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chance,’ Brains chipped in, because although he didn’t care much for physical exercise, he did know that he wouldn’t get very far from Diamond House if he didn’t improve his physical condition. Martha gave him an encouraging glance.
    ‘OK, but what are we going to do?’ said Christina and Rake at the same time.
    ‘Become the most troublesome oldies in the world,’ Martha answered. The word
revolution
would still have to bide its time.

Six
    Rake took the cigarette out of his mouth and did another session with the dumb-bells. It was getting easier now, but then they had been exercising every evening for more than a month, even on weekends. Christina was next to him on the exercise bicycle, and a bit further away Anna-Greta and Brains were busy with those weird contraptions which help you to build up your chest muscles.
    ‘How are you doing, Rake?’
    Martha showed her warm smile and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
    ‘Fine,’ he said, panting and red in the face. He put the dumb-bells aside and gave her a tired look. At seventy-nine, there she was going from one apparatus to another without a care, and she hardly seemed to be out of breath. When herfinal moments came, she would walk to the grave, crawl into the coffin and put the lid on herself, he was certain of that.
    ‘Just one more session, you can manage that?’ she went on. ‘Then we’ll put everything away and tidy up.’
    Rake pulled a face.
    ‘But we mustn’t leave any trace of our being here, Rake, you do understand that? And please, please, cut out the smoking. The smell will give us away.’
    Rake thought that Martha reminded him of his aunty in Gothenburg. The old gal was dead now, but she had been a schoolteacher and had weighed in at 150 kg. When her pupils misbehaved she’d threaten: ‘If you don’t keep quiet, I’m going to sit on you.’ She and Martha could have been related. But Martha had another side to her: she cared about other people. She would sneak out to the corner shop as much as possible to buy fruit and vegetables for all of them. And she wouldn’t let them pay for it either.
    ‘Everything green is good for you,’ she claimed, and flashed one of her winning smiles while her eyes glowed. Sneaking out of the retirement home when nobody was watching had turned into a game for Martha, and she was always in a buoyant mood when she returned. Sometimes she would even give them an encouraging little pat on the cheek. If Rake had been a little boy and had fallen off his bike, he probably would have let her give him a hug to make it feel better.
    ‘We’ll soon have something to show for all this hard training,’ Martha went on. ‘A few vitamins and some carbohydrates on top, and then, my friends, we can conquer the world.’
    ‘You can go conquer it,’ Rake muttered as his pessimism took over once more. There was something a little bit fishyabout all this. Martha sounded so very
purposeful
. His gut feeling told him that she was planning something, something bigger than he could even imagine.
    ‘Right, that’s enough for today,’ she called out. ‘And don’t forget to wipe the floor and dry off all the apparatus. Let’s meet in my room in half an hour.’
    A little later, when they had showered and freshened up a bit, they gathered together in Martha’s room. She had put out a basket with particularly nourishing bread and some fruit, while Brains had got out some bottles of energy drink. She had a new tablecloth, one with red and white flowers.
    ‘One more month of training and we ought to be in good enough condition,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, and by early March the snow will have melted. Then we can set sail!’ Martha filled in.
    ‘Set sail!’ Rake exclaimed. ‘We’re not out at sea, are we? Anyway, where would we go? For God’s sake, tell us what you’re cooking up!’
    ‘I want to make you all happier and livelier, and when the day comes that you are in good condition, then …’
    ‘Then what