is. He brushes his teeth with an electric toothbrush, but shaves with a manual razor. He washes his hands with unscented soap from a pump bottle. He buys toothpaste in huge economy-size tubes. Perhaps she’ll crack some important code if she stares at these things long enough. But then, of course, he’d wonder what on earth she was doing in there.
Minoo turns towards the mirror and sees her unmade-up face. It’s as red with acne as her eyes are with crying. If only she didn’t look so grotesque she’d dare to imagine that Max wanted her here. That he isn’t just taking pity on her for being so pathetic.
‘Stop it,’ she whispers to herself. ‘Get out of here!’
She unlocks the door and steps into the hall. Music comes on further inside the house. A moment later Max appears with two cups of tea. He looks so warm and friendly standing there like that. Not to mention hot. So hot she can feel her ears flushing. She wonders what it would be like to kiss him. To kiss anyone, for that matter. She feels a tingling in her wrists and the strength drains from her arms.
I have to go, she thinks, before I make a total fool of myself.
‘Are you coming?’ he asks.
She follows him into the living room. It’s tastefully furnished yet homely. There is a sofa against the far wall. To the right of it stand shelves filled with books, films and a few old LPs. A framed poster of a woman with dark, curly hair in three-quarter profile hangs on the opposite wall. She’s wearing a draped blue silk dress. Her head is angled slightly downward and her expression is serious and introspective – suffering. In one hand she’s holding a pomegranate, while the other grasps the wrist. There’s something angst-ridden about the pose. Minoo takes an instant liking to the painting. She feels somehow as if she knows the woman.
She glances at the books. An assortment of Swedish and English titles. She’s glad they aren’t the tired old selection of novels that you see in everyone’s bookshelves and will flood the flea markets ten years from now.
‘See anything you like?’
Her gaze falls on The Lover and her cheeks heat.
‘This one’s great,’ she answers and fingers the spine of Steppenwolf. Great? She could hit herself. Interesting, fascinating, fantastic. Any other superlative would have sounded better. But Max seems pleasantly surprised.
‘It’s one of my favourites,’ he says.
‘And I really like those,’ she continues, and points, hoping it isn’t too obvious how hard she’s trying to impress him. Sure, she’s read those books and she likes them. But she reads other stuff, too. Fantasy and science fiction. Max would probably find that immature. Wouldn’t he?
‘The Stranger and Notes from the Underground,’ Max says, when he sees which titles she’s pointing at. He laughs. ‘You’re not a fan of happy books, are you?’
‘Happy books depress me,’ she answers, which is true. But she hears how it sounds and smiles sheepishly. ‘And that didn’t sound pretentious in the least.’
‘It’s okay,’ Max says, returning her smile. ‘Especially for a sixteen-year-old.’
The comment about her age stings a little, but she’s still intoxicated by the attention. She sits down on the black sofa. Max puts the cups on the table and sinks down beside her. There’s just a metre between them. She could reach out and touch him. At least, she could if she were a different, much braver and better-looking person. Vanessa, for example.
‘What a nice place you’ve got,’ she says.
‘Thanks.’ He doesn’t say more. He just looks at her with his greenish-brown eyes.
Minoo’s gaze wanders towards the steaming cups on the coffee-table. ‘Do you like it here?’ she asks. ‘In Engelsfors, I mean.’
‘No.’
When she looks at him he smiles. Minoo can’t help but smile, too. ‘Are we so terrible?’
‘It’s not the students but the other teachers. They want everything to be as it’s always been. In the beginning I thought they might be more open to change. But now it’s been almost a whole term …’
Minoo had always thought teachers stuck together. That they agreed on everything. He’s speaking to me like he would to a grown-up, she realises. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. I’ll stay till the summer anyway. Then we’ll have to see.’
Minoo reaches out for her cup and hopes she can wash down the desperate cry of Don’t go! that’s trying to erupt from her throat. Tea spills over the rim of the cup as