Free Drowned by Therese Bohman Page A

open the prickly green shell, how it opened up along the seams in a way that seemed too good to be natural. And the inside, spongy and white around the dark chestnut. It always felt cold in your hand at first, it was nice to squeeze in your palm, smooth and shiny, and there was that smell of fall, sweet and earthy, like something beginning to decay. Stella seems to have thought exactly the same.
    “I was always so disappointed when they grew dull after a while,” she says.
    “Me too.”
    “One year I decided to save a whole bag of chestnuts, I put them in a shoe box under my bed. When I got them out they were all dull and shriveled.”
    “I did that too. I tried for several years in a row.”
    “Yes.”
    “I think I wondered whether you could varnish them to keep them shiny.”
    “Me too.”
    We laugh. The gravel path crunches beneath our feet, we’re wearing almost identical shoes today, espadrilles, just different colors.
    The palace dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is white with two wings. An author used to live here, Stella says, but she’s forgotten who it was. I tell her it doesn’t matter. We sit down on a bench, there is a park behind the palace. You can see water a short distance away and you can tell from the air that it’s the sea, the open sea rather than a lake, you can smell it, and you can hear it, there are gulls screaming far away, forming a backdrop of noise.
    Stella clears her throat.
    “I’m pregnant,” she says.
    She is looking at me steadily. I have to lower my eyes, I can’t hold her gaze, the sound of the gulls seems so close now.
    “What did you say?”
    “I’m pregnant.”
    The smell of salt is coming off the sea and something else as well, something musty, almost nauseating, perhaps it’s seaweed that has been washed ashore and is drying in the sun, glued to a rock.
    “Congratulations,” I hear myself say. “That’s fantastic.”
    It sounds as hollow as I feel, but Stella doesn’t appear to notice.
    “You mustn’t tell Gabriel. It’s still very early and … well, I haven’t told him yet.”
    “I promise.”
    I give her a hug, she throws her arms around me.
    “We’ve been trying for such a long time. Ever since I moved here, virtually. He thought there was something wrong, but it’s just taken a while, it’s perfectly normal,” she says, her face half buried in my hair.
    “I didn’t know …” I say. “I didn’t know you were trying.”
    “I’d like to wait a little while, I’ve got so much going on at work right now. But Gabriel really wants a baby. He …”
    She lowers her eyes.
    “What?”
    “He’s almost become obsessed by it. He’s not feeling too good at the moment, all this business with his book … There seems to be no end to it and he’snever satisfied with it. And … he’s getting older, of course.”
    I nod.
    “I suppose it’s only natural,” she goes on. “But … I’ve had two miscarriages.”
    “What?”
    “Very early on, I mean it’s not uncommon … but he got so angry.”
    “He got angry with you?”
    “Not with me, maybe. But angry. Furious, almost.”
    “Stella …” I begin without any idea of how I’m going to finish the sentence, I want to say something kind, that it’s not her fault, even though I know that she knows that and it sounds childish, but it’s the only thing I can come up with.
    “It’s not your fault.”
    Suddenly she has tears in her eyes.
    “But what if it is?” she says quietly. “What if there’s something wrong with me, and it will never work out? There’s nothing wrong with Gabriel anyway, because I do get pregnant … it just doesn’t seem to want to stay inside me, somehow.”
    She is crying now.
    “Stella …” I say again, pulling her close, she weeps against my shoulder and I pat her hair, I feel awkward, I ought to say something wise and comforting but I don’t know what. It feels as if the situation isupside down: the fact that I am