Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman

upstairs and it was some time before they heard.
    He wasn’t surprised to see them again. He or his wife must have peered round the curtains. He was humorous about the insects and implied that you had to be born there to cope. They were called stingers, he said. She said she doubted anyone could cope with them. At that he grew rather heated and said people who worked in the forest couldn’t go home just because of the stingers. You just had to get used to them.
    She asked whether they could sit in the shop and wait, though she would prefer to find a place where they could get something to eat.
    ‘There isn’t anywhere. Not in this village.’
    He sounded almost triumphant. His wife was in the living room, only half her attention on the television screen. They had been sitting together on a green velvet sofa, coffee and a large assortment of small cakes and biscuits on a tabletop made of flower-decorated tiles. They were drinking something brown in wide glasses. Cacao liqueur?
    ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to rent a room instead?’
    ‘Roland said the camping site was full,’ his wife called. There was malicious pleasure in her voice.
    ‘There are private cabins, but they’re probably all taken until after Midsummer,’ said her husband in confirmation.
    Then it occurred to Annie that perhaps Dan had thought Midsummer Eve was not until the next day. On the Saturday. For it was, really. The old Midsummer Eve.
    ‘My boyfriend’s probably up there at Nilsbodarna,’ she said. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding. Do you know anyone who could take us there by car?’
    ‘There’s no road.’
    ‘I know. But there is up to where the path begins. I have a map with me. It’s not far to walk after that.’
    Husband and wife looked at each other. Annie could sense their criticism. This was not aversion but something more subtle. They seemed to have agreed on something and now it had been confirmed.
    ‘I need to buy some food for my daughter,’ she said, though she hated saying it. From the living room, the wife said nothing. She was staring at the screen.
    ‘That’s all right,’ said the man. ‘Though we want to watch the feature film first. Perhaps you’d like to watch it as well.’
    So Annie had to sit down in an armchair by the coffee table. Mia clambered up on her knee and soon lost interest in the film. Instead, she looked round this room full of objects that must have seemed strange to her. Lots of animals, embroidered, carved or made of glass or pottery. As the woman fetched a cup and poured out coffee, she tried not to take her eyes off the screen, where a familiar actor was moving about in a cassock. Mia started systematically eating the cakes, cream cakes and sugared buns in small pleated paper cups. Annie sat crookedly in the armchair to be able to overlook the area in front of the shop. A car went by now and again, but none stopped. Mia fell asleep after a while, curled up on her lap, her long legs hanging outside and her thumb in her mouth. Annie hadn’t seen her take to her thumb for a long time.
    Once the bizarre drama on the screen was over, they went out into the kitchen and the woman made something she called bilberry gruel for Mia. She took the bilberries out of the freezer and boiled them up in water, then whipped some cornflour into them. Of course, Mia wouldn’t touch it. It looked like purple glue. But she ate some bread and salami and drank some milk.
    Annie looked into a room alongside the kitchen. It was full of pictures. Above the bed was one made of short-pile plush, brightly dyed in shades of pink, yellow and brown. It depicted a naked girl. She had tight fluffy breasts with budding nipples like large eyeballs gazing at whoever came in. They must look at the wife every time she went in with the duster. For everything was certainly very clean.
    They thought Annie ought to stay in the village, but she was beginning to suffocate in the long, narrow kitchen. Besides, something might have