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had seen the picture of Näcken in one of Grandmother Eva’s books we were in love with the beautiful naked boy who lived in the lakes and the rivers, playing his fiddle. Näcken’s hair was a tumble of dark curls. His eyes, set into a face as pale as death, were filled with sorrow. Rose had thought Julian looked just like that picture. I hadn’t seen the resemblance myself but that was infatuation for you; nothing but a mirror of your own deep desires. In the months after the accident I had told myself that Rose was with him, with Näcken, the beautiful boy with the fiddle, and that it was he who had brought her into the deep of the lake to sleep in his arms for ever. Those thoughts had been comforting at times and at others had driven me close to insanity.
    ‘Not quite seven. Five, I think.’ Katarina’s voice brought me back.
    ‘I seem to remember,’ I said, ‘that in Sweden, what we in England would call a biscuit counts as a cake. So it isn’t quite as extravagant as it might at first appear to be. Of course a biscuit in America is what we would call a roll.’
    ‘Really,’ Katarina said. As she walked out of the room, the empty tray in her hand, I looked after her with long eyes and a sigh escaped me.
    Uncle Ian said, ‘I feel acutely at this stage, near the end of my life, that I have to settle with the past.’
    I was biting into a moon-shaped butter biscuit when he said that and the crumbs caught in my dry throat. I choked and coughed. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘frog in my throat. Do you ever wonder where that expression comes from? I mean, whoever would get a frog in their throat? And if we are dealing in unlikely scenarios why not go the whole hog and make it a toad. A toad sounds even more dramatic. Or a hog. I’m sorry, I’ve got a hog in my throat. Or would that just be silly? It would, wouldn’t it? Because it is just about possible to swallow a frog or even a toad if it’s small but a hog, never.’
    ‘As I was saying,’ he was speaking loudly and his sparse sandy eyebrows knitted together in a frown. ‘I need to put things right before it’s too late. That’s what Rose was trying to tell me.’
    ‘Rose?’
    ‘I told you I had seen her.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, you did.’
    ‘Well then, there’s no need to sound so surprised.’ He changed the subject the way he always did when he was bored with an argument. ‘Your mother filled me in on what has been happening in your life. Not that there was very much.’ Uncle Ian always was one of these people who pride themselves on telling it as it is.
    ‘Oh I don’t know . . .’
    ‘Don’t be vague, Eliza. I can’t be doing with vague.’
    I had always irritated him. It had been good when that was the worst I could do to him.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’
    ‘Say what you think.’
    Such an easy-sounding request yet almost impossible to acquiesce to. What would the world be like if everyone went around saying what they thought? Much like a city where all the traffic signals were broken and the cars had no brakes.
    ‘I think not having had a lot happen is a good thing,’ I said finally.
    ‘I was in the bath this time.’
    I took a gulp of coffee and scalded my tongue.
    ‘It was a little awkward but luckily I had a towel to hand.’
    ‘Sorry, I’m not quite following.’
    ‘That’s because you weren’t paying attention. There were bubbles. Katarina insists on it. She says they’re relaxing. I’m grateful now or it could have been embarrassing.’
    I burst into a high-pitched laugh. I clamped my hand across my mouth, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry but it’s just all been rather overwhelming. Your phone call, coming over to see you, Rose speaking to you. It’s a lot to take in.’ I decided not to say that I still had no idea where, in all of this, the bath came in.
    Uncle Ian’s frown relaxed. ‘Your reaction is understandable. But as you get older you cease to be surprised because you realise how much