Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman

Author:Fredrik Backman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

20

Today is the day after, and it’s one of the absolute worst days of Britt-Marie’s life. She has a bump on her head and apparently she has broken two fingers. At least that is what Ben’s mother tells her, and Ben’s mother is a nurse, after all, so Britt-Marie has to assume she is qualified to comment on such matters. They are sitting on a little bench behind a curtain at a hospital in town. Britt-Marie has a Band-Aid on her forehead and her hand in a bandage, and she’s doing her absolute utmost not to cry. Ben’s mother keeps her hand on her sore wrist, but she doesn’t ask how all this happened. Britt-Marie is grateful for that, because she’d rather no one ever found out.

Having said that, this is how it all did happen:

To begin with, Britt-Marie slept all night through for the first time since she had come to Borg. She slept the unreflective sleep of a child, and she woke up in great spirits. Another day. This alone should immediately have made her suspicious, because little good can come of waking up all enthusiastic like that. She leapt out of bed and immediately started cleaning Bank’s kitchen. Not because she needed to but rather because Bank wasn’t at home and the kitchen was just there when Britt-Marie came down the stairs. Simply put, she had never met a kitchen she did not want to clean. After this was done, she took a walk through Borg to the recreation center. Then cleaned it from top to bottom. Made sure all the pictures were hanging straight, even the ones with soccer balls in them. She stood absolutely still in front of them and looked at her reflection in the glass of the frames.

Then she rubbed the white mark on her ring finger. People who have not worn a wedding ring for almost their entire lives are unaware of how a mark like that looks. Some people take theirs off from time to time—while doing the washing-up, for instance—but Britt-Marie had never once taken off her ring until the day she took it off once and for all. So the white mark is permanent, as if her skin had another color when she was married. As if this is what is left of her, underneath, if you scrape off everything she turned into.

With this thought in mind Britt-Marie set off for the pizzeria, to wake up Somebody. They drank coffee and Britt-Marie inquired in a friendly way about postcards and whether Somebody happened to stock them. Somebody did indeed. They were extremely old and had the caption “Welcome to Borg” written across them. That was how you knew they were old, said Somebody; it was a long time since anyone uttered those words.

Britt-Marie wrote a postcard to Kent. Her message was very short. “Hello. This is from Britt-Marie. Sorry for all the pain I have caused you. I hope you are feeling well. I hope you have clean shirts. Your electric shaver is in the third drawer in the bathroom.

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