Drowned by Therese Bohman Page A

have been cut back or thinned out. Only the trees in pots appear to be thriving: the palms, the lemon tree, and the big angel’s trumpet. I stick my index finger in the angel’s trumpet pot, the soil is dry. It looks abit droopy but healthy, Gabriel must have watered it. I fill the watering can underneath the potting bench and pour water into each pot until it overflows. As if I thought it might be possible to fix them in retrospect; it is a childish idea. But I don’t stop pouring, I stare at the water flowing out of the holes in the bottom of the pots, running across the floor in little black rivulets, disappearing down the cracks between the paving stones.
    “I’m thinking of moving away from here for a while,” says Gabriel when we are sitting in the living room in the evening. He has made tea and sandwiches, lit a fire in the old tiled stove, and put a record on the stereo, it feels lovely, almost like the summer.
    “Where will you go?” I say.
    He shrugs his shoulders.
    “I don’t know yet. Abroad, maybe. I thought I could come back here in the summer, but right now I think I need to be somewhere else for a while.”
    “So … when are you moving?”
    My voice sounds small. He doesn’t appear to notice.
    “As soon as I can. As soon as I find a place to live.”
    I feel the tears overwhelm me without any warning, all at once my eyes are burning and then I am weeping, sobbing violently, totally out of control, Ican see the tears falling from my eyes and dripping onto my legs, which I have drawn up under me on the sofa, it looks like rain, almost unreal. My whole body shakes as I gasp for breath.
    Gabriel looks at me in surprise.
    “Hey …” he says, he sounds so kind, so calm, and suddenly I am in his arms and he is holding me, I cling on tight, I have no intention of letting go. He strokes my hair and I lay my head against his shoulder, my face against his neck, breathing in the smell of him and sobbing even harder because of it. He smells so warm, he is holding me properly now, his arms around my back, and he mumbles that of course I can come and visit him whenever I like. He is wearing a lamb’s wool sweater and I push my hands up inside it, I would really like to crawl right underneath it, stay there. The shirt he has on is easy to undo, and he doesn’t protest. He pulls off his sweater and I part his unbuttoned shirt and lay my cheek against his chest, curling up in his arms.
    He reaches for a checked blanket lying on the arm of the sofa, spreads it over me, and I pull it over my head until I am in a kind of snug haven against his chest, I can hear his heart beating and it is warm under the blanket now, Gabriel’s arms around me, his skin, his smell, his breathing, calm and even. Take care of me, I think, take care of me, I have stoppedcrying now, my body feels heavy and weary, I want to go to sleep, just like this, and I do.

    I wake up on the sofa with a stiff neck. Gabriel has fetched the duvet from the guest room and spread it over me along with the blanket, but I am still frozen. It is raining outside, a slow and monotonous November rain, dripping from the roof onto the window ledges.
    Gabriel doesn’t seem to be home. My head feels woolly, as if I had a hangover, but I didn’t drink at all yesterday. It’s the weeping, I can still feel it in my sinuses and behind my eyes, I press my eyebrows gently with my hands. The inside of my head feels tender, sore. I wind the duvet around me, go into the kitchen, and switch on the coffee machine. The floor is cold, I should have brought a pair of slippers. It’s almost eleven o’clock in the morning but it isn’t all that light outside, it’s a uniform gray, a flat, nondescript light. Yesterday the automatic exterior lighting came on just after two o’clock in the afternoon. Anders and Karin in the house across the field have put Christmas lights in one of their trees, a spindly fruit tree completely enveloped in little sparkling lights, you