Harbor by John Lindqvist (no david read aloud TXT) 📗

Anders couldn’t say what he was thinking, so he said, ‘I was just passing and I saw the light was on, and I thought…’

‘Come in.’

The house smelled almost exactly the same as it had done when he was young. It didn’t feel as if there was anyone else there. Anders had expected the person who had Elin under their thumb would be around.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘Coffee? Wine?’

‘Wine would be nice, thank you.’

Anders looked up as he answered, but immediately looked down again. It was difficult to look at her. He concentrated on undoing his shoelaces and Elin disappeared into the kitchen.

What has she done?

She had been pretty when she was young, she’d had her pick of the boys. In between Big Brother and the centrefolds, she had had surgery on her breasts and her lips, turning herself into a classic bimbo. Oneof those individuals who circulate between photo opportunities and parties and scandals. A night on the town followed by the full story; another relationship break-up followed by the full story. Slap the make-up on a bit thicker each time it all goes south.

It’s easy to see how it takes its toll, how the person behind the mask slowly becomes hardened—the smile grows rigid, the skin grows stiff and numb—until all that remains is a shining, fossilised shell surrounding an empty space. How glamour loses out to gravity.

But this still didn’t explain Elin’s transformation. She hadn’t just aged, she had remodelled herself into something far worse than anything time could create. In some way, for some reason she had made herself ugly.

The picture window in the kitchen looked out over Kattholmen, and despite the cloud both the tiles and stainless steel worktops were bathed in light from the sky and the sea. Everything was as clear as in a photograph. Anders sat down with his back to the window while Elin filled his glass with Gato Negro from a cask. They raised their glasses to each other and drank. Anders made an effort not to gulp.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

Elin ran her finger over the cat on the wine cask. ‘We used to spend whole evenings sitting here, didn’t we? When Mum and Dad were out.’

‘Yes. And nights too. Later on.’

Elin nodded, still following the contours of the cat with her finger. As she wasn’t looking at him, Anders plucked up the courage to study her face.

Her nose, which had been slender and straight, was now twice as big and flattened. Her chin, which had been firm, quite prominent and somewhat square, was now pointed and receding, so that it became part of her throat. Her high cheekbones and dimples had disappeared, and her lips…

Those lips that had pouted in so many close-ups, topless glamourshots and full-length shots, and which had been desirable even before the silicon implants, had now been compressed into two narrow lines that did no more than mark where her mouth began and ended, if that.

She had bags under her eyes that would have looked unnatural on a woman twenty years older, and the baffling thing was that in the clinical brightness of the kitchen Anders could see the marks of badly healed scars beneath her eyes. As if she had had surgery on the bags. As if they had been worse at some point.

He took a large gulp of his wine, almost half the glass, and when he realised what he was doing it was too late, he could hardly spit it out, so he swallowed it. Elin was looking at him, and he couldn’t interpret her expression. It was impossible to read her, just as it would be impossible to read a book that had been torn to pieces.

Time for small talk.

Time for him to pick up the thread and chat about all the times they had sat here, everything they had done all those years ago, and he wouldn’t mention her face or the boathouse on Kattholmen where everything had come to an end.

What did we actually do?

He searched for some amusing memory. Something they could laugh at, something that might dispel the strange atmosphere between them. He couldn’t think of anything. All he could remember was that they used to drink tea, lots of tea, with honey, that sometimes they ran out of honey and…The words came tumbling out of his mouth, ‘What have you done to your face?’

The groove between Elin’s lips widened and the corners moved up towards her cheeks; it could be interpreted as a smile. ‘It’s not just my face.’

She walked into the middle of the kitchen floor and ran her hands over her body. Anders looked down, and Elin said, ‘Look.’

He looked. The heavy breasts that had given the caption writers at Slitz an excuse to write Bouncing beauties! had shrunk and been flattened until they were hardly noticeable. Elin pulled up her sweatshirt.Her stomach was hanging over the waistband of her jeans. The lips pretended to smile again.

‘It was actually possible to use the breast implants and put them in here.’ She grabbed hold of the bulge above her right hip and squeezed it. ‘Then I had to have quite a lot cut away, of course. They were quite big to start with, beforehand.’

She pulled up the sweatshirt a little further, so that the lower part of her breasts was visible. Anders saw the badly healed scar, and looked down at the floor again. ‘Why?’

She straightened her sweatshirt and sat down at the opposite side of the table again, took a sip of her wine and topped up his glass.

‘I just wanted to.’

Her voice was breaking slightly. Someone with serious injuries or deformities might behave this way, showing them off as a challenge to the other person—to say something, to dare to question. But now her voice was breaking.

‘I haven’t finished yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I haven’t finished yet. I’m going to have more work done. More surgery.’

Anders searched her altered face, her eyes, for signs