Free The Beige Man by Helene Tursten Page B

she wanted to live on her own for a while before she moved in with anyone. And if she and Felipe were going to live together, she definitely didn’t want to live in his one-room apartment. Her other major problem was she had yet to work out what she wanted to do with her life. Her grades were reasonable, but not good enough to enable her to train as a physiotherapist, which was her dream job. She had no desire to try to improve her grades; three years at high school was enough.
    At least that had been Katarina’s point of view when she setoff for Brazil four months earlier. Irene was quietly wondering whether anything might have changed. She was also curious to hear more about her daughter’s experiences in the vast country on the other side of the Atlantic. Neither Irene nor Krister had visited that part of the world. In fact they had never ventured outside Europe. Nowadays young people traveled all over the globe, backpacking their way through Thailand and Australia with the same nonchalance as Irene and her boyfriend at the time had cycled around the island of Gotland twenty-five years ago.
    Irene had spoken to Katarina on the phone earlier in the day, and her daughter had requested the Swedish food she had been missing: her father’s blinis with red onion and whitefish roe, and stuffed cannelloni with Gorgonzola sauce and smoked ham. For dessert she wanted crème brûlée. These were all among Krister’s signature dishes. He laughed out loud when Irene relayed Katarina’s desire for “Swedish food.”
    “Russian blinis and Italian cannelloni,” Krister said. “And for the grand finale, a dessert with its origins in Spain’s crema Catalana, which was refined in New York by the restaurant owner Sirio Maccioni. From there it was taken to Europe and France by the illustrious chef Paul Bocuse.”
    “Wow! Really?”
    “Absolutely. Talk about globalization. Within the restaurant world it’s virtually complete. We happily blend cuisine from all over the world. But the truth is we’re all cosmopolitan in our everyday eating habits. Take pizza, for example. I had my first when I was about twelve years old. The whole family had been to Liseberg, then we went to one of the first real pizza restaurants in Göteborg. La Gondola is still there today. The fact is that the taste and aroma of that very first calzone made a much deeper impression on me than our visit to the amusement park. Then we went back home to Säffle, and I told all my friends about the delicious pizza I’d had in Göteborg. Onlya year or so later there was a pizzeria in Säffle, too, and these days there are several. Pizza has become part of the Swedish staple diet.”
    This was one of Krister’s favorite topics. Since Irene was at work and had a limited amount of time, she had to cut him off.
    “Can you sort out the food if I get the wine?” she quickly interjected when he paused for breath.
    “Sure. Jenny’s usually happy with a plain tomato sauce with pasta, but I’ll need to do some shopping. Mushrooms and black olives, at least. And fresh basil.”
    He had sounded happy, looking forward to dinner. It had been a long road back from his burnout eighteen months ago. Sometimes he could still sink down into a darker mood, but these days the episodes didn’t last as long. Irene had just started to hope that he would be himself again one day. He would probably never be exactly the same, but his pleasant temperament and his sense of humor had slowly returned and were often in evidence. Their sex life was also back on track. Sometimes Irene thought that in many ways things were better now that Krister wasn’t working such long hours. He usually did the shopping and cooking, and sometimes he would run the vacuum cleaner before she got home. And old Sammie didn’t have to spend as much time with the dog sitter. In spite of everything, their daily life was working out pretty well, Irene thought.
    I RENE DROVE HOME via Guldheden to pick up her mother.