We ate in silence. It was not an unpleasant silence because I could hear him thinking. He thought about how he had missed me and that he wanted me to live here. We had laid a table in the bestroom. Put one of mother’s embroidered tablecloths on the empire style table and lit the candles in the chandelier.

When he had finished eating bror lit a cigarette and blew a few smoke rings.

Later we started talking. We talked about everything except what was wrecking us.

In the small hours the next morning my dead laptop stood on the table alongside the wine bottles and the small fragile coffee cups and the brandy glasses.

I applied for the post as a homecarer in smalångerparish and clicked send.

They would have to be desperate to employ someone who emailed a rough job application at zeroonefortyfive hours in the night between easter eve and easter day I said brushing crumbs into my hand.

Cheers to the homecare service and cheers to jesus in his cave waiting for the resurrection bror said. 29

Cheers to us and churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints I replied and staggered upstairs to face the world championship team of nineteenseventyfour. I wasn’t even born in nineteenseventyfour. But I had bought the poster in a flea market and stuck it up with drawing pins. I read the names of the players as if praying.

There was one more thing I had to do tonight.

I keyed in onehundredandeighteen to inquiries and asked to be connected to johnbrännström in smalånger.

He didn’t sound at all surprised. Thank you for everything I burbled. Thank you too. How are things between you and your brother are they all right.

So I told him sensing how tired I was. My back was aching after the skiing and all the important things I had wanted to say to him vanished.

Can we meet again I asked.

Yes.

That was it. I fell asleep but in my mind he had wrapped himself around my bony body. Next I was running in the sewage tunnel soon the water was reaching my waist and I knew there was something I should’ve remembered but couldn’t.

30

FIVE

It was morning. And then the morning grew late. Then midday. It was afternoon before I sat up on the edge of my bed and stared redeyed at the pale yellow wallpaper. Slowly the night before caught up with me. I had applied for a job and phoned john. I was becoming ensnared in a finelymeshed childhood net and the more it seemed I would stay in the village the more my tapeworm gnawed on the gutfat.