Are you really sure he collided with the milklorry I said.

Of course I’m sure he said sounding a little irritable. He was in hospital for several months. That’s why he looks like that.

We turned the lights off and went to bed. Because I was the lowest ranking crew member I got the upper bunk. Up there under the ceiling the air trembled with heat.

Göranbäckström was in the bunk below. He was twisting and turning.

Are you awake I whispered. He hummed in response.

Maria’s parents. Who lived in the house by the sawmill. Do you know what happened to them.

What I do know is that they moved out a couple of years later. Went away with their tail between their legs and without paying the rent.

So they didn’t die then.

Not that I know of he said and yawned. Let’s go to sleep now.

Good night he said then and held his hand up towards me. I took his hand and squeezed it in return.

It great that you’ve joined the hunt he said. Even though you don’t shoot cows.

193

THIRTYFIVE

The crew was going to spend the rest of the week hunting. I had no spare holidays to use up and märitljungqvist refused me extra time off. Lukas would stay with the crew and walk with göranbäckström. I went home for a quick change of clothes. I had to get the boiler going too. It was just before six o’clock. The weather had grown colder and the large house cooled down quickly.

Ever since bror fell ill I hadn’t given much thought to practicalities like logging. Now it struck me that it would be impossible to live in the house without wood to burn during the winter. Split lengths were stacked in the yard. Not logged and possibly too sodden to be burned at once.

A painting wrapped in brown paper secured with sisal string was waiting on the veranda.

It was bigger than the first one. The tapeworm sunk its teeth into my gut so deep I dropped my hunting gear on the floor and ran to the loo.

Sitting on the freezing bakelite ring I wondered at it. It was the same seat as sixty years ago.

My mind was a mess. I didn’t want any more paintings. Didn’t want to be told more stories that might not even be true.

For the first time since john and I had met I thought maybe he was seriously unwell. That all his stories were made up. Fantasies. I carried the painting up into the coldattic. Put it down between 194the many boxes stuffed with mother’s embroideries and thought that in future someone might pull the wrapping paper off it and wonder what it was meant to be.

I locked the rifle into the gun cupboard and quickly changed out of bror’s hunting kit.