In the Name of Love by Patrick Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

have time for a coffee, do you think? After your appointment?’
    ‘It’s my yoga class. It takes an hour.’
    ‘I have a few errands to do in town anyway.’
    She glanced uncertainly down towards the wooden footbridge that crossed the river here. Two women were walking in their direction, both carrying shopping bags. They recognized her and then they looked at Dan. She pushed her hair off her face. The faint breeze coming up from the harbour blew it straight down again. She let it hang there and said hello to the two women as they passed. At that moment she seemed to make up her mind.
    ‘My yoga class is near here on Posthusgatan. There’s a good konditori not far away overlooking the river. Tösse’s. Do you know it?’
    ‘No, but I’ll find it. Shall we say in an hour or so?’
    In Tösse’s they ordered plain black tea. He asked her about her yoga. Patiently she explained how she’d started last year and found that it helped her both mentally and physically. She was working on her Master’s and also as a replacement teacher at the local secondary school. Yoga was her way of replenishing herself.
    ‘Do you mind my asking what your thesis is about?’
    ‘Swedenborg and the Destruction of Babylon.’
    ‘The last judgement?’
    ‘Of the Papists. When the Mohammedans and Gentiles have been taken care of.’
    ‘Sounds wonderful.’
    ‘From an eschatological point of view. Rome as the habitation of demons, the home of every foul spirit, the cage of every unclean and hateful bird. To quote some of the gentler phrases. But tell me about your life on the island, that’s much more interesting.’
    And, to his surprise, he told her.
    Later, on the way home, he had a feeling that there was something about her he was failing to grasp. Not a helplessness – he sensed that she was anything but helpless behind her mild façade. Not anything physical either. She was an ordinary woman in her thirties with dishevelled hair and a calm face. Not beautiful, not in the way Connie had been beautiful.
    When he woke in the morning the feeling had gone.
    Nevertheless, finding himself back in Norrtälje the following Wednesday, he walked up Posthusgatan to see if she was coming out of her yoga class. When she did she walked quickly away, towards the square. He followed her. He knew it was a strange thing for a middle-aged man to do and, if she noticed, it was going to be difficult to explain.
    She looked in the window of the cheese shop at the beginning of the little square. After a moment she turned and looked down the street as if searching for something. When he saw her go towards Tösse’s he realized that the something must, against all the odds, be him.
    She was sitting outside on the lower deck, looking over the river, when he walked up behind her and said, too cheerily, in English: ‘A penny for your thoughts.’
    She turned abruptly, pulling the hair away from her face and blushing furiously.
    ‘Sorry,’ Dan said lightly in Swedish. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
    ‘Oh? Didn’t you?’ she said. And then she asked, ‘How did you know I was here?’ It was a bold question from her and he answered at once. ‘I saw you outside your yoga class. I followed you.’
    ‘You what?’
    She looked up at him again, her face altogether grave. Then she said: ‘Well, aren’t you going to sit down?’
    He hung his gabardine jacket across the back of the chair opposite her and asked if she would like another tea. She nodded, staring at him all the time, maybe wondering if he was serious about having followed her. When he came back with the tea tray she seemed flustered. He asked her if everything was all right. She said she was confused.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘There’s so little I know about you.’
    ‘What do you want to know?’
    ‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know enough to know what to ask.’
    Her dark eyes shimmered with the last of the sunlight off the river and he saw that she was close to laughing now, although she