Klara shakes the envelope, and a gold American Express card falls out onto Maria’s coffee table. She can’t help but smile. Gabi thought of everything.
Maria is still standing with her back to Klara, staring out the window, and Klara downs the last of the wine in her glass before standing up. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been incredibly helpful.’
Maria turns around and smiles at her. ‘Where are you off to now?’
‘Thought I’d go get myself a hotel room. I can’t exactly stay in Gabi’s taped-off apartment.’
‘That’s out of the question,’ Maria says in a voice that leaves no room for any protest. ‘I live alone and have two guest rooms. You’ll stay here, end of discussion.’
Then she goes and grabs sheets and towels out of a linen closet. Puts the small stack in Klara’s arms and points to the end of the corridor where the guest rooms are located. As she does it she looks deep into Klara’s eyes.
‘How are you doing?’ she says. ‘Have you sought out any help? Gabi’s told me how rough you’ve had it.’
Maria’s warm eyes and pressed, fragrant sheets. Her thoughtfulness and steadiness. Klara feels her eyes fill with tears. She’s been feeling better this autumn, but she still wakes up in the night. Can’t remember when it hasn’t been a struggle to get out of bed in the morning.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, surprised by how thin and small her voice sounds. ‘I’m not drinking as much as I did any more.’
Why did she say that? She knows she drank too much last year, until what happened in the summer. She knows she craves wine too much right now. But she never talked to anyone about it, hardly even admitted it to herself.
‘That’s good,’ Maria says quietly. ‘But maybe you need some real help? We can’t handle everything on our own, no matter how strong we think we are.’
Klara shrugs and turns around. She doesn’t have the energy to think about it more now. Doesn’t have room to care about herself. Gabriella is the one who needs help now. Besides, she is feeling better.
‘Should I take the room on the right?’ she asks as she heads towards the guest rooms.
*
Maria finds some fish fillets in the freezer and throws together a béchamel sauce, which she pours over the fish and some spinach and puts it all in the oven and then, much to Klara’s hidden delight, opens another bottle of wine.
Klara knows the wine calms her and makes the struggle a little easier, keeps her from falling back into that dark hole again. For a moment, she succeeds in pushing away her thoughts about Grandpa and what happened to Gabriella, and instead can focus on just sitting in this beautiful kitchen with Maria, while the smell of fish in the oven starts to fill the air.
‘Sogliole alla Casanova,’ Maria says finally, as she serves up fish to Klara. ‘A good recipe for when you receive an unexpected guest.’
It’s not until they’ve cleared the table, Maria has headed for her bed, and Klara is smoking a cigarette on the balcony outside the guest room that those thoughts wash over her again. She feels snow swirling in the darkness, melting against her skin. Sees Grandpa’s face in his casket and can almost feel Grandma’s dry hand in her own.
She hasn’t called her yet. She was supposed to call as soon as she got to Stockholm. But then all of this happened. Gabriella pushed onto the ground outside her office. Her own escape from the police. Maria’s kindness. Gabi’s letter.
Klara sneaks back into the kitchen. Just one more glass of wine. Tomorrow she won’t drink at all.
She opens the fridge door and helps herself to the already open bottle. Tomorrow she’ll book tickets to Brussels.
It’s been a long time since she was there. She shivers at the thought of what happened before she left the city that she called home for many years, at the thought of what happened to her father and Mahmoud.
Her pulse starts to race; her chest tightens. She swallows half the glass in one gulp. Brussels. It’s as if she feels a purely physical resistance to returning to the city which she’d once been so fond of.
She has only one friend left there now. One she’s thought about an absurd amount lately, and who she can’t seem to avoid, even if she wanted to. It must be more than a coincidence.
George. Is she really going to contact George Lööw again?
A little flutter somewhere in her stomach, a little buzz in her ears. How is it possible for an arsehole like George Lööw to cause these feelings inside her? Someone who’s all surface and talk and quick success.
Or maybe he’s more than that? He did save her life. And last summer, when they met, she saw another side of him, a calm behind the expensive shirts and the jargon.
She walks over to the window, takes another gulp of cold wine, and lets her eyes wander down to the yellow shine on the street below. She almost drops her glass on the floor. Just a little bit down the street she sees a man in a doorway sheltering from the snow. Maybe it’s a coincidence, someone out for a late-night walk surprised by the intensity of the snow, waiting for it to let up. But somehow, she knows that’s not the case. Her hand trembles slightly as she pours the last of the wine into her glass. She’s sure. Whoever was watching Gabriella has found a new target. And it’s her.