Joel started running his finger over the map. He found Medborgarplatsen first. His heart started beating more quickly. Mummy Jenny seemed to have become more real, now that he had found the place where she worked. He kept on searching.
He had just managed to trace Östgötagatan when the door opened and Samuel came into the kitchen to join him. Joel gave a start, as if he’d been found out doing something that wasn’t allowed. Maybe Samuel wouldn’t want him to pin down Mummy Jenny’s address? But Samuel just came to stand by his side.
‘I didn’t know you had a map of Stockholm,’ he said in surprise.
‘I found it in a rubbish bin,’ Joel told him. ‘I thought I’d better see if she — Elinor, that is — was telling the truth.’
‘She didn’t use to tell lies,’ said Samuel. ‘Not all that often, at least.’
Joel pointed out Medborgarplatsen. And then Östgötagatan. Samuel went back to his room to fetch his glasses. Then he pored over the map and nodded.
‘She doesn’t have far to go, then,’ he said. ‘From Östgötagatan where she lives, to Medborgarplatsen where she works.’
It suddenly occurred to Joel that there was something he had to say. Something he couldn’t overlook.
‘Can’t we go and visit her?’ he asked. ‘Now that we know where she lives.’
Samuel sat down at the table. Looked hard at Joel.
‘Are you serious?’
‘She might be glad to see us,’ said Joel. ‘After all these years. She might want to know what her son looks like. Now that he’s fifteen years old and has got a good school Report. In geography, at least.’
Samuel looked doubtful.
‘At least we can go there and take a look at her,’ said Joel. ‘Peer in through the window of the shop where she works. She probably won’t be able to recognise me. And you can wear dark glasses.’
Samuel burst out laughing. That was a surprise. It was always a surprise. Samuel didn’t often laugh. He often smiled. But laugh? Joel could hardly remember the last time it had happened.
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Samuel. ‘As soon as you’ve left school, we’ll go and look for her.’
Joel wondered if he could believe his ears. Samuel realised that his son was confused.
‘We’ll go as soon as you finish school,’ he said. ‘I’ll apply for a few days’ holiday right away.’
‘Should we write to her and tell her we’re going to visit her?’ Joel wondered.
Samuel thought for a moment before answering. Then he shook his head.
‘She didn’t tell us when she left. So why should we tell her that we’re going to pay her a visit?’
Joel had another question.
‘She probably won’t recognise us. But the question is: will you recognise her? She might look quite different.’
‘I’ll recognise her all right,’ said Samuel confidently. ‘No matter how much she’s changed.’
That evening, when Samuel had gone to bed, Joel got up again. He hadn’t got undressed. He picked up his shoes and his jacket, and tiptoed out. He knew which steps to avoid, because they creaked.
It was still light when he left the house. He wheeled his bike out of the gate, then got on and started pedalling for all he was worth. He raced down to the bridge and when he eventually pulled up he was sweaty and out of breath.
He’d arrived at Gertrud’s house. Gertrud didn’t have a nose, and lived in a strange house in an overgrown garden on the other side of the river. Joel felt that he really had to tell her about what had happened. Gertrud was his friend. He’d already told her about Mummy Jenny who’d gone away when he was very small.
Gertrud had once undergone an operation that went wrong, and as a result she lost her nose. She didn’t have many friends. Joel was one of the few.
As he leaned his bicycle against her ramshackle fence, she came out to greet him. She’d seen him coming, through the kitchen window.
‘Long time no see,’ she said.
‘There’s so much to do for school,’ Joel said. ‘Lots of homework.’
But that wasn’t true. And they both knew it. Joel sometimes thought it was awkward, visiting somebody who didn’t have a nose, and Gertrud knew that was what he was thinking.
But sometimes Joel felt he simply had to see her. Sometimes Gertrud was the only person he could talk to.
Like now, for instance. When a mum called Jenny suddenly appears out of nowhere, having been missing for so long that he can’t remember what it’s like to have her around.
Joel went with Gertrud into her kitchen, which was chaotic and nothing like a normal kitchen. That’s the way Gertrud was. She did whatever she fancied with her furniture and fittings, made her own clothes, and paid no attention to what other people said or thought.
Joel didn’t want to be seen with her in public, but it was all right to meet her here, late in the evening, in her kitchen. Besides, she gave him an opportunity to practise for the future. He’d read that when a boy became a man, the thing to do was to have secret meetings with women.
‘We’re going to Stockholm,’ he said. ‘Samuel and me. We’re going to meet her. Obviously, I wonder how she’s going to react.’
Gertrud thought that over, while she fitted a new handkerchief into the hole where her nose used to be.
‘I’m sure she’ll be pleased,’ she said eventually. ‘She’s bound to be.’
But later, when Joel was cycling back home, it struck him that Gertrud hadn’t sounded really convincing.
Seeds of worry had been sown in his stomach.
What if Mummy Jenny didn’t want to see him or Samuel? What if she was furious about Elinor having written that letter telling where she lived and worked?
It was dark in the kitchen when Joel got home. The door to Samuel’s room was closed. But he wasn’t snoring. He was probably still awake, thinking about the letter.
Joel went to bed. But he found it hard to go to sleep. He could picture himself and Samuel walking down a street in Stockholm.
Samuel still hadn’t started snoring.
We’re both lying awake, Joel thought. In our respective beds.
But we’re thinking about the same thing.
A mum who’s suddenly come back.
2
When Joel raised the roller blind he found that it had been snowing during the night.
The ground was totally white.
He stared out of the window, scarcely able to believe his eyes.
It was the beginning of June. Today was his last day at school. At the leaving ceremony they would sing about sunshine and joy and ‘All things bright and beautiful’. And the ground was covered in snow.
A thought struck him. One he’d never had before. Perhaps it was the snow, which could sometimes fall in June, that had driven Mummy Jenny away? Perhaps she simply hadn’t been able to stand it any more? All that cold and darkness and snow that wouldn’t go away, despite the fact that it was summer already?