ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susanne Jansson was born in 1972 in Åmål, Sweden. She later moved to Gothenburg to work in advertising and then to New York to study photography. The Forbidden Place, her debut novel, sold in twenty five territories around the world.

Susanne Jansson passed away in the summer of 2019 after a courageous fight with cancer.

ALSO BY SUSANNE JANSSON

The Forbidden Place

WINTER WATER

Susanne Jansson

Translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles

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First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Susanne Jansson 2020

The right of Susanne Jansson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Translation copyright © Rachel Willson-Broyles

Originally published in 2020 in Swedish as VINTERVATTEN by Wahlström & Widstrand.

The quote here is from the poem “Mean-Spirited Roadhouses” from The Illuminated Rumi by Jalal al-Din Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, Broadway Books, 1997.

The quote here (“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you”) is from The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle, New World Library, p. 46.

The quote here about a “cold touch of indifference” is from the poem “Influensa” by Henry Parland, from Idealrealisation, Modernista, Stockholm. (Originally in Swedish, translated here by Rachel Willson-Broyles.)

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

eBook ISBN 978 1 473 66861 4

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Don’t wait any longer.

Dive in the ocean,

leave and let the sea be you.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273)

Translation by Coleman Barks

PROLOGUE

It was the skies, so many, so vast.

The skies above the sea, how they shifted.

Some heavy, dingy-white. Some bright blue, carefree, with only thin streaks of white. Some like beautifully folded crepe across a captivating golden glow, some the dull gray of steel, some a flashing abyss thundering in fury.

The skies, how they arced above the gentle cliffs smoothed by millennia of glaciers, tumbling above the world below, dominating everything.

How they were formed, dissolved, and returned as something new, you never knew quite what.

It was the skies.

And the water.

And the cliffs.

It was everything.

And the people. The people, those tiny beings, who had come to make their homes on the furrowed landmasses. To gather up herring when the time was right, so long ago when they came in shoals so large no one had ever seen the like. Never seen such shoals. It was said that you could walk between islands. That it was more fish than water.

The people lived there on the islands, and they set out across that water, under all those skies. And on occasion—not so rarely, not at all—a body fell into water under a sky where it shouldn’t have, and that was that. Well, not for the people, of course, but for the water and the skies.

Perhaps there were cries, a name fading into the wind. Cries from land or from a boat, out across the sea.

Sometimes, in the winter, when the sea seemed to become deeper and darker, there was talk of other cries. Cries that came from the sea, cries that were looking for land. Cries, larking and luring.

But perhaps that was just what people said.

Perhaps it was just the wind.

1

The eye of the sun, way up in the sky, was shining benevolently and sending down a few rays of light that were scattered just below the surface of the water. His headlamp began to fail; he should have charged the batteries. Oh well, he was almost finished.

Martin let his gaze slip across the rows of suspended farming ropes covered in seaweed and mussels, like a colonnade in an undersea garden. After a moment he reached the last anchor mooring down at the bottom. He tested it by tugging at the rope a few times. It seemed intact. No sign of damage.

Everything looked good.

He turned around, kicked with his flippers, and aimed for the rope that ran along the sea floor. It was attached to the mussel farm on one end and the dock at the other. He was starting to get seriously cold; his hands and back had gone numb long ago, but now his whole torso was frozen, dull as a chunk of dead meat.

At this time of year, in January, there wasn’t much going on in the sea. You might spot the occasional little crab scrambling to hide in the sand, or a flatfish lying still and waiting for better days, but for the most part it was so cold that marine life had largely come to a standstill.

Late autumn and early winter were different—the window of time after the summer algae had disappeared but before true cold had set in. When the water was clear and life was still going full speed.

That was the season, when rain, nasty weather, and storms darkened the sky, that it was best to go down into the calm and tranquil realm beneath the surface. He liked to visit just for the pleasure of it.

He found it was the best way to relax, being weightless in the sea and experiencing the world reduced to only what his flashlight illuminated. Everything else vanished. There was simply no comparing it to tropical waters, where you could see twenty meters in every direction. Here, the darkness, the closeness, and the details were the very point.

