The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,146

story from Linnéa’s perspective. Linnéa, who doesn’t even have a mother. Linnéa, whose father dances drunken jigs in Storvall Park.

‘I don’t understand how I can be in love with someone who pisses me off so fucking much,’ Vanessa says. ‘Or why I’m always so fucking pissed off with the person I love.’

‘Don’t ask me.’ Linnéa leans back on the sofa.

‘Why not?’

‘You should never offer advice about other people’s relationships.’

‘But at Monique’s you said—’

‘That was a mistake.’

Linnéa sits cross-legged and looks straight at her. ‘Don’t you get it?’ she asks. ‘You deserve someone better than Wille. But if I say that, and you break up with Wille, I’m the one you’ll be angry with if you regret it. And if you decide to stick it out, then you’ll know what I think and hate me for it.’

‘But I won’t—’ Vanessa protests.

‘I just mean I don’t want to be the girl you blame everything on later,’ Linnéa interrupts.

Vanessa doesn’t know what to say. She feels as if she’s just been paid a compliment that’s really nice and really strange at the same time.

‘But he doesn’t call me any more,’ Linnéa says.

Vanessa sinks a little deeper into the sofa, and gets a flashback of how Jonte and Linnéa looked when they were lying there that night. It feels like a lifetime ago. ‘Are you still seeing Jonte?’

‘No. I plead temporary insanity for that whole thing.’

Vanessa giggles and wriggles to adjust her position on the sofa so that her feet are resting against Linnéa’s legs.

Everything’s going to work out. Somehow.

52

MINOO IS STANDING in the forest near Kärrgruvan. It’s spring and the leaves on the trees are a verdant green. It’s almost painful to look at them. She hears water burbling and looks down. A stream is flowing at her feet. A thousand little suns glitter on its surface. A pair of black feathers float past. It’s strange that she can know it’s a dream without waking up.

Minoo?

Rebecka’s calling to her.

Minoo?

Minoo is suddenly in a hurry. She starts to run along the water. She has to find Rebecka. But her feet keep sinking into the damp earth. A little deeper with each step.

Minoo!

She’s stuck.

And in the water she sees Rebecka. She’s lying on her back in her white nightgown. Her long reddish-blonde hair spreads out around her pale face. Her eyes are angled up at the sky, her mouth open as if in ecstasy. In one hand she’s holding a garland of flowers. Their colours are unnaturally vivid against the black water.

She is the drowning Ophelia.

‘You’re not Rebecka,’ Minoo says, angry and disappointed.

Rebecka looks at her. It’s Rebecka’s face, Rebecka’s body. Rebecka’s voice. And yet it isn’t.

The stream eddies and ripples around her, but she’s floating, motionless in the middle of the current. She’s speaking but her mouth isn’t moving.

The woman who posed for this painting was Elizabeth Siddal. She fell gravely ill afterwards. The bath she was lying in was fitted with lamps to stop the water getting cold. But one day they went out. The artist didn’t notice. He was absorbed in his painting. And little Lizzie said nothing. She just suffered in silence. All so that he could fulfil his vision. To be reduced to an image comes at a high price.

Somewhere in real life the doorbell rings, but Minoo clings to her dream.

‘What are you talking about?’

I thought your mind was your superpower, Minoo. You have to wake up now. You have to find the courage to see yourself as others do. And you have to let go.

The dream dissipates and she’s awake. The doorbell rings again.

Minoo’s father is unshaven and has dark circles under his eyes. Anna-Karin smells the coffee on his breath when he says he’s unsure if Minoo is up yet. Maybe it would have been better if she’d waited a few hours before coming here. But she had to do it before her courage failed her.

He shows her into the front hall and shouts at the ceiling that Minoo has a visitor.

‘I’m coming!’ Minoo’s voice replies.

Anna-Karin takes off her coat and follows him into the living room.

‘Would you like something?’ he asks. ‘Coffee? Tea? Milk? Water?’

‘No, thanks,’ Anna-Karin mumbles, and looks around the big, bright room.

The furniture is expensive. Four packed bookcases with a built-in TV cabinet stand along one wall. There’s real art – not the usual Ikea prints or hangings embroidered with some proverb that Anna-Karin’s mother is so fond of. ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’, ‘There’s no place like home’, ‘A merry