3 short novels

I'm passing through Stockholm next Monday and also on my way south the following Monday. Moderna Museet? Closed on Mondays!

"Everyone I've spoken to has said it's quite something..." The voice melted away as I went on down the corridor. I had no idea what Bob was talking about. And yet, somehow, I felt I did; at least, I felt that I knew confidently that I needn't bother to find out. It was going to be one of those kind of things.

When I first met Billie I fell in love with her straight away, and I was never tired of asking about everything she was (which I photographed, sultry or open-mouthed) and all about her past and everything she'd done and cared about up to that moment. Then I explored those corridors of her past in such detail that I almost became her, I even tracked down the records she played at school, which I was too young to know, and I even learnt the lyrics. Years went by and we were happy. Eventually, however, Billie no longer quite enjoyed being photographed and she no longer wanted to be reminded of the records she had played in her youth. In fact she never made much reference to the Billie I had fallen in love with and even the early history of our own relationship, it was as if it had never had a beginning but was just going on. Now I loved two women who had become enemies, the one that as I knew in that moment so long ago I would love all my life, and the one who I loved every day like the rising and setting sun. Sometimes I didn't know how not be a traitor, as I ran (ever more unsteadily) up and down the corridors of the past trying to keep alight all the votive flames in those grubby recesses that I had sworn never to let go of and that streaked the present with hazy spots. We sat together in the shade and once again I was caught out, I had simply stopped listening to her. Billie said, yes, that's ingenious, but I expect the truth is you were still thinking about the cricket.