The Circle (8 page)

Yes, Anna-Karin knows how it feels to want to die. For eight years she’d thought about it almost every day, then put it out of her mind. Because Grandpa’s here. And the animals. And the holidays when she doesn’t have to go into town. And sometimes, when she dares to think that far ahead, the dream of another life takes form – a life in which she’s a vet and can buy a farm of her own, in the middle of the forest, far away from Engelsfors.

‘There’s probably a lot we don’t know about how the boy was doing,’ Grandpa says to Mama, in his diplomatic manner.

‘It can’t have been easy, of course, with those parents.’ Mama nods, misunderstanding Grandpa as usual.

Sometimes Anna-Karin doesn’t know which of them annoys her most: Grandpa, who won’t judge anybody, or Mama, who judges everyone except herself.

‘I mean, Helena’s always worked a lot, and Krister –don’t get me started on him. The great government boss – I don’t suppose he has time for anything so mundane as his family. Oh, yes, things aren’t always as perfect as they appear.’

Mama relishes the misfortune of successful people and makes no attempt to hide it.

‘Of course, I don’t want to say that it’s somehow the parents’ fault, but you can’t help wondering. When children enter this world, they’re like blank pages. It’s we adults who fill them. And when your father left us, I said to myself, “Anna-Karin shouldn’t have to …”’

Mama continues to talk, but Anna-Karin can’t bear to listen any more.
You’re fucking evil
, she wants to scream.
You don’t know anything about Elias’s family, you don’t even know anything about your own family, and still you sit there judging them. You don’t have the right to say anything
.

JUST SHUT UP!

Anna-Karin’s heart is pounding in her chest. Suddenly she notices the silence.

Mama has stubbed out her cigarette. The butt lies in a crumbled V-shape on the edge of her plate, but is still smouldering. She’s staring at Anna-Karin, wide-eyed. She clears her throat and tries to say something, but all that comes out is a hiss.

Anna-Karin glances at Grandpa. He looks concerned.

‘Are you all right, Mia? Is there something stuck in your throat?’ he asks.

Mama reaches for her glass of water and gulps. She hawks loudly, but still can’t speak.

‘Mama?’ Anna-Karin says.

‘I’ve lost my voice,’ she mimes.

She gets up and shuffles out of the kitchen holding her cigarettes. Soon afterwards the TV comes on in the living room.

Grandpa and Anna-Karin stare at each other. Anna-Karin starts to giggle uncontrollably.

‘It’s nothing to laugh at,’ Grandpa reproaches her, and she goes quiet.

But it is, she wants to say. It’s hilarious.

Minoo spits out the toothpaste, rinses her brush and wipes her mouth with a towel. She looks at herself in the mirror and feels a shiver down her spine. The glass surface is hard, shiny. Would she be able to smash it with her hand? Is that what Elias did?

She’s got to stop thinking about it.

She leaves the bathroom and goes into her room. The little round lamp with the green shade is casting a warm glow from the bedside table. Minoo is wearing her pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers, but she’s still shivering. She goes to the window to check that it’s closed properly.

She remains standing there.

The tops of the trees and bushes are swaying uneasily in the wind. It’s stopped raining. The paved street is glistening
in
the light from the streetlamps. A bush casts a strange shadow.

No. Someone’s standing there. In the darkness, just beyond the reach of the streetlamp.

She draws the curtains and peers through the narrow gap between them. She is absolutely sure now. A person is standing in the shadows, looking straight at her house.

Minoo sees the figure move away. When it reaches the next lamppost and passes through the cone of light, she sees the person’s back. A black sweater with the hood pulled up.

Minoo stands stock still until the figure has disappeared.

Suddenly she hears the creak of footsteps behind her, and the panic she has been carrying all day explodes. Minoo screams in terror. When she turns, her mother is in the doorway.

‘Minoo …’ she says.

The tears come. In the next moment, she feels warm arms around her and breathes in her mother’s scent. Minoo sobs until she has no more tears.

‘
Bashe azizam
,’ her mother says comfortingly.

That night her mother sits on the edge of the bed until Minoo has fallen sleep.

Vanessa is dreaming about Elias. He is standing in front of the dead trees in the playground, watching her. When she sees him, she feels sad. Elias Malmgren is dead and will only be remembered as the boy who killed himself in the school toilets.

She is woken by Wille’s phone vibrating hard against the
floor
. Damn it. They had fallen asleep on a mattress in Jonte’s house. Is it the middle of the night? It’s hard to tell with the blinds pulled down.

Wille’s telephone is still ringing when she lifts it to see what time it is. She rejects the call, but registers the name on the screen.

Wille has taken all the bedclothes as usual and she shivers. She lays her hand on Wille’s midriff and feels the warmth of his skin. He’s moving around uneasily – he looks so different when he’s asleep. It’s as if she can see him as a boy and as a very old man at the same time. Vanessa spoons against him and pulls the covers over them.

‘Linnéa W,’ it had said on the screen.

Linnéa Wallin.

Elias Malmgren’s best friend.

Wille’s ex.

7

THE CART BOUNCES
and lurches along the road. She’s on her knees and has managed to free herself from the sack they pulled over her head. The morning air cools her sweaty face. She glances at the driver’s hunched back and floppy black felt hat.

She straightens up a little and struggles with the ropes. They are tied too tightly.

A forest stretches along one side of the road, dark and silent, and on the other, a wide expanse of open fields. Little grey huts lie scattered here and there, huddled beneath the clear sky. In the east, the morning star glows above the pink streak of dawn.

She tries to muster the courage to jump from the cart. But how far would she get with her broken body and fettered feet? Would she even survive the fall? She wouldn’t be able to catch herself with her bound hands.