Nearest the surface were the jellyfish. Tiny sea gooseberries that blinked in different colors if you shone a light at them. And the lion’s mane jellies out hunting with their meter-long tentacles: healthy, strong organisms in their element, not the broken, half-dead ones you typically saw washed up on the beach in the summer. You had to be very careful. One time a few tentacles had wound their way behind his regulator; his lip had swollen beyond recognition.

With the darkness came creatures that wouldn’t show themselves in the light. Small squid that changed color when they felt crowded, lobsters that left their lairs to go for a walk. Oftentimes they weren’t in his field of vision, not the shrimp, not the spider crabs or the hermit crabs either; you had to be on the alert for movement or their tiny eyes, which reflected the light from his headlamp.

He had dived down to take a look at a wall of rocky coral and barnacles. Suddenly he felt something watching him. He turned around to find a white, slightly bluish barrel jellyfish floating behind him. It looked like a small ghost, or maybe an unrooted mushroom or the cloud of a nuclear bomb.

Then he realized that the jellyfish wasn’t the only one looking. He was under observation from all directions, by all the creatures gliding around or hiding beneath the sand or rocks, avoiding his gaze, creatures whose eyes were never in the path of the rays from his flashlight.

Now he could see the dock by the boathouse.

With a few final kicks of his feet, he was there. He slowly surfaced and grabbed the ladder, then pulled off his flippers, tossed them onto the dock, and climbed up.

He took the regulator from his mouth, undid all the hoses, took off the oxygen tank, and placed it all on the nearby dolly. Then, his steps heavy, he hauled it all over to the pickup, feeling about as nimble as an overturned turtle.

Once he had shucked the wet suit and hung all the gear in his truck, he coughed the chill from his lungs and sank into the well-worn driver’s seat. He started the engine, poured a cup of coffee from his Thermos, and let the mug slowly thaw his hands.

Everything looked fine.

It’s over now; everything will go back to normal.

If only he could believe that.

Fifteen minutes later, Martin drove off, his hands turning white against the wheel.

No one was in sight as he left the boathouse and crossed the brothers’ land.

No unfriendly eyes on him, not that he could see. Still, he could feel those eyes, their restrained rage, as if they came from every direction—from the house, from the barn, or from within one of the parked farm implements.

They were in there somewhere; he was sure of it.

He wondered how he would keep busy during the three days he was about to spend alone with Adam. Maybe they could make a trip into Gothenburg on Saturday and visit the zoo at Slottsskogen; Adam would love that, especially if they could bring his friend Vilgot along. But tomorrow, in any case, he planned to stay home and clean up the shed and the yard. It would be a few degrees below freezing and clear, not the most pleasant weather. But at least there wouldn’t be a snowstorm like last weekend, when there had been close to zero visibility on the road and they’d had to spend most of their time indoors. Maybe he could bring Adam down to the water for a little picnic tomorrow once Alexandra and Nellie had left. Take it easy.

After driving for twenty minutes he turned onto the gravel road that led to the day care. It was right next to the sea, and it had to be the most beautiful day care in Sweden, he’d often thought, once he’d gotten over his initial unease about all the potential dangers that came with being so close to water. The endlessness of it, that the children got to spend every day in this environment—somehow that just had to make them into good people, he sometimes thought, even if he certainly but reluctantly knew better.

The children were sitting on a square of logs around the firepit and grilling hot dogs. Martin parked the truck and looked around for his son, finally spotting his blond mop of hair and blue snowsuit. Martin sat still for a moment, just looking. Adam hadn’t noticed his father’s truck yet. He was living in his own world right now. It was fascinating and magnificent and a little scary to watch, how he was his own person even without his parents. Now he was stuffing down the last of his hot dog and was given a napkin to wipe his mouth.

That pouty, delightful mouth. Those soft, round cheeks. Those eyes that were open to everything, until they reacted to something that was wrong. Often such reactions had to do with Mulle—that he’d been left at home and he couldn’t be retrieved immediately, that he’d been mean to some other doll or stuffed animal and he didn’t know to say he was sorry; every setback and every pleasure in Adam’s life could somehow always be traced back to his rag doll.

Martin pushed his seat back and took off the thick pair of leggings he’d worn for his dive. He pulled on jeans and a sweater and stepped out of the car. As he closed the door, Adam looked up.

