here.’
It was like a stab in the gut. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? So you and Nicke can fuck in peace. Or have you found someone else to have an unplanned pregnancy with? This time you might want to keep a pen and paper handy so you can write down his name.’
For a moment Vanessa thinks her mother is going to hit her. It’s never happened before, then it’s never been this close to happening. Her mother turns abruptly and marches off into the kitchen.
‘You can have what you want!’ Vanessa shouts. ‘I’ll move in with Wille!’
‘You do that!’ her mother shouts back. ‘We’ll see how long you can stand it!’
‘I hate you! Sirpa’s a much better mother than you’ve ever been!’
She goes into her room and slams the door, expecting to hear her mother storm after her, open the door and shout at her to remember the neighbours, or does she want them to be evicted?
But nothing happens.
Vanessa is standing in the middle of her room. She feels empty inside. All day she’s been like a pinball, bouncing back and forth between extremes of emotion. All she wants now is to sleep. She reaches for the covers to pull them aside.
There’s a knock at the door. Vanessa tries to decide if she has the energy to make up with her mother. But her mother doesn’t come in. Instead she calls through the door. ‘I had a phone call at work. You don’t have to go to your first lesson tomorrow. The principal wants to speak to you. A routine chat.’
*
Late that night Minoo finally hears back from Vanessa and can confirm that all five of them have been called to the principal’s office first thing in the morning.
Half an hour later, she opens the door to her room. The house is quiet. She sneaks along the corridor, past her parents’ closed bedroom door. She hears a sound from inside their room and stiffens. But it’s just her father snoring.
Only once the front door is shut behind her can she breathe normally. A thick fog has enveloped the garden, making any shapes appear vague and indistinct. There’s no wind, and her footsteps seem to echo across the entire neighbourhood.
Nicolaus is waiting for her in his car, hidden in the fog, a hundred metres down the street. She climbs into the passenger seat. He is shivering in his thin coat, and his breath steams out of his mouth when he speaks.
‘Good evening,’ he says. ‘Or perhaps that’s the wrong choice of words on such a fateful night.’
For a moment they sit in silence. Minoo looks at his hands resting on the steering wheel. They’re red and chapped. ‘You’ve got to buy some clothes,’ she says. ‘A down jacket, gloves and a hat. It’ll be winter soon. You’ll be ill if you don’t.’
Nicolaus looks at her gratefully. ‘You’re far too kind, far too considerate. I don’t deserve it. I wish I could help you. I know there’s a solution but I … can’t remember …’ His brow furrows. ‘It’s like a moth fluttering at the very edge of my vision. All I catch is a glimpse of its flapping grey wings.’
He sighs and turns to Minoo. ‘I can’t allow you all to walk straight into the lion’s den,’ he says.
‘We’ve no choice. The lion has spoken to our parents.’
‘You could … skip school. Isn’t that what you call it?’
‘We can’t skip school for ever. Besides, she can hardly have planned to kill us if she wants to meet us in her office during the day when the school is full of people.’
‘Maybe that’s what she wants you to think.’
27
‘PLEASE COME IN,’ the principal says.
Adriana Lopez is wearing a dark green, knee-length sixties-style dress with black pumps in some kind of reptile skin.
She sits down in the armchair next to the little coffee-table. Two folding chairs have been brought out. Minoo sits on the sofa, between Vanessa and Anna-Karin. Ida and Linnéa take the chairs. Once they’re seated, silence settles over them.
There is a clock hanging above the door to the assistant principal’s office. It ticks the seconds loudly, one by one. It reminds Minoo of a time bomb. At any moment the world may explode.
‘I know you were in my house,’ the principal says.
Minoo feels the blood drain from her face.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she continues.
Ida gets up so suddenly that she knocks her chair over backwards. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with this,’ she says.
The room is