But what holds her back more than anything else is despair.

What sort of life would await her if she escaped into the forest?

Alone and cast out. Hunted by those she had thought she
could
trust. Forsaken by those who had promised always to protect her.

The red sun will clear the horizon at any moment.

They are nearly there.

Rebecka opens her eyes. The smell of smoke stings her nose, more pungent than it was yesterday morning.

The floor feels cold beneath her feet. She pulls on her socks from yesterday, a sports bra, an old T-shirt and baggy tracksuit trousers. Then she sneaks out of the room and quietly closes the door behind her.

She peeks into her little sisters’ room. Alma and Moa are still asleep. Rebecka can hear their breathing, and is filled with the love she often feels for them. It takes away the sadness and fear she experienced in her dream.

Only when she steps out into the hall does she realise that it is only six o’clock. She can hear her mother’s gentle snoring from behind the closed bedroom door, the humming and clicking of the refrigerator. Not a sound from her brothers’ room. Rebecka laces up her jogging shoes, grabs her grey hoody from the chair and leaves the apartment.

As she’s running down the stairs she can feel the endorphins pumping into her bloodstream. By the time she steps out on to the street, euphoria is bubbling inside her. It’s a beautiful day again today. The sun bathes the dull three-storey brick apartment blocks in a warm glow.

Rebecka pulls out her battered MP3 player from the pocket of her hoody and puts on the earphones. She jogs
down
the street and turns left at the end. She quickens her pace. The only time she loves her body is when she’s running, when she can feel the blood surging through it. It’s a machine that burns calories and oxygen.

She wishes she could see her body the way Gustaf claims to see it. But to her all reflective surfaces are like fairground mirrors. It started in year six when she and a few friends went on a diet together. The others gave up after just a few days, but Rebecka discovered she was good at it. Far too good. Since then not a day has gone by without her thinking about what she eats and how much she works out. Several times a day she calculates it in her head: small breakfast, small lunch, slightly bigger dinner in exchange for an extra long run – how many calories does that make?

The autumn of year nine was the worst. That was when she ate least and was best at hiding it. At weekends she would sometimes stuff herself with sweets and crisps, so that her mum and dad wouldn’t get suspicious. Then, to compensate, she ate even less the following week. It was during one of those weeks that she fainted in the gym, and the teacher sent her to the nurse where she made a partial confession that she might have been a bit ‘lax’ about eating. But only for a few weeks. ‘I swear.’ The nurse believed her. Rebecka was such a sensible girl, not at all the type to develop an eating disorder, the nurse thought.

Things had been a bit better during the spring term. And then she had met Gustaf. Now she doesn’t starve herself, but the thoughts are still there. Even if the monster keeps
to
itself most of the time, it’s always there, whispering, waiting.

The terraced houses give way to detached homes. In front of her rears Olsson’s hill where the big May bonfire is lit each year. She sprints up the long steep incline. When she reaches the top, she slows down and stops.

Her heart is pounding in her chest. Her face is flushed. The music is exploding in her head. She removes her earphones.

Down below the canal runs past. Beyond it lies the church. The cemetery. And the vicarage. Where Elias lived. Where his room is now empty. Where two parents have lost their son.

They’ll see his grave whenever they look out of the window, Rebecka realises. Suddenly she’s crying.

She didn’t know Elias, and doesn’t want to revel in someone else’s misery, like Ida Holmström and her friends, yet she feels a great sadness weighing on her chest. Because what happened was so senseless. Because he could have been happy if he’d held out a little longer. And because of something else that she can’t put into words.

She wipes her tears with her sleeve and turns.

Someone is standing at the foot of the hill, gripping the handlebars of a bicycle. He or she is wearing a black hoody, similar to the one she has on, with the hood up. Rebecka can’t see the person’s face, but she knows they’re looking straight at her.

It feels like an eternity before the figure in black hops on to its bike and pedals off. Rebecka lets a few more minutes pass before she runs home.

*

When Rebecka comes in, Alma and Moa are stirring. It is nearly seven o’clock, and Rebecka starts to get breakfast ready, quietly so that she doesn’t wake her mother who came home in the small hours after her night shift at the hospital.

She puts milk, cereal, a loaf of bread and whey butter on the table. Since her father started commuting weekly to Köping, there have been many such mornings when she helps Anton and Oskar get off to school and takes Alma and Moa to nursery. Most of the time it’s okay. But sometimes she feels like Cinderella before her trans formation. Now, with the figure in the black hoody still haunting her, she’s glad to be doing something so mundane.

Rebecka goes into her brothers’ room. Oskar wrinkles his nose and groans as the light from the hallway falls across his bed. He has just turned twelve and has become taller and thinner over the summer. Even though his face is still that of a child, Rebecka has a sense of how he’ll look when he grows up. Anton, just a year younger, isn’t far behind. But when they’re asleep they look so small. Helpless.

She goes to the window and opens the blinds.

There are a thousand possible reasons why the figure in the black hoody might have been standing on the hill, he wasn’t necessarily stalking her. Rebecka doesn’t believe a single one of them.

‘Are you sure you should go to school today?’ her father asks, over breakfast.

He and Minoo are alone since her mother is at the
hospital
. Radio voices are reporting on world events. Her mother can’t stand having to listen to the radio in the morning, so her father takes the opportunity to do so when she’s not there.

‘The longer I wait, the harder it’ll be.’

He nods as if he understands, but he has no idea. If she were to stay at home today, rumours would immediately start to circulate. Maybe people would say she’d gone mad. Or committed suicide herself. Then when she finally came back to school, everyone would stare at her a thousand times more than they would if she went in today.