“Oh, come on!” she said, banging the top of it with her fist.
Not a new washing machine. That would cost thousands.
The machine hummed painfully. Anna-Maria switched it off and then back on again. Tried a different program. In the end, she kicked it. Then the tears came.
When Robert went down to the laundry room an hour later she was sitting in front of the workbench. Folding clothes like a mad thing, tears pouring down her face.
His gentle hands moving over her back and her hair.
“What’s wrong, Mia-Mia?”
“Leave me alone!” she snapped.
But then, when he put his arms around her, she sobbed into his shoulder and told him about the washing machine.
“And everything’s such a bloody tip,” she sniveled. “As soon as I get through the door all I can see is things that need doing. And now this…” She fished a pair of blue-and-white-striped rompers out of the pile of clean washing. The blue had faded and frequent washing had made the fabric bobbly.
“Poor kid. He’s going to be wearing faded hand-me-downs for the rest of his life. He’ll get bullied at school.”
Robert smiled into her hair. After all, there hadn’t been too many storms this time around. When she’d been expecting Petter things had been worse.
“And then there’s this case,” she went on. “We’ve got a list of everyone who’s involved in the Miracle Conference. The idea was to blitz them all. But Sanna Strandgård was arrested today, and now von Post wants all resources concentrated on her. So I’ve promised Sven-Erik I’ll go through the list, because officially I’m not part of the investigation. I just don’t know when I’m going to get it done.”
“Come on,” said Robert. “Let’s go up to the kitchen and I’ll make some tea.”
They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. Anna-Maria moved her spoon around listlessly in her mug, watching the honey dissolve in the chamomile tea. Robert peeled an apple, cut it into small pieces and passed them to her. She pushed them in her mouth without even noticing.
“Everything will work out okay,” he said.
“Don’t say everything will work out okay.”
“We’ll move, then. You and me and the baby. We’ll leave this untidy house. The kids’ll be all right for a while. And then I’m sure society will intervene and find them some decent foster parents.”
Anna-Maria laughed out loud, then blew her nose loudly on a rough piece of kitchen roll.
“Or we could ask my mother to move in here,” said Robert.
“Never.”
“She’d do the cleaning.”
Anna-Maria laughed.
“Never in a million years.”
“Empty the dishwasher. Iron my socks. Give you good advice.”
Robert got up and threw the apple peel in the sink.
Why can’t he just throw it straight in the bin? she thought tiredly.
“Come on, let’s take the kids and go for a pizza. We can drop you at the station afterward and you can go through the Miracle lot this evening.”
When Sara and Rebecka walked into Sivving’s kitchen on Friday afternoon, he and Lova were busy waxing skis. Sivving was holding a white cake of paraffin wax up against a little travel iron, letting it drip onto the skis, which were held in a waxing clamp. Then he carefully spread the paraffin the whole length of the ski with the iron. He put the iron down and held his hand out to Lova without looking at her. Like a surgeon looking down at his patient.
“Scraper,” he said.
Lova passed him the scraper.
“We’re waxing skis,” Lova explained to her older sister as Sivving shaved away the excess paraffin in white curly flakes.
“I can see that,” said Sara, bending down to pat Bella, who was lying on the rag rug in front of the window and playing a tune on the radiator behind her as she wagged her tail.
“So,” Rebecka said to Sivving, “you’ve moved into the kitchen.”
“Well,” he said, “this particular job takes up a lot of space. It might be an idea if you say hello to Bella as well before she wriggles out of her skin. I’ve told her to stay put, so she doesn’t knock the skis over or run around among the flakes of paraffin. Okay, Lova, now you can pass me the glide wax.”
He picked up the iron from the draining board and melted more paraffin onto the skis.
“Right, chicken, now you can take your skis and put on one layer of blue kick wax.”
Rebecka stooped down to Bella and scratched under her chin.
“Are you hungry?” asked Sivving. “There’s cinnamon buns and milk.”
Rebecka and Sara sat on the wooden sofa with a glass of milk each, waiting for the microwave to ping.
“Are you going skiing?” asked Rebecka.
“No,” said Sivving, “you are. The wind’s going to drop tomorrow. I thought we could take the snowmobile and follow the river up to the cabin in Jiekajärvi. Then you can do a bit of skiing. You haven’t been up there for years and years.”
Rebecka took the cinnamon buns out of the microwave and placed them straight on the pine table in a pile. They were much too hot, but she and Sara tore off chunks and dunked them in the cold milk. Lova was rubbing away at her skis.
“I’d love to go up to Jiekajärvi, but I’ve got to do some work tomorrow as well,” said Rebecka, blinking.
The headache was like being stabbed behind the eyes with a chisel. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Sivving glanced at her. Looked at the half-eaten bun next to her glass of milk. He passed Lova the cork and showed her how to smooth out the wax under her skis.
“Listen,” he said to Rebecka, “you go upstairs and lie down for a bit. The girls and I will go out with Bella, then I’ll sort out some food.”
Rebecka went up to the bedroom. Sivving and Maj-Lis’s double bed stood there in the silent room, neatly made and empty. The big rounded knobs on the pine headboard had grown dark and shiny with many years’ use. She had the urge to place her hand on one of them. The gray sky was shutting out most of the daylight, and the room was dark. She lay down on top of the bed and pulled the woolen rug that was folded up at the bottom of the bed over her. She was tired and frozen and her head was pounding. Restlessly she fumbled for her cell phone and checked her messages. The first was from Måns Wenngren.
“I didn’t need a horse’s head,” he drawled. “But I did promise that journalist first pop at the story if she dropped the complaint.”
“What story?” snapped Rebecka.
She waited for him to say something else, but the message was over, and an expressionless voice in her ear was telling her the time of the next message.
What were you expecting? she sneered at herself. That he was going to whisper sweet nothings and make small talk?
The next message was from Sanna.
“Hi,” said Sanna tersely. “I’ve just heard from Anna-Maria that the girls are going to be interviewed. And they’re dragging somebody from the Child Psych team in. I don’t want it to happen, and I’m surprised you haven’t spoken to me about it. Unfortunately things don’t seem to be working out with you and me, so I’ve decided that Mum and Dad can look after the girls for the time being.”
Rebecka switched off the phone without listening to her other messages. There was a knock on the door, and Sivving popped his head round. He looked at her lying there, and stared at the telephone in her hand.
“I think we need to swap that for a proper teddy bear,” he said. “It’ll do you good to come out to Jiekajärvi. There’s no reception there, so you might as well leave it at home. I was just going to say the food will be ready in an hour, and I’ll come and wake you. Now get some sleep.”