The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,135

maniacal scream. It echoes down the corridor. Everything comes to an abrupt stop. That’s enough. Linnéa kicks Robin between his legs with her steel-toed boot. Hard connects with soft. Robin howls and drops to all fours. The book falls out of his hand and slides across the floor.

Minoo bends down and catches it.

‘FuckingcuntI’mgonnakillyou,’ Erik hisses, as if it were one word, and twists Linnéa’s arm behind her back.

Minoo has never been in a fight, not even as a child. She has no brothers or sisters to fight with, and at nursery she was always a good girl. Now she wriggles out of her backpack.

It’s heavy. Full of books.

Linnéa cries out when Erik twists her arm even harder. Minoo shuts off her brain and lets her instincts take over.

She swings her bag in a wide arc. It hits Erik’s head so hard that he stumbles backwards into the lockers.

Linnéa breaks free of him. She throws herself to the ground and gathers up her things. Her jar of face powder breaks, sending up a cloud of white dust.

‘The book!’ she shouts to Minoo.

The adrenalin starts pumping through Minoo’s body when she sees Erik climbing to his feet behind Linnéa. She almost doesn’t register what Linnéa says.

Linnéa gets to her feet with her bag in her hand. She grabs the book from Minoo and runs.

Minoo is running, too, but Linnéa is a lot faster and has soon disappeared through the front doors. Minoo dashes down the steps to the cafeteria.

‘Fucking dykes!’ Erik shouts, somewhere down the corridor behind her.

Vanessa is sitting in Wille’s car looking at the Lingonberry Nursery playground with its monkey bars and snow-covered sandpit. Five lumpy snowmen are standing to attention in front of the familiar building.

Vanessa looks at the clock on the dashboard. She should have just enough time. As long as Nicke or her mother hasn’t decided to pick him up early today …

‘I’m so nervous,’ she says.

Wille leans across the seat and kisses her cheek. ‘Should I wait for you?’

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It’ll only stress me out knowing you’re sitting out here.’

That’s only half the truth. The other half is that she wants to be alone afterwards.

‘Okay. I’m going to Jonte’s place,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

Vanessa swallows a comment about there being a thousand things Wille ought to do instead of going to Jonte’s place. But she’s sick of hearing her nagging voice.

She feels like an adult in the worst way whenever she’s with Wille, these days. She’s never sighed so much in her whole life as she has since they started living together. It’s as if she’s turned into her mother.

Wille still hasn’t mentioned the email she sent him the day before yesterday, with links to the few job listings on the homepage of the Engelsfors employment office. She can understand that it wouldn’t be much fun to work at the saw mill, or clean offices overnight at the town hall, but it would be temporary. As soon as she’s left school they can do whatever they want. Together.

She climbs out of the car, and he waves to her through the windscreen after she’s slammed the door. She loves him. But she doesn’t know if that’s enough any more.

‘Vanessa! We haven’t seen you for ages! Are you picking up Melvin today?’

Amira had been working there when Vanessa was at nursery, and she was Vanessa’s favourite teacher. She still wears the same suspender-skirts now as she did then, and every time Vanessa sees her she gets flashbacks of story time and rosehip soup, and of when Amira caught her and Kevin in the Wendy house.

‘I’m just here to say hi to him,’ Vanessa says. ‘Is it okay if I give him a present? Maybe you have rules or something …’

Amira looks at the bag she’s holding. Vanessa wonders if Amira knows she isn’t living at home now.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘We can make an exception for you. But do it away from the other kids so they don’t see. There’ll be such a fuss otherwise.’

‘Thanks,’ Vanessa says.

‘Go on into the lunch room and I’ll bring him to you.’

The low table where the children eat has been cleared. The dark blue roller blinds decorated with circus animals in bright colours are pulled down halfway, and the room is gloomy. It smells of plastic and cleaning liquid. Everything has been adapted for little kids, and it’s hard for her to imagine she herself was once that small.

‘Come on, Melvin. Vanessa’s in here,’ she hears Amira say