The Key (8 page)

Anna-Karin runs to her room. Minoo shuts down all emotion.

It felt like this when she learnt that Rebecka had died. Being terrified is useless. She has to take action.

She has been dreading that something like this would happen to her father, that he would just collapse one day. She has obsessively researched what she must do if she is alone with him at the time.

Following the instructions she has studied on the Internet, Minoo shakes Mia and calls to her to make sure that she really is unconscious. No response. Minoo pulls Mia’s chin up and back, looks down her gullet to check that nothing is stuck inside it. She leans forward to listen out for breaths and watches Mia’s chest at the same time.

No signs of breathing.

‘They’re on the way,’ she hears Anna-Karin say. ‘They’re coming.’

Minoo puts one hand above another between Mia’s breasts, then tries to keep her arms straight and strong.

She pushes down and feels the ribcage give.
1
…

She does it again.
2
…

Again.
3
…

The entire hefty body is swinging under her hands as she pushes and counts, pushes and counts.

…
15 … 16 … 17 …

This is a body, Minoo thinks. A large package of flesh and bones and blood. This is not Anna-Karin’s mum. I’m not to think of this as Anna-Karin’s mum.

… 28 … 29 … 30
.

She squeezes the body’s nostrils together, opens its mouth and places her lips over it. It smells of smoke and of something rank, but nothing affects Minoo.

After blowing air into Mia’s lungs, she checks her chest to see if it is rising. Then she inhales deeply and blows into the body’s lungs again.

Minoo always imagined that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would feel intrusive, intimate, like a kiss. But it’s not like that in the slightest.

She straightens her back and places her hands on Mia’s chest again. Pushes thirty times. Blows twice. Another thirty compressions.

Two. Thirty. Two.

Minoo soon feels tired. Her arms are shivering with effort. But she carries on, like a machine. She has no idea where Anna-Karin might be. She has no idea of how much time has passed. She doesn’t notice when the paramedics enter the flat, until they move her away from the body and take over.

Anna-Karin edges over on the seat in the ambulance driver’s cabin and avoids the gaze of the paramedic.

He introduced himself as Stian. He is strong. He and the ambulance nurse lifted Mum up on the stretcher as if she was practically weightless.

Mum.

She is lying somewhere behind Anna-Karin’s back.

She is on a drip and a tube has been rammed into her throat. She might die at any moment. The thought doesn’t make Anna-Karin feel anything. It is just a thought.

‘It was very good that you two knew how to carry out first aid,’ Stian says.

You two
? What is he saying? Minoo did it, and this Stian person knows just as well as Anna-Karin. He saw it with his own eyes.

As for herself, she did nothing. Could hardly get her address out when she got through to the emergency services. In fact, she didn’t even think of calling 999 until Minoo told her to.

If Anna-Karin had been alone, Mum wouldn’t have stood a chance. Stian is bound to realise that as well and that’s why she can’t bear to look at him. She doesn’t want to read in his eyes how useless he thinks she is.

‘Your friend will be there for you at the hospital, won’t she?’ he asks.

Anna-Karin nods. As soon as the paramedics had strapped Mum to the stretcher, Minoo called a taxi.

Anna-Karin looks at the reflection of her face in the side window. She looks just as usual. Oughtn’t it to show that what is happening is for real? Does Stian wonder why she isn’t crying?

‘Your granddad and my dad are friends,’ Stian says. ‘My dad is Åke.’

A quick sideways glance tells her that he is smiling.

‘How awful this must be for you.’

STOP BEING NICE TO ME. STICK TO YOUR JOB.

It feels as if her magic suddenly fills the closed space of the cabin.

Stian blinks and fixes his eyes on the road. He doesn’t utter another word during the rest of the drive to the hospital.

The blanket flutters in the wind and Linnéa pulls it tighter around her. Engelsfors looks almost beautiful from where she is on the roof of the tall block of flats where she lives. She drags on her cigarette and looks at all the familiar places. The lines of streetlights form geometric patterns in the darkness. The fire on Olsson’s Hill has started to die down. The howling sirens that criss-crossed the town earlier are quiet now.

Linnéa has one last puff and stubs her cigarette out against the tarred surface of the roof. She has been sitting here for hours, writing and sketching in her diary until the sun began to set. She stayed on because it felt impossible to go downstairs into the dark, silent flat.