“Papa!”

He stood up and ran to Martin with outstretched arms.

“Hi, sweetie,” Martin said, crouching down.

They were reunited in a long, hot-dog-scented hug, and Martin felt all his anxieties dissolve and disappear.

“Hop in and get in your seat, and I’ll go get your stuff and tell them you won’t be coming tomorrow.”

It was getting dark by the time they drove onto the county road. Adam sat next to Martin in his backward-facing car seat, trying to fold a paper airplane. A text dinged on Martin’s phone. It was Alexandra.

Will you get the popcorn? it read, followed by a big heart.

Martin smiled and sent a kiss emoji back.

The small country store was right on the county road and was patronized mostly by folks who lived outside Henån and preferred to avoid the larger grocery store in town. It sold basic necessities and also had a small corner with a few chairs, a table, and a coffee machine.

There was almost always someone around in the corner to exchange a few words with, for anyone who wanted to chat; it was a place to discuss horse-racing tips and soccer results, and Adam liked to sit there and wait. Sometimes a nice man or lady would give him a lollipop or a piece of candy.

“Stay here—I’ll be back soon,” Martin said. Adam dashed over to sit in his usual spot in one of the wicker chairs. Martin had soon grabbed everything he needed, and went to the cash register to pay.

From the line he cast a glance at Adam; in his lap was Lisa, a little Pekingese belonging to an older woman they ran into sometimes. Martin smiled and sighed inwardly. He knew what was coming. Adam wouldn’t stop talking about Lisa all weekend. How soft her coat was, how fun it was to play with her. Couldn’t they get a dog too? When could they get one? When he turned four or five? Would he be allowed to name it himself?

By the time Martin was finished, Lisa was gone and had been replaced with a small box of candy.

“Look,” Adam said in delight, shaking the box.

Behind him was a seriously overweight man in his sixties wearing a tracksuit. Martin didn’t recognize him. He leaned on a cane, winked, and said in a hoarse voice, “After all, it’s almost Saturday.”

Alexandra was sitting on the kitchen bench, holding Nellie and looking through the mail, when Martin and Adam came through the door. A wall sconce filled out the dim evening light, the news streamed from the radio, and the kitchen smelled like parmesan. On the stove was a pot full of risotto.

“Did you …?” Martin asked in surprise.

“Don’t sound so shocked,” said Alexandra, feigning offense.

Martin wiggled out of his jacket and hung it in the hall as Adam ran to his mother for a hug; he showed her the paper airplane and the box of candy.

“You know the rules,” said Alexandra, who was more principled when it came to raising children than Martin had the energy to be.

“A man gave it to me.”

“But candy is only for Saturdays.”

“When is Saturday?”

“Not tomorrow, but the next day.”

“But by then it will be gone,” he said triumphantly. He frowned and looked at his sister, who had fallen asleep at Alexandra’s breast, a film of milk on her little lips.

“Nellie’s sleeping,” he observed, poking her cheek.

“You’re right about that,” Alexandra whispered. “But don’t wake her up.” She rose to lay her daughter in the old cradle that stood in one corner of the kitchen. Martin’s father had slept there once upon a time, and so had Martin himself.

She went back to Adam and lifted him into her lap. Martin bent down to kiss her on the lips.

“How did it go?” Alexandra asked.

Martin could hear the worry in her tone. He went over to the fridge.

“Beer?”

“Yes, please,” Alexandra replied. “They said on TV that beer is really good for you when you’re nursing.”

“Is that true?” Martin asked in surprise.

“Hmm, I might have misunderstood,” Alexandra said with an innocent look.

Martin poured a foamy porter into a big glass and gazed out the window, taking in the red evening light that slowly lit the sky. Despite Alexandra’s playful tone, he knew how tense she was as she waited for his answer.

“It looked fine,” he said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

He ran his hand over his dark, wiry hair and down across his beard, ending with a few thoughtful strokes of his chin. Then he shook his head.

“I don’t think we need to worry anymore.” His voice was steady, as if now he’d made up his mind that this was so. “I really think it’s over.”

“Let’s hope so,” she said. “Let’s hope so.”