Fire (20 page)

And he is one of the last people she wants to meet just now.

Vanessa wonders if she can turn back, pretend she hasn’t seen him. But they are the only living creatures in sight. He
must have seen her, too. And he would realise if she tried to avoid him.

She carries on ahead.

About a hundred years pass before they finally meet. Jonte looks as awkward as she feels.

‘Hi,’ Vanessa says.

‘Hi,’ Jonte replies. ‘How are things?’

‘Good. Really good.’

‘Right. That’s great.’

Silence.

‘And you?’

‘Fine.’ Jonte scans the surroundings, as if hoping that a rescuer will materialise from somewhere. ‘Long time, no see.’

‘Yes.’

For that is how it feels, even though she and Wille broke up only three weeks ago. When Wille left her life, his mates disappeared with him. She doesn’t exactly miss them, but she misses the old simplicity of life. It was always easy to hang out in Jonte’s house, always easy to convince him to throw a party. Without Wille she suddenly has too much time on her hands. She doesn’t know what to do with it, and filling in time in this town is so hard.

‘Such a shame things turned out this way,’ Jonte says. ‘Everything is that much more boring now you aren’t around.’

He looks the other way, clearly embarrassed.

That’s surprising. Vanessa never picked up any signs that Jonte enjoyed her company in any way. On the whole, he has seemed to tolerate her. Though it’s a fact that she has never seen him show enthusiasm for anything much, except his cultivation of pot in the cellar.

‘Did you know all along?’ she asks. ‘That he cheated on me, I mean.’

Jonte looks so guilty he doesn’t need to answer.

Christ, how many of them had known? If Jonte knew, did
Lucky
know, too? Do they all think she’s a brain-dead little bimbo who never could get a grip on anything? Vanessa feels ashamed and also hates the sense of shame because that’s what Wille should feel, the rotten bastard.

‘I hope you aren’t angry with me,’ Jonte says and tugs at his cap. ‘You know, it’s like, my fault it ended up like this.’

His fault? This is news to her. Jonte seems to think that Vanessa already knows all there is to know, or else he wouldn’t have said what he just did.

She tries to keep her expression neutral and let him do the talking.

‘Elin and I were classmates, of course. I’ve always liked her. That’s why I asked her to my dad’s cabin. I had no idea that she and Wille …’

In Vanessa’s brain, pieces in a jigsaw puzzle are falling into place. C
lick click click.
They form a pattern she hasn’t seen before.

That weekend last year, when Wille just vanished. And then came back and said he had stayed in a cabin belonging to Jonte’s father. He had told her that he had gone there alone to think, that the realisation of how much he loved her had come to him. Then he had given her the engagement ring.

All lies.

He proposed to Vanessa out of a guilty conscience. He had slept with this
Elin
person. And Vanessa bought every single word. She had even abandoned Mum and Melvin for his sake.

He lied even when they sat together on Sirpa’s sofa, when he wept and said that he only wanted ‘to be honest’. He admitted to being unfaithful to her with Elin twice. But it was at least three times. Maybe more. Who knows how many?

Vanessa is suddenly about to throw up.

‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘I must … I must pick up Melvin.’

She sees panic in Jonte’s eyes as the truth dawns on him.

‘Shit! You didn’t know. Forgive me.’

‘I’ve had it with “forgiving”,’ she replies.

Naturally, Melvin is at his worst, sulky and peevish. First, he wants to sit in the buggy, then walk, then sit again. In the end, Vanessa can’t take any more and, for the last stretch, sticks him in the pushchair and tries to close her ears to his howling. When they arrive at the house he finally shuts up. She manages to get him into the lift before he starts whining again.

‘Where is Daddy?’

Great. That’s all she needs.

‘Your daddy is not at home.’

‘Why?’

‘You know why, Melvin. He isn’t going to live with us any more. He lives somewhere else now.’

‘Why?’

‘Sometimes things just work out like that.’

‘Why?’

She crouches down and looks him in the eyes.

‘It will be ever so nice. Imagine what fun it’s going to be to have two homes! Your daddy has found a flat with a really great room for you.’

Melvin stares blankly at her. The lift stops outside their flat and Vanessa picks him up in her arms.

She unlocks the front door, opens it and hears the humming of the kitchen fan. She can smell the cigarette smoke even in the hall.

