Love Doesn't Work Read Online Free PDF

secret compartments.
    When they found nothing, they concluded that Harold and Linda were part of a terrorist cell.
    Having spent his whole life longing for more space, Harold now found himself living under the open sky among a group of people who’d taken refuge in the Greenstone Mountains of Västerbotten, close to the Arctic Circle.
    A geologist from Uppsala University had advised them that the earth’s crust was older and deeper here. Here, if anywhere, they would have firm ground under their feet until the end of time.
    Behind them, Stockholm had already collapsed into the abyss.
    Linda was a changed woman. She was tougher and more resourceful, always sewing or making ingenious devices for cooking over open fires, with a train of children behind her, always one at her breast and several more hanging at her skirts.
    Harold had to admit that their children were very lovable. As for Linda, now that she had her children she seemed less concerned about Harold. He was a spent force, a cracked amphora whose value had been proved, although lately eclipsed by these small growing entities whose significance was infinite and almost cosmic.
    Sometimes Harold reflected that he would never again walk along city streets, browsing for CDs or renewing his insurance policy at the broker’s. Such things were now obsolete. Along with everything else, they had gone down the hole.
    One day a fleet of military helicopters arrived, landing on a piece of level ground and disgorging a number of Ministers and high public officials with their assorted wives, husbands and families. The politicians did not speak to the settlers, merely threw embarrassed glances in their direction. In no time at all they had built a palisade and, within it, a village of strong, timbered houses with proper stone chimneys. Guards were placed at the gates.
    The government announced a public meeting, at which the Prime Minister set about justifying his policies. As soon as the Cabinet had found out about the hole, he explained, it was thought more merciful to keep the truth from the people. This was partly to avoid panic. After all, the entire population could not have emigrated to the mountaintops of Västerbotten.
    The Prime Minister also reported that all the major cities of the world had fallen into the bottomless void. Who knew where the Eiffel Tower was now, or Big Ben?
    Maybe one day the planet would spew forth lava and build new continents. When this happened, the human race would come down from the mountains and build a new Jerusalem based on the same Grecian ideals.
    The years passed. Disease and starvation were widespread among the settlers. The bureaucrats, with their solid houses and well-stocked warehouses behind the palisade, had an abundance of food and medicine. Occasionally they would make a grand gesture and donate some medicine to a dying settler outside the walls.
    Sometimes at night Harold could hear the politicians standing on prominent rocks, practicing the speeches they would make on the day the first foundation stone was laid for the reconstruction of Stockholm.
     
    VI
    He woke from the dream at three in the morning. Outside, a storm was hammering the building. The gods were angry.
    Harold looked for Linda but she was not in the bed and not in the bathroom either. Then he remembered that she had gone. Probably she was staying with her sister in Solna, but he knew he mustn’t telephone her there, or ask her to come home. Linda was not like that. Leaving, for her, had been a final gesture. Harold closed his eyes and tried not to cry. Things snapped sharply into focus, like new-broken glass.
    At first he had an absurd vision: he saw the lady with the shopping trolley, falling through the air and occasionally making a slow revolution. In her hand she held an umbrella, like a sort of Mary Poppins figure in a neatly buttoned blue overcoat, her hair held in place by a hat and hat-pins. She still had not reached the bottom of the hole! Her eyes were