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courage, her sentences would be hopelessly stilted, full of ‘sort of ’s and ‘maybe’s, most of them sounding like questions rather than statements. In the end his scrutinising stares had made her mute.
    Her reaction had surprised her. Maybe she thought that the sheer physical departure from her childhood home in Hudiksvall would have taken her farther. She was the first in her family to go to university. Her parents had supported her even though she sensed their vacillation when they had to defend her against those who thought she’d turned uppity. In her parents’ house, they only spoke about concrete things, and words were not to be wasted. Thoughts were something you kept to yourself, and the general view was that everything got better if you didn’t talk about it. Books were something that educated people read, of a different class of society more elegant than their own – teachers, doctors and managers. Respect for the powers that be had been passed down for generations and was a natural part of life. It was thought best to keep to their own sort, which seldom required any expansion of their horizons. There was no bitterness; a great sense of solidarity with the other families in the area prevailed, and even when times were hard, people helped each other out in any way they could. And had a booze-up on the weekend to recharge the batteries. But they were always at a dis advantage to those allied with words. Lowered heads and caps in hand at PTA meetings and visits to the doctor. And anyone who tried to make his way beyond his circle, as though it wasn’t good enough, was regarded as a traitor. Writers were something mysterious and other, with a distant, elevated mystique. Like magicians, they knew about things that wereimpossible for other people to grasp; they could capture the unattainable and describe what nobody else could see.
    She remembered how proud she was at first to bear the Ragnerfeldt name. Her friends would get a dreamy look in their eyes whenever he was mentioned, and they wanted to hear all about what he was like. But when they noticed her ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm, she was met with suspicion, as if her words had sprung from envy. No one wanted to hear anything negative about Axel Ragnerfeldt, the national treasure. With all his wisdom about good and evil he had chiselled such astonishing stories out of their Swedish language. She stopped saying what she felt and wholeheartedly joined his crowd of admirers, at least outwardly. It was easier that way. The tremendous awe she felt for her father-in-law had made her tongue-tied, and she had never got to know him. Now he was the one who was mute, and even though she would never in her life admit it openly, it sometimes felt like a liberation.
    ‘I’m off now.’
    Louise got up from the kitchen table and tightened her dressing-gown belt. ‘Wait a second!’
    ‘But I have to be there in ten minutes.’
    She rushed through the flat and caught up with her daughter in the hall. She hugged her quickly and zipped up her jacket.
    ‘Bye then. It was at seven o’clock, wasn’t it? Did Pappa ring you?’
    ‘No.’
    Louise swallowed and struggled to smile. ‘He’ll show up, you’ll see.’
    Ellen didn’t reply. The door closed and Louise was left standing there. She closed her eyes and cursed the fact that she’d become part of this. Her own suffering was nothing compared to what she saw in her daughter’s eyes. The appeal for attention. That just once he might notice her.
    * * *
    Thirteen years had passed since they first met. She was thirty then and Jan-Erik was thirty-seven. Two years earlier, after an eight-year relationship, she had been left by the man she had thought was the one. Her biological clock was not yet ticking, but the sadness and humiliation she felt at being dumped had made her wary. Then she had met Jan-Erik. His courtship had been the symbol that great true love arrives as suddenly as lightning. His determination had