‘Of course we will help you! I’ve said so all along. You shouldn’t be so scared of asking for help. Next time I will be the one in need of help, Pernilla, and then I will come to you.’
Stina’s voice is firm and the hand squeezing my back is warm and secure.
‘Next time I will have met some hopeless man again and be in need of a good cry,’ she adds, with a hoarse laugh.
We are sitting on a blanket on a rock a couple of hundred yards from Stuvskär harbour.
The sun is low over the skerries and the rock under us has just started to cool off. Stina’s flaming red hair glows in the warm light and her leathery skin is the colour of copper. She is wearing a bright pink singlet that is so low-cut that I can see almost all of her bra.
‘Isn’t that right, Björn?’ Stina adds and looks encouragingly at her son, a skinny boy in his late teens with strawberry-blond hair and a beautiful, almost feminine face that I recognise from the photo on Stina’s desk.
‘Yeah,’ Björn says and immediately looks very uncertain. ‘But it will probably be mad awkward.’
‘Nonsense,’ Stina says, waving a mosquito away with her hand, setting the loose flesh under her arm in motion. ‘Nobody can see that you feel awkward over the phone.’
Björn shrugs his thin shoulders and prods a bit at a large pimple on the side of his chin.
‘Let’s go then,’ I say and give Björn the prepaid mobile I’ve bought.
Björn takes the phone in one hand and the paper with the notes and the pen in the other.
‘It was half past eight, wasn’t it?’ Stina asks.
I nod. ‘That’s correct, but I can’t promise she will call exactly then.’
*
Rachel is cautious. After I found the ad online and answered it via email she has sent me two messages: the first to ask follow-up questions, the second to book a time when she can call me.
She has not given any contact information.
The minutes pass and the sun descends into the water that lies perfectly placid in front of us. Only a few small waves nip, almost silently, in the green seaweed growing at the water’s edge, the slippery mess that one always slips on when one is going to swim.
Somewhere in the distance there is a motorboat and the sound rises and sinks as it bounces between the islets.
Stina takes her out her flask that I recognise from the shop and raises it at me.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asks, pouring the amber liquid into two limp plastic cups without waiting for me to answer.
‘Why not?’ I sigh.
Then she opens a bottle of Coke for Björn, who raises his hand and shakes his head.
He looks nervous, twiddling his pale hands in his lap.
As for me, I think of Samuel. Of how ironic it is that his name actually means ‘God heeds prayer’.
Because Samuel in the Bible got his name because his mother, Hannah, had him after she prayed to God for a son.
God heeds prayer.
But who’s listening now?
It has been three days since Samuel was supposed to meet me in the harbour – three days without me hearing a word from him. Not a text message, not a phone call.
Just silence.
I suppose I ought to go to the police again, but that arrogant girl sitting there being cheeky made me lose my nerve.
I promise myself that I will go back if we get hold of this woman now, because then I will at least have something concrete to show them. Something to make them act, rather than sit there and stare at me as if I were truly crazy.
The phone rings and Björn picks up with a resigned look.
He looks at me and I nod encouragingly, raising a thumb in the air.
‘Uhm, hi?’ Björn says and his voice breaks.
Stina looks at me and nods, smiling; I can tell that she is proud of her son.
‘OK,’ Björn continues.
And then: ‘No, well not specifically, but I have had a part-time job at an old people’s home. But that was mostly cleaning. And of course I couldn’t give them any medicine or injections or anything.’
He is silent and nods several times.
‘Nineteen. In three months.’
He is silent again and I hold my breath, saying a prayer that it will work.
‘The thing is, I dropped out,’ Björn says, managing to sound exactly as embarrassed as I have instructed him to. ‘I was pretty sick of school and just wanted to work. I mean, I haven’t been truant or anything I just like . . .’
He goes quiet again, looking at me.
‘Yes,’ he says, hesitantly. ‘That works.’
Then he writes something on the paper as he nods.
‘OK, see you there.’
He hangs up.
I don’t dare ask, but Björn’s face, which cracks a broad Colgate smile, betrays him.
‘Stuvskär harbour, the day after tomorrow, at eleven o’clock,’ he says triumphantly, holding up his hand so that Stina can give him a high five.
I do as Stina does, slapping my palm against his and draw a deep sigh of relief.
‘What did she say?’ I whisper.
‘That she would love to meet me and talk a bit. That it was hard to find good people. That she hoped we would get along.’
Stina looks at me and her green eyes gleam.
‘I told you it would work out,’ she says and smiles so that I see all the fillings in her nicotine-stained teeth.
‘Thank you,’ I say, with tears in my eyes, nodding first at Stina and then at her son. ‘Thank you so much. I don’t know how I will ever be able to repay you.’