Little Star

stories the customers had told her, and several dog and cat owners had become her friends. She was invited to more parties and weddings and so on than she could ever manage to attend.

Goran would suffer agonies for several days in advance if there was to be some kind of social tasting night at work. If it hadn’t been for his purely professional interest in, for example, new wines from Languedoc, he would probably have declined. As far as he was concerned, it would have been better if they’d just sent small samples by post.

As a consequence, they interpreted the information from the parents’ evening differently. Goran was pleased that things were going so well for Teresa at school, while Maria was worried that things were so difficult for Teresa at school. Every day she started quizzing Teresa about what she had done during break times, who she had played with, who she had talked to. It got to the point where Goran started hoping Teresa would lie, make up some friends and games just to satisfy Maria. But making things up just wasn’t in her nature.

Arvid and Olof were always having friends round. Some of these friends had younger brothers and sisters, and Maria would occasionally ring the parents and explain the situation, begging them to send a small sibling along for Teresa as part of the package. In Goran’s opinion, Teresa handled things as well as she could. She would show the visitor her things, suggest games they might play and try in her own way to make the best of their forced proximity.

His heart swelled a little with pride as he watched his daughter take responsibility for a situation not of her making, and contracted with pain when he saw how badly things went. Teresa would meticulously set out the game and explain the rules while the other child looked anxiously around, wanting to go to the toilet. It would end in silence with a small sibling tugging at its big brother’s sleeve and asking to go home.

In the spring Goran was made manager of his store. Rudolf retired and recommended Goran in glowing terms. He was already in charge of ordering and product selection, and was responsible for much of the contact with suppliers.

He had to go for an interview, and felt it went reasonably well. Later he was told that he had been given the job due to his extensive knowledge, despite some reservations about his suitability for the managerial role itself. He understood perfectly.

From a purely practical point of view it meant an extra twelve thousand kronor a month, more responsibility and longer working days. He was no longer able to finish early on Wednesdays. He and Maria took the bold step of securing a loan to renovate the kitchen, and for the first time in their lives they were able to buy a brand new car.

By May Goran had already begun to wish he could step down from the post he had taken up in March, but once an upward movement has begun, it takes a great deal of determination to break it. Goran did not have that determination. He gritted his teeth and stuck with it, worked harder. His daring decision to carry a wider selection of wines in Tetra-paks was a success, and sales increased.

In June he led a team-building weekend at a conference centre, and when he came home he was so worn out that he slept for fourteen hours.

It pained him that he had less time to spare for Teresa. He did his best to be there for her and the boys when he came home exhausted, but something had slipped away from him and he didn’t have the strength to work out how to get it back.

Teresa had taken over her brothers’ Lego since they lost interest in it. Maria had kept all the instructions, and Teresa spent a lot of time putting together all the different models as she listened to a tape of Allan Edwall reading Winnie-the-Pooh, over and over again.

Sometimes Goran would come in and just sit down in the armchair in her room to watch her, to listen to the clicks as the Lego pieces fitted into one another and Allan Edwall’s dark, gentle voice. He would feel close to her for a while, until he fell asleep.

***

In the October of Teresa’s second year in school there was to be a fancy dress disco at Hallowe’en. There would be soft drinks and sweets, and prizes for the best costumes. Maria had managed to miss the whole thing, and it wasn’t until she got home at five o’clock that she spotted the piece of paper saying the disco would start at six.

Goran was busy stocktaking and probably wouldn’t be home until late evening, so with every scrap of her positive determination Maria sat Teresa down on a chair in the kitchen and asked her what she wanted to be.

‘I don’t want to be anything,’ Teresa replied.

‘At the fancy dress disco, I mean,’ said Maria. ‘What do you want to dress up as?’

‘I don’t want to dress up.’

‘But we’ve got loads of stuff. You can dress up as anything you like-a ghost or a monster, whatever.’

Teresa shook her head and got up to go to her room. Maria stepped in front of her and made her sit down again.

‘Sweetheart. Everybody else will be dressed up. You don’t want to be the only one who isn’t dressed up, do you?’

‘Yes.’

Maria massaged her temples. It wasn’t because she found this difficult. It was because she found it totally absurd. She couldn’t think of one good reason why a person wouldn’t dress up when they were going to a fancy dress disco. However, she controlled herself and did something she perhaps did all too rarely. She asked a question.

‘OK. Can you tell me why you don’t want to dress up?’

‘I just don’t.’

‘But why? You can dress up as somebody else.’

‘I don’t want to be somebody else.’

‘But it’s fancy dress. If you don’t dress up, you can’t go.’

‘I won’t go, then.’

Teresa’s attitude was as crystal clear as it was untenable. Maria couldn’t accept it. Teresa would end up being odd if she was allowed to follow every whim. Since Teresa wasn’t old enough to have an overview of the consequences of her actions, it really came down to a question of upbringing, of taking responsibility as a parent.

‘Right,’ said Maria. ‘This is what’s going to happen. You are going to the disco and you are going to dress up. The matter is not up for discussion. There’s only one thing I need to know: what do you want to dress up as?’

Teresa looked her mother in the eye and said, ‘A banana.’

If Maria had had a different sense of humour, she might have laughed at her daughter’s obviously defiant answer, then hunted out everything yellow she could lay her hands on. However, she didn’t have that particular sense of humour. Instead she nodded grimly and said, ‘OK. If that’s the way you want it, I’ll decide for you. Stay there.’

It is possible that we inherit certain characteristics from our parents. If this is the case, it was her sense of order that Teresa had inherited from her mother. In the clothes storeroom was a big box labelled ‘Fancy Dress’, since neither Arvid nor Olof had anything against getting dressed up-quite the opposite, in fact. After a few minutes Maria was back in the kitchen with black and red make-up, a black cape and a pair of plastic fangs.

‘You can be a vampire,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a vampire is?’

Teresa nodded, and Maria took this as a sign of approval.

When Goran got home at eight o’clock, Maria asked him to pick Teresa up from the disco. He turned around in the hallway and went mechanically back to the car. This week had almost finished him, and the world felt like a piece of flat stage scenery as he drove towards the school.

Music was pounding from the gym, and a few children in costume were charging around outside the entrance. Goran blinked and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t do it. He just didn’t have the strength to walk into that pulsating grotto of excited little bodies and well-meaning parents.

He wanted to go home. He knew he couldn’t. With an effort he hauled his soul to its feet from its slumped, sideways position and walked towards the entrance, smiling and nodding at the parents who had been kind