The Circle (44 page)

No, I’m bloody not, Minoo wants to say –actually, there’s a lot she’d like to say. Instead she says, ‘No. My right knee really hurts. I don’t think I can skate any more.’

‘Then go home and rest,’ Max says.

He’s completely impersonal again. It’s painful for her to be so close to him and unable to touch him. She feels as if he’s ripped her heart out, thrown it on to the ice, set fire to it, stamped on it, stuffed it back into her chest, sewn it up, and started all over again.

‘I’ve handed in my notice. I’ll be leaving at the end of the spring term.’

He doesn’t bat an eyelid when he says it. His gaze is fixed on Julia and Felicia, who are making failed attempts at pirouettes.

‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t like you,’ he continues, in a low voice. ‘Quite the opposite.’

Finally he looks her in the eyes.

‘I like you far too much.’

Then he skates off. A few quick strides and he’s gone.
Minoo
is left alone, looking after him and trying to understand what she has just heard. The pain has subsided. Instead she is filled with a new and dangerous sensation.

Hope.

Anna-Karin shuts her eyes and glides down the hill. She’s skied here a thousand times before and knows every curve. The rush of air hits her face. The snow is whispering beneath her skis. She feels light and free. She opens her eyes and blinks at the sun as she coasts into the next curve.

Anna-Karin used to go cross-country skiing with Grandpa on these trails in winter, and it’s always been the obvious choice for her during school sports days. It’s the only sport she’s reasonably good at, and she loves shooting through the forest among the fir trees. She’s never had to worry about meeting any of her bullies on these tracks: cross-country skiing is not the sport of choice for the in-crowd.

Anna-Karin relishes being alone. She has to steel herself for the new term and the difficult task she’s set herself.

If only she didn’t have such a vivid image in her mind of the principal’s scarred skin.

It’s nothing compared to what they did to him
.

What will the Council do to Anna-Karin?

There’s a rest stop a short distance ahead. She sets her sights on the dark brown wooden roof, the solid table with its two long benches, and picks up speed.

When she reaches it, she sticks her poles into a snowdrift, takes off her skis and stands them alongside. She opens her jacket to let in the cold air and tosses her backpack on to the
table
. She has just started to take out her packed lunch when she hears a skier swishing towards her.

The figure catches sight of her, stops, looks around, then skis in closer. Anna-Karin sees her blonde hair and puts down her drink.

It’s Ida.

‘What do you want?’ Anna-Karin asks, as she comes up.

‘Just to say hi.’

Anna-Karin glances around automatically. Are Robin, Kevin and Erik hiding in the forest? Or any of the others that Ida has lamented her with over the years? Can they already be out to get her?

‘Now you’ve said it,’ says Anna-Karin. ‘So leave me alone.’

‘It’s a free country.’

‘What – are you still at primary school?’

‘I just want you to know one thing,’ Ida says, taking off her skis. She looks almost unnaturally healthy, as if she lives on vitamins, organic vegetables and outdoor activities in clean alpine air. ‘This term’s going to be different. You took away everything that was mine, and now I’m taking it back. You can’t stop me. You’re going to regret ruining my life.’

So says Ida. The Ida who had made Anna-Karin’s life miserable for nine excruciating years.

It’s as if something bursts inside her, something she hasn’t been completely aware of. It’s like the thin membrane inside an eggshell, a protective layer that has somehow held together the roiling mass of angst, fear and rage. Now it
breaks
, and all the ugliness and venom pour out, spreading through her: a dark, seething sludge of pure hatred.

‘Everybody hates you, Ida,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Don’t you know that?’

‘Thanks to you, yeah. But don’t go thinking—’

‘No,’ Anna-Karin carries on relentlessly. ‘Everybody has always hated you. They just pretended to like you because they were afraid of being your next victim. It makes no difference what you do to me. It won’t change what they think of you.’

For a moment Ida looks as if she’s about to cry –the tears are just beneath the surface. ‘Nobody’s friends with you because they want to be either,’ she says.

Anna-Karin moves a step closer and Ida backs away. ‘Maybe, but I never hurt anyone. You did, all the time. What I did is nothing compared to what you’ve been doing.’

‘You’re such a fucking
freak
!’

‘You ruined my
entire
life,’ Anna-Karin says. She walks forwards a few more steps. Ida’s heels are pressed against a snowdrift.

‘It wasn’t just me,’ Ida says defiantly.

‘No. But you were one of the ones who started it. I never understood why you picked on me. I used to lie awake at night trying to work out what was wrong with me so I could change. I discovered loads of things to hate about myself. I tried everything. But it was never enough. Not even when I gave up, when I did everything not to draw attention to myself.’

Anna-Karin glimpses a momentary hesitation in her.

‘No, it wasn’t enough,’ Ida says slowly, as if she really wants Anna-Karin to hear every word. ‘You should have killed yourself.’

The dark wave that has built inside Anna-Karin washes over her. She allows herself be swept along by it.

She throws herself forward. She’s heavier than Ida and adrenalin makes her strong. Ida topples to the ground. Anna-Karin pins her shoulders to the snowdrift and straddles her waist. Ida struggles, twists and strains, but to no avail.

‘Let go! I can’t breathe!’

It’s as if the power inside Anna-Karin has a life of its own. A living entity that has been lying in wait, biding its time for this very moment.

G
o away, leave this town and never show your face here again
.

Ida’s pupils widen. Anna-Karin sees her struggle to resist, her face turning redder and redder.

Be gone
…

There is an invisible wall between her and Ida.

Anna-Karin recognises it from the practice exercises. Ida resists.

