Ake Edwardson - Chief Inspector Erik Winter, Never End

She felt a prick in her right foot, under her toes. She had been feeling her way forward, but the bottom was covered in seaweed here, a sort of long, thick grass that swayed with the current. It was brown and nasty. Like dead flowers.

Now she was standing on a small sandbank. She balanced on one leg and examined her right foot: she could see it was bleeding, but only a little. It wasn't the first time this summer. Par for the course.

She suddenly found herself thinking about a cramped classroom smelling of musty clothes ... and musty thoughts. Rain against the windowpane. Questions on a sheet of paper and the scratching of pens, answers that would be forgotten as soon as the papers had been handed in. Now it was all over, though. She'd passed her final exams, three bloody big cheers. And now a summer that would never end. Neeeverend. She could hear the tune in her head.

The cut would be no more than a little scratch by tonight, and it wouldn't hurt at all; but she would still feel the heat on her skin, from the sun and the salt. From the shower. Before the evening got under way.

She swam, kicking with her legs, and water flowed all around her. A sailing boat chugged slowly into thebay on its engine. She could see the little ferries, three of them, from where she was swimming. All the people on their way down to the islands in the southern archipelago. She was drifting on her back. She couldn't feel the water any more, it was like floating on air. I can fly, she thought. I can do anything. Be whatever I like. I can be famous.

I can forget.

Summer, and then she'd be starting at the medical school but that was a million years away, millions of drops of water tasting of salt and sand when she dived.

The water was green and a bit cloudy. She saw a shadow that might have been a fish.

She'd study for a year and then take a gap year, no matter what her father had to say. He'd comment that she was good at planning sabbaticals, but what about all the rest?

She didn't want to be at home.

She stayed under water for as long as she dared, then kicked off and tried to leap high above the surface. She swam back to the rocks picking her way carefully through the seaweed and heaved herself up onto one jutting out into the water.

The wound under her big toe was still bleeding. She clambered up to her blanket, pulled her towel from her bag, dried her hair and took a drink of water, then sat down on the blanket and blinked away some drops of salt water from her eyes. She took a breath, then another, a deep one, full of sun that almost scorched her lungs. The surface of the water was glittering like fish scales, as if tens of thousands of fish were wriggling away out there. She could hear faint sounds from boats heading in all directions. Some disappeared into the horizon, melted away. The sky was nearly white in the distance,but there was no sign of any cloud. She lay on her back. A drop of water ran down from her hair and over her cheek, and she could taste it on her lips. She'd already closed her eyes. Everything was red and yellow inside her head now. She could hear snatches of voices from people nearby, half words, a splinter of laughter that sparkled like the surface of the water in the sun.

She hadn't the strength to read. She didn't want to do anything at all, just lie there for as long as possible. Do nothing, just live for ever.

The sun was at eye level when she gathered her things together and scrambled over the hill and down through the little ravine to the cycle stands. She felt quite dizzy. Her shoulders were smarting, in spite of the cream. Her cheeks were burning, but not too much. It would have died down by evening, sort of sunk in. It would look good in the lights of the open-air caf.

She was starting to forget.

She cycled past the marina, threading her way through the crowds of people flocking off the archipelago ferries towards the trams and buses. Everybody was going home at the same time, as if they all had the same habits. Maybe we do, she thought. That's the way it is in summer. Everything is simpler. Sunbathe, swim, shower, party. Swim, sunbathe, shower, party. Shower, sunbathe, swim, party. She stopped, parked her bike and stood in the ice-cream queue to buy a tub with two flavours: tutti-frutti and old-fashioned vanilla. The ice cream started to melt straight away, but it would have been worse if she'd had a cone. A woman next to her said it was 33 degrees. Thirty-three degrees at 6.00. 'We shouldn't complain,' said a manto the woman's right. 'Oh, I don't know,' said the woman, who could have been anywhere between forty-five and sixty. 'The gardens could do with a bit of rain.'

Bugger your gardens, she thought as she rode off. Let this never end. The gardens will get their fill of rain come autumn.

There was a smell of hay coming from the field sloping down to the creek on the other side of the road. She passed through a cluster of houses, speeded up when she came to the cycle track alongside the tram lines, and was home within ten minutes. Her father was sitting on the verandah with a glass of what seemed to be whisky.

'Here comes a beetroot.'

She didn't answer.

'Still, better that than a leek.'

'A leek?'

'The white bits on a leek.'

'I'm going up to my room,' she said, walking up the steps. It was whisky. She recognised the heady smell.

'I'll be lighting the barbie in exactly ten minutes, Jeanette.'