and looks towards house number thirty-seven. The light is on in Max’s window. She can still turn around and go home. It’s still possible. She can still pull out.
But if she leaves now, she’ll never know.
She walks up to Max’s door and reaches out to ring his doorbell. She stops when she hears voices inside the house. Is the TV or radio on? Or has he got a friend with him? A woman?
It’s never occurred to her that Max might have a private life. In her mind he’s always existed in a vacuum when he hasn’t been at school.
What if he has friends with him for dinner? What will they think? That Max is some kind of semi-paedophile who takes advantage of his students? And that she’s a stupid little airhead with a penchant for older men?
Perhaps Max’s friends would think it quite normal for him to be with a girl who’s barely started year eleven, and he probably wouldn’t be embarrassed in the slightest.
‘How did you two meet?’
‘Well, Minoo is a real whiz at quadratic equations, and we took a liking to each other!’
Suddenly she can imagine how repellent it would look to other people.
Does Max have brothers and sisters, parents? What fun family gatherings they’d have. She’d have to sit at the kids’ table while the grown-ups talked. And what about her own parents? Her father would wonder if he had brought on a father fixation by working too much during her childhood. Her mother would find a less than flattering diagnosis for Max, and dispatch Minoo to a psychiatric ward for adolescents.
Even if they were to try to keep their relationship secret, it would get out. Secret love affairs never remain secret for long in Engelsfors. Then the school would report Max to the police. He’d never be able to work again as a teacher.
She lowers her hand.
Suddenly a new dimension has been added to her relationship with Max: reality. She had avoided it until now. But Max had seen it all along.
When you’re older you’ll realise how young you actually were.
She had sat on his sofa, trying to convince him of how mature she was, when all she’d really done was prove the opposite.
The voices inside are suddenly silenced and Minoo realises it must have been the TV. She hears footsteps. Max is walking about. He goes from the living room to the kitchen, fills the sink with water, starts clattering dishes.
She had come here to convince Max that they have to be together, that they shouldn’t care what other people think. But now that she can see everything so clearly, she can’t pretend not to.
There’s only one thing she can do. And one thing she has to know.
The doorbell is surprisingly soft and melodic.
The clattering in the kitchen stops. Footsteps approach. Minoo stands her ground, trying to breathe calmly even though her heart is pounding with a blistering techno beat.
The latch turns. The door opens.
Max appears, lit from behind. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans. His hair is ruffled and he is pale, with dark circles under his eyes. Somehow that makes him even better-looking. He’s like a tragic young poet – a Keats or a Byron. He’s drying his hands on a tea-towel.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you like this.’
‘Minoo—’
‘Please, just listen to me. I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I know you’re right. We can’t be together.’
It’s painful for her to say it. The logical part of her brain sees things clearly but that doesn’t change the fact that she loves him. Perhaps more than ever.
‘I’m not going to come here again like this. I’m not going to tell anyone about us so you don’t need to worry. There’s just one thing I want to know …’ She falls silent. The question had seemed so simple and straightforward. Now it seems too momentous to ask. She looks at his hands, which are playing with the towel.
‘What do you want to know?’ Max asks softly. ‘If I meant what I said? Because I do. I love you, Minoo. I’ve loved you since the first day I set eyes on you.’
‘I love you, too,’ she says, and it feels so natural. ‘But I know now that it’s not possible. What I have to know is … can you bear to wait for me?’
She can’t look him in the eyes. ‘I’ll be eighteen in a little over a year. And then you won’t be my teacher.’
She looks up and can