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

She bites her lip.

“You just think it’s silly, I suppose.”

He looks up from his telephone. Looks at her, breathing deeply and loudly, like he does just before he falls asleep and starts snoring.

“Yes, yes! Of course I can understand the whole darned thing, darling. I get it. It’s superb, really superb! Self-actualizing. Bloody superb. So now you’ve got it out of your system. And tomorrow we can go home!”

She bites her lip and lets go of his hand. Takes a firm grip on the vase and clambers out of the car.

“Damn it, darling! Don’t get annoyed again! I mean how long does this job last? How long will you be employed?”

“Three weeks,” she forces herself to say.

“And then? When those three weeks are over and you don’t have a job anymore? Will you be staying on in Borg as an unemployed person, then?”

When she doesn’t answer he sighs and gets out of the car.

“You do understand this is not your home, don’t you, darling?”

She is walking away, but she knows he’s right.

He breaks into a run and catches up with her. Takes the ceramic pot with the tulips from her, and carries them into the house. She walks slowly behind him.

“I’m sorry, my darling,” he says, with his hands cupped softly around her face, as they stand there in the hall.

She closes her eyes. He kisses her on the eyelids. He always used to do that, in the beginning, just after her mother had died. When she was at her loneliest in the world, until one day when he stood there on the landing in their apartment building, and then she was no longer at her loneliest. Because he needed her, and you are not alone when someone needs you. So she loves it when he kisses her eyelids.

“I’m just a bit stressed. Because of the meeting tomorrow. But everything is going to be all right. I promise.”

She wants to believe him. He grins and kisses her cheek and tells her not to worry. And that he will be picking her up tomorrow morning at six o’clock, so they don’t end up in the morning rush hour traffic.

Then he scoffs: “But you never know, if all three cars in Borg are out at the same time it could get a bit crowded!” She smiles, as if that’s funny. Stands in the hall with the door closed until he drives away.

Then she goes up the stairs and makes the bed. Puts her bags in order. Folds all the towels. Goes down the stairs again, out of the door, and walks through Borg. It’s dark and silent as if no one lives here, as if the soccer cup never even took place.

But the lights are on in the pizzeria; she can hear Bank and Somebody laughing in there.

There are other voices too. Clinking glasses. Songs about soccer, and other songs sung by Bank, the lyrics of which, certainly as far as Britt-Marie is concerned, do not bear repeating.

She unlocks the recreation center and turns on the kitchen light. Sits on a stool and hopes the rat will turn up. It fails to do so. Then she sits with her cell phone held in her cupped hands, as if it was liquid and might otherwise be spilled. She waits for a long time before she can bring herself to make the call.

The girl from the unemployment office answers on her third attempt.

“Britt-Marie?” she manages to say, sounding drowsy.

“I should like to hand in my notice,” Britt-Marie whispers.

It sounds as if the girl is stumbling about and knocking something over at the other end of the line. A lamp, perhaps.

“No, no, Mummy is just talking on the telephone, darling, go back to sleep, sweetie….”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. I was talking to my daughter. We fell asleep on the sofa.”

“I wasn’t aware you had a daughter.”

“I have two,” the girl replies, and it sounds as if she walks into a kitchen and turns on a lamp and starts making coffee. “What time is it?”

“Hardly a good time to be drinking coffee,” answers Britt-Marie.

“What can I do for you, Britt-Marie?”

“I should like to hand in my notice. I need to… come home,” whispers Britt-Marie.

“How did the soccer cup go?” the girl asks after a long silence.

Something about that question impacts Britt-Marie. It may be the case that after Ben’s goal she really did come back to earth as a different human being. She doesn’t know. But she takes a deep breath and tells the girl everything.

About communities situated by main roads and rats and people who wear their caps indoors. About boys’ first dates and jerseys hung up on pizzeria walls. It all pours out of her. About Faxin and bamboo screens, beer bottles presented in cellophane, and IKEA furniture. Pistols and crossword supplements. Policemen and entrepreneurs. Doing the Idiot in the beam of a truck’s headlights. Blue doors and old soccer matches. Purple tulips and whiskey and cigarettes and dead mothers. Flu. Soft-drink cans. 1–0 against the team from the town. A girl who covers a shot with her face. The universe.

“I suppose this must all sound very… silly,” she concludes.

The girl at the other end of the line can’t quite keep her voice steady as she replies:

“Have I told you why I work here, Britt-Marie? I don’t know if you know this, but you’re at the receiving end of an unbelievable amount of crap when you work at the unemployment office. People can be incredibly mean. And when I say ‘crap,’ Britt-Marie, you should know that I really do mean that quite literally. One time, someone sent me some shit in an envelope. “As if it’s my fault that there’s a financial crisis, sort of thing?”

Britt-Marie coughs.

“Might one ask how on earth they got it into the envelope?”

“The shit?”

“It must have been quite hard to… aim.”

The girl laughs loudly for several minutes. Britt-Marie is pleased about losing her voice, because it means the girl can’t hear that she’s also laughing. It may not be the universe, maybe not so, but the emotion levitates her slightly off the stool.

“Do you know why I work when there’s all this crap, Britt-Marie?”

“Why?”

“My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile.” The next words that come are smiling:

“You’re my sunny story, Britt-Marie.”

Britt-Marie swallows.

“It’s inappropriate to talk on the telephone in the middle of the night. I should like to contact you again tomorrow.”

“Sleep well, Britt-Marie,” says the girl softly.

“You too.”

Britt-Marie sits on the stool with the palms of her hands cupped around the telephone.

She catches herself wishing so fervently for the rat to turn up that when there’s a knock on the door, she thinks it finally has. Then she comes to her senses and realizes that rats can’t knock on doors, because they don’t have knuckles. At least she thinks they don’t.

“Anyone home?” Sami calls out from the door.

Britt-Marie flies off her stool.

“Did something happen? Has there been an accident?”

He stands calmly leaning against the doorpost.

“No. Why?”

“It’s the middle of the night, Sami. Surely one doesn’t just show up unannounced at people’s homes like some vacuum cleaner salesman unless something has happened!”

“Do you live here?” asks Sami, with a grin.

“You must surely understand what I mean—”

“Chill, Britt-Marie. I was driving past and I saw your lights were on. Wanted to see if you fancied a cigarette. Or a drink.” He laughs at her expense.

She doesn’t appreciate that at all.

“Certainly not,” she hisses.

“Okay, cool,” he laughs.

She adjusts her skirt.

“But if you’ll make do with a Snickers instead you can come in.”