Each time he met someone he hadn’t seen in a long time, the same question:Weren’t you supposed to…?
“I needed to stay,” he said simply. “I’m studying to become a teacher.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Filip offered him a drag of his cigarette. Sander took a look at the bloody filter and declined once more.
“How have you been?”
Sander was asking out of concern, or at least he tried to make it sound that way. Filip chuckled like it was a bad joke.
“You’re looking at it. But don’t worry about me.” He raised his head to look at Sander. “You live with Felicia, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But I saw you last week, with a blond girl. Out in Tylösand.”
74
He had told himself that the throngs on the beach at Tylösand would render them invisible. But Halmstad was a small city, in the end, and no affair could go on unnoticed forever. The only question was who would find them out first, and what would happen next.
“What’s her name?” Filip asked.
“Felicia and I…we’ve been having a rough time.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, I don’t care. Anyway, we’re all made of the same stuff.”
Stuff,Sander would think later on, or could he actually have saiddust?
“I’ve cheated in every single relationship I’ve had.” Tendrils of bluish smoke rose from Filip’s lips. “If you can call them relationships. But what’s her name?”
“Olivia.”
Like he was confessing a sin. That was how her name sounded.
Could it be, Sander had begun to wonder, that sometimes you get so used to living with guilt that when it finally begins to fade, you have to replace it with a fresh source? Even in the gloomier emotions there can be a certain amount of security, and Sander had lived with his guilt about Killian’s death for so long that it was as familiar to him as hunger or exhaustion. But without it, he didn’t know who he would be, what would happen. Maybe that was why he cheated.
“What were you doing in Tylösand, though?” he asked Filip.
“Swimming, obviously, like everyone else.” Filip laughed at himself. “No, I had an errand to run out there. You know how they do an ‘after beach’ there, do you ever go?”
“Sometimes.”
“Some poor bastard sits on a stool playing ‘Wonderwall’ while people get drunk in the sunshine. Sometimes they want to top it off with something a little stronger than alcohol, you know.”
“Good business, I take it?”
“Crazy good. That sheet you tore out of my notebook, remember that? Christ were they ever gunning for me after the landslide, those two cops. Fuck. Hey, I know it was you. It’s okay, I’m not angry. Not right now, anyway.”
Sander found Filip’s hopscotching between different parts of their past disorienting.
“I never thought you were the one who caused the landslide,” Sander said tentatively, as though he were trying to defend himself against the next accusation. “Everyone knows it was Sten.”
“Mm.” Filip didn’t say anything more for a long time. “Then why did you give them that piece of paper, you bastard, if you didn’t even think it was me?”
“I guess I just wanted to do the right thing. Or I don’t know. I just did it. But it would have seemed weird if I hadn’t too. Like I was trying to hide something, to protect myself. Or you.”
