Fire (22 page)

Minoo opens the door and enters. Dad is bending over his desk, but looks up and smiles at her. He looks tired. His large hands are still now and rest on the keyboard of his laptop.

‘What’s on your mind, Minoo?’

‘I just wanted to chat for a while.’

‘About anything in particular?’

About you and Mum. About what your real quarrel is about. If you’re planning to divorce. About the reason why you and Bahar are behaving so weirdly towards each other.

‘Have you heard that they’ve sacked the principal?’ she asks.

Dad sits up. His face has the expression it always has when he scents news.

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. I guess it isn’t official yet. But is it allowed? You know, to sack someone, just like that?’

Dad drinks a mouthful of coffee. He looks thoughtful now.

‘Sounds irregular. And very odd. But, of course, there are always ways to get around the regulations.’

‘I heard that it has something to do with Rebecka and Elias.’

‘Did you, indeed? You’ve picked up a great deal. Where have you learned all this? I trust it isn’t mere gossip?’

‘I got the whole thing from … I guess you’d call it “reliable sources”.’

‘Good. You might well become an investigative journalist one day, Minoo.’

Dad stands, pulls her into his arms and gives her a long, warm hug. Minoo realises her eyes are full of tears. She loves him so very much. She loves them both very much. If only they would feel the same way about each other.

Maybe they do, Minoo thinks. In their heart of hearts.

She would really like to think so.

‘What do you think?’ Ida asks as she emerges into her room from the en-suite bathroom.

‘Great,’ Julia tells her. ‘Perfect. Don’t you think so?’

‘Don’t know.’

The back of the dress is cut really low. The black material
sways around Ida’s legs when she sweeps around in a full circle.

‘More a big party dress. Not so much a dress for a romantic dinner with your boyfriend. Don’t you think?’

‘Exactly,’ Julia says and nods.

Ida sighs, annoyed. Totally pointless to ask for advice from someone who always agrees with you.

‘If you really like it, would you like to borrow it?’

‘One day, maybe,’ Julia says and avoids Ida’s eyes.

They both know that Julia would never wear it because her back is covered in pimples. Even on the lakeside beach she always wears a thin T-shirt over her bikini. And never goes in for a swim.

‘I think this is more like it,’ Ida says and pulls a flowery dress from the wardrobe.

She goes to the bathroom to change.

‘Isn’t it simply sweet of Erik to invite you for supper?’ Julia calls after her. ‘Imagine having the whole house to yourselves. Sheer luxury! I wish I had a boyfriend, too.’

‘Maybe you can make it with Kevin,’ Ida teases her as she steps out of the black dress.

‘Oh, my God, noo!’ Julia shrieks. ‘Do you know what he said the other day? That the best chicks have sexy bodies and ugly faces. That way you can shag them without falling in love.’

Ida giggles. As if Kevin has the faintest idea.

‘The thing is, Robin and Erik were talking about him. Like, that Kevin is hopelessly immature,’ Julia goes on. ‘It’s as if he sort of stopped developing at thirteen or so. They were wondering how long they could bear to have him hang out with them.’

‘Robin and Erik said
that
?’ Ida asks and pulls the dress with the flower pattern over her head.

Too tight-fitting around her hips.

‘Well, sort of,’ Julia replies.

Ida examines herself in the mirror. She looks like an overstuffed flowery sausage. Either it’s the heat that has made her swell like a balloon or else she has put on weight. Disgusted, she takes the dress off.

‘I might fancy Rickard,’ Julia shouts.

‘Which Rickard? Johnsson? The footballer?’

‘I think he’s quite hot.’

Ida and her image in the mirror roll their eyes in unison. Julia is incapable of expressing an opinion without scattering words like ‘sort of’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘quite’ all over her sentences. Just to be safe.

‘Felicia thinks so too,’ Julia adds.

‘Felicia? I didn’t think she’d even look at anyone except Robin, ever,’ Ida says and puts the black dress back on.

Sod it, it doesn’t matter if it’s a little too flashy. It fits perfectly. And Mum always says that black is slimming.

‘What happened to the one with flowers?’ Julia asks when Ida is back in her room.

‘You were right all along,’ Ida says with a smile. ‘This one is cool.’

