Mikael pulled the duvet around him and turned away.
‘I wanted to have children with him,’ she began. ‘We were together ten years, but nothing ever happened, because he didn’t want it to. But during that trip things happened, and made him change his mind.’
‘The light’s in my eyes, can’t you turn it off?’
She was hurt by his lack of interest, but turned the light out and curled up against his back.
‘Do you want to have children, Mikael?’ she asked after a while.
He took her arm and wrapped it around him.
‘Mmm … maybe not right now’.
She thought about what Lasse had always said. He spent ten years saying ‘not right now’. But in New York he had changed his mind.
She was sure he had meant it, even if things were different when they got home.
What had happened after that was something she’d rather not think about. How people change, and how it sometimes seems as if everyone contains different versions of the same person. Lasse had been very close to her, he had chosen her. But at the same time there was another Lasse, one who pushed her away. It’s really just basic psychology, she thought. But that didn’t make any difference, it still scared her.
‘Is there anything you’re frightened of, Mikael?’ she asked quietly. ‘Something that really frightens you?’
He didn’t reply, and she realised he’d fallen asleep.
She lay awake for a while thinking about Mikael.
What had she seen in him?
He was handsome.
He looked like Lasse.
He had caught her interest, in spite of the fact that he seemed so friendly, or possibly precisely because of that.
Classic middle-class background. Raised in Saltsj?baden with Mum, Dad and one younger sister. Safe and secure. No money worries. School and football and following in Daddy’s footsteps. Done and dusted.
Daddy had committed suicide just before they met, but Mikael never wanted to talk about it. Every time she tried to raise the subject he left the room.
His father’s death was an open wound. She realised they had been close. She’d only met his mother and sister once.
She fell asleep behind his back.
She woke up at four in the morning, bathed in sweat. For the third night in a row she had dreamed about Sierra Leone, and was far too agitated to get back to sleep. Mikael was sleeping soundly beside her, and she got out of bed carefully so as not to wake him.
He didn’t like her smoking indoors, but she switched on the exhaust fan in the kitchen, sat down and lit a cigarette.
She thought about Sierra Leone, and wondered if she’d made a mistake in turning down the job of checking facts for that book.
It would have been a wiser and more cautious way of starting to deal with her experiences there than by coming face-to-face with a child soldier the way she had with Samuel Bai.
In many ways Sierra Leone had been a disappointment. She never quite managed to get close to the children she had imagined she might be able to help find a better life. She remembered their blank faces and their wary attitude towards aid workers. She had soon realised that she was one of the others. An adult white stranger who had probably scared them more than she had helped them. The children had thrown stones at her. Their trust in adults was gone. She had never felt so impotent.
And now she had failed with Samuel Bai.
Disappointment, she thought. If Sierra Leone had been a disappointment, then her life now, seven years later, was just as much of a disappointment.
She made herself a sandwich and drank a glass of juice, thinking about Lasse and Mikael.
Lasse had let her down.
But was Mikael a disappointment too? It had all started out so well.
Were they already starting to slide apart, before they even got properly close to each other?
There wasn’t really any difference between her work and her private life. The faces blurred together. Lasse. Samuel Bai. Mikael. Tyra M?kel?. Karl Lundstr?m.
Everyone around her was a stranger.
Slipping away from her, beyond her control.
She sat down beside the stove again, lit another cigarette, and watched the smoke disappear up into the exhaust fan. The little tape recorder was on the table, and she reached for it.
It was late, and she ought to try to get some sleep, but she couldn’t resist the temptation and switched it on.
… always been afraid of heights, but he really wanted to go on the big wheel. If it hadn’t been for him, it would never have happened, and he would have been speaking with a Sk?ne accent by now, he’d be grown up and know how to tie his laces properly. God, it’s so hard to remember. But he was horribly spoiled and always had to have his own way.
Sofia could feel herself relaxing.
Just before she fell asleep her thoughts roamed free.
The door
OPENED AND THE fair woman came into his room. She was naked too, and it was the first time he’d seen a woman without clothes. Not even his mother had revealed herself to him like that.
He shut his eyes.
She curled up beside him and lay there completely quiet as she smelled his hair and gently stroked his chest. She wasn’t his real mother, but she had chosen him. Just looked at him and took his hand with a smile.
No one had ever caressed him like that before, and never had he felt so safe.
The others had always doubted. They pinched him rather than felt. Testing his strength.
But the fair woman had no doubts.
He shut his eyes again and let her do whatever she wanted with him.
The mattress got wet from their exertions. For several days they did nothing but stay in bed, practising and sleeping in turn.
When he wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do, she would show him exactly what she meant. Even if all this was new to him, he was a quick learner, and as time passed he got more and more adept.
What he had the most trouble learning to handle was the claw-like object.
He often pulled it too gently and she was forced to show him how to scratch her until she started to bleed.
When he pulled hard she groaned, but showed no sign of punishing him, and he realised that the harder he pulled, the better, even if he didn’t really understand why.
Maybe it was because she was an angel and couldn’t feel pain.
The ceiling and walls, the floor and mattress, the squeaking plastic under his feet, and the little room with the shower and toilet. All this was his.
His days were filled with lifting weights, doing painful stomach crunches, and spending hours on the exercise bicycle she had installed in one corner of the room.
Inside the bathroom was a little cupboard. It was full of oils and creams that she rubbed into him every evening. Some had a strong smell, but they helped his aches and pains go away. Others smelled wonderful, and made his skin soft and elastic.
He saw himself in the mirror, tensed his muscles and smiled.
The room was like a miniature version of the country he had come to. Silent, safe and clean.