GLIDING OVER THE snow.
Setting the world to rights.
Sleeping, dreaming. Waking.
In the evening she visits Rauna. The children are eating in the large, brightly lit dining room, and she sits to one side, watching them. Pellervo Halonen, head of the Home, sits down beside her smiling. He asks how she’s doing.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m feeling better.’
Rauna is eating with a hearty appetite, and laughs at them, and Pellervo Halonen says, ‘Rauna always likes it when you come. It’s good to see that, every time.’
She nods.
‘I really hope you’ll be able to help Rauna some day when … when she fully realises what happened. When she has to confront … well, the whole of it.’
She thinks about what he has said for a little while.
‘I hope so too,’ she says at last.
Pellervo Halonen rises to his feet and walks away, and she watches him. He is unusually young, younger than most of his staff, and he always walks very upright, turning to meet life. She noticed that on her very first visit.
She had been afraid of seeing Rauna again that time. It was a mixture of fear and longing. She talked to the psychologist about it. He advised against it, and she went to see Rauna the very next day.
Pellervo Halonen’s upright carriage as he accompanied her to Rauna’s room. She remembers that. And Rauna’s distant face at the moment when their eyes met. Rauna said nothing, and for a few moments she thought that Rauna didn’t remember her. Then the fear in Rauna’s eyes gave way to longing. Rauna ran to her and hugged her, and laughed. Pellervo Hallonen laughed. Even she herself laughed, for the first time in a very long while.
‘I’ve had enough to eat. Shall we do a jigsaw?’ asks Rauna.
She opens her eyes and sees Rauna smiling.
She nods. Rauna runs ahead with a hop, skip and a jump, and she follows her to the playroom. Rauna does the Noah’s Ark puzzle. Deep in thought, she fits all the pieces in place until the picture is complete.
‘Finished!’ says Rauna, and she claps her hands and says Rauna is the best at doing jigsaw puzzles for miles around, and Rauna asks where the third lion is. ‘The third lion. The third monkey. The third giraffe.’
She can’t think of an answer to that, and says it’s a good question.
‘The third lion is coming later. And so are the others,’ says Rauna.
She nods.
‘On another ship,’ says Rauna. ‘In the winter.’
A carer is standing in the doorway. Visiting time is over. She reads Rauna a bedtime story, and at the end of the story Rauna, in her pink pyjamas, is wide awake.
‘See you again soon!’ calls Rauna, and the carer, smiling, offers her hand as she says goodbye.