Vanessa sees a quick vision of Mum weeping over a wine box and a packet of fags. But then she hears laughter. Mum
is laughing for the first time since Nicke moved out. And not on her own either. She is joined by a hoarse, smoke-raddled chuckle

Vanessa knows of only one person who
chuckles
.

The removal firm’s boxes are stacked in the hall. She puts Melvin on top of one of them and helps him to pull off his shoes. Then they go to the kitchen together, just as Mum drags deeply on her cigarette, standing under the fan. When she sees them, her expression turns enormously guilty and she quickly stubs out her cigarette in the brimming ashtray.

‘Oops, is that the time?’ she says. ‘We completely lost track.’

Vanessa turns to the kitchen table where Mona Moonbeam is sitting. She is smoking without any sign of inhibition. Her blonde hair, permed to within an inch of its life, is pulled back with a grip shaped like a butterfly. A wine box and two wine glasses are on the table in front of her. Mona’s frosted lipstick has left a sticky mark on one of the glasses.

‘Do you remember Mona?’ Mum says. ‘She told your fortune in the Crystal Cave once.’

Mona Moonbeam waves to Vanessa. It sets her thin silver bracelets tinkling.

‘Vanessa’s your name, right?’ she says with a broad smile.

Vanessa watches in silence as Mum shows Melvin off to Mona, who pinches his cheeks hard and coos over him. Melvin looks ready to bite her and Vanessa hopes he will.

Then he manages to wriggle free and runs off to the living room. Soon afterwards the TV starts up.

‘What are you doing here?’ Vanessa asks Mona, looking straight into her eyes.

‘Jannike is one of my best customers. And definitely the best company. I haven’t met up with her for a long while
so I felt I just had to phone and find out how she’s getting on.’

Vanessa is convinced that Mona had felt she just had to earn some easy cash.

‘Mona is so out of this world,’ Mum says. ‘She knew exactly what Nicke had been up to. And she says, give him a year and he’ll be back with his tail between his legs. Not that it will do him any good.’

Typical. Mona’s speciality is of course always to say precisely what her customers want to hear. That is her
real
talent, the skill that makes her so popular. Engelsfors is full of people in need of hope.

Mum puts her arm around Vanessa, her head close to her daughter’s, but presses a little too hard. She smells of cigarettes and sour wine.

‘Everything will turn out all right, Nessa. But now I must be off to the ladies’.’

She giggles suddenly and heads to the bathroom. Vanessa immediately sits down on the chair next to Mona.

‘Where have you been?’ she hisses. ‘The shop has been closed for absolutely ages.’

‘You’re not to trouble yourself, sweetheart,’ Mona says and lights another cigarette. Then she smiles at Vanessa. ‘So, you’re single again, I hear. You should’ve dumped him when I told you that you had no future as a couple. Would’ve saved yourself all this hassle. Tell you what, though. About that chick he cheated on you with. You have seen her once but she’s never seen you.’

Vanessa can hear Mum rummaging in the bathroom. She has no time to figure out Mona’s riddles.

‘We need your help, Mona. How do you go about contacting the dead?’

Mona looks inquisitively at her.

‘It depends,’ she says, suddenly serious. ‘It depends on whether the soul has passed on or is caught somewhere. And you must know the name of the dead person.’

‘This soul has got caught, for sure. And we do know her name.’

There is the click from the lock on the bathroom door.

‘We’ll deal with this after the weekend,’ Mona says.

‘But it’s urgent!’

‘Not in my world. Come to the shop on Monday. And wear something classy.’

Minoo clutches the red food tray and scans the dining area. The din hits her ears. Everyone is trying to be heard at the same time. Shouting, screeching laughter, ringing mobiles and clattering of cutlery on plates, chairs scraping against the floor.

There are of course plenty of free chairs, but where to sit without being made to feel an intruder?

She catches sight of Linnéa at a table in the middle of the room. She is with that blue-haired girl. They are surrounded by a whole crew of alternative types who just sit there and look aggressive. Minoo wishes that she too had a table where she belonged just as obviously.

She can’t see Anna-Karin anywhere. Presumably she has already wolfed her food and slunk off somewhere else. Minoo sympathises. To have Viktor Ehrenskiöld watching you just about every lesson would drive anyone to the brink of a breakdown.

