Free When the Snow Fell by Henning Mankell

right on the edge of town. There were no other possibilities.
    She stopped at the middle one of the three blocks of apartments, and went in through the front door. Joelkept his eye on the front of the building. After a couple of minutes a light went on in a second-floor window. So that was where she lived. Joel tried to work out what that implied. She might be lodging with somebody, but goodness only knows who. Or else she had her own apartment.
    But as she hadn’t rented a room in the boardinghouse, she must have come here to stay. She wasn’t just working at Ehnström’s shop for a couple of weeks.
    Joel waited. He stamped his feet and jumped up and down so as not to be too cold. But his boots really were much too small for him. He’d have to have a word with Samuel, or his feet would be worn away.
    Then he crossed the street and went in through the front door. He decided that if anybody came and asked what he was doing there, he would tell them he was looking for somebody called Sverker.
    Just inside the front door was a board with the names of all the tenants. But there was a gap against one of the second-floor flats to the left. And that was where the light had gone on. Didn’t she have a name? Or was it a secret? Joel decided it must be because she’d only just moved in. If there was a doorman or a caretaker or whatever, he wouldn’t have had time to insert the name yet. Down at the bottom of the board was a row of unused letters for making the names by pressing them into the little holes on the surface of the board. Joel was very tempted to pick out some and press in a name:
Salome
.
    But he didn’t. Which was no doubt sensible of him. Instead he walked up the stairs. To make sure that nobody thought he was sneaking around, he trod down hard with his boots on each step. When he came to the second floor, he saw that there was a bit of paper with a name on the door to the left. He leaned forward in order to read it.
    Mattsson
, it said, written in red.
    There was something else. In small letters, down at the bottom. The lighting was bad on the staircase. But he made it out in the end. It said:
Ehnström’s Grocery Store
.
    At that very moment the door opened. Joel gave a start and took a step backwards. Without his noticing, one of his bootlaces had come undone. He somehow stood on it, stumbled and fell to the floor.
    It was her, all right, standing over him. But she wasn’t wearing transparent veils. She had on a checked overall. And she was holding a sweeping brush.
    “I thought you weren’t going to come until to morrow,” she said, sounding surprised.
    In the midst of his confusion it struck Joel that he’d been right: she certainly spoke with a Stockholm accent.
    He scrambled to his feet. What the hell do I do now? he wondered. I hadn’t planned for this.
    “I said Thursday,” she said. “It’s only Wednesday today.”
    Joel tried to work out what on earth she was talking about. Was he supposed to have come tomorrow instead?
    She suddenly burst out laughing. Joel stared at her red lips and white teeth.
    “Why do you look so scared? And where’s the catalog you were supposed to bring, with all the Christmas magazines?”
    Sometimes, especially when he was in a corner, Joel had the ability to think quickly. He could sometimes surprise himself. He realized that she was mistaking him for somebody else. Somebody who was due to come the next day and show her a catalog with lots of Christmas magazines.
    “I must have mixed up the day,” Joel said.
    “Where’s the catalog?”
    “It’s downstairs.”
    Now he’d painted himself into a corner again. What if she asked him to fetch it? Then what would he do?
    “Didn’t Ehnström tell you my name?”
    “I’ve forgotten it,” he mumbled.
    She looked at him and frowned.
    “Ehnström said that Digby was sixteen. You can’t be more than fourteen.”
    “Digby’s my brother,” said Joel.
    “Your brother?”
    “Digby’s my brother, and he’s