Frozen Moment
Authors: Camilla Ceder
Translated from the Swedish
by Marlaine Delargy
First published in Great
Britain in 2010
by
Weidenfeld Nicolson
An imprint of the Orion
Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House, 5 Upper St
Martin's Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An
Hachette UK Company
© Camilla Ceder 2009
Translation © Marlaine
Delargy 2010
First published in Sweden as
Fruset dgonblick
in 2009
by
Wahlstrom Widstrand
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The right of Camilla Ceder to
be identified as the author of
this
work has been asserted in
accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this
book are fictitious, and any
resemblance
to actual persons living or
dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 o 297 85947 5
(cased)
ISBN 978 o 297 85949 9 (trade
paperback)
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Table of Contents
20
December 2006
In
the old days, when they were both working, Åke Melkersson liked to get up an
hour before his wife - she was more of a night person - just to indulge himself
for that hour with a cup of coffee and the crossword in the morning paper. A
quarter of an hour before they were due to leave, he would wake Kristina; she
would get dressed more or less in her sleep, then stumble her way to the garage
and collapse in the passenger seat with a blanket over her knees. She would
sleep all the way to the timber factory gate, where he would get out and she
would drive the short distance to Hjällbo and the post office where she had
worked for so many years.
In
the afternoons she would pick him up at the factory gate at twenty to six,
every day except Thursday when she arrived two hours later after meeting her
sister at Dahl's for coffee and cakes. And so on Thursdays he would have a
shower at work instead of when he got home.
Since
Kristina retired he had had the car to himself, and had been forced to rent a
space in the factory car park for the first time in twenty-seven years. Sixty
kronor a month it cost him. At first he had thought about leaving the car in
the free car park down by the holiday cottages and walking the last bit of the
journey. It wasn't the money that annoyed him. It was just so penny-pinching on
the part of the company.
Anyway,
now he didn't need the space any more. He had paid until the end of the month,
but he wouldn't need it after today - his last day at work.
The
realisation had coursed through his body like an electric shock when the alarm
clock went off. For a second he had considered calling in sick for the first
time in many years, pretending that he had been struck down by a nasty bout of
the flu in order to avoid the obligatory cake and the laboured speech from the
director.
A
frozen branch had caught on the dining room window during the night and was
stuck fast in the rime. December hadn't been this cold for a long time. He
lingered over his empty coffee cup and thought that this was the last time he
would spend an hour like this: sitting alone in the early morning, by the soft
light of the Advent candles in the holders Kristina had inherited from her
family.
He
decided to set off a little earlier than usual so that he would have time to
empty his locker before work started; he stood up a little too quickly and
knocked over the glass of milk which had been dangerously close to the edge of
the table.
When
he got in the car it was almost half past six. The first hesitant snowflakes
fell from the lingering night sky and landed on the windscreen. He switched on
the wipers and watched them sweep the snow- flakes away, hypnotised by the
movement.
Kristina
had been saying for days that it was going to snow, warning him that the roads
would be slippery; they were always at their most treacherous just before it
snowed. And you can always tell it's going to snow when the air tears at your
skin and ice particles form on your face, invisible but feeling like frosted
glass.
It
was those five years that made the difference, the fact that she was five years
older than him. It had been an issue when they decided to get married almost
half a century ago but the age difference had levelled out over the years, and
for most of their marriage they had hardly noticed it. Now it was making itself
felt once again. Kristina had turned seventy in May, but he thought it was the
lack of social contact that had changed her, rather than the encroaching years.
That was what had made it easier for anxiety to tighten its grip.
Was
that what happened to people who retired? People like us, he thought for a
second, who no longer have anything to do. Who have long ago exhausted every
topic of conversation and established that the pleasure gained from the various
activities available barely compensated for the effort involved.
The
last hill, the steepest, had been gritted. That was the only advantage of the
shocking amount of building and the mass influx of residents during the 90s:
the roads were gritted during the winter. From being the back of beyond, the
area had suddenly become highly desirable. One pastel-coloured house after
another had shot up with impressive speed. The potholes left by last year's
deep frost needed filling in, however, and Åke grimaced as the undercarriage of
his old Opel Astra jolted. It carried on banging rhythmically beneath his feet
as he took the bend at Johansson a little too quickly and felt the tyres lose
their grip on the surface of the road. No, the new highways agency was in no
hurry to get the holes filled in. After all, the younger generation drove
around in enormous cars with tyres to match.
As
he pulled out on to Göteborgsvägen, which was still deserted, early risers were
starting to switch on the lights in their kitchens. The windows of the houses
showed up as soft yellow points of light in the midst of all the blackness. He
braked and let the six-thirty bus pull out from the stop. As usual it was
almost empty
Bang-bang-bang.
It sounded like the exhaust pipe.