dust particles, drifting around in grubby sunlight. The window had not been cleaned for a long time, and its surface was marked with uneven greasy patches, a legacy of all those evenings when Anders had stood with his forehead resting on the glass, gazing down into the car park and waiting for something to happen, something that could change things. Something, anything, a miracle.
The fern was on the windowsill above the radiator. A long frond waved in the rising heat. The leaves were small and brown, withered.
Anders lit another cigarette to sharpen his thoughts, or perhaps as a reward for the fact that he had had a real thought, a clear thought. The smoke made his eyes smart, he coughed and kept looking at the fern.
Itâs dead.
Most of its fronds were plastered against the side of the pot, pale brown against the red. The compost in which it had been planted was so dry it was almost white. Anders took a deep drag and tried to remember: how long had the fern looked like that, how long had it been dead?
He searched his memory for days and evenings in the past when he had sat on the sofa or wandered around the apartment or stood by the window. They drifted together to form a fog, and he couldnât see a wilting fern through the mist. When he thought about it more closely, he couldnât even remember when he had acquired the fern, why he had ever got the idea of buying a living plant.
Had someone given it to him?
Possibly.
He got up from the sofa, and his legs wouldnât carry him properly. He thought about filling a bottle with water and giving it to the fern, but he knew there were so many dishes in the sink that he wouldnât be able to get the bottle under the tap. In the bathroom it was impossible to get the bottle at the right angle for the water to run in. So he would have to unscrew the shower head andâ¦
Itâs dead anyway.
Besides which, he just didnât have the strength.
In the pot he found eight cigarette stubs. Some were half-pushed down into the hard compost. So he must have stood here smoking. He didnât remember that. As he ran his fingers over the dry fronds, some of the leaves came off and drifted down to the floor.
Where did you come from?
He got the idea that the plant had simply tumbled into the material world in the same way as Maja had tumbled out of it. Through a gap in time and space it had suddenly been there, just as his daughter had suddenly not been there. Gone.
What was it Simon used to say when he was doing tricks for them?
Nothing here, nothing there⦠then he would point to his head⦠and absolutely nothing here.
Anders smiled as he remembered the look on Majaâs face the first time Simon had done some magic tricks for her, just a couple of months before she disappeared. A rubber ball in one hand went up in smoke, and the ball Maja had just been holding suddenly became two. Maja had carried on looking at Simon with the same expectant expression: OK, whatâs next?
Magic is not the same miracle when youâre five years old. Itâs more like something natural.
Anders stubbed out his cigarette in the pot, making the eight cigarette ends nine, and at the same moment he remembered: Mum.
It was his mother who had brought the plant when she came to visit him four months earlier. She had cleaned the apartment for him and placed the fern there. He had been in the middle of a period of apathy, and had just lain on the bed watching her. Then she had disappeared, back to her own life in Gothenburg.
The fern had not been among the things he needed, and so he had forgotten it, paying it no more heed than a mark on the wallpaper.
But he was seeing it now. He was looking at it. He was thinking the thought once again.
Thatâs the ugliest thing Iâve ever seen.
Yes. That was what had occurred to him when he finally caught sight of it. The lonely, dead fern on the dusty windowsill against a background of dirty sunlight through an