Erik lives only a few blocks away and Ida walks slowly to avoid getting sweaty. At the front door, she pulls her fingers through her hair and gives her head a shake. Then she rings the doorbell.

Erik opens almost at once, as if he has been waiting on the doormat.

‘You look great,’ he says, pulling her close and kissing her hard on the lips. ‘Sexy.’

‘Thank you,’ Ida says as she frees herself. ‘Likewise.’

Erik looks pleased. He smells of aftershave and is wearing
a suit. He has combed his thick, dark hair straight back. He looks older, suddenly. More mature. Ida approves and tries to hang on to that feeling. Only to find that she suddenly remembers the time Anna-Karin made him pee himself in front of everyone in the school playground. She firmly rejects the memory. Why can’t she be allowed to forget that incident when everybody else seems to?

‘Come along to the living room. I’ll fix us a couple of drinks.’

‘Brilliant,’ Ida says and smiles.

The R&B from the loudspeakers is totally porny. Ida knows what the playlist is called.
ErikLove
. Too embarrassing. She doesn’t want to think about it. She settles down on the sofa. Waits.

Erik’s home smells funny.

Not nasty or anything bad, but
different
. Stale, with a hint of old-fashioned soap.

Ida’s gaze stops at a large ball of fluff that has stuck to the hairy rug. Her mum has always said that Erik’s parents ought to hire an agency cleaner if they have a problem with keeping the place tidy.

When Ida and Erik were little, and Ida’s family had been invited here, Mum and Dad used to start talking about the Forslunds the moment they got home. Mum would shake her head about their standard of cleaning and their furniture and clothes. Dad would criticise the food, the wines and the garden.

Ida used to wonder why they bothered to meet socially. Now that she is older, she understands. It’s the way the system works. Anders Holmström owns the sawmill. Bosse Forslund owns a successful haulage firm. They do business together now, and when they were young they played ice hockey in the same team and saw quite a lot of each other.

Erik comes in carrying their drinks. He hands one to Ida.

‘Cheers. A toast to us. Four months.’

Ida’s parents also started going out together in senior school. Sometimes, she thinks about this, tries to imagine Erik and herself as grown-ups, living in a house somewhere in this neighbourhood. The images she creates are satisfying. Erik’s older brother is studying medicine so Erik is destined to take over the haulage business and she could manage the sawmill. True, she isn’t the slightest bit interested in it right now, but she knows that if she makes up her mind to take it on, everything will work out fine. Dad has always told her that she’s got what it takes to run a business.

‘Cheers,’ she says, smiling.

The bitter taste burns her palate and all the way down to the stomach. She almost has to cough.

‘Perhaps the mix is a bit on the strong side,’ Erik says.

‘The
tiniest
bit,’ Ida says sharply.

But she softens her tone when she sees Erik’s disappointed face.

‘But amazing all the same. I just wasn’t ready for it.’

She is determined to be nice tonight.
Not
think of Gustaf, not compare Erik with Gustaf all the time. Erik is here and now. And tonight he looks really good. And he is making an effort for her sake.

Erik and Ida Forslund.

The most successful couple of entrepreneurs in Engelsfors. Attractive. Owners of a newly built house. Two perfect kids, a boy and a girl.

They eat crisps and finish the drinks. Ida is feeling drunk already. She hates it; it’s beyond her why everyone seems to want to feel as though they’re losing control.

Erik serves wine with the food but she drinks only a few
mouthfuls. When he goes off to the loo, she pours the rest of her wine in the sink. He fills the glasses when he comes back and apparently doesn’t notice.

They talk about the same things and the same people as always. The line that guys are not into talking behind people’s backs is such total crap. The fact is that Erik obsesses at least as much as Ida about rumours and gossip, maybe even more. Ida tells the story about Kerstin Stålnacke and Erik agrees that she definitely must be a lezzy.

‘The reason she’s bitchy towards you has got to be because she’s hopelessly in love with you. Or something like that. You should report her for sexual harassment,’ he jokes and Ida laughs.

It goes without saying that Ida would never take it that far. It would backfire on her. Vague rumours are something else and loose talk can easily undermine a person’s position. They won’t know a thing until suddenly everything collapses around them and the rumour changes into a generally accepted truth.

