Was this really the right direction I wondered. Another black grouse flew up only a few metres away from me but I didn’t shoot it. It was a hen. A sad thought invaded my predator’s mind. The female bird was looking for her partner or she would never have watched from a perch so close to me.

Then I found the dead cock lying under a solitary fir among all the pines.

I picked it up. A fine specimen of almost four kilograms. I held it to me like a sleeping baby. Its body was still warm.

27

FOUR

Easter eve. We cooked. Stood next to each other communing in the language of the silent. Chopped veg for a burbot soup. Bror kept topping up his glass of wine. He was becoming steadily more drunk but so far with discretion.

I was plucking and drawing the black grouse. I skinned the body and put it away in the freezer all the time sickened by the smell of the gut as half-digested pine needles oozed into the sink and by myself for being a common poacher.

Are black grouse like swans I asked bror but he only shook his head.

Hand me the garlic he said. And the thyme. Seems life in the city has made you a bit of a wimp. Besides it’s a myth that swans pair off for life. They cheat on each other and get divorced. All birds do. The females pull new males to make sure of goodlooking babies. The male drops in at the next door nest box on the offchance.

We were the same height. We had the same stringy hair and we kept pulling at it and pushing strands back behind our ears. Our pale reddish skin was freckled. It’s a pity that we rarely smiled because our teeth were straight and strong. I wondered what we were like inside. If we still were as similar.

Are you staying here for a long time he said and lifted his glass as if to toast something. How do you mean long I said. I mean are you going to live here. 28

We stood together in silence. I asked myself what the right and wrong answers might be and if there were any rights or wrongs.

Well now I said defensively I don’t know. I hadn’t told him about my job or about henrik. And he had asked no questions not until now.

There’s a job going in the homecare service he said. Because maria went and died he said. Went and went, I don’t know.

What’s that supposed to mean.

Nothing he replied and hid behind the noise of vegetables sizzling in the hot saucepan.