It was messy even down there in the cold dark space where only food and overwintering geraniums had a life. He had come down for more than just fetching onions and potatoes. On the floor stood an ashtray full of fagends and empty beer cans were scattered here and there. It was freezing.

What do you get up to down here I asked.

Try to feel things he said. Sometimes it seems nothing is for real. Then I come down here and sit on the floor and get cold. Well try to feel that I’m cold.

My brother had keeled over and needed help to right himself. I was pretty certain that he kept going on cigarettes and alcohol and didn’t touch food. He was emaciated like a pauper.

Together we gathered the rubbish into the ica bag and then clambered up the steep steps.

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t given henrik a thought. There had been no room for him. I decided to stay for a little longer than planned and went off to reinstate myself in my old girlhood bedroom. Bror leaned against the doorframe watching 23as I made the bed with clean sheets and put an extra blanket on top. The pink woollen blanket was the same type as at john’s. They must have gone to the same auction.

On the walls okej magazine covers with sexy popstars mingled with childish drawings and pictures that had been hung in my room because they had to hang somewhere. Even my childish ornaments were still in place. Keyrings shells fool’s gold and stones from the seashore placed on embroidered runners that my mother enjoyed making in such quantities they had to be stored in boxes kept in the coldattic.

You can say what you like about her but she was ace at embroidery bror said.

He shifted from where he stood to settle at the foot of the bed. You didn’t come when she fell ill he said. She asked for you and I phoned you. You could have come.

I replied with what I had said when he phoned which was that I never wanted to see her again. Neither alive nor dead.

The wind had grown stronger now and made the walls creak but the room was nice and warm as if it had never stood empty and cold.

It never did bror told me. She stubbornly kept your room warm in case you’d come home again. I thought it was unnecessary but didn’t have the heart to tell her how it was.

How what was I wondered. We pushed our thin strands of hair back behind our ears.