The Sins of our Fathers

The Sins of Our Fathers Also by Åsa Larsson in English The Savage Altar The Blood Spilt The Black Path The Second Deadly Sin Until Thy Wrath be Past First published as Fädernas Missgärningar by Albert Bonniers Förlag in Stockholm, Sweden This ebook published in 2023 by MacLehose Press An imprint of Quercus Editions Limited Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK company Copyright © Åsa Larsson 2021 English translation copyright © 2023 by Frank Perry The moral right of Åsa Larsson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Frank Perry asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of the work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN (HB) 978 0 85705 174 5 ISBN (TPB) 978 0 85705 175 2 ISBN (Ebook) 978 0 85738 999 2 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or particular places is entirely coincidental. Ebook by CC Book Production www.maclehosepress.com Contents The Sins of Our Fathers Also By Title Copyright Tuesday 26th April 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wednesday 27th April 1 Thursday 28th April 1 2 3 4 Friday 29th April 1 2 Saturday 30th April 1 Monday 2nd May 1 2 3 4 5 Tuesday 3rd May 1 2 3 Wednesday 4th May 1 Thursday 5th May Friday 6th May 1 Saturday 7th May 1 June 2 Acknowledgements About the Author and Translator Tuesday 26th April Living became a bit easier once Ragnhild Pekkari had made up her mind to die. She had a plan. To ski across the crust the night frost left on the snow, a two-hour trip unless you broke through it. When she got to the spot, a jokk across which a snow bridge would always form, she would light a fire and enjoy one last cup of coffee. Afterwards she would melt snow and pour it into her rucksack to make it heavy and wet and to push any air out. Then she would ski onto the snow bridge. There would be open water flowing beneath. If all went to plan the bridge would collapse. If not, she would push herself over the edge with a quick thrust of her ski poles. It would happen incredibly quickly. No chance to change your mind, not with skis on and a sodden rucksack that refused to float. And then it would finally be over. She had made an appointment with death. And meet it she would – on the very day she had chosen – but not in the way she had imagined. Once the appointment had been made, the worst of the weight was lifted. Her being grew tall like the birches in the woods. The winter snow had hunched them into frozen arches. Now that winter was giving way to the mildness of spring they were straightening up, shifting from grey to violet, the liturgical colour of penance. She had begun her retirement in June the previous year. The head of the clinic gave an obviously unprepared speech, getting the number of years she had been employed there wrong, even though it would have been so simple to check. That little shit. He was the kind of doctor who felt threatened by her height. His right hand, Elisabeth from the management team, had shopped for the present: a bottle opener in the shape of a silvery dolphin. That was it, after all those years. Elisabeth had been working in admin for more than twenty years and was completely out of touch with what the other nurses actually did on the wards. She was firmly on the side of management and kept piling on the pressure with additional duties and mean-spirited schedules. And then, to top it all off, a silver dolphin. Ragnhild managed to squeeze out an insincere thank you, which made her feel like going home and cleaning out her mouth with wire wool. The entire farewell do, with its cheap paper serviettes and shop-bought cake, was enough to make her sick. Some of the doctors had come into the break room and then left. Ragnhild had exchanged looks with the other nurses: odd the doctors never came when paged if a patient was ill but would always move faster than light towards anything sweet. “What are we celebrating?”, one of the junior doctors had asked with his mouth full. When her last shift was over, there was a round of hugs with her colleagues. She stood for a while in front of the locker that had been hers for almost thirty years, shut it for the very last time and left the hospital with a sense of unreality and that bloody dolphin in a bag. After that, summer had gone by as usual; it had just felt like a really long holiday. Autumn arrived, and she established new routines. She signed up for an advanced course in weaving together with a retired former colleague. She exercised every day, went to the gym or hiking in the woods. She read books, of course, almost one a day. The first half of winter passed. She knew that they were short-staffed at work, but no-one called her to fill in. Elisabeth hated her and clearly did not want her back. She spent Christmas on her own. It was astonishingly lonely. She had always worked the major holidays before. A memory from childhood came to her at the beginning of March, one Monday as she was on her way back