When he got home he investigated his find and was disappointed. He had been hoping for a few hundred- kronor notes, perhaps some interesting cards and a furious owner who would have to spend the whole afternoon ringing around and cancelling them.
But the wallet belonged to a young girl, sixteen years old according to her ID card, and contained only a few bits of paper with telephone numbers on them, two twenty-kronor notes and a Nordea bank card. Perhaps that would have been the end of the matter-Jerry might even have gone down and put the wallet back, if he hadn’t found a piece of paper in one of the side pockets.
‘IDOL 2006’ it said at the top in white letters on a blue background. It was a flyer with the time and place of the auditions for this year’s program. Grand Hotel, May 14.
Jerry looked at the ID card. Presumably the girl-Angelika Tora Larsson-had dreams of stardom.
Jerry was still inclined to give the wallet a chance to be reunited with its owner. Then he spotted the small print right at the bottom of the flyer: ‘Minimum age 16 years. Bring ID and completed application form’.
And Fate stepped aside and opened the door.
‘Sis? How would you like to be on that program we saw? You remember, the one where people were singing?’
Theres was sitting at the computer reading an article about tigers. She nodded without taking her eyes off the screen.
‘No, seriously,’ said Jerry. ‘Would you like to do that? There’ll probably be loads of people.’
‘You’ll come too.’
‘Yes, absolutely. Of course I will. But it would be cool to sing in a place where people could hear just how good you are, wouldn’t it? I mean, it’s kind of a waste just singing in here with me, don’t you think?’
Theres didn’t answer, and Jerry realised he was actually talking to himself; she had already given him her answer. Jerry held out Angelika’s ID card. ‘What do you think? Does this girl look like you?’
‘I don’t know.’
Jerry scrutinised the photograph. It had presumably been taken a couple of years ago, because the girl hardly looked like a teenager. She wasn’t exactly like Theres apart from the long, fair hair, but he didn’t think they’d check that carefully. After all, she wasn’t exactly trying to get into a political summit meeting.
He continued the train of thought. ID number, name. Check, TV. It probably wasn’t a particularly good idea, all things considered. He had got carried away by the possibility. But it was too dangerous, anything could happen. Oh well. He would keep the ID card; you never knew when it might come in handy.
Theres got up from the computer and said, ‘Come on, then.’
‘Come where?’
‘We’re going now. To the TV program.’
Jerry smiled. ‘It’s not for ten days, sis, and I don’t think…We need to give this some thought.’
He thought. And thought. He downloaded the application form just for fun, and filled it in; he checked out where the Grand Hotel was, just to amuse himself. Just to see if it was possible, he sat down with a pin and a drafting pen and changed a one in Angelika’s date of birth to a four. And just to finish what he had started, he rubbed the card around in the gravel a little bit just to make it look scruffy, so that the change would be less noticeable.
Since they had nothing else to do, he and Theres practised a couple of songs that sounded good when she sang them a cappella. Theres wanted to sing ‘A Thousand and One Nights’, which Jerry didn’t think was a good idea. But then it didn’t really matter, because she wasn’t going to the auditions anyway.
Of course it would be good if Theres could get out and meet some people of her own age, and obviously it was almost criminal that more people didn’t have the chance to be touched by her voice, and no doubt there was some kind of desire for revenge within Jerry,
He kept thinking like that, and he was still thinking like that at eight o’clock on the morning of May 14 when they took the subway to Kungstradgarden just so that they could stroll over to the Grand Hotel and check things out. They walked along Nybrokajen holding hands. Theres asked about everything she saw, and Jerry hardly knew the answer to any of it. He felt lost in the middle of Stockholm.
Up to now only his thoughts had been opposing the whole thing, while his feelings and impulses had kept driving them forward. Now at last his feelings began to catch up. He wasn’t in control of the situation at all. When they had passed Berzelii Park and turned into Stallgatan, Jerry stopped, let go of Theres’ hand and said, ‘No. No. I don’t think we should do this, sis. We’re fine as we are, aren’t we? This is only going to cause trouble.’
Theres looked around. Boys and girls of her own age, alone or in groups, with or without parents, were walking past them. Without looking in Jerry’s direction, she simply followed them.
Jerry was on the point of shouting ‘Sis!’ after her, but stopped himself just in time, dashed after her and said, ‘Tora. We’re going home now.’
Theres shook her head and kept on walking. Without Jerry noticing exactly when it happened, the disparate groups became a crowd, and they were at the back of a queue that was more than a hundred metres long, with people joining on behind them. Jerry tugged gently at Theres’ hand but she stood there open mouthed, gazing at all the girls who were slightly older than her, and refused to move.
Jerry realised he wasn’t going to get her away without causing a scene, and it was impossible to know what she might do if he started behaving in an unexpected way. He had said they were going to come to the auditions. They had come. Now they were here. Theres was behaving according to what had been said so, with sweat pouring down his back, Jerry joined the queue and whispered, ‘Just remember your name’s Tora. If anyone asks. Tora Larsson. Your name is Tora Larsson, OK?’
Theres shook her head. ‘That’s not my name.’
Jerry realised his mistake, and rephrased. ‘No, that’s right. But if anyone asks what your name is, you have to answer Tora Larsson.’
‘Yes.’
‘And if anyone asks how old you are, what do you say?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘OK. OK.’
Although it wasn’t OK at all. Jerry felt as if everyone was looking at him; he felt like a deviant, he felt threatened as he stood there in the middle of the pack of girls. Most of them were probably between sixteen and twenty. Further away stood a couple of groups of boys and a few older girls, but the majority were just a couple of years older than Theres, and only a few of them had an adult with them.
The opposite was true of Theres. He had never seen her so calm when she was among other people, and presumably she was calm for the same reason that Jerry was overcome with a mild feeling of panic as he stood there surrounded by the aroma of hairspray, lip gloss and chewing gum. She was with her own kind. Jerry wasn’t.
After an hour the queue began to shuffle forwards, and after another two hours they had reached the registration desk. Jerry clenched his fists in his trouser pockets as Theres handed over her application form and ID card. His heart almost stopped as the woman dealing with the registration looked from the form to the card, back to the form.
‘Do you use your middle name?’ she asked. Theres didn’t answer. ‘Hello,’ said the woman. ‘I’m talking to you.’ Jerry saw that Theres had begun to draw back her lips, and he heard a faint growling. He quickly stepped in.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She uses her middle name. It was her grandmother’s name.’
The woman ignored him and fixed her gaze on Theres. ‘Listen to me. What’s your name?’
‘Tora,’ said Theres. ‘My name is Tora Larsson.’
‘There you go,’ said the woman, writing the name next to a number. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it? We don’t want to have the wrong name down for you if you go and win, now do we?’ Her tone implied that Theres winning was just about as likely as Bruce Springsteen releasing a disco album, but Theres was given a number to pin on her sweater.
Then all they could do was wait. The wannabes sat scattered about or crowded together in a vast room below street level. From time to time groups of four were called into one of the four rooms on the next floor up, where an initial audition was held, and some were then filtered through to meet the real judges a couple of days later.
