middle of a raging torrent.