Posts with reflective discs denoted the road’s edges where snow had been ploughed into berms. As they drove into a town bedecked with tasteful white Christmas lights they passed a lake and Nico told them his childhood family home had been on the other shore. The lake was icy at the edges. ‘We used to skate on it,’ Nico reminisced.
Then he swung the car uphill into an area of older homes and into a small drive. ‘Here’s Farfar’s house. Nice of him to let us stay here while he’s in hospital.’
The house was slate grey and white with a rounded turret under a hat-like roof and, the way the snow had clad one side, looked slightly askew, drunk and beautiful like a bride on her hen night. A lady emerged from the next house, bundled in woollens and enormous boots, to talk earnest Swedish over the hedge to Nico. Hannah, letting Josie out and then scooping Maria from her car seat, caught most of what was being said. The neighbour had found Lars lying in the snow when she’d come out to her car. He couldn’t have been there long or he would surely not have survived. Nico clasped the woman’s hand and thanked her.
The neighbour beamed at Hannah, Josie and Maria. ‘Such a lovely family!’
Nico didn’t try and explain who was who but thanked her again before she scurried back to the warmth of her house. He jumped up on the white-painted porch, fishing a key from his pocket and letting them in. They left their boots in the alcove inside the door rather than track snow onto Lars’s parquet floors while Nico went back for the luggage.
Hannah looked around. There were two big rooms downstairs: a sitting room and an L-shaped kitchen-diner that led to a snowy back verandah and a garden with a birdhouse. Nico reappeared, stacking up their bags, wind-blown and out of breath.
They climbed the uncarpeted wooden stairs to examine the two bedrooms and bathroom. Hannah’s room was a typical spare, home to a collection of cardboard boxes and an ironing board as well as a bed with a white and yellow quilt. Lars’s room, where Nico and the girls would sleep, ran across the back of the house and sported a king-sized bed and two airbeds, neatly made. As soon as the girls saw the airbeds they flung themselves down, considerably reducing the neatness.
Nico groaned theatrically as he deposited the suitcases on the floor. ‘I don’t think I’ll get to sleep late with this pair so close.’ Then they stood at the window while he pointed out landmarks above the rooftops – his high school, the church where his parents had married. Farmland and forest out of town. He looked happy and relaxed to be back where he’d come from.
They’d unpacked and the girls had eaten a little of Felicia’s cake when Mattias arrived to pick Nico up for the drive to the hospital in Jönköping.
Nico dragged on his coat. ‘I’m going to see Farfar.’ He hugged Josie and then Maria. ‘Be good for Hannah. When I come back we’ll go back to Farmor’s house for julbord. It was arranged before Farfar was ill and Farmor still wants to do it.’ He hugged Hannah, too, warm, firm. Brief.
After he’d hurried back into the snow, Hannah decided to take the girls food shopping. Google told her there was a Kvantum supermarket in Bandygatan, a few minutes’ drive away and soon she was pushing Maria in a trolley while Josie darted back and forth, asking if she could buy tinsel for Farfar’s sitting room and falling on Marabou chocolate with a delighted cry of, ‘This is the best.’
‘Wan’ chocyut,’ Maria decided, trying to crane backwards to scoop it out of the trolley.
Hannah beat her to it, replacing the enormous bar Josie had selected with two much smaller ones. ‘We’ll put them in the fridge and ask Dad when you can have them.’
‘Awww,’ groaned Josie, folding her arms.
‘Awww,’ groaned Maria, folding hers too, though not as neatly.
‘Poor you,’ Hannah joked. ‘Let’s get cereal bars and fruit, juice, milk, tea and coffee.’ Not certain what shape the week would take, she added bread, ham, cheese, salad and soup. It felt very domesticated to be shopping with two children in tow. At the checkout she stepped back to let a very pregnant lady go ahead of her and helped load the till belt to save her having to bend over her considerable bump. Must be funny to be pregnant,