The question is whether Kerstin Stålnacke is worth the trouble. Could be, if Ida isn’t chosen to lead the Lucia procession this year either.

By dessert time, they have run out of subjects to talk about. Erik has drunk almost the whole bottle of wine himself without noticing.

‘Would you like to go to my room now?’ he asks as soon as Ida has swallowed the last spoonful of ice cream.

‘Umm,’ she mumbles and looks away, because his smile makes her body crawl.

‘Or my parents’ room. What do you think? Their bed is bigger.’

‘Yuck, that’s such a creepy idea!’

He stiffens.

‘What I mean is, I’d feel so out of it,’ she adds in a milder tone and looks at him. ‘I like
your
bed.’

They walk downstairs to the basement, which Erik has had to himself ever since his brother moved out. Ida often gets a touch of claustrophobia in his bedroom, what with its narrow windows placed high up under the ceiling.

ErikLove
drifts down from the floor above. Erik has turned the volume up.

It feels faked to have sex to his ‘sexy music’, like a rubbish erotic scene in a rubbish film. But Ida doesn’t comment. He was thinking about her when he spliced together the music on the list. He told her that he was, anyway.

‘You’re so gorgeous. The best-looking chick in Engelsfors,’ Erik says.

He kisses her neck, nibbles at her earlobe.

Warmth is beginning to ooze through her body. She caresses his back, pulls him closer. Suddenly, Erik stops kissing her.

‘Hey, you’re keen,’ he beams. The warm feeling evaporates and vanishes.

But it’s too late to back out. Ida starts wriggling out of her dress. She is not wearing a bra and Erik starts fondling her breasts at once, as well as carrying on kissing her neck. But her body no longer responds. She just wants it over and done with.

‘Come on, get your kit off,’ Ida says.

He laughs.

‘Super keen,’ he says as he fumbles with his fly zip.

Soon, they are in Erik’s bed, naked and turned towards each other. She tries to think sexy thoughts, but nothing catches hold, her mind just keeps going round, round, round. It seems disconnected from her body, from Erik.

‘Have you got your new pills?’ he asks.

Ida has no intention of taking contraceptive pills ever again. She had begun last summer, but all the time she was dead scared of getting a blood clot. Apparently, it’s a warning sign if one calf looks swollen compared with the other. After measuring her calves every evening for a month, she simply couldn’t hack it any more. She had told Erik that she must have lost the pills somewhere and he has been nagging about them ever since.

‘No, not yet. There’s some hassle about the prescription,’ she says.

Erik swears and starts rummaging for the condoms in the drawer of his bedside table.

Afterwards, she gets up to go to the bathroom, because it’s important to have a pee immediately or you might get a urinary tract infection. She examines her face in the mirror while she is washing her hands.

Why does everyone pretend that sex is so simple and natural and fantastic?

It’s exactly the other way round. The moment you start a sex life, a whole new world of problems opens. Hair or no hair? If hair, how much, how little, where? Am I supposed to move about? A lot? Or a little? How do I look when I do whatever it is? Is it normal that he tries whatever it is? Is it normal to feel like this? Do we have it too often, or not often enough? Can his parents hear us?

And if all that kind of thing wasn’t enough, there are could-be fatal risks of taking certain contraceptives, abortion panics and sexually transmitted diseases.

If you have to worry about all that, how on earth are you meant to enjoy sex? Ida thinks as she returns to the bedroom.

Erik is in bed. There is a pleased smile on his face.

‘Was that good for you?’ he asks as she crawls in under the duvet.

‘Mmmm, great,’ she mumbles and leans her head against his shoulder.

He reaches for the remote and zaps the TV on. The set is mounted on the wall opposite the bed. Ida edges closer to him.

And now she can’t keep her thoughts under control.

Surely, she thinks, it would be much better with Gustaf?

Vanessa is dancing, but the living-room floor in Evelina’s place is so crowded that dance moves are mostly about bouncing against other bodies that are sweating as much as hers is. The tune slips into a riff where only the underlying beat remains. The bass notes make the whole flat shake. Expecting the chorus to explode again, Vanessa raises her arms. She feels like a space rocket just before lift-off.

‘Happy birthday!’ she screams to Evelina and gives her a smacking kiss on the mouth.

And
there
is the chorus. Vanessa and Evelina jump up and down like crazies.