Lately he had been spending a lot of time gazing out of windows, lost in daydreaming. Surely that was a bad sign, but for what? Middle age or discontentment or the opposite? He really couldn´t say. He supposed he could rule out middle-age, since he wasn´t even in his mid thirties yet and he didn´t feel the least bit discontent.
He had gotten rid of Anna as soon as possible.
They had talked through her business plan and when she had asked him out to lunch, he had graciously declined and she had understood that she had only been one-night stand for him. He hoped she wasn´t desperate or clingy, because he had had his fare share of bad experiences with hysterical, love- sick women. One had once put an axe through the windshield of his brand new Aston Martin. Women really knew how to hurt you and that had really hurt.
An axe for God´s sake. That had been in London.
He had sold the car when he moved back to Öland. There was just no way you could be respected and liked by Ölanders and drive yourself around in an Aston Martin. People just wouldn´t have it, unless you were King Gustav, who was regularly spotted in the summer driving his Ferrari or one of his other sports cars around the island. It was also acceptable if you were a Stockholmare, meaning someone from Stockholm, who had a summer house on the island, but spent most of the year in Stockholm. But for him as someone who lived there permanently, it was just not on. People would think he was an idiot for spending that much money on a car and they would probably be right.
God, he hoped Clarice was still there when he got home and Per Nielson had miraculously died of a heart attack.
Chapter 14
Clarice was having an unusually long day at the university. Normally she was only there to deliver her lectures followed by a bit of a question and answer session with the students and some more detailed follow up discussions in her office. She preferred doing all her paper work and research at home. She really didn´t like being around so many people all the time, it made her nervous and restless.
And she hated long, boring meetings spiked with unnecessary detailed discussions about issues that didn´t really concern her. But she had noticed that Swedish people loved boring, prolonged meetings and discussing every point on the agenda to death.
Due to her little scene with Sören that morning she had missed breakfast and since she hated canteen food she had skipped lunch too, thinking she would be going home soon and would cook something there. This was a relic from her past. She had grown up learning to cherish good food. Which was why she was always happy to join Sören at any given meal he invited her to share with him, because Nanna was an excellent cook.
And she also enjoyed his company, but would rather hack of her right hand before admitting this to anyone but herself. Clarice was a very accomplished cook too but since she lived alone and never invited anyone home, her cooking skills had remained as yet undetected by anyone who knew her. That was fine with her.
So she had been packing up and just about to leave when the department secretary had informed her about the meeting with the other faculty members.
“Shit” she had thought, rather uncharacteristically, since she rarely cursed, “Now I´m going to have to get something from the canteen.”
She had bought herself a prawn sandwich, which the woman in the canteen had to prepare freshly for her, since the lunch time crowd had already been and gone and prawn sandwiches were very popular. Preparing the sandwich took an unduly long time, but Clarice was used to this by now. Swiftness of service was not a common thing anywhere outside of Stockholm. When she had first moved to Kalmar she had paid a visit to McDonalds. All she had wanted was a cappuccino to go, since she never ate fast food. The place had been packed but the staff behind the counter had carried on serving people at their usual calm and unhurried pace and Clarice had waited in line a good thirty minutes before she was served. What had fascinated her most was that not a single person in the seemingly endless queue complained. Everyone had just stood patiently and quietly in line until it was their time to be served. Clarice had visited many countries where the slowness of the staff would have resulted in a riot. But this was Sweden and slow service was a way of life.
Clarice was eventually presented with a prawn sandwich and prepared for a long afternoon locked up in the faculty meeting room. As expected every point on the seemingly endless agenda was magnified from every angle and her mind began to wander. Usually she was always caught up in her work, pondering mathematical theories while giving the impression of being an avid listener. Today her mind kept going back to Rettinge and her little home there. She loved the gård and she loved Vickleby, it was the most beautiful place she had ever lived in. Well, maybe not ever, but for a long time anyway. And she had lived in quite a lot of places in the past few years, never staying long. As soon as people got too close or inquisitive she had packed up and left. She hadn´t even always been employed in her line of work, which meant academic work. Once she had worked at a Vineyard in the south of Germany, picking grapes and generally helping with the busy time of autumn harvesting. She knew about wine, another relic from her past.
Sören was not inquisitive and neither were any of the other people on the gård. Swedish people were in general not inquisitive. They liked to keep to themselves.
And that suited her very well.
Sören had instinctively known when to stop asking questions. And Tilda, Magnus and Alma were too wrapped up in their own life to be bothered about Clarice.
She thought about Tilda and her little son. She had grown very fond of the little chap. He was adorable with his shock of brown hair and those glasses. He looked like the little professor. She liked children because they took everything in their stride and always lived in the present with no concept of tomorrow. And they soaked up information like a sponge.
She knew that Tilda was a little weary of her and didn´t quite know what to make of Clarice and of course she had this huge minority complex, because she was just a cleaning lady.
Clarice didn´t give a toss about anyone´s line of work as long as they were good people and didn´t intrude on her life. She actually liked and admired Tilda.
Sören had filled her in on the sorry details of Tilda´s life and considering what she had gone through, she was holding up really well and doing a great job on the kid.
At least Clarice had had a happy and privileged childhood, regardless of what had happened later. She wished that horrid old man, Tilda´s father would just go up in smoke. He was a real pest; if not for him life on Rettinge would be perfect.
Chapter 15
When Sören returned from work in the evening he was really tired, almost exhausted.
The unusually persistent economic crisis had taken its toll on everyone and he couldn´t exclude himself from the general feeling of insecurity and apprehension every employer and employee was going through. His clients were nervous and unwilling to part with large chunks of money right now and uneasy about bigger investments. It took a lot of diplomatic smooth talking on his part to hold everything together. He turned right into Rettinge, passed Tilda´s and Clarice´s houses and his heart stopped. Her car was not there. She was not home and she was always home by this time. She never went anywhere, so where the hell was she? He got out of the car , walked over to her house and knocked. Nothing happened. He looked through the window, but since she had brought no personal items with her, the look of the place didn´t really give him any clue, whether she still lived there or not. Had she packed up and booked a one way ticket to Brazil never to be seen again, as he had always feared she might? Strangely enough he felt a little scared. He knew nothing about her, he wouldn´t know how to find her, if she had left. Should he ask Tilda if she had seen Clarice leave with a suitcase and risk looking like a fool?
Maybe she was just working late, but surely lectures where during the day? Students needed time to party in the evening, right? There were no lectures in the evening? Maybe she had had an accident, perhaps he should he call the police? But he