Fire (29 page)

‘Can’t you grasp that, at this point, control is more important than ever?’ Alexander says. ‘We are in the dawn of an age of magic. More and more natural witches emerge from nowhere. All young and silly and capable of causing immense harm …’

He comes closer to her.

‘Everything worked out so well,’ he says gently. ‘You were completely rehabilitated. Our family’s reputation was fully restored. And then you get lost in a morass once more.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Alexander sighs.

‘Adriana. Can’t you simply tell me what has been going on in this hopeless dump of a town?’

She raises her eyes to look at her brother. Suddenly Linnéa hardly recognises her. But she knows what it is like to hate someone so intensely.

‘Is this the point where you start to threaten me?’ Adriana says.

‘Will you never forgive me?’ Alexander says. He sounds sad.

She doesn’t reply.

‘Do you think that was an easy decision for me to make?’ he continues. ‘It was a sacrifice for me, too. I did what I had to for the sake of our family. For your sake. Your suffering would have been even greater if it had been someone else who—’

‘I’m too grateful for words,’ Adriana says. ‘Can we go now?’

Alexander sighs. He nods and they walk towards the hall.

Soon afterwards, the front door shuts, then something scrapes in the lock until it slowly clicks into place again.

Steps echo in the stairwell. The door to the street opens and shuts. Silence falls.

‘Okay,’ Vanessa says. ‘Now you all know what it feels like to be invisible.’

They agree to leave the flat at five-minute intervals. Linnéa goes first. She waits for Vanessa in Storvall Square. When Vanessa finally arrives, Linnéa pulls a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket of her dress.

‘Would you like one?’ she asks, but Vanessa shakes her head.

Linnéa lights up and inhales the smoke deep into her lungs. She really should stop. If for no better reason than that she can’t afford this garbage.

They walk through the centre of Engelsfors. The evening sun warms their faces and gleams in the display windows of the abandoned shops.

They stop by a small playground. There are a couple of swings made from tyres that dangle from creaking chains, and a climbing frame that looks like a death trap.

Vanessa crosses the sandy patch under the swings and pushes her legs through one of the tyres. Linnéa settles on the rim of the other swing.

‘What do you think Alexander and Adriana were talking about?’ Vanessa says.

‘Search me. But I wouldn’t fancy joining their family get-togethers.’

Linnéa takes hold of the chains, leans back, and looks up at the sky.

‘It is so typically Anna-Karin that she couldn’t resist looking after Nicolaus’s fern.’

‘But she couldn’t know that Alexander would turn up,’ Vanessa says.

‘No, I know. It’s just that … Sod it. Now and then I get so fed up with her.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Linnéa says and lets the cigarette drop on the sand. She rubs the ashes out with her foot.

She knows exactly what it is. She can’t stand Anna-Karin’s soft, submissive naivety. Her permanent victimhood. And the fact that Linnéa could so easily have become an Anna-Karin, if she hadn’t made up her mind to be hard and aloof instead.

‘Tell me, who was that visitor?’ Vanessa asks. ‘The woman who came to your place yesterday?’

Linnéa straightens up, sets the swing going and tells her about Diana’s visit. Then she talks about her session with Jakob this afternoon and how she had to defend herself. He had of course heard all Diana’s side of the story.

And Vanessa listens. Listens intently, as no one has since Elias died.

Linnéa loves her for that.

She loves Vanessa.

This insight strikes home with a massive impact. It isn’t the first time, but the shock is always the same. A great rush of happiness that floods her body. She has to remind herself that it is just some neurotransmitter agents that cheat her brain into believing that everything is fantastic.

Because she knows of course that it is hopeless. And also knows that, all the same, she will never stop hoping.

‘Think about it, Helena could be behind this as well, couldn’t she?’ Vanessa says.

Linnéa tries to focus again. She has almost forgotten what they were talking about.

‘The way I see it, she really did think you were a bad influence on Elias,’ Vanessa continues. ‘If she’s revenged herself on Adriana by getting her sacked, why wouldn’t she do a similar thing to you? I bet that Diana person is also a member of Positive Engelsfors.’

‘Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?’ Linnéa says and shoves her feet into the sand so that the swing stops with a jerk.

