Britt-Marie Was Here Read Online Free PDF Page A

fully intend to find the post office you have informed me about and pick up the keys to the recreation center, but I am not putting one foot inside the recreation center until you inform me of the whereabouts of the cleaning equip—!” Once again she is interrupted by the ball rolling across the parking area. Britt-Marie dislikes this. It’s nothing personal, she hasn’t decided to pick on this ball in particular. It’s just that she just dislikes all soccer balls. Entirely without prejudice.
    The ball is being pursued by two children. They are exceedingly dirty, all three of them if you include the ball.
    The children’s jeans are all torn down their thighs. They catch up with the ball, kick it back in the opposite direction, and once again disappear behind the recreation center. One of them loses his balance and steadies himself by putting his hand against the window, where he leaves a black handprint.
    “What’s happening?” asks the girl.
    “Shouldn’t those children be at school?” Britt-Marie exclaims, reminding herself to put an extra exclamation mark after “Buy Faxin!” on her list. If this place even has a supermarket.
    “What?” says the girl.
    “My dear girl, you have to stop saying ‘what?’ all the time, it makes you sound so untalented.”
    “What?”
    “There are children here!”
    “Okay, but please, Britt-Marie, I don’t know anything about Borg! I’ve never been there! And I’m not hearing you—I think you . . . are you sure you’re not holding the telephone upside down?”
    Britt-Marie gives the telephone a scrutinizing look. Turns it around.
    “Ha,” she says into the microphone, as if the fault lay with the person at the other end of the line.
    “Okay, I can hear you at last,” says the girl encouragingly.
    “I’ve never used this telephone. There are actually people who have other things to do than spending all day talking into their telephones, you understand.”
    “Oh, don’t worry. I’m just the same when I have a new telephone!”
    “I’m certainly not worrying! And this is absolutely not a new telephone, it’s five years old,” Britt-Marie corrects her. “I’ve never needed one before. I’ve had things to get on with, you see. I don’t call anyone except Kent, and I call him on the home telephone, like a civilized person.”
    “But what if you’re out?” asks the girl, instinctually unable to process what the world looked like before one could get hold of anyone, at anytime of the day.
    “My dear girl,” she explains patiently, “if I’m out, I’m with Kent.”
    Britt-Marie was probably intending to say something else, butthat’s the point at which she sees the rat, more or less as big as a normal-sized flowerpot, scampering across patches of ice in the parking area. Looking back, Britt-Marie is of the firm opinion that she wanted to scream very loudly. But unfortunately she did not have time for that, because everything abruptly went black and Britt-Marie’s body lay unconscious on the ground.
    Britt-Marie’s first contact with soccer in Borg is when the soccer ball hits her very hard on the head.

5

    B ritt-Marie wakes up on a floor. Somebody is leaning over her, saying something, but Britt-Marie’s first thoughts are about the floor. She’s worried that it may be dirty, and that people might think she’s dead. These things happen all the time, people falling over and dying. It would be horrific, thinks Britt-Marie. To die on a dirty floor. What would people think?
    “Hello, are you, what’s-it-called? Deceased?” Somebody asks, but Britt-Marie keeps focusing on the floor.
    “Hello, lady? Are you, you know, dead?” Somebody repeats and makes a little whistling sound.
    Britt-Marie dislikes whistling, and she has a headache.
    The floor smells of pizza. It would be awful to die with a headache while smelling of pizza.
    She’s not at all keen on pizza, because Kent smelled so much of pizza when he came home late from his meetings with