Then I tucked him in under a pink blanket and tidied away the wineglass and the crispbread crumbs. He slept or perhaps just thought. The plants needed watering. In the end I went to bed in my girl’s room. I had made my bed afresh that morning. It smelled nicely of sheets dried in the outside air. Georgåbyericson looked the other way. The staircase creaked. I moved over to the side of the bed. John came to lie next to me with all his bodyweight and hair and skinsmell as powerful as ripe hops of an august night.

He was breathing against my mouth. Mouth meeting mouth. Told me something but I tried to silence his mouth but it kept speaking. It said that in the end the man and the girl left the chapel together and took the path down to eskilbrännström’s.

The man had grown hard and rough from relentless work. His back was already bent. He was just twentyfive.

The girl in the striped pyjamas who was once premature was a still a child but older than she looked. Fourteen already. She followed him even after he had told her to get lost. She didn’t want to get lost. She wanted to go with him home to his house at the end of the sideroad. Almost ran to keep up with his fast pace. Tugged at his shirt until they had both climbed the grated iron steps and closed the door behind them.

By now I remembered but there was something about that memory. It tried to escape by twisting like a seatrout fly on a flytying anvil. My memory had somehow bypassed what happened until a month later. When father’s hands were tearing in a rage at my white milkingcoat. My father’s body forcing my panties off. He came with a bellow just as I saw bror closing in with the spade raised above his head. 174

Then we had lain together on the pullout bed. Geraniums in flower stood on the window sills. One might suppose that I sought nearness. But my body’s needs were driven by raw desire. I licked up sweet words and caresses like a pet cat abandoned at the end of the summer. The door to the bestroom had been left open. One could make out a chest in there. On top of it stood a pair of yellow rubber boots.

Afterwards you told me to go away and never come back. You were moving south soon you said. So I went home. The same way as before. The pyjama sleeve was torn. My feet burned where they had been bitten by the forest. I stopped at the bramble bushes and picked berries saving every second one for bror.