‘I don’t know,’ Vanessa says. ‘But it seems to me it’s about as far-fetched as complaints about parties you haven’t given made by neighbours you don’t have.’

‘I hope you’re wrong,’ Linnéa says. ‘I’d so much prefer it to be some misunderstanding rather than a mega conspiracy.’

And something Elias used to say comes back to her.

Even if you’re not paranoid, it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

The editorial staff at the
Engelsfors Herald
has finished work for the day. All except Dad, who is holed up in his office writing the editorial for the next issue. Minoo observes him through the panes of glass that make up part of the office wall. He sometimes raises his hands from the keyboard and stares at the screen. He looks discontented. His lips move without speaking. His forehead is wrinkled. He nods to himself. When Minoo was little, she used to laugh at the way Dad behaved when he wrote.

She is in the common room and leafs through the latest issue of the
Herald
while she is waiting. The reason she’s here is to talk with him about Helena. He would soon be done, he had said, just another fifteen minutes. That was forty-five minutes ago.

It is Friday’s paper. It’s been running a long piece about
the problems with the electricity supply these last few weeks. The people in charge are ‘baffled’, a headline explains. No one has been able to locate any faults in the hardware. Minoo turns the pages.

Helena Malmgren smiles at her from a double-page spread. The
Herald
’s trainee has done a personal interview. Minoo skims the totally uncritical text. Clearly, Helena has acquired yet another admirer in the course of the interview.

Minoo turns another page. An article about the continued high risk of forest fires. A road report and, to go with it, a photo of a lady who points accusingly at a pothole in the street outside her house. And someone has seen a lynx and taken a blurry picture on a mobile phone.

Minoo leafs through the sports results, weather reports and school lunch menus. The classified ads with the announcements of deaths on the last page but one. She can’t resist reading them. It is almost compulsive with her. She scans the images printed in each one: crosses, lilies of the valley, shining sunsets, boats, sports club logos …

Days when no one of Mum or Dad’s age, or anyone younger than them, has died, always come as a huge relief. But this time, she spots a year of birth that upsets her and also a name she recognises. Only forty-two years old. Leila Barsotti. Minoo’s first teacher.

Minoo hasn’t seen Leila for years, or even thought about her. But in primary school, Leila was her idol. Minoo even burst into tears at her first end-of-term assembly because she didn’t want to leave her teacher and all her wonderful school books.

Leila leaves a husband and two children, it says in the paper. Minoo stops reading when Dad comes and sits down heavily at the table.

‘How are things?’ he asks.

‘I just saw that Leila Barsotti has died.’

‘Yes, of course. Leila. I’m sorry I didn’t get round to telling you,’ he says and looks sadly at her. ‘We haven’t talked much lately, not as much as we used to.’

‘No, I suppose we haven’t,’ she says, but feels she can’t bear a repetition of what happened in the car this morning. She changes the subject.

‘Did you know that Positive Engelsfors and my school are supposed to collaborate?’

Dad straightens his back and looks so intently at Minoo that someone who didn’t know him might well think that he was angry.

‘No, I didn’t. Where did you hear that?’

‘At assembly, this morning. Tommy Ekberg – he’s the acting principal now – introduced our school’s new “positive” approach. Helena came on stage afterwards and gave a speech. Urged everyone to come along to their centre.’

By now, Dad looks angry for real.

‘It’s a local authority school, for heaven’s sake.’

‘She’s married to Krister Malmgren, so presumably she can do what she likes,’ Minoo says. ‘Do you think she’s behind Adriana Lopez being sacked? As some kind of revenge for what happened to Elias?’

‘Couldn’t tell you,’ Dad says between clenched teeth. ‘But I’ll make it my business to find out.’

Anna-Karin doesn’t want to go home, but can’t think of anywhere else. She doesn’t dare to seek refuge in the forest, not any more. And it’s too late to go and see Grandpa. Not even Nicolaus’s flat is a safe haven. And that’s her fault. She should have taken the fern home instead.

She hasn’t kept track of how long she has been drifting around in the narrow streets around the centre of Engelsfors,
but it’s getting dark now and she’s hungry. She has to go home, sooner or later. Since their quarrel yesterday, she and Mum haven’t said a word to each other. The thought of returning to the flat makes Anna-Karin claustrophobic before she even gets there.

