Before the Frost Read Online Free PDF Page B

way of expressing herself. I would have had to sit down and write it all down if I were going to come up with anything like that, she thought. The King and Queen of Contentment.
    â€œIn that case I guess I’ve never really been afraid of losing my mind,” she said lightly.
    Anna got up and walked over to the window. After a while she returned to the sofa. We’re much more like our parents than we think, Linda thought. I’ve seen Henrietta move in just the same way when she’s anxious: get up, walk around, and then sit down again.
    â€œI thought I saw my father yesterday,” Anna said. “On a street in Malmö.”
    Linda raised her eyebrows.
    â€œYour father? You saw him on the street?”
    â€œYes.”
    Linda thought about it.
    â€œBut you’ve never even seen him—not really, I mean. You were so young when he left.”
    â€œI have pictures of him.”
    Linda did the math in her head.
    â€œIt’s been twenty-five years since he left.”
    â€œTwenty-four.”
    â€œTwenty-four, then. How much do you think a person changes in twenty-four years? You can’t know. All you know is that he must have changed.”
    â€œIt was him. My mother told me about his gaze. I’m sure it was him. It must have been him.”
    â€œI didn’t even know you were in Malmö yesterday. I thought you were going in to Lund, to study or whatever it is you do there.”
    Anna looked at her appraisingly.
    â€œYou don’t believe me.”

    â€œYou don’t believe it yourself.”
    â€œIt was my dad.”
    She took a deep breath.
    â€œYou’re right; I had been in Lund. When I got as far as Malmö and had to change trains. There was a problem with the line. The train was cancelled. Suddenly I had two hours to kill until the next one. It put me in a terrible mood since I hate waiting. I walked into town, without any clear idea of what I was going to do, just to get rid of some of the unwanted, irritating time. Somewhere along the line I walked into a store and bought a pair of socks I didn’t even need. As I was walking past the Saint Jörgen Hotel a woman had fallen down in the street. I didn’t walk up close—I can’t stand the sight of blood. Her skirt was bunched up, and I remember wondering why no one pulled it down for her. I was sure she was dead. A bunch of people had gathered to look, as if she were a dead creature washed up on the beach. I walked away, through the Triangle, and walked into the big hotel there in order to take their glass elevator up to the roof. That’s something I always do when I’m in Malmö. It’s like taking a glass balloon up into the sky. But this time I wasn’t allowed to do it—now you have to operate the elevator with your room key. That was a blow. It felt as if someone had taken a toy away. I sat down in one of the plush armchairs in the lobby and looked out the window and was planning to stay there until it was time to walk back to the station.
    â€œThat’s when I saw him. He was standing on the street. Now and then a gust of wind made the windowpane rattle. I looked up, and there he was on the sidewalk looking at me. Our eyes met and we stared at each other for about five seconds. Then he looked down and walked away. I was so shocked it didn’t even occur to me to follow him. To be perfectly honest I still didn’t believe I had really seen him. I thought it was a hallucination or a trick of the light. Sometimes you see someone and you think it’s a person from your past, but it’s really just a stranger. When I finally did run out and look around, he was gone. I felt a bit like an animal stalking its prey when I walked back to the train station—I tried to sniff out where he could be. I was so excited—upset, actually—that I hunted through the inner city and missed my train. He was nowhere to be found. But I was
sure that it was