In those days I rarely got drunk. Maybe a couple of times in a year. Maria would tell people that she was living with an alcoholic who was lying about at home getting pissed. I didn’t. I worked as hard as anyone and harder. When I wasn’t working I was with petra.

Don’t you think people worked that out. They aren’t that stupid.

They are not stupid he said. But they will believe what they want to believe.

So do you.

I felt his body against mine. It felt almost as it always did. There was so much between us and not enough space left for all of it. Tiredness was grinding my thoughts into sand. I wanted to sleep not think.

We heard noises from the yard. They’re here I said.

A woman was lying in the grass. Sometimes she was smiling. Turned playfully. Looked deep into the painter’s eyes. Her gaze and the position of her body changed in each image. The pain grew almost unbearable. Pain that was breathing behind me. 220

Then something entered the image at first as a diffuse shadow. A person. The person carried something. At first I couldn’t make out what it was. It came closer. The thing was an infant.

Whose baby is it I asked but he didn’t answer.

In the next painting the baby had vanished. The woman seemed asleep.

Petra wasn’t my child. At the time I was working in sundsvall. When I came back home maria was pregnant already.

He pulled his hand along my arms so hard my skin burned.

There was a knock on the front door. A bell rang somewhere. He moved quickly from image to image. What had looked like a woman lying in the grass now became an axis for measuring time. Details emerged and disappeared. We were coming close to the end.

What happens when they come into the house I asked.

He turned me round to face him. I memorised the look in his eyes. Knew that I would recall it. Again and again. His eyelids didn’t even twitch. Wavy hair was tumbling over his forehead. His mouth when he bent down to me. His voice close to my ear.

Don’t go he said. Remember what I said once. That you and I make a binary weapon. Jana you must trust me.

You must trust me was an unreasonable thing to say. His eyes said something quite different. He was ready for battle and I was his prisoner. To control the dread rising inside me I tried to focus on his paintings. We had reached the last one. The grass was still grassgreen. The clouds were drifting by. Maria was dead lying with her hands clasped in prayer. A man was kneeling close to her.

He isn’t me he said.

And then all hell broke loose as they say in crime novels. 221