Then Vanessa’s text arrived. She was at a boring party. And, as usual, Linnéa admitted immediately that she was available.

When she senses Vanessa’s energy field approaching, she walks to the edge of the roof and sees the blonde hair shining in the street.

Linnéa projects a thought.

I’m on the roof. Come up
.

Vanessa looks up and waves.

OK

Linnéa sits down again. Vanessa’s energy grows stronger until the grey steel door to the stairwell opens and she steps out onto the roof. She is wearing a micro dress with only an open jeans jacket on top. She holds her high-heeled shoes in her hand. Her skin-coloured tights are so thin that her legs look bare.

‘Why are you sitting here?’ She walks towards Linnéa.

‘Why not?’ Linnéa replies, smiling.

Vanessa’s glittery earrings tinkle faintly as she sits down. She hardly looks at Linnéa.

It’s so odd. When she is not with Vanessa, Linnéa longs for her all the time. But sometimes, like now, being with Vanessa makes the longing more intense. To have her there, so close, but still not truly to have her, not in the way she really wants to.

‘You smell of smoke,’ Linnéa says. ‘It’s almost like …’

‘Barbecued sausage … I know.’

‘Actually it made me think of when we dreamt about Matilda for the first time.’

Vanessa doesn’t reply. She is stiff in a way that is utterly different from her usual body language. Linnéa suddenly feels worried. It’s as if Vanessa has wound herself up to speak about something. Something difficult.

She would feel really bad if she had to tell me that she’s going out with Wille again, Linnéa thinks.

‘Please, give me a fag,’ Vanessa says. Linnéa’s certain now that something must be wrong. Vanessa hardly ever smokes.

‘Only if you tell me what’s up,’ Linnéa tells her.

She lights a cigarette and hands it to Vanessa.

‘Nothing special,’ Vanessa says, in the way that tells you the opposite is true.

‘Did something happen at the party?’

‘It got out of hand.’

Linnéa tries to look into Vanessa’s eyes, but she keeps staring fixedly at the glowing tip of her cigarette, rather than smoking.

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, please. Not now. I mean, I don’t want to talk about them now.’

‘
Them
, who?’

Vanessa sighs.

‘Erik and Robin came. And Erik and Kevin started fighting. After that, it was a massive clusterfuck.’

Linnéa is fingering the stitched edge of the blanket. Her hands are surprisingly steady given that she goes shaky inside at just hearing their names. She detests being so weak. She detests the fact that those cowardly little creeps Erik and Robin are able to make her react like this. And she detests Vanessa’s assumption that she must be treated with kid gloves.

‘Why didn’t you tell me straight?’ she asks. ‘You don’t have to hide things because you worry that I’ll have a breakdown or whatever. That just makes me feel worse.’

‘You don’t get it!’ Vanessa hisses and gets up, throws the cigarette away and picks up her shoes. ‘You just don’t get it!’

Now Linnéa is standing, too, and the blanket slips off her shoulders. The wind catches it and tumbles it over the edge of the roof.

‘What is it that I don’t get?’ she says. ‘That you treat me like a fucking mental case?’

Vanessa stands looking at her for a moment. Then she turns and starts walking towards the door.

Linnéa stays where she is. She can’t get her head round what just happened. But she does know one thing: she can’t bear a repeat of last summer, when they didn’t talk to each other for months.

Vanessa tugs the stairwell door open.

Wait!

Linnéa calls out into Vanessa’s head and she stops.

‘I’m sorry,’ Linnéa says. ‘Please don’t go.’

Vanessa lets the door slide shut again. But she doesn’t turn around.

‘I am really sorry. You know how I get sometimes.’ Linnéa comes closer.

‘Yes, I know,’ Vanessa replies quietly.

‘Trust me to lose it like that. I guess I
am
a mental case.’

She has tried to use a light tone of voice, but Vanessa turns quickly to face her and looks seriously at her.

‘You mustn’t ever say that.’

Linnéa is dumbstruck. Both are very still as they meet each other’s eyes. And something changes in the silence between them.

‘I’m going to do it now,’ Vanessa says.

And then she gives Linnéa a kiss.

A light kiss, on the lips.

