On the steps at the back of the police station Estelle hugs each of them in turn. (Except Zara, of course, who blocks her with her handbag and jumps out of the way when she tries.)
“I have to say, if you have to be held hostage, then there’s no better company to be in than all of you.” Estelle smiles at them all. Even Zara.
“Would you like to come and have coPee with us?” Julia asks.
“No, no, I need to get home,” Estelle smiles, then she suddenly becomes serious and turns to the real estate agent: “I really am very sorry I changed my mind and didn’t let you sell the apartment after all. But it’s… home.”
The real estate agent shrugs.
“I think that’s rather lovely, actually. People always think real estate agents just want to sell, sell, sell, but there’s something… I don’t quite know how to say it…”
Lennart 1lls in with the words she can’t 1nd: “There’s something romantic about the thought of all the apartments that aren’t for sale.”
The real estate agent nods. Estelle takes several deep, happy breaths. She’s going to be neighbors with Julia and Ro, in the apartment on the other side of the landing, and she and Julia will be able to swap books in the elevator. The 1rst one Estelle is going to give her is by her favorite poet. She’ll fold down the corner of one page, underline some of the 1nest words she knows.
Rothing must ha99en to you Ro, mhat am I saying
Zuevything must ha99en to you Rnd it must be mondevful
Julia will give Estelle a completely diPerent type of literature in exchange. A guidebook about Stockholm.
Ro will lose her dad, she’ll visit him every week, he’s still on Earth but already belongs to Heaven. Ro’s mom will 1nd the strength to cope with the loss because another man will show her that life goes on. Julia will give birth to him with her hand clasped so tightly around Ro’s 1ngers that the nurses have to give both mothers painkillers, one before the birth, the other after.
Ro will sleep beside him, perfectly still, on white sheets, without feeling afraid. Because she would have crossed mountains for his sake, would have done anything. Robbed banks, if necessary. They’re going to be good parents, Ro and Julia. Good enough, anyway.
Julia will still hide candies, and Ro will be allowed to keep her birds. The monkey and the frog will love them, visit them every day, and even when Julia oPers them lots of money, they won’t leave the cage open. Julia and Ro will argue, then make up, and all you have to do is make sure you’re better at the latter than the former. So they will shout loudly and laugh even louder, and when they make up, the walls will shake and Estelle will feel embarrassed in her closet. Their love will continue to be a Aower shop.
Outside the police station Zara skips quickly down the steps to the street, afraid that someone else might try to hug her. Lennart hurries after her.
“Would you like to share a taxi?” he asks, as if that weren’t the very de1nition of anarchy.
Zara looks like she’s never shared a taxi in her life, or anything else for a very long time. But after a long pause she mutters, “If we do, you can sit in the front. And we’re not going in a car with lots of crap dangling from the rearview mirror. That’s an evolutionary dead end.”
Anna-Lena is still sitting on the steps. Roger sits down beside her with an ePort, just close enough that they’re almost touching. Anna-Lena stretches out her 1ngers toward his. She wants to say sorry. So does he. It’s a harder word than you might think, when you’ve been climbing trees for so long.
She looks up at the sky, dark now, December is merciless. But she knows that IKEA is still open. A light out there, somewhere.
“We could go and look at that countertop you were talking about,” she whispers.
She crumbles when he shakes his head. Roger says nothing for a long time.
He keeps changing his mind.
“I thought perhaps we could do something else,” he eventually mumbles. “What do you mean?”
“The cinema. Maybe. If you’d like that.”
It’s a good thing Anna-Lena is already sitting down, because otherwise she would have had to.
They go and see something made up. Because people need stories, too, sometimes. In the darkness of the auditorium they hold hands. For Anna-Lena it feels like coming home, and for Roger, like being good enough.
Estelle hurries back to her apartment. On the way she calls her daughter and tells her not to worry, either about the hostage drama or the fact that her mom lives alone in that large apartment. Because she doesn’t anymore. Estelle will have to give up smoking, because the young woman who’s going to be renting a room in the apartment won’t even let her smoke in the closet.
If we’re being pedantic, the young woman actually rents the whole apartment from Estelle’s daughter, and then Estelle rents a room from her for the same amount: six thousand 1ve hundred. On the door of the fridge hangs a crumpled drawing of a monkey and a frog and an elk. Estelle stole it from the interview room when Jim was getting coPee. Each morning, every other week, the monkey
and the frog will eat breakfast with their mom in Estelle’s kitchen. For many years, on the last night of the year, they will watch 1reworks together from the window. Then, eventually, a night will come which will be Estelle’s last night without Knut, and everyone else’s last night with Estelle.
At her funeral Ro will suggest an inscription for her headstone: “Here lies Estelle. She certainly liked her wine!” Julia will kick Ro on the shin, but not hard. Their son will hold each of them by the hand as they walk away. Julia keeps the old woman’s books for the rest of her life, the wine bottles, too. When the monkey and the frog grow into teenagers, they smoke in secret in the closet.
Somewhere, in some sort of Heaven, Estelle will be listening to music with one man and talking about literature with another. She’s earned that.
Oh, yes. In the basement storage area of an apartment block not far from there, where a mother of two little girls who became a bank robber once slept, alone and frightened, there’s still a box of blankets there the day after the hostage drama. Somewhere else entirely a bank doesn’t get robbed the day after New Year, because the person who hid their pistol down there under the blankets turns the whole storage area upside down, shouting and swearing because it’s gone. Because what sort of callous bastard would steal a person’s 9istol?
