The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Read Free Page B

the many serial killers hiding in every nook and cranny. Her mother’s words triggered something in Sara’s memory.
    â€˜It’s because people get closer to one another there,’ she said.
    â€˜Honestly, though, what do you know about people? If you didn’t have your nose in a book all the time …’
    This was another discussion they had had many times before.
    Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that her mother saw her elder daughter as a challenge. Her little sister Josefin worked as a trainee lawyer for the district court in Södertälje. Eventually, she would be a solicitor, a socially viable profession carried out in suitably expensive suits. Sara, on the other hand … A
bookshop
. In a suburban shopping centre. That was only marginally better than being an unemployed former bookshop assistant like she was now. And now that she had finally gone abroad? She had chosen to go to a little backwater in the American countryside, to stay with an elderly lady.
    Sara didn’t normally care that her mother so clearly thought she was boring. After all, her mother had a point. Sara had never done a single thing that was even the slightest bit adventurous. But the constant jabs at Amy had started to get on Sara’s nerves even before she had left, and now, with the tragedy of the funeral still fresh in her mind, her patience was wearing thin.
    Her mother seemed to sense that she had gone too far, because she quickly added: ‘Oh well, at least you haven’t been chopped into pieces.’ Her tone was so openly pessimistic that she didn’t even need to add a
yet
. ‘What’s Amy like then? Is she being good to you?’
    â€˜Amy is …’ Sara stopped. ‘She’s nice.’
    She was. It was just that she was also dead.
    Sara crept out of her room and down the dark hallway like a jumpy burglar. Outside her door was a narrow corridor which led first to the bathroom and then to Amy’s bedroom, as Caroline had pointed out when she had first shown Sara to the guest room. She walked quickly past, trying to avoid looking at the grimly closed door. She wondered whether anyone would ever open it again. She, for one, had no intention of doing so.
    When she reached the stairs, she stopped for a moment to listen, before making her way slowly down.
    At each new room, she hesitated and glanced cautiously inside. She didn’t really know what she was expecting. A couple of townspeople hiding behind the sofa? Angry relatives in the hallway, accusing her of staying in the house without paying? Amy’s ghost in the kitchen? But the house was deserted.
    She walked around Amy’s home, in and out of the rooms in which she had lived, touching the surfaces Amy had touched. The stillness of the house scared her. Small reminders of routine, of everyday life, surprised her when she was least expecting it.
    Someone had left a jar of Nescafé and a gallon of milk for her in the kitchen. There was bread from the day before, and when she opened the fridge she discovered food in abundance, carefully wrapped in plastic and marked with the dish’s name and the previous day’s date.
    She ate the bread plain before creeping up to the bathroom to wash. The shower was ancient, hanging above a little oval-shaped tub. She undressed, folding her night clothes into a neat pile and placing them on the worn old stool opposite the toilet. She hoped they would stay dry there, but neither the drain nor the shower curtain looked particularly trustworthy.
    A whining, moaning sound came from the pipes and the water never got any hotter than lukewarm.
    This really wasn’t how it was meant to be, Sara thought. Her hair was twisted up in a hand towel and she had just unpacked her bags before retreating to the kitchen. So far, she hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes anywhere except the guest room in which she had slept. For some reason, it felt safer to keep moving.
    Unpacking