Fire (45 page)

‘Hello?’ Ida says again. ‘You’re not ending the call, are you?’

‘Well, no …’

‘So … I’ll soon be home,’ Ida puffs. ‘If we could just keep talking a little longer …’

‘Of course. About what?’

‘Not a clue. Just not the end of the world.’

‘Ida,’ Minoo says and knows the moment she begins that she will regret saying this. ‘You know you have mates who are not members of PE. We could be your friends. If you only …’

‘If I only … what? Why is it just me who’s supposed to change all the time? Why is everyone complaining about me? What’s actually wrong with me?’

‘Maybe it would be a good idea to find out,’ Minoo replies quietly.

Ida says nothing. Her panting is the only sound.

‘I’m home now,’ she says in the end.

Minoo hears her unlock a door.

‘See you later,’ Ida says and ends the call.

Minoo hangs on to the mobile. Might as well deal with the next awkward call straight away.

Ingrid comes out from the storeroom at the back carrying two hurricane lamps. She puts them on the counter in front of Linnéa. And then laughs a little.

‘You look so funny,’ she says.

Linnéa glances sideways at her.

‘I guess so,’ she says.

She’s standing near the till, putting a few invoices into a folder in the light of a torch that she keeps squashed between her chin and her shoulder.

Ingrid stops in front of a mirror set in a frame made of corks from wine bottles.

‘Typical, isn’t it,’ she says. ‘Just when we’d decided to sort the storeroom at last. And there’s no way of telling when the power will be back on. You don’t have to stay. We can carry on tomorrow.’

‘It’s fine, I’ll stay.’

Ingrid lets down her long white hair, then twists it and pins it up in a bun at the back of her head.

‘You’re a stubborn one, you are,’ she says.

Maybe so, Linnéa thinks.

But above all, she doesn’t fancy setting out into the darkness just yet. Or being alone for any longer than absolutely necessary on a night like this. Her body has been uncomfortably tense ever since she left school today. She’s kept looking over her shoulder. Jumped at the slightest sound.

Ingrid walks over to one of the ‘bargain shelves’ and picks up a troll made of pine cones.

‘Oh, dear, how long have you been standing around?’ she asks the troll. ‘Doesn’t anybody want you? What do you think, time to throw you in the bin?’

She blows some of the dust off the gloomy little cone-creature and puts it back where it came from. It’s safe enough on its shelf. Linnéa knows that Ingrid can’t ever bring herself to get rid of anything.

‘Didn’t you want that white lace fabric that was just delivered?’ Ingrid asks. ‘With those stains it will never sell and you dye everything black anyway.’

‘Thanks,’ Linnéa says. ‘Love it.’

It is utterly mysterious how Ingrid keeps the shop going since there are hardly ever any customers. Rumour has it that she lives off a big inheritance after her husband, who won a serious sum of money on a lottery ticket, died. The story is that Ingrid’s adult children don’t want to know about her any more. And that she was one of the steady visitors
to the secret swingers’ club in Lilla Lugnet before the house burned down.

But all Linnéa needs and wants to know about Ingrid is that she has always treated her well.

A piercing signal cuts the silence and Linnéa is so startled she drops the torch. It bounces on the counter, falls to the floor. And goes dark.

‘Christ Almighty,’ Ingrid says. ‘Whoever is calling at this time?’

Linnéa lifts the receiver of the old-fashioned telephone on the wall.

‘Ingrid’s Hidey-hole.’

No response.

‘Hello?’ she says.

The line goes dead.

Linnéa looks at Ingrid and shrugs.

The next moment there is a ringtone from Linnéa’s bag. She swears, starts rummaging. Her mobile stops and then starts again just as she picks it up. It’s Minoo. What new shit has hit the fan?

‘Has something happened?’ Linnéa says immediately.

‘Yes, it has,’ Minoo replies.

‘Was it you who phoned the shop just now?’

‘What shop?’

Linnéa sighs.

‘Never mind.’

She looks apologetically at Ingrid, picks up one of the hurricane lamps and goes through to the storeroom as she listens to Minoo starting to tell her about Ida’s evening in the centre.

‘I can’t say it’s a surprise,’ Linnéa says when Minoo reaches the end of the story. ‘But what you said is right. We must wait. One evil power at a time.’

‘But there’s something else,’ Minoo says.

‘Aha?’

