I really don’t mind at all I said as I made up two glasses of squash.

I felt awkward but for katarina everything was just as it always was. I turned her slight body on its side to clean her private parts with baby wipes. Even her pubic hair had fallen out after the cell poison treatments. She looked like a prepubescent child.

I’ll die soon you know that don’t you she said as I fastened the tapes on the new nappy. I’ve been going that way for many months now. It is too fucking awful to die before you’re even forty and I agreed with her. It felt as if we were talking about something else. Like how awful to be unemployed before you’re forty or how awful that the post office has closed. 64

Your husband then I asked. Where is he.

You mean fredrik. When I fell ill he went off to germany for a new job. His story was that the car company had moved him against his will.

Then we started to talk about our childhood and pretended that everything happening in real time had nothing to do with us.

I’ve been to see the birch I said. Her forehead wrinkled.

We carved our names in it and you can still see them. What happened with the others I asked. All I know is that tony died.

He had something wrong with his heart katarina said. He died in his sleep. Daniel disappeared to somewhere down south I think. I don’t know anything about johan. Andreas is married to sanna she was two years younger than us and hannesbjörk’s sister. They have three children. All called something than begins with a. Alexander anna and alice. Hannesbjörk too has lots of kids and they begin with f. Felix felicia fanny and frej.

All these names. Visiting the old folk was just the same. Interminable stories about people alive or dead and known or unknown who had all done something and said something or died from something. It made me long for the city.

That I was getting to know things about unknown people implied that they knew things about me.

Still it seemed the gossip about maria being our sister hadn’t reached katarina.

What do you know about maria I wondered. Bror claims she’s our sister.

I haven’t heard that one she said. Our erik would be the dad then is that what you mean.

Yes I said. 65

It sounds weird said katarina. Maria was of course quite a lot older than us. I guess your dad was boasting she went on and I agreed.

Though it could just as well have been john trying to unnerve bror. I neither wanted a new sister nor to know more about father’s flings. Both of them were dead now. Rest but not in peace I thought from old habit.