Part 11 (2/2)

'What?'

They all looked at her.

'We want to get to know you,' said Petrus. 'Tell us why you're so tense.'

They waited. She simply had to say something, but it was obvious what was worrying her. So why did she have to say it? And she didn't want to say anything while Mia was there, not when the children were listening. They were sitting quietly and attentively beside their parents, and all of them were looking at her.

'It's what happened,' she said. 'The accident by the Lobber. I saw them.'

'Annie,' said Petrus, leaning over towards her, so close she could feel his breath. It smelt odd. Like an animal's. Was it the goat's milk?

'You mustn't think about that any more,' he said, the smell wafting over her, sour and mild at the same time. 'It's in the past now. It has nothing to do with us up here.'

'But I saw . . . you have to think about how . . . well, how it happened. That it'll be cleared up, I mean. We live so near.'

'No.'

What a fantastic thing to say! No. We don't live near. But she had no time to protest.

'You've left that now,' said Petrus. 'The tabloid world. You're here now.'

'Lotta, dear!'

Brita had put her arm round the bony back. Lotta looked like a child curled up on the floor. She raised her face and it was wet. Wet and swollen.

'What is it now?'

'It's hopeless because everyone notices it at once. I'm doomed. It's always like this. Everyone can tell by looking at me.'

'I don't think so,' said Brita.

'Yes, they do even that kid. The new one. ”Why has she got such grey teeth?” she said. I can't take it. She saw it straight away.'

Annie looked at Mia, who had stiffened, pouting out her lips. She knew Mia was clenching her teeth hard. Her eyebrows shot forward and her face crumpled. The little monkey had appeared. Jesus, now she's really going to blow her top, Annie thought.

'Mia didn't say quite that,' she said quickly. 'You said just now you've been . . . troubled for several days. And we only came this afternoon.'

Cool and sharp. Oh, Christ! She had also spoken loudly, as if in front of a cla.s.s. All of them except Lotta looked at her.

'You don't have to defend yourself, Annie. Not here. We're friends,' said Brita. Annie wanted to say she wasn't defending herself, but didn't because she had seen from the corner of her eye a flash of something unbelievable Dan t.i.ttering.

'Has anyone got anything else?' Petrus asked. He talks like a book, Annie thought. Like a d.a.m.ned Bible. No doubt he had noticed that everything was going off the rails.

Sigrid with her gleaming plaits drew a deep breath.

'Yes?'

'The girl plays with Barbie dolls,' she said.

'Mia?'

She nodded repeatedly.

'Yes, well,' said Petrus. 'We're going to forget about that here. There's so much else. There are lambs and kittens, Mia. Alive and a lot of fun.'

He sounded kind, even very kind, but Mia's face was expressionless. He went on in his singsong voice as if at all costs he had to influence her. That wouldn't work, Annie knew. Not when she had that expression on her face.

'Barbie dolls are dead,' he said. 'Aren't they?'

Now there'll be h.e.l.l to pay, thought Annie. But to her surprise, Mia replied almost dispa.s.sionately: 'Then I suppose they should be buried.'

'That's right, that's right,' said Petrus. He gave Annie a smile and quite a genial look. It was the soft cloven beard that did it.

Then they broke up. It was warm outside, but they couldn't stay there because the stingers had emerged. She knew their name now, those almost invisible insects. They gave her an excuse to go into the house with Dan. Mia bustled in, fetched Barbie and Ken, then vanished again.

Annie registered that the mattress on Lotta's bed had gone. Perhaps she ought to sort that out now, but it could wait for the time being. They could have one night to themselves. Dan disappeared again. She didn't know what he did when he was gone, but things would become clearer. She went out and looked into the kitchen. There was an iron stove, a table covered with oilcloth, one cupboard on the wall, and some wooden boxes on the floor, apparently used as cupboards or shelves, for there were bags of groceries in them. Everything was clean and bunches of herbs were hanging drying above the stove. onis and Enel, she thought. They're sure to be clean people. This'll be all right. But Dan must make some cupboards.

Wailing sounds of singing came through the window, and to her surprise she saw it was Mia, with Sigrid and Gertrud joining in. A drift of flowers lay heaped on the slope above the house and Mia was squealing away, waving a sprig of birch about.

Going out, Annie saw Barbie's bare foot sticking out of the heap of flowers. The rigid little foot filled her with unease. Mia was burying Ken and Barbie with great enthusiasm. She had fas.h.i.+oned a cross with sticks, neatly made and fastened together with tacks. She must have had help. Perhaps Sigrid was already capable of that.

'Eaaarth to eaaarth, duuuust to duuust, G.o.d is deaaaath, deaaaath, eaaarth to eaaarth, duuust to duust,' Mia was chanting, and Annie wished she would get it over and done with.

'The bird shall come, the great bird, strike dust in deeeath!'

Sigrid and little Gertrud were trying to sing along but had no idea what to do with the words, or the tune, either. At last they had finished, as definitively as if it had gone according to the book.

'Now they're asleep,' said Sigrid quietly.

'They must have a tent,' said Mia and bustled inside. She seemed quite untroubled by the insects, but Annie couldn't stand them any longer. Moving to the kitchen window, she watched Mia put a handkerchief like a tent over the dolls and the harvest of flowers. Sigrid helped her prop it up with sticks and as soon as that was done, Mia left the other two without even looking at them.

She fell asleep the moment she was up in the top bunk. She ought to have washed, but Annie didn't really know how to go about it. Tomorrow, she thought. That's when we'll make a proper start. Dan had come in and stretched out on the bed. His face was very pale.

'What was it about Lotta that everyone saw?' she asked him.

'What?'

'That grey-teeth business.'

'We'll take that up when Lotta's with us.'

He had closed his eyes, his skin moist and greyish. He isn't well, she thought. He's having a bad time again. Yet she couldn't help asking again.

'I want to know.'

'Amphetamines.'

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