Linnéa absently examines a table cluttered with collectors’ china plates decorated with pictures of European royalty.

‘Can’t you come here?’ Minoo says. ‘When the power is off the newspaper office goes crazy and Dad doesn’t come home for hours. So we’d be on our own. If you can make it, that is. It would be great if you could come.’

Linnéa can’t think what Minoo might want, but she sounds really upset.

‘Right, I’ll come,’ she says. ‘As soon as I can.’

Linnéa plays the torchlight over the front of Minoo’s house and confirms that it looks exactly the way she had imagined it. A large, detached villa on two floors. Several tall trees which lean protectively over the neat garden.

She goes rigid for a moment when she hears the rat-tatat of a moped engine start up on the road behind her. She thought she heard the same sound when she came out of Ingrid’s Hidey-hole. Is somebody following her?

You’re just paranoid, she tells herself. Let go.

A last drag on her cigarette. She throws it away and goes along to ring the doorbell.

Minoo opens the door.

‘Come in.’

She’s holding a four-armed candlestick. The candle flames flicker in the wind.

Linnéa steps inside, pulls off her coat of leopard-patterned fake fur and hangs it up among all the dark coats and jackets on the hall stand. Seemingly, the entire Falk Karimi family have the same boring taste in clothes.

Minoo leads the way into the living room. A pale brown teapot, two matching cups and saucers, sugar and milk, are set
out on the table by the sofa. Two kinds of biscuits on a plate. Lit candles everywhere. Whatever this is all about, clearly it isn’t so bad that Minoo was put off organising a tea party.

Linnéa sits down on the sofa, scans the room.

It looks tasteful, impeccable. Nice, but anxiously restrained. Only the books are likely to tell you something about the personalities of the people who live here.

Minoo pours tea for two.

‘I’m not sure how to tell you this,’ Minoo says as she pushes a cup across.

She sits down on the sofa, too, and turns to Linnéa.

‘Do you remember when Vanessa could suddenly hear you inside her head? The time Max held you prisoner in the dining area?’

‘Yes,’ Linnéa says.

She cautiously sips her tea. Tries not to show how nervous this is making her.

‘You didn’t know that you did it, right? That you sort of cried out to her?’

‘No, I didn’t. Why are you asking about this?’

Minoo bites her lip.

‘It happened again. This Monday. But it was me who heard you this time. Heard your thought, that is.’

Linnéa almost spills the tea.

‘Impossible,’ she says. ‘You must have imagined it.’

It is impossible, she repeats inwardly.

Surely it is? That time, with Max, she was so desperate, so certain she would die.

‘You thought about Vanessa,’ Minoo says. ‘You were thinking that you … that she …’

Linnéa puts her cup down on the table with a bang. Tea splashes on to the saucer.

‘Linnéa …’ Minoo says.

Linnéa gets up. Her heart thumps against her chest wall, so hard it will break her ribs any time now.

‘I need to go home,’ she says.

So, this is what it feels like when someone reads your mind. No wonder the others felt so awful when they found out about her magic power.

‘Please, don’t go,’ Minoo says. ‘You need to talk about this.’

‘I need to nothing,’ Linnéa replies and walks into the hall, fumbling in the dark to find her fake fur coat.

Minoo catches up with her and grabs her arm.

‘I truly believe you need to talk. Just like when you told me last spring that I had to tell someone about the black smoke. And you were right. What I’m trying to say is, I understand if you don’t want to talk to me about Vanessa, but you must talk to somebody. Open up to someone. If you don’t, it might bubble out of your head again.’

Linnéa can hardly follow all this because Minoo is speaking so quickly.

‘Next time, maybe it’ll be Vanessa who hears your thoughts,’ Minoo continues. ‘Is that really the way you want her to find out?’

‘I don’t want her to find out at all!’ Linnéa snarls.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I haven’t got a chance!’

The words hang in the air between them. Silent, they face each other in the dark hall.

‘Shall we go back and sit down again?’ Minoo suggests.

The tea has cooled down long ago, when Minoo swallows the last mouthful in her cup. She tries to look as if she doesn’t think what Linnéa has just told her is strange in the slightest.

In fact, she doesn’t think it is. But it’s weird that Linnéa has told her any of this. Now, Minoo isn’t sure how she
should deal with this huge confession. This is a fragile moment. She feels awkward and is worried that Linnéa might misunderstand.

