Fredrik Backman - Britt-Marie Was Here [Britt-Marie var här]

Britt-Marie rubs her ring finger in front of the mirror. The white line there is like a tattoo. Taunting her. There’s a knock on the bathroom door.

Pirate is standing outside.

“Ha… Did you win?”

“Two to zero!” Pirate nods blissfully.

“Because actually I have only stayed in here all this time because you told me so. I have no intestinal problems,” says Britt-Marie very seriously.

Pirate nods, in some confusion, mumbles, “ Okay ,” and points at the front door, which is open.

“Sven is here again.”

The policeman stands on the threshold and lifts his hand in a fumbling wave. Britt-Marie draws back, deeply affronted but not sure why, and closes the bathroom door behind her. Once she has fixed her hair properly she takes a deep breath and reemerges.

“Yes?” she says to the policeman.

The policeman smiles and holds out a piece of paper, which he drops just as he’s giving it to Britt-Marie.

“Whoops, whoops, sorry, sorry, I just thought I’d give you this. Well, I thought, or we, we thought…”

He makes a gesture towards the pizzeria. Britt-Marie assumes he means he has spoken to Somebody. He smiles again. Clasps his hands together on top of his stomach, then changes his mind and crosses his arms just below his chin.

“We were thinking you need somewhere to live, of course, of course, and I understood you didn’t want to stay at the hotel in town… Not that you can’t live anywhere you want to. Of course! We just thought this might be a good alternative for you. Perhaps?”

Britt-Marie looks at the paper. It’s a handwritten, misspelled advertisement for a room that’s available for rent. At the bottom is an image of a little man wearing a hat, who appears to be dancing. The relationship between the man and the advertisement is extremely unclear.

“I’m the one who helped her make the ad,” says the policeman enthusiastically. “I did a course in it, in town. She’s a very nice lady, the one who’s letting the room, I mean, she’s just moved back to Borg. Or, I mean, it’s just temporary, of course, she’s selling the house. But it’s here in Borg, not far at all… it’s walkable but I can give you a lift, if you like?”

Britt-Marie’s eyebrows inch closer together. There’s a police car parked outside.

“In that?”

“Yes, I heard your car’s at the workshop. But I can drive you, it’s no trouble at all!”

“It’s obviously not a problem for you. Whereas I’m supposed to be driven around this community in a police car, am I, so everyone thinks I’m a criminal, is that what you are telling me?”

The policeman looks ashamed of himself.

“No, no, no. Of course, you wouldn’t want that.”

“I certainly would not,” says Britt-Marie. “Was there anything else?”

He shakes his head despondently and turns to leave. Britt-Marie closes the door.

The children stay in the recreation center until she has tumble-dried their clothes.

Clothes that cannot be tumble-dried she hangs up to dry, so the children can pick them up the next day. Most of them go home in their soccer jerseys. In a certain sense this is how Britt-Marie turns into their team coach. It’s just that no one has told her about it yet.

None of the children thank her for doing their laundry. The door closes behind them and the recreation center is steeped in the sort of silence that only children and soccer balls can fill. Britt-Marie puts away plates and soft-drink cans from the sofa table. Omar and Vega have left their plates on the dish rack. They haven’t washed them up or put them in the dishwasher, haven’t even rinsed them off. All they’ve done is put them there.

Kent also used to do that sometimes as if expecting to be thanked for it. As if he wanted Britt-Marie to know that when the plate was back in its place, washed and dried, in the cupboard tomorrow, he had certainly done his allotted share of the task.

There’s a knock at the front door of the recreation center. It’s not a civilized hour, so Britt-Marie assumes that it’s one of the children who’s forgotten something. She opens with a:

“Ha?”

Then she sees that it’s the policeman standing outside again. He smiles awkwardly. Britt-Marie immediately changes the tone to a:

“Ha!”

Which is something quite different. At least the way Britt-Marie says it. The policeman swallows and seems to be drumming up some courage. A little too abruptly he whips out a bamboo curtain, almost smacking it into Britt-Marie’s forehead.

“Sorry, yes, well, I just wanted to… this is a bamboo screen!” he says and almost drops it into the mud.

“Ha…” says Britt-Marie, more guarded now.

He nods enthusiastically.

“I made it! I did a course in town. ‘Far Eastern Home Design.’ ”

He nods again. As if Britt-Marie is supposed to say something. She doesn’t. He holds the bamboo screen in front of his face.

“You can hold it against the window. So no one sees it’s you.”

He points cheerfully at the police car. Then at the bamboo screen.

Then at the rain that has started falling again. As rain does in Borg. Which must obviously be quite pleasant for the rain, not having anything better to do with its time.

“And you can keep it over your head when we go out to the car, like an umbrella, so you don’t ruin your hair.” He swallows again and fingers the bamboo.

“You don’t have to, of course, of course. I was just thinking that you have to live somewhere while you’re in Borg. I was thinking, so to speak, well, hmm, you understand. That it’s hardly suitable for a lady to live in a recreation center, so to speak.”

They stand in silence for a long time after that. Britt-Marie switches her hands the other way, and then at long last exhales deeply with immeasurable patience. Not at all a sigh. Then she says:

“I need to get my things.”

He nods eagerly. She closes the door and leaves him out there in the rain.

That is how it goes on — the thing that has started.

Britt-Marie opens the door. He gives her the bamboo screen and she gives him the balcony boxes.

“I was told there was a large flat-pack from IKEA in the backseat of your car, should I load it into my car?” he asks helpfully.

“You certainly shall not!” answers Britt-Marie, as if he had suggested setting fire to it.

“Of course not, of course not,” he says apologetically.

Britt-Marie sees the men with the beards and caps leave the pizzeria. They nod at the policeman, he waves back. They seem not to see Britt-Marie at all.

The policeman hurries off towards his patrol car with the balcony boxes, then he hurries back to walk alongside Britt-Marie. He doesn’t hold her arm, but he does position his arm a few inches under hers without actually touching her. So he can catch her in case she slips.

She holds the bamboo screen like an umbrella over her hair (because in fact bamboo screens work quite brilliantly as umbrellas), and keeps it in a firm grip over her head throughout the journey, so the policeman doesn’t notice that her hairstyle has been ruined.

“I should like to stop by a cash machine on the way, so I can pay for the room,” she says. “If it’s no bother to you. I obviously don’t want to cause you any bother,” she adds in a bothered tone of voice.

“It’s no bother at all!” says the policeman, who seems free of any kind of bothered tendencies. He doesn’t mention the fact that the nearest cash machine is actually a twelve-mile detour.