The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,150

they were in a place where she could scream uninhibitedly at her mother. Slam a door or two, maybe.

‘Rules?’ she repeats, and raises an eyebrow.

Her mother spins her teaspoon in her hand. She’s hardly touched her coffee or the petit beurre on her plate.

‘Well, we can hardly go back to how it was before.’

‘I agree,’ Vanessa says, sure they’re talking about two different things.

‘I haven’t been strict enough. You’ve been allowed to go out partying and meeting boys since you were far too young.’

‘Like mother, like daughter?’

The teaspoon stops spinning. Her mother meets her gaze. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I suppose so.’

‘But that’s all over now? It’s time to be a real mother?’ Why do I do that? she wonders. Why do I ruin everything from the word ‘go’?

‘If you’re going to take that attitude …’ Her mother starts to stand up.

‘I’m sorry,’ Vanessa says. The word leaves a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. But her mother sits down again. That’s the important thing.

‘You have to see it from my perspective, too,’ Vanessa continues.

‘Don’t you think I’m trying to?’

Vanessa sips her coffee to stop herself from screaming, ‘No!’ to that question. ‘I really don’t know,’ she says. ‘You don’t seem to care. You haven’t tried to get in touch. Not even at Christmas.’ She speaks quickly, so her voice doesn’t shake.

‘Of course I care!’ her mother says.

Vanessa still doesn’t trust her voice so she shrugs.

‘I’ve asked Sirpa not to say anything, but we’ve talked to each other at least once a week,’ her mother says. ‘I thought it best that you came to me when you were ready.’

She reaches across the table to Vanessa, but Vanessa leans back in her chair.

‘Why do you want to come home anyway?’ her mother asks. ‘Aren’t things working out between you and Wille?’

‘Everything’s great,’ Vanessa says, and hears how defiant she sounds, how obvious it is that she’s lying. She looks out of the window. ‘It isn’t fair to Sirpa,’ she says.

‘Is that the only reason?’ her mother asks.

Vanessa looks at her hands. Only now does she become aware that she’s also spinning her teaspoon. She knows what she wants to say. Why is it so difficult? ‘I miss you –Melvin and you.’

‘And we’ve missed you. A lot.’

Her mother’s voice sounds thick and Vanessa doesn’t dare look at her. She’s afraid she’s going to start crying.

‘I want it to work,’ her mother says, sighing heavily. ‘I want us to be a family.’

‘So do I,’ Vanessa says. ‘But there’s one thing I have to know: don’t you think on some level – just a tiny bit – that Nicke’s behaviour might be out of line sometimes, too? That maybe it isn’t always my fault that things aren’t working.’

‘I’ve never said it was only your fault,’ her mother says, in the martyr voice that Vanessa hates.

She clenches her fist, lets her nails dig little red half-moons into her palm. ‘You said something about rules.’

‘You can be out late only at weekends,’ her mother says.

Vanessa doesn’t object. She’s an expert at slipping out and in without her mother noticing.

‘I’m not going to try to stop you seeing Wille,’ her mother says. ‘I just have one request. Please, Vanessa, be careful. Don’t let yourself be dragged into anything. Promise me that?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but okay.’

‘And maybe it’s not such a good idea for Wille to come over to our house.’

Her mother looks away, and Vanessa knows instantly that that’s Nicke’s condition. ‘I don’t think he’ll want to,’ she says. ‘Not after how he was treated last time.’

‘I can understand that.’

It may not sound like much, but that’s the closest her mother has ever come to admitting that Nicke was wrong.

‘We’ve fixed the pipes in the shower, by the way,’ her mother continues, with a hint of a smile, ‘so now you won’t get scalded every morning.’

‘Did Nicke manage to …?’

‘No,’ her mother says. ‘We had to call in a contractor. They tore out everything Nicke had done and started again. It ended up being twice as expensive as it would have been if we’d brought them in from the beginning.’

Now Vanessa sees an unmistakable smile at the corners of her mother’s mouth. Maybe there is hope, after all.

The last lesson is physics and they’re working in pairs. Minoo lets her partner Levan build the ramp that they’ll let a little car roll down to show … something or other. She can’t concentrate on the problem. She can’t think. She avoids looking at Max. Avoids looking