Anna-Karin pushes harder, puts all her will and concentration behind her power to break through the wall between them. It buckles but doesn’t break. Finally Anna-Karin realises she has nothing left to draw from.

Exhaustion overcomes her. She tumbles to the side, into the snowdrift. Ida gets up, staggering, but triumph shines in her eyes. And Anna-Karin realises she fell into Ida’s trap.
She
allowed herself to be provoked. Just as Ida had wanted.

‘I’m not afraid of you any more,’ Ida says. ‘The book taught me how to do it. It’s on my side.’ She stumbles towards her skis and puts them on. Anna-Karin is unable to speak.

‘You should follow your own advice,’ Ida says. ‘You should leave. Tomorrow school starts for real, and then everything will be just as it should be.’

She glides down the track. Anna-Karin shuts her eyes. If she lies here long enough she’ll freeze to death. It wouldn’t matter much. ‘I can’t take it any more,’ she whispers. ‘I can’t take it any more.’

45

NUMBER SEVENTEEN. NUMBER
nineteen.

What am I doing? Minoo thinks as she walks along Uggelbovägen Street.

Number twenty-one. Twenty-three.

The sodium streetlamps cast their eerie glow over the freshly cleared road. The banks of snow are marked here and there with random squirts of dog pee. She passes numbers twenty-five, twenty-seven and twenty-nine.

This is something Vanessa might do. Or Linnéa.

Thirty-one and thirty-three.

Definitely not Minoo Falk Karimi.

She stops at number thirty-five and looks towards house number thirty-seven. The light is on in Max’s window. She can still turn around and go home. It’s still possible. She can still pull out.

But if she leaves now, she’ll never know.

She walks up to Max’s door and reaches out to ring his doorbell. She stops when she hears voices inside the house. Is the TV or radio on? Or has he got a friend with him?
A woman?

It’s never occurred to her that Max might have a private
life
. In her mind he’s always existed in a vacuum when he hasn’t been at school.

What if he has friends with him for dinner? What will they think? That Max is some kind of semi-paedophile who takes advantage of his students? And that she’s a stupid little airhead with a penchant for older men?

Perhaps Max’s friends would think it quite normal for him to be with a girl who’s barely started year eleven, and he probably wouldn’t be embarrassed in the slightest.

‘How did you two meet?’

‘Well, Minoo is a real whiz at quadratic equations, and we took a liking to each other!’

Suddenly she can imagine how repellent it would look to other people.

Does Max have brothers and sisters, parents? What fun family gatherings they’d have. She’d have to sit at the kids’ table while the grown-ups talked. And what about her own parents? Her father would wonder if he had brought on a father fixation by working too much during her childhood. Her mother would find a less than flattering diagnosis for Max, and dispatch Minoo to a psychiatric ward for adolescents.

Even if they were to try to keep their relationship secret, it would get out. Secret love affairs never remain secret for long in Engelsfors. Then the school would report Max to the police. He’d never be able to work again as a teacher.

She lowers her hand.

Suddenly a new dimension has been added to her
relationship
with Max: reality. She had avoided it until now. But Max had seen it all along.

When you’re older you’ll realise how young you actually were
.

She had sat on his sofa, trying to convince him of how mature she was, when all she’d really done was prove the opposite.

The voices inside are suddenly silenced and Minoo realises it must have been the TV. She hears footsteps. Max is walking about. He goes from the living room to the kitchen, fills the sink with water, starts clattering dishes.

She had come here to convince Max that they have to be together, that they shouldn’t care what other people think. But now that she can see everything so clearly, she can’t pretend not to.

There’s only one thing she can do. And one thing she has to know.

The doorbell is surprisingly soft and melodic.

The clattering in the kitchen stops. Footsteps approach. Minoo stands her ground, trying to breathe calmly even though her heart is pounding with a blistering techno beat.

The latch turns. The door opens.

Max appears, lit from behind. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans. His hair is ruffled and he is pale, with dark circles under his eyes. Somehow that makes him even better-looking. He’s like a tragic young poet – a Keats or a Byron. He’s drying his hands on a tea-towel.

‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you like this.’

‘Minoo—’

‘Please, just listen to me. I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I know you’re right. We can’t be together.’

It’s painful for her to say it. The logical part of her brain sees things clearly but that doesn’t change the fact that she loves him. Perhaps more than ever.

‘I’m not going to come here again like this. I’m not going to tell anyone about us so you don’t need to worry. There’s just one thing I want to know …’ She falls silent. The question had seemed so simple and straightforward. Now it seems too momentous to ask. She looks at his hands, which are playing with the towel.

‘What do you want to know?’ Max asks softly. ‘If I meant what I said? Because I do. I love you, Minoo. I’ve loved you since the first day I set eyes on you.’

‘I love you, too,’ she says, and it feels so natural. ‘But I know now that it’s not possible. What I have to know is … can you bear to wait for me?’

She can’t look him in the eyes. ‘I’ll be eighteen in a little over a year. And then you won’t be my teacher.’

She looks up and can tell he’s hesitating. A year is a lot to ask. An eternity. ‘I understand if you can’t make any promises,’ she mumbles.

He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he says, ‘A year is nothing. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.’ He reaches out and strokes her cheek. A gentle caress that almost shatters her logic.

Just one night, she wants to say. Just one night together. That can’t make any difference, can it? And she sees in his eyes that he wants it as much as she does.

She pulls away from his hand. ‘I have to go,’ she says.

She turns and starts walking. Thirty-five, thirty-three, thirty-one, twenty-nine. Only now does she hear him shut his front door. She speeds up. Twenty-seven, twenty-five, twenty-three, twenty-one, nineteen, seventeen. She stops. Turns.