When they got to Munkkiniemi, Irma wanted to treat Siiri to lunch at a French restaurant on Laajalahdentie. Siiri didn’t know that before her hospital adventure Irma had been to the restaurant so often that she knew all of the staff. A dazzlingly handsome young man rushed over to give her a hug and another man with a beard took her coat. They spoke at length in French and then the men hugged Irma again.
‘Did you notice how I haven’t forgotten my French, even though I’m soft in the head?’ Irma said proudly, when finally the men had gone back to their work. The short one was the chef, the taller one the waiter.
‘He’s from Martinique,’ Irma began, and she told Siiri the man’s life story, which was teeming with siblings and surprising twists. ‘So it will be a loss to our nation when he leaves us.’
‘What do you mean, leaves us?’
‘Don’t you understand any French at all, after taking the beginners’ course at the community centre seven times over? He just said that he’ll only be here for two more weeks, deux semaines. That’s why he gave me such a warm embrace. First, because he thought I had died, and second, because he’s going to be leaving us.’
‘You actually could have died,’ Siiri said, to get Irma to say what she’d been waiting for her to say for a long time. But Irma paid no attention.
‘It’s a pity they don’t sell red wine here. We can get wine at IKEA, but not in a French restaurant at lunchtime.’
Siiri agreed. After all, they were celebrating the fact that Anna-Liisa was married for the third and last time, and Irma had come home. That Irma wasn’t demented at all, and her hip, with its glowing titanium spike, was healing up and her new home was coming together nicely and quite quickly. She was still using a Zimmer frame, but Siiri felt sure that she would be done with it before the snow fell, and then she could go back to her beloved Carl the Cane.
‘Maybe. And in September, we’ll celebrate your ninety-fifth birthday,’ Irma said contentedly, planning her life out like she used to do.
A very small baby at the next table started to whimper. Irma went quite gaga over it – she had always had a weak spot for babies. The smaller they were, the weaker she became, and this one was perhaps only a few weeks old. Irma learned that the baby’s name was Rudolf and he kept his mother up quite a bit at night. Then the baby’s mother whipped out her breast and started nursing Rudolf right there in front of them, even though they were eating lunch. Even Irma had trouble smiling at her new friend and searched feverishly for a new topic of conversation.
‘How is your criminal case going?’ she asked carelessly, as if they were discussing window cleaning. Which was another thing you had to do yourself at Sunset Grove – no one had come to wash the windows, although summer was almost over and the windows had got so dirty over the winter that the sun couldn’t get in. There they sat in the dark, all those miserable oldies who couldn’t get out to a restaurant in the way Siiri and Irma could. They didn’t even know if it was summer or winter.
‘Don’t change the subject. Are you going to jail for arson?’
Siiri told her what she knew. Mika Korhonen had kept her up to date, no longer evading the subject or avoiding her. Siiri’s complaint had been shoved somewhere and it was working its way through the requisite cogs of justice so she didn’t have a ghost of a worry. She knew what had really happened, and, more importantly, what hadn’t happened. Even if she did use the key to the closed unit without permission, they couldn’t put her in jail for that. She hadn’t started the fire, and if there were any criminals at Sunset Grove, they were on the board of directors of the Loving Care Foundation. She knew that evil would be punished eventually. And besides, their detective work had kept them busy. She had felt useful, as though her life had a purpose again, and she was sure that this wasn’t to be the end of it.
‘It’ll either never be solved, or it will someday,’ Irma said, and sprinkled some sugar on her baguette.
‘At any rate, it’ll take a long time for the case to run its course, and anything could happen to me in the meantime.’
‘It certainly could. You might die, for instance. Ah! I love how the sugar crunches between my teeth!’
‘True. And that’s really a relief, you know. And, it’s so wonderful that you’re alive again!’ Siiri said, and she meant it from the bottom of her raggedy heart. Irma understood and said that they had to have a big party in honour of her resurrection, before Siiri’s birthday.
‘Since we didn’t get a wedding party. Let’s have the kind of party where you serve champagne. Even though it puts knots in your stomach and makes you belch. Maybe we should just make some punch.’
‘Punch or champagne, anything will do,’ Siiri said, worn out with happiness. ‘What else have you got planned?’
‘We’re going to start playing four-handed piano. I’ve already been to the West Helsinki music school to talk to them about it.’
Siiri suspected that the music school was just for children, but Irma had asked about that, too. The rector had enquired if they’d ever taken piano lessons before, and when Irma told her that they had got off to a good beginning but were interrupted by the start of the Winter War seventy-three years ago, the rector didn’t ask any more questions.
‘But before we start piano lessons we’re going to take an Internet class.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. They have them at the Munkkiniemi senior centre, next door to the health clinic. They take you by the hand and teach you what the Internet is and how to get on it. I’m sure you realize that you can’t carry on without the net.’
‘Do we have to buy a computer?’
‘Of course! And it’s not a computer any more, it’s a tablet, and you brush it and stroke it and it politely obeys you. That’s the kind we’re going to buy. I want a green one. I’ve seen them in the Stockmann preferred-customer flyer.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Irma!’ Siiri cried. ‘With you around I don’t know where in the world I’ll end up!’
‘Dead,’ Irma laughed, and finally said what Siiri had been waiting for her to say: ‘Döden, döden, döden.’