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

The girl checks her watch.

“Okay,” she says.

Britt-Marie feels her tone has a note of criticism in it.

“The children are twins and we have a balcony. It’s more work than you think, having a balcony.”

The girl nods tentatively.

“How old are your children?”

“Kent’s children. They’re thirty.”

“So they’ve left home?”

“Obviously.”

“And you’re sixty-three years old?”

“Yes,” says Britt-Marie dismissively, as if this was highly irrelevant.

The girl clears her throat as if, actually, it’s very relevant indeed.

“Well, Britt-Marie, quite honestly, because of the financial crisis and all that, I mean, there’s a scarcity of jobs for people in your… situation.”

The girl sounds a bit as if “situation” was not her first choice as a way of concluding the sentence. Britt-Marie smiles patiently.

“Kent says that the financial crisis is over. He’s an entrepreneur, you must understand. So he understands these kind of things, which are possibly a little outside your field of competence.”

The girl blinks for an unnecessary amount of time. Checks her watch. She seems uncomfortable, which vexes Britt-Marie. She quickly decides to give the girl a compliment, just to show her goodwill. She looks around the room for something to compliment her about, and finally manages to say, with as generous a smile as she can muster:

“You have a very modern hairstyle.”

“What? Oh. Thanks,” she replies, her fingertips moving self-consciously towards her scalp.

“It’s very courageous of you to wear your hair so short when you have such a large forehead.”

Why does the girl look offended? Britt-Marie wonders. Clearly that’s what happens when you try to be sociable towards young people these days. The girl rises from her chair.

“Thanks for coming, Britt-Marie. You are registered in our database. We’ll be in touch!”

She holds out her hand to say good-bye. Britt-Marie stands up and places the plastic mug of coffee in her hand.

“When?”

“Well, it’s difficult to say.”

“I suppose I’m supposed to just sit and wait,” counters Britt-Marie with a diplomatic smile, “as if I didn’t have anything better to do?”

The girl swallows.

“Well, my colleague will be in touch with you about a jobseekers’ training course, an—”

“I don’t want a course. I want a job.”

“Absolutely, but it’s difficult to say when something will turn up….”

Britt-Marie takes a notebook from her pocket.

“Shall we say tomorrow, then?”

“What?”

“Could something turn up tomorrow?”

The girl clears her throat.

“Well, it could, or I’d rather…”

Britt-Marie gets a pencil from her bag, eyes the pencil with some disapproval, and then looks at the girl.

“Might I trouble you for a pencil sharpener?” she asks.

“A pencil sharpener?” asks the girl, as if she had been asked for a thousand-year-old magical artifact.

“I need to put our meeting on the list.”

Some people don’t understand the value of lists, but Britt-Marie is not one of those people. She has so many lists that she has to keep a separate list to list all the lists. Otherwise anything could happen. She could die. Or forget to buy baking soda.

The girl offers her a pen and says something to the effect of, “Actually I don’t have time tomorrow,” but Britt-Marie is too busy peering at the pen to hear what she’s saying.

“Surely we can’t write lists in ink ?” she bursts out.

“That’s all I’ve got.” The girl says this with some finality. “Is there anything else I can help you with today, Britt-Marie?”

“Ha,” Britt-Marie responds after a moment.

Britt-Marie often says that. “Ha.” Not as in “ha-ha” but as in “aha,” spoken in a particularly disappointed tone. Like when you find a wet towel thrown on the bathroom floor.

“Ha.” Immediately after saying this, Britt-Marie always firmly closes her mouth, to emphasize this is the last thing she intends to say on the subject. Although it rarely is the last thing.

The girl hesitates. Britt-Marie grasps the pen as if it’s sticky. Looks at the list marked “Tuesday” in her notebook, and, at the top, above “Cleaning” and “Shopping,” she writes “Unemployment office to contact me.”

She hands back the pen.

“It was very nice to meet you,” says the girl robotically. “We’ll be in touch!”

“Ha,” says Britt-Marie with a nod.

Britt-Marie leaves the unemployment office. The girl is obviously under the impression that this is the last time they’ll meet, because she’s unaware of how scrupulously Britt-Marie sticks to her lists. Clearly the girl has never seen Britt-Marie’s balcony.

It’s an astonishingly, astonishingly presentable balcony.

It’s January outside, a winter chill in the air but no snow on the ground — below freezing without any evidence of it being so. The very worst time of year for balcony plants.

After leaving the unemployment office, Britt-Marie goes to a supermarket that is not her usual supermarket, where she buys everything on her list. She doesn’t like shopping on her own, because she doesn’t like pushing the shopping cart. Kent always pushes the shopping cart while Britt-Marie walks at his side and holds on to a corner of it. Not because she’s trying to steer, only that she likes holding on to things while he is also holding on to them. For the sake of that feeling they are going somewhere at the same time.

She eats her dinner cold at exactly six o’clock. She’s used to sitting up all night waiting for Kent, so she tries to put his portion in the fridge. But the only fridge here is full of very small bottles of alcohol. She lowers herself onto a bed that isn’t hers, while rubbing her ring finger, a habit she falls into when she’s nervous.

A few days ago she was sitting on her own bed, spinning her wedding ring, after cleaning the mattress extra carefully with baking soda. Now she’s rubbing the white mark on her skin where the ring used to be.

The building has an address, but it’s certainly neither a place to live nor a home. On the floor are two rectangular plastic boxes for balcony flowers, but the hostel room doesn’t have a balcony. Britt-Marie has no one to sit up all night waiting for.

But she sits up anyway.

The unemployment office opens at 9:00. Britt-Marie waits until 9:02 before going in, because she doesn’t want to seem pigheaded.

“You were supposed to contact me today,” she announces, not at all pigheadedly, when the girl opens her office door.

“What?” the girl exclaims, her face entirely liberated from any kind of positive emotion. She is surrounded by similarly dressed people clutching plastic mugs. “Erm, look, we’re just about to begin a meeting….”

“Oh, right. I suppose it’s important?” says Britt-Marie, adjusting a crease in her skirt that only she can see.

“Well, yes…”

“And I’m not important, of course.”

The girl contorts herself as if her clothes have suddenly changed size.

“You know, I told you yesterday I’d be in touch if something turned up. I never said it would be tod—”

“But I’ve put it on the list,” says Britt-Marie, producing her notebook and pointing at it determinedly. “I wouldn’t have put it on the list if you hadn’t said it, you must understand that. And you made me write it in ink!”

The girl takes a deep breath. “Look, I’m very sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding, but I have to go back to my meeting.”