a visitation by two angels. Without being able to help himself, he had been attracted to one of them. And she had known it.
“That would be the worst thing that could happen,” the angel had said. “I would become the opposite of myself. As much of the darkness as I am now of the light.”
Sanna knocked timidly on the bathroom door.
“Rebecka,” she said. “I’m going to go down and ask Curt to come up. You are going to come out of there, aren’t you? I don’t really want to be alone with him, and the girls are asleep…”
When Rebecka came out, Curt Bäckström was sitting at the table. He held his mug of coffee with both hands when he drank. He lifted it carefully from the table, and at the same time lowered his head so that he wouldn’t have to lift it too high. He had kept his boots on, and just shrugged off the upper part of his snowmobile overalls so that they hung down below his waist. He glanced sideways at Rebecka and said hello without meeting her eyes.
Where’s the resemblance to Elvis? thought Rebecka. Two eyes and a nose in the middle of his face? His hair, of course. And his moody expression.
Curt had black, wavy hair. His thick fur hat had pressed it down so that it was plastered to his forehead. The outer corners of his eyes had a slight downturn.
“Wow,” exclaimed Sanna, looking Rebecka up and down. “You look fantastic. It’s really strange, because it’s only a pair of jeans and a sweater, and it looks as if you’ve just pulled any old thing out of the wardrobe. But it’s just so obvious it’s top-quality stuff.
“Sorry,” she went on, her hand covering an embarrassed smile. “I wasn’t supposed to comment on your appearance.”
“Like I said, I just wanted to see how you were,” said Curt to Sanna.
He pushed the coffee mug away slightly to indicate that he was about to leave.
“I’m fine,” replied Sanna. “Well, I say fine… but Rebecka has been an enormous support to me. If she hadn’t come up here and gone with me to the police station, I don’t know if I could have done it.”
Her hand flew out and lightly brushed Rebecka’s arm.
Rebecka saw the muscles under the skin around Curt’s mouth stiffen. He pushed back his chair to stand up.
Well done, Sanna, thought Rebecka. Tell him how nicely dressed I am. What a support I’ve been. And touch me just to make sure he understands how close we are to each other. So you’ve put some distance between you and him, and the only one he’s angry with is me. Like the pawn placed in front of a threatened queen on the chessboard. But I’m not your damned chaperone. The pawn is handing in her resignation.
She quickly placed her hand on Curt’s back.
“No, you stay there,” she said. “Keep Sanna company. She can find some bread and something to put on it and you can both have some breakfast. I’ve got to go down to the car to fetch my cell phone and laptop. I’ll sit downstairs, make a few calls and send some e-mails.”
Sanna followed her with an inscrutable gaze as she went into the hall to put on her heavy boots. They were wet, but she was only going the short distance to the car. She could hear Sanna and Curt talking quietly at the kitchen table.
“You look tired,” said Sanna.
“I’ve been up all night praying in the church,” replied Curt. “We’ve started a chain of prayer, so there’s somebody praying all the time. You ought to go. Put yourself down just for half an hour. Thomas Söderberg has been asking about you.”
“But you didn’t tell him where I was, did you?”
“No, of course not. But you really shouldn’t stay away from the church now, you should find your refuge in it. And you ought to go home.”
Sanna sighed. “I just don’t know who I can rely on anymore. So you mustn’t tell anybody where I am.”
“I won’t. And if there’s anyone you can rely on, Sanna, it’s me.”
Rebecka appeared in the doorway just in time to see Curt’s hands working their way across the table to find Sanna’s.
“My keys,” said Rebecka. “Both my car keys and the key to the house are missing. I must have dropped them in the snow when I was playing with Virku.”
Rebecka, Sanna and Curt hunted for the keys in the snow with their torches. It hadn’t started to