Simone tastes blood. She has bitten her lower lip without noticing. She sits beside her father’s bed in a dim room at St Göran’s Hospital. He has been lying here for days while the doctors try to establish how badly hurt he is. All she knows for certain is that Kennet was hit by a car, and the impact could have killed him. Her headache is a steel ball, rolling around inside her head. She has lost Erik, she may have lost Benjamin, and now it’s possible she could lose her father, too.
She doesn’t know how many times she’s done it already, but just to be on the safe side she gets her mobile phone out, checks that it’s working, and returns it to the outside pocket of her bag, where it will be easy to get hold of, on the outside chance that it should ring.
She leans over her father and straightens the covers. He is sleeping, but there isn’t a sound. She’s always struck by this: Kennet Sträng is probably the only man in the world who doesn’t make a noise when he’s asleep.
His head is bound in a chalk-white bandage, from beneath which a dark shadow creeps out, an aubergine-coloured bruise that extends down across one cheek. He looks terrible: the bruising, the pale grey complexion, the swollen nose, the mouth drooping at one corner.
But he isn’t dead, she thinks. He’s alive. And Benjamin is alive, too; she knows it, he has to be.
She gets up and paces back and forth. She thinks about the conversation she’d had with her father the other day, just as she’d gotten home from Sim Shulman’s apartment, just before the accident. He’d told her he’d found Wailord and was going to a place called “the sea,” somewhere out on Loudden.
She looks at her father again. His sleep is so deep.
“Dad?”
She immediately regrets speaking. He doesn’t wake, but a troubled expression flits across his face like a cloud. Simone cautiously touches the wound on her lower lip. Her gaze falls on the Advent candles in the window. Some Christmas this year, she thinks. She looks at her shoes in their blue plastic protectors. The headache pounds against her temples. She shudders and pulls her cardigan more tightly around her, although she isn’t cold. She thinks about an afternoon many years ago, when she and Kennet watched her mother wave and then disappear in her little green Fiat.
Suddenly Kennet gives a low groan.
“Daddy,” she says, like a little child.
He opens his eyes. They seem unfocused, not fully awake. The white of one eye is covered in blood.
“Daddy, it’s me,” says Simone. “How are you feeling?”
His gaze wanders past her. She’s suddenly afraid that he can’t see.
“Sixan?”
“I’m here, Dad.”
She sits down beside him and gently takes his hand. His eyes close again, his eyebrows contract as if he is in pain.
“Dad,” she asks again, “how are you feeling?”
He tries to pat her on the hand, but he can’t quite manage it. “I’ll soon be on my feet,” he wheezes. “Don’t you worry about me.”
Silence. Simone tries to keep her thoughts at bay, to ward off the anxiety hurtling toward her. She doesn’t want to put any pressure on him in this state, but panic forces her to make an attempt.
“Dad?” she asks tentatively. “Do you remember what we were talking about just before the accident?”
He peers wearily at her and shakes his head.
“You said you knew where Wailord was. You talked about the sea. You said you were going to the sea.”
Kennet’s eyes flicker. He tries to sit up but falls back with a groan.
“Dad, tell me, I have to know where it is. Who’s Wailord? Who is he?”
He opens his mouth, his chin trembling as he answers. “A … child … It’s … a child.”
“What are you saying?”
But Kennet has closed his eyes and no longer seems able to hear her. Simone goes over to the window and looks out at the hospital complex. She can feel a cold draft. There is a strip of dirt along the glass. When she breathes on it, she can see the impression of someone else’s face in the mist for a brief moment. Someone else has stood in this exact spot, leaning against the windowpane.
The church on the opposite side of the street is in darkness, the streetlamps reflected in its black arched windows. She thinks about Benjamin’s message to Aida, telling her not to let Nicky go to the sea.
“Aida,” she says aloud. “I’ll go and see Aida, and this time she’s going to tell me everything.”