than that.’
‘Well, read it yourself, then!’ Ida says, and adds, with her trademark venomous smile, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. You don’t know how.’
Minoo grits her teeth and raises her Pattern Finder.
The book is both a transmitter and a receiver.
Maybe it’s ready to transmit to her too.
Minoo opens her book again, heart pounding, and sees Anna-Karin do the same.
She stares at the small symbols, then twiddles and flips. But nothing happens.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Anna-Karin says.
The principal looks at Ida with delight, as if she were a child prodigy. Not only does Minoo find it incredibly unfair but she wonders how reliable the book can be if it has chosen to communicate with Ida of all people.
The black winter sky sits like a dome over the cemetery. It’s so cold that your nose hairs stick together when you breathe in. On days like this Vanessa can hardly believe she’ll ever see the sun again. It feels unreal to imagine that it’s still out there somewhere in space.
They enter the newer part of the cemetery. Here, most of the graves are marked with discreet stone slabs that lie flat on the ground. It’s as if they don’t want to attract too much attention, unlike the ostentatious blocks used for the older graves.
Gustaf’s sports bag is slung over his shoulder and is swinging in synch with his footsteps. He’s walking quickly, as if he’s in a hurry, and Vanessa almost has to run to keep up with him.
He turns off on to a snow-covered path. Some of the graves are looked after by family while others lie hidden under a white blanket. Vanessa starts to worry that Gustaf will hear her footsteps crunching, turn and see her tracks, so she tries to step in his and walk as quietly as she can.
Gustaf puts down his sports bag. Then he walks the last few steps up to the square marble headstone that bears Rebecka’s name, and squats in front of it. Next to it stands another with the name ‘Elias Malmgren’. Vanessa shivers, but it has nothing to do with the cold. Gustaf takes off a glove and runs his finger over Rebecka’s name, which has been carved into the stone and filled with gold leaf. ‘Hello,’ he whispers.
Then he falls silent. Vanessa stands stock still and shoves her hands deep into her pockets to keep them warm.
‘Sorry I haven’t been out to see you before now,’ Gustaf says. ‘I’ve sort of felt like you’re not buried here … I mean that this isn’t where you are. But I can’t find you anywhere else. So now here I am. And I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you can sense somehow that I’m here, and know that I think about you every day. I miss you. I talk to you every night before I fall asleep.’
His voice is tense, and his breathing uneven. A few tears run down his cheeks.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,’ he continues. ‘I don’t know which way is up or down. I miss you so much it feels like I’m going to be sick. And I don’t know if you can ever forgive me. Please, you’ve got to forgive me.’
Gustaf bends forward so she can no longer see his face. His words crumble into inconsolable sobs. It’s unbearable. It’s far too private. But she daren’t sneak away in the squeaking snow.
‘You’ve got to forgive me, you’ve got to …’
Gustaf repeats the words in a drawn-out wail.
Vanessa lowers her eyes and tears run down her own cheeks. When she looks up again, Gustaf is standing. He lays something on the gravestone before he walks away. She watches him until he’s some distance away. Then she goes up to the grave. Lying on the black marble is a necklace set with little blood-red stones.
It’s actually really good for everyone that Ida found a pattern in the book, Minoo tells herself. And of course I must have a power, too. After all, Linnéa’s got an element with out having any powers. That must feel even worse to her.
It’s so dark that it could be the middle of the night. She tries to avoid slippery patches of ice as she walks. The ground is still strewn with the remains of spent fireworks from New Year’s Eve. Electric candlesticks and Christmas stars glow from windows she passes.
She hasn’t met anyone since she left the fairground. In this town it’s easy to gain the impression that