The Swimmer Read Free Page B

archipelago. Eva-Karin’s voice felt like an intruder into her only refuge.
    ‘…so if you could get a summary to me by—what time shall we say? By five o’clock today, okay? So I can look through it before the meeting tomorrow? You’ll have plenty of time, right? You’re an angel, darling.’
    ‘Of course,’ Klara said. ‘Actually, Eva-Karin, maybe you don’t remember, but I’m in Sweden right now and won’t be flying back to Brussels until two this afternoon. I’m not sure I can have that to you by five o’clock—’
    ‘Klara, of course I know you’re in Sweden,’ Eva-Karin interrupted in a voice that brooked no further discussion. ‘But you can work while you’re traveling, can’t you? I mean, for goodness sake, you’ve already had the whole weekend free, right?’
    Klara squatted down in the wet moss and closed her eyes. It was Sunday morning. She’d only had Saturday free. It was as if all zest for life was being sucked out of her.
    ‘Klara? Klara? Are you still there?’
    Eva-Karin’s voice sounded in her ear.
    Klara cleared her throat and opened her eyes. She took a deep breath and tensed her voice, forcing it to sound alert, forward, and willing to serve.
    ‘Absolutely, Eva-Karin,’ she said. ‘No problem. I’ll e-mail the summary before five o’clock tonight.’
    Half an hour later, Klara Walldéen was back in the room she grew up in, surrounded by the pink wallpaper with the floral trim that she’d begged for when she was ten years old. The smooth, worn floorboards beneath her bare feet. Outside her window the Baltic Sea glimmered through the bare trees. She could see the whitecaps on the sea. A storm would be blowing in before the day was over. They had to hurry up. Her childhood friend Bo Bengtsson, who lived farther out in the bay, was going to bring her in to Norrköping by boat and car. Then she’d take the train to the airport and a flight down to her regular life in Brussels.
    She pulled the pilling Helly Hansen shirt over her shoulders, and replaced it with a light, tight top and an asymmetrical cardigan. She replaced the worn-out corduroy pants, which were actually her grandmother’s, with jeans of Japanese denim. She stepped into a pair of limited edition Nikes, forgoing the insulated rubber boots she’d worn on the morning hunt. Applied a little bit of smoky makeup around her eyes. A few strokes of a brush through her jet-black hair. She looked like a different person in the mirror above the small white dressing table. The floorboards creaked as she moved.
    Klara rose from her chair and opened the door to a crawl space. Carefully, with much practice, she leaned into the darkness and pulled out an old, worn shoe box from which she took out a pile of photographs. She spread them out on the floor and crouched down in front of them.
    ‘Are you looking at those old photos again, Klara?’
    Klara turned around. Her grandmother seemed almost translucent in the pale light streaming in through the small attic windows. Her body was so brittle and fragile. If you hadn’t seen it for yourself, you’d never believe she could still hoist herself up to the top of the gnarled apple trees to beat the birds to the last of the fruit.
    She had the same ice blue eyes as Grandpa. They could have been siblings—but that was no joking matter out here in the archipelago. Her face had a few lines but no wrinkles. No makeup, just sun, laughter, and salt water, she used to say. She didn’t look a day over sixty, but she was turning seventy-five in a couple of months
    ‘I just wanted to take a look, you know,’ replied Klara.
    ‘Why don’t you take them to Brussels with you? I’ve never understood why you don’t. What good are they doing here?’
    Grandma shook her head. Something sad and lonely flashed through the blue of her eyes. For a moment it looked as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Klara said. ‘That’s just the way it has to be. They