the wind, and came towards her. His face was pale. His eyes were red, as if he had been drinking, his lips were chapped. Lips that don't kiss split and crumble away, he used to say.
'Henrik is dead. I've tried everything I could think of to make contact with you. In the end this was the only possibility left, so I came here and looked for you.'
He looked at her, his face expressionless, as if he had failed to understand. But she knew that she had stuck a knife into him, and that he was feeling the pain.
'I found Henrik dead in his flat. He was in bed, as if he were asleep. We buried him in the cemetery in Sveg.'
Aron swayed and looked as if he were about to fall over. He leaned against the stone wall, and held out his hands. She took hold of them.
'It can't be true.'
'I don't think it can be true either. But it is.'
'Why did he die?'
'We don't know. The police and the pathologist say that he took his own life.'
Aron stared at her, his eyes popping.
'They say the lad committed suicide? I can't believe that for one moment.'
'Nor can I. But his body contained a large dose of sleeping pills.'
Aron gave a roar, threw the fish into the water, then hurled the bucket and the fishing rod over the pier wall. He took firm hold of Louise's arm and led her away. He told her to follow his rusty old Volkswagen campervan. They left Apollo Bay, taking the road she had used to get here. Then Aron turned off onto a road that twisted steeply up into the hills that tumbled down into the sea. He drove fast and unsteadily, as if he were drunk. Louise followed close behind him. In among the hills they turned off onto a road that was barely more than a path, climbing steeply upwards all the time, and eventually stopped at a wooden house perched on the very edge of a cliff. Louise got out of the car, thinking that this was exactly the sort of place she would have imagined Aron choosing as a hideaway. The view was boundless, the sea stretched as far as the horizon.
Aron flung open the door, grabbed a bottle of whisky from a table next to the open fire and filled a glass. He looked enquiringly at her, but she shook her head. She needed to be sober. It was enough for Aron to go overboard and when he drank he could become violent. She had seen too many broken windows and smashed chairs and had no desire to experience anything like that again.
There was a big wooden table outside the large picture window facing the sea. She could see colourful parrots landing on it and pecking at crumbs of bread. Aron had moved to the land of parrots. I would never have imagined he would do that.
She sat on a chair opposite him. He was slumped on a grey sofa, holding his glass in both hands.
'I refuse to believe this is true.'
'It happened six weeks ago.'
He flared up.
'Why did nobody tell me?'
She made no reply, but turned away to look at the red and light blue parrots.
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I realise that you have been looking for me. You would never have left me in ignorance if you could have avoided it.'
'It's not so easy to find somebody who's hidden himself away.'
She remained there, sitting opposite him, all night. Conversation was spasmodic, with long, silent intervals. Both she and Aron were skilled at allowing silence to roam. That was also a sort of conversation, she had discovered that during the early part of their life together. Artur was another person who never spoke unnecessarily. But Aron's silence sounded different.
For a long time afterwards Louise would remember that night with Aron as being like returning to the time before Henrik was born. Of course, he was the one they were talking about. Their sorrow was one long scream. But even so, they remained sufficiently far apart to prevent her moving to the sofa beside Aron. It was as if she could not rely on his sorrow being as intense as it ought to have been in somebody who has lost their only child. And that made her bitter.
Shortly before dawn she asked him if he had fathered any more children. He made no reply, merely stared at her in astonishment: that told her all she needed to