Chapter 11
Emelie came walking through the door with shopping bags in her hands and a big smile on her face.
Last week’s line dance had been so much fun that she had giggled to herself several times during the following week.
Dancing was so much fun, plus she felt that she had made two new friends in Sussi and Sara, and that was also lovely.
She missed Sara and their wine nights and powerwalks, and even if they often spoke on the phone, it wasn’t the same.
To be able to look someone in the eyes and laugh together was incredible.
Perhaps she hadn’t realised how much she had missed friends.
Over here, she only spent time with her kids and the people involved in the market, Stig, Birgitta and Christer.
They were all lovely people, even though they were a tad odd, but they weren’t friendship material in the same way that Stina and Sussi were.
So, when Linn declared that they needed to have some people over in order to try out her baked goods, Emelie had pushed her shyness to the side and invited the two girls over.
“I’ve been baking,” Linn shouted from the kitchen.
“I can tell, it smells heavenly,” Emelie said, as she walked into the kitchen “Oh my…”
The worktops were over-filled with oven plates full of rolls and cookies in all shapes and sizes.
There was flour all over the kitchen table and the sink was full of dough bowls and whisks.
In the middle of the chaos, Linn was standing, her dark hair sprinkled with flour and with a broad grin on her lips.
“Goodness, have you been baking all day?”
Linn nodded enthusiastically, pointing to the oven plates around her.
“Here’s checkerboard cookies and Brussels cookies. Shortbread and caramel biscuits. Cinnamon rolls of course, and I was thinking about trying to make some Danishes. What do you think?”
Emelie started laughing.
“Wonderful darling, but I don’t think that we need any more cookies.”
Linn found a cookie jar with elves on top of a shelf and carefully started filling it with checkerboard cookies.
“I’m going to need more flour…” she mumbled.
“So you’re actually planning on baking more?”
Emelie put butter and milk in the refrigerator and started unpacking cereal and oats, putting them into the larder.
“Yes! For the market and the line dance as well. I thought we could have a tasting today when SoS are coming over,” she said, putting the lid on the jar. Then she found a new one and started filling it with Brussels cookies.
“SoS?”
“Sussi and Stina, of course,” she said, grinning.
As the evening sun was setting over Sardinon, mother and daughter were once again standing by the window looking at the woman on the mountain.
“It’s just like that slow TV thingy”, Linn said, hesitantly.
“Yes, like the moose in Norrland. People just love watching them. Perhaps I should put up a camera and film the yoga lady, people would go bonkers” Emelie said.
“But, I’ve read that you can do yoga everywhere. Why go through the trouble of climbing a rock every evening? It seems dangerous. Do you think she does it all year round?”
“Impossible, it must be super slippery on the mountain in the winter” Emelie said.
Jingle Bells echoed through the house making them both jump.
“Oh, that bloody doorbell…” Emelie muttered as she walked over to open the door.
Linn went out into the kitchen to prepare the coffee and called up to her sisters that it was time for evening coffee and cookie evaluation. Stina and Sussi came into the hallway, giving Emelie and the younger girls big hugs.
“I’ve wondered quite a bit about this house,” Sussi said, and Stina nodded.
“It looks rather normal from the outside, but on the inside….”
“It’s okay now after we have packed away most of the Christmas stuff, but I have no idea what to do with it all.
But Astrid has decorated the kitchen with Santa and Christmas tree wallpaper – I’m not joking.
You can see for yourself – we have Christmas wallpaper in the kitchen,” Emelie laughed pointing at the kitchen walls.
Sussi and Stina’s eyes grew wider.
“You’re kidding, what a funny old lady!”
Emelie nodded.
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Oh yes, in town, and then always when there was a happening at the community centre. She was a jolly old lady. Now that you mention it, she was always dressed in red,” Stina said.
“Doesn’t surprise me one bit. Come on in and try some of Linn’s cookies and check out the Christmas wallpaper”, Emelie said, showing them into the kitchen.
When Linn and Emelie had the poured coffee for the adults and cordial for the kids, the cookie tasting began.
They each got one of all the different kinds of cookies and then were instructed to grade them between one and five.
Linn was standing by the sofa table like a conductor leading her orchestra.
“Now everyone take a bite. I want you to evaluate taste, texture and structure”, she said strictly.
Stina looked up on her from the sofa, she was holding a round cookie with a pink edge in her hand.
“Will that make three different grades then?”
“Yes, I guess it must,” Emelie said, looking to Linn to see if she agreed.
Linn shook her head.
“No, one grade, but you have to weigh all the different aspects,” she said with determination.
The three grown-ups and the two kids looked solemnly at Linn and on her command, they all took a bite of the cookie.
“Mmm, it’s delicious…”
Linn silenced Liv with just a stern look.
“Give it a proper taste! Everything has to be perfect,” she said harshly, and Liv nodded solemnly towards her big sister.
They chewed thoroughly, tasted, hummed and eventually, Linn let them speak their mind. She pointed at Sussi.
“What was it like? A one? A three?”
“Hmm, I’m going to say a three,” Sussi said, hunching a little in her chair. She didn’t know if Linn was going to get upset.
“I think it’s a five!” Linnea shouted and Liv nodded, but Linn just waved her off.
“Hmm, you guys like everything. Why just a three?” she asked while looking encouragingly at Sussi.
