The Spring Tide Read Online Free PDF

you’re going to get back into form!’
    ‘Another time.’
    ‘That’s what you always say nowadays! OK then, but don’t blame me if you miss out!’
    ‘Promise. Hope it works out with Jakob!’
    ‘Yeah, keep your fingers crossed! Hugs and kisses!’
    Olivia didn’t have time to say hugs before Lenni had hung up. Lenni was already on her way somewhere else, somewhere with a bit of action.
    But why had she really said no? She had been thinking herself about guys just before Lenni phoned. Had she really become as deadly boring as Lenni claimed? College project work?
    Why had she gone and said that?
     
    Olivia put some fresh cat food in the bowl and emptied the litter tray. Then she sank down beside her laptop. What she really would have liked was a bath, but there was something wrong with the drains which meant that the water ran out over the floor when she let the plug out of the bath and she simply couldn’t deal with that just now. She’d do something about it tomorrow. Put it on her things-to-do-tomorrow list. A list that she had neatly pushed ahead of her most of the spring.
    Instead she opened Google Earth.
    Nordkoster.
    She was still fascinated by the possibility of sitting at home in front of a screen and just hovering down almost to the window level of buildings and dwellings all over the world. She always felt spy-vibes when she was doing it. Almost like a peeping Tom.
    But now they were a different sort of vibes, she noticed. The more she zoomed in on the island, the landscape, the small roads, the houses, the closer she got to her goal, the stronger the vibes became. And then she got there.
    Hasslevikarna.
    The coves on the northern part of the island.
    Almost like a little bay, she thought. She tried to get as close as possible. And that was pretty detailed. She could see the sand dunes above, and the beach. The beach where the pregnant woman had been buried. There it was in front of her, on the screen.
    Grey, grainy.
    She immediately started imagining where. Where had the woman been buried?
    Was it there?
    Or there?
    Where did they find the coat?
    And where had that little boy been sitting when he saw it all? Was it over there by the rocks on the west side of the beach? Or on the east side? Up by the trees?
    She suddenly noticed how irritated she had become because she couldn’t get any closer. All the way down. Almost with her feet on the beach.
    To be there.
    But she couldn’t. This was the best she could do. She turned off her computer. Now she was going to treat herself to a beer. A beer like Ulf had gone on about a couple of times. But she was going to have a beer on her own, at home, without having to rub shoulders with her classmates in the pub.
    On her own.
    Olivia liked being single. It was entirely her own choice. She had never had any problem with boys, on the contrary. Throughout her childhood and teens she received confirmation that she was attractive. First, all those cute photos of her as a little girl, and Arne’s mass of holiday videos starring little Olivia. Then there were all those admiring glances as she stepped out into the big world. For a while she amused herself by wearing sunglasses and observing all the boys she met beneath them. How their gaze would seek her out wherever she went and wouldn’t let go until she had passed. She soon tired of that. She knew who she was and what she had. In that respect. It gave her a sense of security.
    She didn’t have to go out hunting.
    Like Lenni.
    Olivia had her mum and her little flat. Two rooms painted white, with wooden floors. It wasn’t hers for real, she rented it from a cousin who was working for the Swedish Export Council in South Africa. He’d be there two years. Meanwhile, she was living here. Amidst his furniture.
    She just had to put up with that.
    And she had Elvis, of course. The cat that had been left after an intense relationship with a sexy Jamaican. A guy she had bumped into at Nova Bar on Skånegatan, first she’d