SHE DIDN’T WANT to seem too eager, so she didn’t mention the prospective stash of money again—instead she waited patiently for Jeanette to take the initiative herself. She had almost given up hope when on Thursday Jeanette came and sat next to her on the bench, and said she was willing to head out on a treasure hunt.
“There’s a summer house,” she said. “There might be something?”
Jeanette had been in a slightly better mood over the last few days, and hopefully that boded well. At the same time, she was shit-faced most of the time, so it was hard to know exactly where she was. Including now, as she sat there swaying back and forth in a way that obliged Kerstin to grab hold of her on several occasions so that she wouldn’t tumble off the bench. Jeanette didn’t even notice, or she didn’t care. It was hard to tell which.
“Absolutely,” said Kerstin. “Do you know where it is?”
“Tofta beach,” Jeanette said. “Or somewhere nearby.”
She was slurring so much it was barely possible to hear what she was saying.
“Tofta beach?” Kerstin replied, wanting to be sure.
Jeanette nodded.
“Do you know where?”
“No idea,” said Jeanette. “But he used to call it Meadow Hill.”
“Good work,” said Kerstin. “How about we take an outing there tomorrow?”
“Sure. We going to nick a car or what?”
“We’ll bike there,” Kerstin said with a smile. “There’s a bike lane all the way. Do you have a bike?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure there’s any air in the tires.”
“We’ll sort that. I’ll make a packed lunch and come to yours around eight o’clock. You make sure you’re sober, otherwise I’ll go without you. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jeanette, trying to roll her eyes—but it mostly looked like she was gazing up at the sky.
THE NEXT DAY it was cloudy and quite windy, but the weather was meant to stay dry. Jeanette had shaken off the last few days of misery and was sober, or at least she seemed to be. She was able to cycle at any rate, despite the occasionally strong headwinds.
The plan—which hadn’t been that well thought through, Kerstin acknowledged that—was to ask around. There must be hundreds of houses in Tofta, but perhaps not that many that were next to something that might be considered a meadow. She had hung a couple of buckets over the handlebars, containing some clothes and cleaning fluid, rubber gloves, and some black bin liners. Her idea was that they could pretend to be cleaners and ask around. She hadn’t got any further than that in her thoughts, but the project still had an air of adventure to it. Jeanette seemed to be in a good mood and some fresh sea air never did anyone any harm.
The ride there took around an hour, after which they spent two hours and twenty minutes asking people for directions to Meadow Hill and the Norling family summer house before they got a bite. It took another half hour for them to get into the house, and, disregarding the forty-five-minute lunch break in the garden, it took them five hours to turn the place upside down and inside out before putting it all back the way they had found it. Then they cycled the twelve or thirteen miles back to Visby, a job well done.
Not completely, if they were going to be picky, because they now knew at any rate that the money wasn’t there. But they’d had a pleasant if somewhat strenuous day. And Kerstin had been able to spend time alone with the object of her darkest fantasies. She had studied Jeanette in a different setting than her usual one, weighing her good and bad qualities against each other. Only to realise that she was none the wiser as a result.
Jeanette was a complex being, and if she was in a good mood then she was easy to like. If she wasn’t, then she awakened other emotions, but it was hard to build up a grudge against someone who was suicidal. It was in the middle ground of her emotions that one found Jeanette’s most unsympathetic characteristics: her insatiable need for affirmation, her self-absorption and indifference towards other people, and her inability to take command of the situation and put her back into anything. In other words, she was someone who could easily be described as both unenterprising and lazy, and perhaps it was these rather ordinary qualities that made her weak in circumstances that required a bit of fighting spirit.
Guilty or innocent? Kerstin still hadn’t the foggiest, but sooner or later she was likely to beat her to a pulp if the chance arose and the stars aligned. But no matter how strange it seemed, the memory of Karl-Erik and what had happened to him had become more distant as she had got closer to the truth of the disaster. Perhaps talking about it was healing in itself—the constant presence of such terrible, life-changing events made them less devastating. The conversation had the effect of taking the edge off. Just like alcohol, but its impact was less pernicious.
They had, however, learned a few things during the course of the day. In particular, that Jeanette—with her unspoilt exterior—found it easier to make contact with people. Kerstin, with her deeply furrowed face, hoarse voice, and tattoos, scared people away. Jeanette had to handle the chat, while Kerstin hovered in the background and pretended she didn’t speak Swedish. If they were going to make any more outings, then Kerstin needed to make sure she wore sunglasses and long sleeves. A toolkit wouldn’t do any harm either, and a towel so that they could jump in the sea afterwards.