A Question Mark is Half a Heart by Sofia Lundberg

Author:Sofia Lundberg [Lundberg, Sofia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-11-09T17:00:00+00:00

THEN

HEIVIDE, GOTLAND, 1982

The rocking chair squeaked softly, the sound filling the empty house. Elin sat on the bottom step and listened. Marianne had been sitting there almost all day, just staring in front of her and rocking. Back and forth, back and forth. No lunch had been prepared, no afternoon coffee. Not a word had crossed her lips. Not a smile. Not even when Elin had stuck her head in and met her gaze.

She’d had to look after the animals in the barn all by herself. Micke and Fredrik were out in the fields. On the days when there was extra work to do they didn’t come home until late in the evening. She could hear the eternal ticking of the kitchen clock and the infernal grumbling of her stomach. She’d lost track of time.

Erik and Edvin. Where had they got to? They needed food. She listened but couldn’t hear anything from upstairs. She went out into the farmyard, stumbling over the gravel in her clogs, twisting her ankle but limping slowly on, looking everywhere. At her heels padded Sunny, who had been out on her own all day. When Elin stopped and scratched behind her ear, the dog squirmed in gratitude and laid a paw on her arm.

Right in front of them on the gravel lay Edvin’s bicycle, with the chunky red saddle he was so proud of.

She eventually found them in the tractor shed, behind heaps of junk they’d fashioned into a den. Long, irregular planks, damaged by the sun and water. Rusty bits of corrugated tin. Oil drums. A tractor tyre and a sack of hay had been turned into a sofa and they both lay in it, with a well-thumbed Donald Duck comic between them. Elin stopped a little way off, listening to Erik reading the speech bubbles to Edvin with great effort. Edvin was resting his head on Erik’s chest. Between them lay an open packet of crackers. She crept up to them and squeezed in next to Erik, took the comic and went on reading where Erik pointed. Erik and Edvin each took a fresh cracker and crunched on them. The heat shimmered under the tin roof and their bodies were clammy and warm. On one of the roof trusses a pigeon sat cooing. In the grass along the walls the grasshoppers chirped.

Edvin turned the cracker packet upside-down, crumbs raining down all over his top.

‘Elin, I’m still hungry,’ he moaned, clutching his belly.

‘Me too. Mama’s tired today, so we’ll have to make our own food.’

Elin fried some fish fingers in the cast-iron frying pan and boiled some quick-cook pasta. When she put the pans on the table, Marianne came shuffling over and sat down at one end. In one hand she was holding her bankbook, its corners torn, the pages yellowing and full of handwritten figures in blue and black ink. She flicked through it, staring at the numbers. Elin set a plate down in front of her.

‘Is money tight again now? Is it, Mama?’

Marianne raised her eyes and quickly met Elin’s.

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