When she crosses Storvall Square, she catches sight of Minoo standing below the blue neon sign saying
Engelsfors Herald
.

‘Hi, Anna-Karin,’ Minoo says and waves.

‘Hello,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Been visiting your dad?’

Minoo nods.

‘He’s bringing the car round. Would you like a lift?’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Anna-Karin says.

She would rather not have to meet Minoo’s father again. Their stiff meeting last winter was quite enough.

‘I live so near,’ she adds and looks at the ground.

‘How are you feeling?’ Minoo asks.

Anna-Karin studies the cobbled paving on the square.

‘So-so,’ she mumbles.

They stand in silence for a while. A flock of rooks flies past above their heads. The birds are cawing noisily at each other.

‘You see, when Mum and I went to the Positive Engelsfors Centre,’ Anna-Karin says, ‘Mum … I don’t know. She seems to hate the way her life has turned out but she still won’t do anything about it. She hardly goes out at all. And Helena said exactly all the things Mum needed to hear. Well, I thought so anyway. But she didn’t want to listen. And, besides …’

Anna-Karin stops. She very nearly began to explain how worried she is about money, but feels it would be too humiliating.

‘I just don’t get it,’ she says instead. ‘I’ve done everything I can think of, but it’s as if she doesn’t want to change. That was why I tried … to help her last autumn.’

At last, Anna-Karin looks at Minoo. She has wrapped her arms around herself, as if cold inside her dark blue sweater.

‘Listen, this isn’t the same thing at all, but anyway …’ she says. ‘My dad is killing himself. His father died from a heart attack when he was Dad’s age, but he – my dad, I mean – still carries on as if he’ll live forever. He just eats and eats and never takes any exercise and his blood pressure is sky high, you only need to look at him to see that. And he and my mum are at each other’s throats all the time and I think they’re talking about divorce.’

Minoo is almost breathless when she pauses.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says in the next moment. ‘You were telling me about your problems. And so I go gabbling on about mine instead.’

‘That’s all right. It’s kind of comforting to know that other people have problems, too.’

‘We could start an alternative to Positive Engelsfors,’ Minoo says. ‘“Join Negative Engelsfors! Feel better after listening to people who are worse off than you!”’

They both laugh.

A car glides to a halt close to them. Anna-Karin looks quickly at it and notes that Minoo’s father is driving. He is listening to the news with the car radio turned up high. They can easily hear the woman newsreader’s calm voice.

‘I must go,’ Minoo says. ‘But listen. It’s not as if I know much about mental illness, but I think your mother is depressed. Would you like me to find the number to a helpline or something? So she can phone up and talk? My mum’s bound to know who to contact.’

‘Thanks, it’s nice of you,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘But she’d never make that call.’

‘Think about it, anyway.’

Minoo touches Anna-Karin’s arm a little awkwardly. Anna-Karin is so amazed that she has no time to respond before Minoo is in the car.

‘Jesus, just look at these clowns,’ Ida says. ‘Such a poor show.’

‘Maybe you should invite them to the party tonight?’ Erik says.

He and Robin laugh. All three stand and watch Michelle and Evelina who are pretend-wrestling with a final-year boy each at the far end of the corridor and shrieking with laughter at the tops of their voices.

Ida can’t get her head around why Vanessa would want to be friends with those two. Compared to them, Vanessa is hyperintelligent and tastefully dressed. Michelle and Evelina are always clinging to older guys, always too scantily dressed with far too much make-up slapped on, and always laugh too often and too loudly. As if they hadn’t ever needed to stop and think.

‘Anybody read Evelina’s blog?’ Erik says. ‘That chick is completely brain-dead.’

‘Girls who look good are always brain-dead,’ Robin announces, as if he’s stating a fact, a law of nature established beyond doubt.

Ida swings round to face him.

‘Exactly what’s that supposed to mean?’

Robin’s eyes swivel nervously.

‘But it’s how it is,’ he says. ‘The lookers don’t have to be smart to get on in life, so their brains become, like, underdeveloped.’

‘So, do you think I’m brain-dead?’ Ida asks.

‘Of course I don’t.’