Sussi took another bite, carefully testing every single piece of the cookie.
“Well, they aren’t quite as vanilla-scented as Astrid’s. You could smell hers all over the community centre when she had baked,” Sussi said dreamingly.
Stina agreed. Emelie looked at her daughter.
“Do you want me to be completely honest?”
“Yes of course, if they aren’t perfect I have to change the recipe,” Linn said.
“Well, then I’ll say a three as well.”
Linn wrote something in a notebook and then ordered everyone to try out the cinnamon rolls. They also got threes from everyone. The caramel biscuits got a four for their creamy texture and the shortbread only got a two, they were too dry. The checkered cookies everyone loved and gave a full five.
“Okay, thank you for your grades, now I just have to update the recipes a little bit and try to improve them even more,” Linn said, as she was disappearing into the kitchen.
Emelie, Sussi and Stina dropped down on the sofa.
“Phew, that was tough”, Sussi laughed.
“Yes, she has high demands, and she really wants them to be as good as Astrid’s, but I don’t know if she can match them. Perhaps if we manage to find Astrid’s baking book… It’s supposed to be here somewhere, but we have looked everywhere,” Emelie said and shrugged her shoulders in despair.
Stina took another caramel biscuit.
“These ones were delicious. By the way, are we going to dance around the tree at the Christmas market?”
“I don’t know, I guess we should,” Emelie said. Or yes, I suppose we have to, for the kids. Vi ?ro Musikanter and Sm? Grodorna or is that just for Midsummer?”
Sussi shook her head.
“No, it’s the same as with the herring, you do the same dances for Christmas and Midsummer. Do you have someone to take care of that?”
“I imagine you guys will,” Emilie said, smiling.
Stina and Sussi nodded and immediately started listing more Christmas dances; R?ven raskar, Ritsch, ratsch, Raketen…
“Can’t you do a bit of line dancing as well? It’s so incredibly fun and it’s nice to have something for the grown-ups as well,” Emelie pleaded.
Everyone thought that was an excellent idea, and then Linn came back, declaring that she had changed up the recipes a little bit, that she was off next Saturday and that she was planning on baking again then.
“Buy flour”, she commanded, but then changed her mind. “No wait, I can have Oskar bring it all over to me from the shop. I will just collect it all when I’m at work and he’ll get it over here on his moped. Great!”
“Super,” Emelie said, happy not to have carry loads of flour, butter and sugar home.
Two days later, Emilie was sitting in her garden, planning for the Christmas market.
On the little garden table in front of her, she had lists of what to do, and on the very top it said: “Write note and hang on the notice board in the shop.” That was how she was planning on inviting people to book a table for the market to sell their goods.
She had heard that there was a silver smith on the island and someone making art out of driftwood.
And there was probably a countless number of old ladies knitting mittens and making embroidery.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Birgitta came trotting through the garden, dressed in the same, slightly too tight lilac blouse matched with stained, beige shorts. Emelie was familiar with the routine by now and got up to fetch a Christmas cup and some of Linn’s homemade cinnamon rolls and some cookies.
“Well, they aren’t quite like Astrid’s, but they taste nice,” Birgitta said, taking another bite of her roll.
“No, Linn is quite aware, but so far we haven’t been able to find the baking book, and she is trying to figure out how to make them moister and tastier,” Emelie explained
Birgitta nodded and asked how Stig was doing. He was just fine; he had offered to be the Santa at this year’s market as well. Birgitta chuckled and clasped her hands together.
“The kids are going to love that. Do you think he might need an assistant?”
Her eyes were sparkling when she talked about Stig and Emelie nodded.
“Of course, you should be Santa’s wife, if you would like to,” she said.
“I’d love to help,” Birgitta said, staring down at the ground.
Was she mistaken, or did Birgitta blush a little?
“I wanted to ask you about the woman on the mountain. Do you know who it is?”
Birgitta looked up towards the spot on the rock where the woman exercised in the evening.
“That’s Yoga-Jenny, she lives on the other side of the hill, and she practices yoga here every night,” she said.
“In the winter as well?”
“Well, most of the times, but if it’s too slippery and snowy, she stays inside,” Birgitta said. She took a checkered cookie and had barely taken one bite before she exclaimed:
“Ooh, this one is lovely”
She showed the cookie to Emelie.
“Yes, it was everyone’s favourite at the cookie tasting. But who is this Jenny?”, Emelie asked. Birgitta swallowed the cookie with a sip of her coffee.
“She was a good friend of Astrid’s. Jenny used to be here quite a bit and sometimes, when they quarreled, you could hear it all the way out to the road,” she said, squinting.
“What were they quarrelling about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.
Once, I happened to step in in the middle of an argument, you know, I don’t tend to ring the doorbell, and they immediately got quiet and Jenny left without a word and Astrid said nothing, even though I asked her what was going on. It was very odd,” she said, puzzled.
As if on cue, Birgitta’s pager started beeping and she sighed and left.
Emelie gathered her notes and papers and went back inside.
On the way back, she looked up towards the mountain.
Yoga-Jenny was one of the few neighbours that hadn’t been to the house once since they had moved in.
She wondered if Astrid and Jenny had been fighting when Astrid died?
And in that case, what had they been arguing about?