Minoo finally makes up her mind. She picks the table where a handful of gaming nerds from another class are already installed. They are so completely into their digital worlds they don’t even look her way. Which is exactly how she wants it.

The potato patties are tough in the way they get when kept warm for hours. She is just chewing on her first bite when someone sits down opposite her. She looks up. It’s Viktor.

‘Hi,’ he says.

She looks at her plate again.

‘I must’ve become invisible?’ he says, clearly trying to be amusing. ‘Maybe Vanessa is infectious?’

Minoo concentrates on meticulously cutting the patties into small, neat pieces. It’s pathetic, but she feels ashamed about eating in front of Viktor. His mere presence is enough to make her feel that everything she does is too
physical
. As if she was a big, lumpy human body with all these repulsive excretions, and he some ethereal being who floats through the air and sustains himself on flower nectar and birdsong. Does he really use the toilet? She can’t imagine it.

Viktor leans forward across the table. Once more, she is amazed at the absence of any smell. His lack of odour contributes to making him come across as unsettling. Skewed. Not quite human.

Who says, anyway, that Viktor actually
is
human?

Perhaps Ida is right. Now that it’s established that witches and demons exists, couldn’t anything be true?

‘I’m not your enemy, Minoo,’ Viktor says quietly. ‘I won’t conduct the interrogations. I’m here simply to help my father. And he isn’t your enemy either. He is in charge of seeing to it that everyone obeys the laws. That benefits all of us. Chaos would reign otherwise.’

Minoo stays silent. She is aware that the computer freaks at the other end of the table are eyeing her and Victor. No surprise if the gossip about them takes off, as of now.

‘Come on, Minoo. Sooner or later you’ll have to talk to me,’ Viktor whispers.

Have to, will I? Minoo thinks and carries on dissecting the potato patties.

‘Hello?’ Viktor says and touches her hand.

She startles and drops the knife.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says and quickly pulls his hand away. ‘But I don’t understand why you keep on with this childish behaviour. You’re cleverer than the rest of them. I don’t mean just in your … circle of friends, but the entire school. Look around. You’re the only one here who I could become friends with.’

‘Am I meant to be
flattered
by all that?’

‘All I’m doing is state facts,’ Viktor says calmly.

‘We will never be friends,’ Minoo replies just as calmly. ‘Anna-Karin is my friend.’

The instant she says this, she knows that it is the truth. The insight makes something slot into place in her mind. She cares for Anna-Karin. Not only because Anna-Karin is one of the Chosen Ones, but because she is Anna-Karin. Suddenly, Minoo is certain about this and equally certain that Viktor Ehrenskiöld is the enemy of them both.

She spears three pieces of patty on her fork, puts the lot in her mouth and chews.

‘Bye-bye,’ she says.

Before Viktor gets up and leaves, he shakes his head, pityingly.

Ida’s voice soars towards the ceiling. It fills the music room.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see
.

She shuts her eyes, feels that she can trust her voice to carry her all the way and increases the volume. The music class is transformed into an arena and she stands alone in the spotlights. She imagines the audience, the thousands of faces all turned towards her.

I shall possess within the veil, a life of joy and peace …

Ida gives her voice a bit of vibrato towards the end and opens her eyes.

Julia and Felicia and all the others in the school choir are cheering and applauding. Ida sighs contentedly and thanks her audience.

And then she catches sight of Kerstin Stålnacke’s worried-looking smile.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ida,’ the choir’s conductor says. ‘What can we do with you?’

A knot tightens inside Ida’s belly. She feels that everybody stares at her.

‘Did I make any mistakes?’ she asks and smiles back.

She hit every note. What can the stupid hag be on about now?

‘Technically, you’re outstanding. But you must let your
emotions
into your singing.’

Ida observes Kerstin’s tent-style dress and obviously butch hairdo. She hasn’t got the slightest wish even to imagine what kind of emotional display Kerstin has got in mind.

So effing typical that the conductor of the choir is this sad lezzy. Who clearly hasn’t got a clue what she’s talking about.
Everyone
knows that Ida is the best singer in the whole school, in all Engelsfors, probably. It’s not being boastful, it’s stating a fact.