Jeanette realised with sadness that he was boring her. She tried to change the subject, but he didn’t seem interested, and she realised that she was probably boring him as well.
Our entire relationship is stagnant, she thought with a sense of defeat, looking at ?ke, who was immersed in his mobile phone.
‘Who are you writing to?’
He looked up at her. ‘Oh … it’s a new art project. A new contact.’
Jeanette started to get interested. Had something finally happened?
?ke tried to smile but failed. He stood up and disappeared off to the toilet.
A new art project, she thought. She wondered who this new contact was.
Five minutes later he came back to the table and grabbed his jacket from the chair without sitting down. Outside the restaurant they hailed an empty taxi. Jeanette opened the car door and got in the front passenger seat. She reflected on how much the evening had cost. And for what? she thought as ?ke slumped into the back seat.
She turned to the driver. ‘Gamla Enskede.’
Jeanette was good at faces, and it only took her a couple of seconds to place him.
He’d been at the same middle school as she had. The eyes and nose were the same, but his lips were no longer as full. It was like seeing a child’s face hidden under a layer of fat and loose skin, and she couldn’t help laughing.
‘Damn! Is that you?’
He laughed back, and ran his hand over his almost-bald scalp, as if to hide the ravages of age.
‘Jeanette?’
She nodded.
‘So …’ he said as they pulled out onto Ringv?gen towards Skanstull. ‘What are you up to these days?’
‘I’m a police officer.’
He turned towards the Skanstull Bridge. ‘I can’t say I’m too surprised to hear you joined the police.’
‘No? Why not?’
‘It’s obvious.’ He looked at her. ‘You were the class police officer back then.’
Was she that predictable?
Probably.
Palak paneer.
Already the classroom cop back in middle school.
City of Uppsala, 1986
SHE’S THE ONLY girl at the place she’s working that summer. Fifteen teen boys goading each other on, and the shack isn’t very big, especially not when it’s raining all the time and they can’t sit outside. They play rummy to work out who gets to go with Crow Girl into the other room.
The large area of grass in front of the old barracks at Polacksbacken is covered with rides, carnival booths and food stalls. It’s early August, and a travelling fair is in Uppsala for a week.
She’s going to take Martin around while his parents go into the centre for dinner.
Martin is at his most charming, and she can see how much he’s enjoying being there on his own with her. After the summers they have spent together she has become his best friend, and she’s the one he turns to if he wants to talk about something important. If he’s sad or if he wants to do something exciting, something forbidden.
She is assuming that this summer will be the last they spend together, because Martin’s dad has been offered a new job with a better salary down in Sk?ne. The family will be moving in the middle of August, and Martin’s mum has just said that they’ve already found an au pair for him, a very conscientious, responsible girl.
Victoria has promised to meet his parents at eight o’clock by the big wheel, where Martin will finish his evening by getting to see the immense view across the Uppsala plain. Apparently they’ll be able to see all the way home to Bergsbrunna from up there.
All afternoon Martin has been looking forward to going up in the Ferris wheel. No matter where you are in the fair, you can see the big wheel with its gondolas almost thirty metres above the ground.
As for her, she isn’t looking forward to the ride, because it won’t just mean the end of their evening, but might possibly be the last thing they ever do together.
There won’t be any more after that.
And she doesn’t want the grown-ups to come along. So she suggests that they go on the Ferris wheel now, and then again when his mum and dad come back. Then he can point out different places to them before they work out what they’re looking at.
He thinks that’s a great idea, and before they go and stand in the queue they each buy a drink. When they’re standing immediately beneath the wheel and look up, they feel dizzy. It’s so incredibly high. She puts her arm around him and asks if he’s scared.
‘Just a bit,’ he replies, but she looks at him and can see that that’s not entirely true.
She ruffles his hair and looks him in the eye.
‘It’s nothing to be scared of, Martin,’ she says, trying to sound convincing. ‘I’ll be with you. And that means nothing bad can happen.’
He smiles at her and clutches her hand as they take their seats in one of the gondolas. As new passengers get on and they rotate higher and higher, Martin’s grip on her arm gets progressively tighter. When the gondola sways and stops for a while almost at the very top, while the last gondola is filled down below, he says he doesn’t want to continue.
‘I want to go down.’
‘But, Martin,’ she tries, ‘now that we’ve got to the top we can see all the way to Bergsbrunna – you want to see that, don’t you?’ She points across the countryside, in the way she used to when she was showing him things in the forest. ‘Look over there,’ she says. ‘That’s the jetty where we go swimming, and over there’s the factory.’
But Martin doesn’t want to look.
She is seized by an impulse to give him a good shake, but resists when she sees that he’s started to cry.
When the wheel begins to turn again he looks at her and wipes his eyes on his sleeve. By the third revolution his fears seem to have vanished, and he now seems curious about the views opening up all around them.
‘You’re the best in the world,’ she whispers in his ear, and they giggle and hug each other.
A row of houseboats is visible along the river through the trees. There are children swimming by one of the jetties and their laughter is audible all the way to the gondola they’re sitting in.
‘I want to go swimming too,’ he says.
She knows it can smell down there if the wind is in the wrong direction, bringing with it the cloying, heavy whiff of dirt and excrement from the sewage plant in the distance.
When their ride on the big wheel is over he makes a fuss about wanting to go to the river.
They leave the crowds at the fair, walk round the main barrack building, and follow the path leading down the ravine-like slope towards the Fyris River.
The jetty where the children were swimming a short while ago is empty now, except for a forgotten towel draped on one of the posts. The houseboats are bobbing, dark and empty, on the murky water of the river.
She strides out along the jetty, bends over and feels the water.
Afterwards she couldn’t understand how she had managed to lose him.
All of a sudden he’s just gone.