she found herself thinking. All that waiting. Wondering. Then, at the end of the waiting, suddenly there was a Josie or a Maria. Her mind strayed to Loren, who’d given birth to these bright, lovely girls. If she ever had children she’d fight through anything to keep them with her, she decided. Then she brought herself up sharply, realising that she’d never experienced what Loren was going through so had no right to judge.
They’d been home half an hour when Nico returned, subdued, though he smiled for the children. ‘I saw Dad for twenty minutes,’ he reported to Hannah in a low voice. ‘He gets his angiogram results tomorrow. He’s pretty tired and looks—’ he paused to select the right word ‘—colourless.’ He sighed. ‘Do you mind if we get straight off to Mum’s? It sounds as if she’s gone to a lot of trouble and my great-aunts, Astrid and Ellen, will be there, along with Ida, my cousin Emelie’s mum, and a couple of male cousins of Mum’s who go wherever there’s free nosh. Mattias and Felicia have gone straight there.’
‘Sure.’ Hannah gave him an impulsive hug. ‘Try not to worry about your dad. He’s in good hands.’ When she saw an answering gleam in his eye she blushed, realising a comforting hug was different to a hug hello or goodbye. Maybe she was getting too deeply into this family role. It was as if she thought she was a wife.
In the event, they didn’t stay late at Carina’s. Mattias proved prickly and moody, Felicia casting him anxious looks. Nico was quiet too. His great-aunts Astrid and Ellen had identical grey wavy hair and called Nico ‘Nicke’ explaining to Hannah with evident delight that ‘Nico’ was a German name. Nicke was Swedish. Nico just smiled but Carina retorted that she was entitled to give her sons any names she pleased, Germanic or not. It appeared to be a family discussion of long standing. Carina’s male cousins ate and drank stolidly, and though Ida, who was Lars’s brother’s ex-wife, was a chatty, homely lady, Hannah concluded it was a gathering to get all the hospitality owed to peripheral family over with at one time.
The adults sharpened their appetites with a small glass of glögg: mulled wine. The girls loved the drink Julmust, which always tasted to Hannah like flat cola, with their Prinskorv sausage, spare rib and meatballs. They dipped happily into the gravlax and the beetroot salad but weren’t sold on herring or Janssons frestelse of potato, anchovy and onion.
The cheesecake and ischoklad – ‘ice chocolate’ – found great favour. Even Nico ate three of the little sweets. She ate eight, herself.
Finally, Nico said it was time to get the girls to bed and they said their goodnights and drove in silence through the forest between Älgäng and Nässjö, moonlight turning the snow and trees to a landscape of black and white.
Maria had fallen asleep as soon as the car wheels turned and stayed more or less that way through being changed into pyjamas, taken to the loo and slipped beneath her quilt.
‘You’re tired too,’ Nico murmured to Josie. ‘You can read in bed for a while.’ She yawned and fished unicorn-strewn pyjamas out of a suitcase.
Hannah went down to the sitting room, switched on a couple of lamps and built a fire in the corner of the open fireplace in the Swedish way, enjoying the crackle as the flames took hold.
A soft tread on the stair. Nico appeared and passed through the corner of the room headed for the kitchen, reappearing in a few moments with a bottle of red wine. ‘It’s Dad’s but I’ll replenish his stock.’
‘That looks great.’ She added another log to the fire and returned to her place on the sofa. Nico handed her a brimming glass of the jewel-red liquid and stood the bottle on a small table. He dropped down beside her and helped himself to a share of her footstool so that their feet, in thick woolly socks, were not far apart.
He drank half his wine and sighed, letting his head loll back against the sofa. ‘I need this. Dad looks grey and Mattias has an ant up his arse about something. He was morose when he drove me to Jönköping, as if I’d offended him.’
Hannah thought of Mattias’s earlier terseness and Felicia’s wary expression. ‘Is he usually happier to see you when you come to Sweden?’
He shrugged. ‘No, but he’s not so obviously … distant.’ He shifted slightly, his shoulder