The Double Silence (Andas Knutas 7)

rabbit holes. He didn’t really know what he was expecting. Of course, he hoped to see her. Weeks and months had passed without him giving her a thought. He’d had other things on his mind. But then one day he’d been going through a box of photographs and found all the pictures he’d taken of her, most of them in secret. And everything had come back to him, overwhelming him like an avalanche. Memories crowded in on him, and long-slumbering floods of emotion awoke. He had no defences. It was as if she took over his life again, piece by piece. He hated her because he couldn’t help looking at the photos, over and over. He wished he could erase her from his life when she appeared to him in the night and roused him from his dreams, keeping him sleepless. For hours he would lie in bed, wide awake, staring into the dark and picturing her face, which made it impossible for him to drop back off. He couldn’t think about anything else. In the past he had been the stronger one; he held the power and could do whatever he liked with her. Then everything had changed. Suddenly she wanted nothing to do with him. Ice cold, she had locked him out, refused any further contact. Never answered his text messages or emails. He had been carrying around such anger.
    He looked at her now, between the trees. She was turned away fromhim, gazing out at the sea. Her hair hung down her back, gleaming in the sunlight. The underbrush rustled beneath his feet. He continued moving forward, not letting her out of his sight. She had kept her trim shape.
    Soon it would be his turn again.
    He was convinced of that.

WITH AN AWKWARD leap she landed on the other side of the wall. The ground was soft. The property on this side offered nothing more than a meagre amount of grass and a few pitifully stunted pines struggling to survive the wind in such an exposed location. But right now there was only a light breeze. The sea stretched out before her like a blue carpet, glittering in the sun. The road down to the water, a hundred or so metres from the house, was rocky and dry. The shore was strewn with stones, extending as far as the eye could see. Off in the distance a promontory stuck out, blocking the view. Wild and beautiful. It was easy to understand why Bergman had loved this remote spot. Enchanted, she stood there trying to take in the whole scene.
    The house didn’t really look very impressive. The greyish-brown façade facing the sea bore clear traces of the weather. It was a single-storey structure that seemed to go on and on, with small windows. Typical sixties design. A veranda faced the sea. It was rather worn-looking, with several old deckchairs leaning against the wall. A table with a cement top was fastened to a low, knotty tree trunk growing out of the rocky ground. Amazing. The gusts must be fierce when the wind really started to blow. She could just imagine it whistling around the corners of the house during an autumn storm. And the darkness. It must be terribly dark out here in the autumn and winter when the daylight disappeared around four in the afternoon.
    She wandered slowly along in front of the house; then she went up on to the veranda and peered in through a window. There she saw the kitchen, with simple wooden cupboards and an ordinary pine table. Nothingremarkable at all. A candlestick with a partially burnt candle stood on the table. The clock on the wall had stopped.
    Suddenly she gave a start. A shadow danced across the floor. The next instant she relaxed when she realized that it was the sun playing through the crowns of the trees. It was just her imagination that someone had appeared. She sat down on the veranda and leaned against the wall with her face lifted towards the sun. The trees surrounding the house whispered in her ears; a seagull shrieked from the water. A man in a rowing boat was fishing out there. Again she closed her eyes, feeling the sun on her face. Here she sat, all alone on Ingmar Bergman’s veranda. Almost as if she belonged to the family and had a right to be here. In her mind she pictured him coming out of the house.
    Then another thought slipped in. Slowly, as if it didn’t really want to announce its presence. No, she thought. That’s crazy. Her gaze swept over the warm wooden floor of the veranda, the sheltering trees, the silent house, the cloudless blue sky. Things really couldn’t get any better, but that would be the icing on the cake. She glanced at her watch. It was three thirty. There