Free The Last Boat Home by Dea Brovig

away and the boat floats into the skerry. The island’s shouts and laughter dwindle behind them. They have hardly begun their journey when Liv lies down next to Else, stretching across the cushions of the sunbed to place her head in her grandmother’s lap. Else strokes her hair and considers the silhouette on the sailing boat. She wonders which way Petter’s face is turned.
    O NLY THREE CARS are parked in a shaded corner of the car park. Else crosses the empty lot together with Liv, who skips up the wheelchair ramp and leans against the door to the nursing home. In a reception area that smells of bleach, a girl dressed in a burgundy scrub suit is visible behind a window. She removes an earphone as Else draws close and the notes from a tinny guitar solo stray into the silent space.
    ‘Knut Tenvik,’ Else says. ‘Don’t worry. We know where we’re going.’
    The girl replaces her earphone and they continue down the hall, past the numbered rooms that house ‘Assisted Living’ residents. It is something quite different from the secure ward where Else’s mother spent her final days. Even now, more than a year since her death, Else feels the guilt that comes with each visit to Tenvik. She should have done more, researched some new medication, but her mother was in a hurry at the last. She seemed to embrace her slip into dementia with a calm that pained Else almost as much as seeing her fade.
    A staircase next to a wall plastered with drawings from the local kindergarten brings Else and Liv to the second floor. In the middle of the corridor a door opens into a common room, where a handful of the home’s residents are gathered at a table playing whist. Tenvik sits in his wheelchair by the window, gazing at the fjord below. His hair has been washed. It springs from his skull in a dandelion clock’s puff of white.
    ‘Hi, Knut,’ says Liv.
    ‘Young lady,’ he says. ‘And there is Else. And Marianne?’
    ‘Mamma’s with her boyfriend,’ says Liv.
    ‘Well, that explains it,’ he says. ‘And what does Else make of that?’
    ‘She doesn’t like it.’
    ‘I’m right here,’ says Else. ‘I can hear you, you know.’
    Liv exchanges a smile with Tenvik before she darts to the kitchen to find an orderly who will make their coffee. While she is gone, Else carries two chairs to Tenvik’s side.
    ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks. ‘Any more trouble with that cough?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Tell me, how’s business?’
    ‘Fine,’ Else says.
    ‘Well,’ he says, ‘then everything is fine.’ A laugh gives way toa splutter and Tenvik hacks onto his knees. Else waits for the attack to pass.
    ‘Have the doctors said any more?’ she asks.
    ‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘When are you going to take me out for lunch? It’s the food here that’s killing me, not the cough. One more meatball and I’ll thank them for having me.’
    Liv returns with a middle-aged woman, who places a thermos of coffee on the window ledge. She lifts cups from her tray, a jug of cream and a plate of biscuits. While Else pours the coffee Liv reaches for a saucer of sugar cubes, tearing the wrapper from one before handing it to Tenvik.
    ‘Here,’ she says and watches, delighted, when he pinches the cube between finger and thumb. He dips a corner into his coffee and the liquid bleeds into the sugar, staining its granules a caramel brown. Tenvik pops the cube into his mouth and sucks.
    ‘That’s more like it,’ he says. ‘Have you been to the house?’
    ‘There hasn’t been time,’ Else says.
    ‘You really must sell it. It’s an asset, Else, you can’t just leave it to rot. Stop by the farm while you’re at it, will you? I want a report on how Karsten is treating my cows. Do you remember, young lady,’ Tenvik asks Liv, ‘what fun we used to have on the farm? You liked to drive the tractor, just like your mother used to. How about another sugar cube?’
    Liv awards him with a second cube and he repeats the procedure.