Linnéa is so surprised that she takes one step back. Vanessa looks terrified, as if she has just realised she has made the biggest mistake of her life.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Vanessa tells her.

‘Why are you sorry?’

‘The way you looked … as if you didn’t want to … that I shouldn’t … do what I did.’

Linnéa wishes that she could express how often she has dreamt of this moment, how much she has longed for it. But words seem too small.

She takes a step forward, gently puts her hand on the back of Vanessa’s neck. Her skin is warm. The sensation is dizzying, as if she is standing on the edge of the roof.

This time she feels that Vanessa’s lips are as soft as she’d always imagined.

Vanessa hugs her tight and Linnéa dares – quite how, she cannot think – to let her hand slip under the jacket just where it ends at the small of the back. She senses the warmth through the thin fabric of the dress.

Their kiss becomes more intense, deepens. It feels like being in free fall, like plunging straight into an alternative universe where the impossible suddenly is possible, where fantasies become reality and you are given exactly what you have wished for.

A light slowly grows stronger, strong enough to pierce Linnéa’s eyelids. As if the sun has risen again. And perhaps it has. Perhaps she has been kissing Vanessa all night long. Perhaps dawn has come.

Vanessa carefully frees herself from their embrace and Linnéa opens her eyes. Above them the sky is glowing orange.

‘Look, over there.’ Vanessa points at the horizon.

In the far distance, Engelsfors sawmill is on fire. It lights the town like a gigantic May Day Eve bonfire.

And Linnéa’s phone starts ringing.

It looks like the middle of the day. On Mars.

Minoo stands next to Anna-Karin. Both are looking out through the window of the small room off the A&E reception that is set aside for visitors. The sky itself seems to be on fire. Far away, a huge pillar of smoke is rising from the sawmill. The one owned by Ida’s father.

‘Why don’t they tell us anything?’ Anna-Karin asks. ‘Why not let us know what they’re doing?’

Her voice is as tired and empty as the look in her eyes.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Minoo replies.

Precisely the kind of stupid platitude that complete idiots utter when something terrible has happened. Clearly, Minoo is one of those idiots.

‘Why do you say that? You don’t even know what’s wrong with her.’

‘All I mean is … Mia isn’t that old,’ Minoo says.

Anna-Karin doesn’t respond. For a start, Mia isn’t that young. Also, she’s a heavy smoker and hardly ever moves. Worse, she seems to have lost the will to live. How will she find the energy to fight?

‘I miss Nicolaus,’ Anna-Karin murmurs.

Her face glows in the firelight.

‘Me, too,’ Minoo says.

She puts her hand on Anna-Karin’s arm, but feels awkward.

‘Vanessa and Linnéa will be here soon.’ She takes her hand away. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

Anna-Karin mumbles something that might be yes. The coffee machine is crammed into a gap between a small sofa and the wall. Minoo puts a paper mug in place, then hesitates. Did Anna-Karin actually say yes? If so, would she like milk in her coffee? Minoo doesn’t want to ask. It would feel like another piece of idiotic chatter, going on about stuff like milk and coffee at a time like this.

The walls are decorated with a border showing little lambs that gambol happily in very green grass. They seem to glare accusingly at Minoo.

She guesses and picks
CAFÉ AU LAIT
. The machine just sits there. She tries a couple of other buttons. Nothing happens.

Then they hear the sounds of high heels and of boots in the corridor outside. Next, Vanessa and Linnéa stand in the doorway. Vanessa in a tiny dress and glittering earrings, Linnéa in top-to-toe black: jeans and a hoodie. Her eyes under the long fringe are thickly outlined with eyeliner.

Vanessa walks straight over to the window and puts her arms around Anna-Karin. Minoo notes that Anna-Karin’s tense shoulders relax a little.

For the first time tonight, Minoo feels close to tears. But she swallows and gets back in control. She has no right to cry when Anna-Karin isn’t. The last thing Anna-Karin needs now is for one of her friends to crack.

Minoo keeps pressing coffee machine buttons at random.

I am so totally useless at this kind of thing
, Linnéa’s voice says inside Minoo’s head.
I can’t think what to say to her
.

Me neither
, Minoo thinks.
Not that it stopped me. Unfortunately. I guess it’s better to say nothing
.

They hear sobbing. Minoo and Linnéa simultaneously look towards the window.