Cinderella Girl Read Online Free PDF

and at first he could not manage a word.
    One of the nurses was much too familiar, with her flowing dark-red hair and her lively green eyes. She was the woman in the window, the woman who had tormented him at night for many months. Lately in his dream her facial features had started to blur into a kind of general female appearance, because it had been almost a year since he’d last seen her – Margit Olofsson. But the hair was always the same, and now here he stood, stammering, not knowing what to do. This is ridiculous, he thought.This woman doesn’t know about my absurd dreams. They had only met two or three times the previous year, during a murder investigation, and had not exchanged many words. What was the matter with him? Her neutral expression changed to recognition and she was already smiling broadly when he finally came out with an awkward greeting.
    ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Margit Olofsson …’
    ‘Inspector! Good job, remembering my name after such a long time. I must have been a prime suspect!’ she joked.
    The other nurse continued on her way along the corridor and they were left alone together. Sjöberg couldn’t think of anything to say, so Margit Olofsson continued, ‘What are you doing here? Is there another murder case?’
    ‘No, my mother broke a couple of ribs, so I drove her here. We’ve been in casualty since eleven o’clock, and she’s spending the night for observation. Do you work at this time of night?’
    ‘Yes, periodically. But tonight has actually been pretty quiet, so it’s no problem.’
    Sjöberg didn’t know where the idea came from, but without thinking he heard himself saying, ‘May I get you a coffee?’
    In order to play down what felt to him like a minor social transgression, but which presumably meant nothing to Margit Olofsson, he added, ‘I feel like I need a cup of coffee, so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel.’
    ‘Why not?’ Margit Olofsson replied. ‘I’ll just go and tell them I’m taking a break. Wait here so I can pilot you through the labyrinth here at Huddinge!’
    ‘So how is she doing now?’ asked Margit Olofsson as they sat facing each other in the hospital cafeteria with their coffee.
    ‘Pretty good, I guess. They’re going to X-ray her to make sure she hasn’t punctured a lung or anything. She may get to go home as early as tomorrow.’
    ‘I’ll look in on her. What’s her name? Sjöberg perhaps?’
    ‘Yes, Eivor. And how are you doing? And – what was her name – Ingrid?’
    ‘I don’t have any contact with Ingrid Olsson now. I never knew her well; it was only for a few weeks that it worked out that way.’
    ‘The good Samaritan …’ said Sjöberg.
    ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Margit Olofsson self-deprecatingly. ‘Things are fine with me anyway. Two happy children who’ve left home. A husband in the painting business and personally …’
    ‘Isn’t he happy then?’ Sjöberg interrupted.
    ‘… I’ve been idling around here for thirty years.’
    She finished the sentence, but now she looked at him thoughtfully. Sjöberg felt like he was blushing, but hoped it didn’t show. Why did he ask that? What had got into him? Was he really sitting here flirting with Margit Olofsson, an extremely peripheral person from an old murder investigation? It was definitely time to drive home.
    ‘Well, I guess he’s happy in his own way. And I in mine,’ she answered cryptically, with a slight, almost imperceptible smile. ‘And you?’
    During the few seconds Sjöberg took to consider how he should answer that, he was flooded by an almost irresistible urge to tell her about the strange dream. Shearoused peculiar feelings in him, which he couldn’t really put into words. It wasn’t love, in any event not the kind of love he had for Åsa or the children. Not a communion of souls either, because what did they have in common? Nothing apparently, at least nothing he could discern behind the outer shell of the person he’d encountered up to now.