Nothing is hopeless and you should never give up, thought Nurse Barbara while she browsed through the papers on her desk. Love is like politics. Almost like buying shares on the stock exchange. You never know which way it will go. She had invested her future in Ingmar, and soon something must happen. She took out her white handkerchief and dried the sweat from her brow. Over in the general lounge two elderly men sat barely awake, and Dolores had dozed off on the sofa. Barbara saw them, but without taking it in. In her head there was only Ingmar. He had problems with his wife. She had returned with the children but then gone back to England the week after. At first, he hadn’t spoken so much about his marriage, but she had noticed that he had become silent and thoughtful. When finally she asked what was wrong, he told her that his wife had fallen in love with a British businessman in London. No man likes to be cut out, so she realized she must console him. She stayed the night with him and now she had several pairs of shoes and dresses in his wardrobe. She felt as if she had caught her fish and was slowly but surely reeling it in.
‘Ingmar, darling, what’s going to happen now?’ she ventured to ask some weeks later.
‘My wife and I have some things to sort out, but then, dearest, then!’
Her and him. She quickly realized that he was serious about this when he introduced her to his children.
‘This is my colleague, Barbara. I hope you will get on well together,’ he had said as he introduced her to them. Ingmar had started grumbling more about everything he had to do. ‘A pity I have so much overtime, darling, but we’ve got the evenings and the entire nights together.’
‘I can help you,’ she said in a sprightly tone, and she went on working to make herself indispensible.
Now they shared a home and a weekday life. At the end of each day she couldn’t wait to finish work to get home in time to make dinner. Just as if she and Ingmar were already married. She felt she was approaching the goal. Soon, she thought. Soon!
It was lucky that things seemed to be working out between her and Ingmar, because at work she had problems. Since the art theft at the National Museum nothing had been the same.
‘Why should we sit here? I want a bit of action,’ said Sven, aged eighty-four.
‘And I want to go on a boat trip on Lake Mälaren,’ his friend Selma, eighty-three, nagged.
‘Can’t we all go shopping?’ Gertrude, who was eighty-six, interposed as she tugged on Nurse Barbara’s sleeve. ‘Some new clothes would cheer me up.’
The oldies went on like that, and when things were at their worst, Nurse Barbara searched frantically for the red pills. She searched and searched but she couldn’t find them. Things didn’t get any better when she went to the chemist’s.
‘Those pills weren’t profitable, so we have stopped making them,’ she was informed. The new pills she was offered cost much more. Barbara asked Ingmar what they should do.
‘Goodness, we can’t afford such expensive pills,’ he answered. ‘You’ll have to entertain the oldies instead.’ He laughed and gave her a hug.
In the retirement home, things were beginning to get out of hand. Nobody at Diamond House went to bed at eight o’clock, as they were meant to, and they refused to eat the food they were served. And the weirdest of them all was Dolores, who was ninety-three. She went around with a shopping trolley full of blankets and old newspapers and claimed it contained money.
‘I’ve been given several million,’ she said every day, pointing at the shopping trolley and looking most satisfied. ‘My son is extremely generous, I must say. To think that I am so well off.’
Barbara smiled and agreed because that was the best you could do with old people—smile and agree with them. She had learned that on a course.
Dolores hummed to herself, patted her shopping trolley and beamed. ‘My millions,’ she said and giggled.
‘Congratulations,’ everybody said at the home. They got together to give Dolores a fancy cream cake with green marzipan, which was her favourite. A week later, Dolores had painted the trolley handle sky blue because, as she said, the money was a gift from heaven.
Barbara’s days became all the more stressful. What she really needed was more staff at Diamond House, but every time she broached the subject Ingmar said he was sorry but they couldn’t spend so much money.
‘You see, my darling,’ he explained, ‘if Diamond House becomes even more profitable, then we can open more retirement homes. Then, sweetie, I will be rich.’
We will be rich, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she proposed several ways to cut costs to make him happy. She was even a bit ashamed of one of her suggestions.
‘If we make the present staff redundant and then employ immigrants instead, we can give them lower wages. They won’t dare grumble but will be glad to have a job,’ she had ventured, uncertain as to how he would react.
‘My darling, you are wonderful,’ he had answered, and from that day on he had regarded her with new eyes. She could sense his respect, and now she felt not only like his woman, but also like his business partner.
She smiled to herself. She was getting close to her goal, and much faster than she had expected.