The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,18

shrouds the table in ultraviolet smoke with a single exhalation. ‘And you’re only telling me now?’

Anna-Karin looks at Grandpa helplessly.

‘It wasn’t Helena’s son Elias, was it?’ Mama continues.

‘Helena who?’

‘The priest! What was Elias’s last name?’

It’s easy to forget that Mama once had another life. It’s only when she starts talking about old friends and acquaintances that Anna-Karin remembers.

‘Malmgren,’ answers Anna-Karin.

‘Good Lord, it is him.’ Mama puts out her cigarette and immediately lights another one. She looks elated. She’s always like that when there’s a tragedy or an accident. It’s the only time she ever stops wallowing in her own misery. ‘Poor Helena,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that typical? She works as a spiritual guide to others, but I suppose you can still be blind to what’s going on in your own home. How did he do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But he did it at school?’

Mama is excited now. For once she’s alert and bursting with energy. She leans towards Anna-Karin as if they were two friends gossiping over coffee.

‘Who found him?’

‘Two girls. One of them is in my class. Minoo.’

‘The newspaper man’s daughter,’ Mama says.

Grandpa has been sitting there without saying a word. Now he reaches across the table and pats Anna-Karin’s hand. ‘Was this Elias a friend of yours?’

‘No. I just knew who he was.’

‘When you’re young you think the world revolves around you and that every little setback is a catastrophe,’ Mama says. ‘You don’t understand how good you’ve got it. All the responsibility you’re spared.’

‘Young people don’t have it easy these days,’ Grandpa remonstrates.

‘No? They expect to have everything done for them.’ Mama snorts.

Anna-Karin has trouble swallowing again. Her anger is stuck, like a lump, in her throat. She puts down her knife and fork.

‘With his whole life ahead of him,’ Mama continues. ‘I can’t understand it.’

But I can! Anna-Karin wants to scream.

She’s thought so many times how easy it would be to end it all. The first occasion was when she was eight and had told her teacher about her living hell. He tried to talk to the kids who were bullying her, but they responded by stripping her down to her T-shirt and pants and leaving her in the playground in the middle of winter. ‘Next time we’ll kill you, farm girl,’ said Erik Forslund. When her mother came and picked her up, Anna-Karin said that they had been playing. If Mama had probed a little, she would have told her the truth. But instead she had scolded her for making her drive all the way to school to pick her up.

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