‘What I don’t get is, how can you bear listening to all this,’ Linnéa says and rubs her forehead.

She is avoiding Minoo’s eyes.

‘I asked you,’ Minoo says.

‘Perhaps you got more than you asked for. I need a smoke now.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

Minoo picks up a couple of blankets and an ashtray and they go outside to sit on the front steps. Just as they settle down, the street lamps whir for a moment and start up again. The lamps inside the house also come on and the windows create lit rectangles on the grass. The mist is crawling out of the ground.

‘You want one?’ Linnéa says and waves the packet of cigarettes at Minoo.

‘No, thanks.’

‘I guessed,’ Linnéa says with a grin.

‘Nice of you to keep reminding me of what a wholesome person I am,’ Minoo says and smiles back.

Linnéa lights her cigarette and inhales deeply.

‘Not all that wholesome. You seduced a teacher, for instance.’

‘And was punished for it,’ Minoo points out. Linnéa laughs.

Their eyes meet and Minoo feels a sudden, overwhelming wave of warmth for Linnéa.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ Linnéa says seriously.

‘I know what it’s like to love somebody and not be able to mention it to anyone. Thank your lucky stars you’ve got better taste than me.’

Linnéa laughs a little again.

‘Not usually, believe you me. You’d weep if you saw my list of exes. It’s so typical that when I care for someone who makes sense, she doesn’t want me. I’ve got to try to stop falling in love. For my own good.’

‘Good luck,’ Minoo says ironically.

It slips off her tongue so naturally and then, abruptly, she has to look away.

Good luck.

That’s what Rebecka said, that autumn day when they met in the fairground. Same words, same ironic tone, when Minoo had said she would stop loving Max.

‘Hello?’ Linnéa says. ‘Where did you disappear to?’

‘I was just reminded of Rebecka,’ Minoo says.

Linnéa looks searchingly at her.

‘A shame I never got to know her better,’ she says. ‘And it’s a shame, too, that you never got to know Elias. He would have liked you.’

Surely there can’t be a better compliment, coming from Linnéa.

‘I knew him, just for a few seconds. The time I liberated him from Max.’

Linnéa nods.

Minoo thinks about the child Elias, a classmate of hers in primary school. It is only a faint memory. His hair, so blonde it was almost white, and the look in his eyes, always on his guard, that he kept throughout life.

Linnéa stubs her cigarette out and gets up.

‘I’d better go home now.’

She folds the blanket she had wrapped herself in and hands it to Minoo.

‘Are you absolutely sure that you know what Vanessa feels?’ Minoo asks. ‘She always comes across as if she likes you very much.’

‘She does, I suppose, but as a friend. And you must have noticed that she likes men
very, very
much.’

‘Perhaps it simply hasn’t dawned on her yet.’

‘I don’t want to hope for anything,’ Linnéa says. ‘Then it hurts even more.’

Minoo nods. She knows exactly what Linnéa means. On the other hand, she isn’t so sure that Linnéa is right about Vanessa.

When Linnéa is nearly back in her part of town, she feels so tired she is almost sleepwalking.

But it is the right kind of tiredness. A load is lifted off her mind and, for the first time, she understands how heavy a burden the secrecy about her feelings for Vanessa has been.

The fog has swallowed up a large part of Linnéa’s block of flats. It looks as if it is rising up from among the clouds. Someone in the area is throwing a party. The music is very loud, hard and aggressive. The sound echoes between the walls and grows more intense the closer Linnéa gets. She even recognises the tune now, Elias used to like it.

At the front door, she hears the sound of glass breaking above her. Fragments are raining down from the sky. She just manages to wrap her arms protectively around her head when the largest shards hit the ground just next to her.

It must be that bunch of total idiots who have made Diana give her hell.

Linnéa tugs the door open. The music fills the entire stairwell, bouncing off the walls as she steps into the lift. As it crawls upwards, she checks each landing through its window, trying to work out where the party is being held.

The music comes closer. The heavy beat thumps so hard that Linnéa’s heart seems to follow the rhythm.

The lift chugs past the fifth floor. Sixth. On the seventh floor, the music is howling at her. And she realises where it is coming from.

Someone is in her flat.

She isn’t frightened but her fury is overpowering. A jerk as the lift stops, a click from the automatic lock. Linnéa throws the door open and runs to the landing.