‘Can you write more?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘When you write I want to read them.’
Teresa nodded. Suddenly she didn’t want to sit here any longer. She wanted to go home to her room and write poems, to fill the whole notebook. Then she would come back and just sit here and look at Theres while she read her poems. That was what she wanted. That was how she wanted things to be.
Jerry appeared in the doorway. ‘So there you are. Everything OK?’ Theres and Teresa nodded in unison and Jerry gave a snort. ‘You look like…I don’t know what you look like.’
‘Laurel and Hardy?’ suggested Teresa.
A grin spread across Jerry’s face and he pointed at Teresa, waggling his finger. Then he stepped into the room and held out his hand. ‘My name’s Jerry. Hi.’
Teresa took his hand. ‘Hi. Teresa. Are you…Theres’ dad?’
Jerry shrugged his shoulders. ‘Kind of.’
‘Kind of?’
‘Yes. Kind of.’
‘He’s my brother,’ said Theres. ‘He hid me when Lennart and Laila got dead.’
Jerry folded his arms and looked at Theres with a somewhat anguished expression. Then he sighed deeply and seemed to give up. He cleared his throat, but his voice was still thick when he said, ‘Would you like some juice? Or something? Biscuits?’
Teresa went to the toilet and used her mobile to ring home and tell them everything was fine. Then she sat in the living room and drank raspberry juice and ate a couple of chocolate brownies that were so old they were leathery. Jerry drank coffee and Theres ate apricot puree with a teaspoon out of a baby food jar. Teresa thought the whole thing was very uncomfortable. It felt as if Jerry was studying her and Theres all the time, as if he was trying to work something out. He was an unusual adult, and she liked him in a way, but she still wanted him to go away.
When they had finished eating and drinking, her prayers were answered. Jerry slapped his thighs and said, ‘Right, girls, I have to go out for a while. And you seem to be getting on fine, so…I don’t know exactly when I’ll be back, but you’ll be OK, won’t you?’
When Jerry was ready to go, he waved Teresa over to him. She went out into the hallway and Jerry lowered his voice. ‘Theres is a little bit special, as I expect you’ve noticed. If you find some of the things she says a bit strange, just…don’t give it too much thought. You’re not a telltale, are you? You’re not the kind of person who runs around telling everybody everything?’
Teresa shook her head and Jerry chewed air in his closed mouth as if he were thinking, trying to reach a decision. ‘It’s like this. If Theres tells you anything…you mustn’t tell
Teresa nodded and said, ‘Yes. I know.’
The look Jerry gave her was so long and so penetrating that Teresa started to feel uncomfortable. He patted her on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m glad she’s met you.’ Then he left.
When Teresa went back to the living room, Theres was sitting at the computer. She asked, ‘Do you want to listen to some music?’
‘Sure,’ said Teresa, and crashed down on the sofa. She stretched out, free of the stiffness produced by having Jerry’s eyes on her. It would be exciting to find out what kind of music Theres liked.
She didn’t recognise the songs coming through the computer’s speakers, but from the thin, synthetic sound she guessed it was something from the early eighties. Then again, what did she know. Maybe music was supposed to sound like that these days, she didn’t really keep up. Anyway, she liked the intro, the melody. It came as a bit of a shock when she heard Theres’ voice.
She couldn’t pick up much of what Theres was singing, it just seemed like disjointed sentences with no connection, mixed with wailing in a lot of places. But it didn’t really matter. The song had her hooked right away. It was catchy, melancholy, beautiful and happy all at the same time, and shivers of pleasure ran up and down Teresa’s spine.
When the song came to an end Teresa sat up and called out, ‘That was fantastic. It was…brilliant. What song was it?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You know…what’s it called?’
‘It’s not called anything.’
Then Teresa got it. The song was so self-evident and so immediately accessible that she had assumed she’d heard it before. But that wasn’t the case. ‘Did
‘Jerry wrote it. I’m singing.’
‘Yes, I could tell. What’s it about?’
‘Nothing. I sing words. Your words are better.’
Theres turned and clicked on another track. The song began to play, and Teresa closed her eyes and leaned back on the sofa, ready to enjoy the experience again. When she heard Theres’ voice it took her a couple of seconds to realise two things. One: the voice was no longer coming from the speakers, but from Theres herself. Two: she was now singing the words of the poem Teresa had given her.
Two warm hands grabbed her lungs and wrung them like floor cloths. It was a feeling of happiness so great that it was more like fear. She couldn’t move. Theres modulated her voice and adapted the pauses so that the words flowed perfectly with the melody, as if they had been written together from the start. When the song reached its first crescendo and Theres sang, ‘Fly, fly, fly high one day, fly high for fuck’s sake’, Teresa began to cry.
Theres pressed the space bar and the music stopped. She looked at Teresa, slumped on the sofa with tears pouring down her cheeks. Then she said, ‘You’re not sad. You’re happy. You’re crying but you’re happy.’
Teresa nodded and swallowed several times, then wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Yes. I just thought it was so beautiful. Sorry.’
‘Why do you say sorry?’
‘Because…I don’t know. Because I said it was beautiful even though I wrote it. But it’s really because your voice is so fantastic.’
Theres nodded. ‘My voice is fantastic. Your words are good. They go well together.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. But it sounded much better when you sang it.’
‘The words were the same. I have a good memory. Jerry says so.’ Theres turned and clicked on a folder. She pointed at the rows of files filling the screen from top to bottom. ‘We’ve made a lot of songs. Can you write words for them?’
They listened to a number of songs. Only a couple were as immediately appealing as the first one Theres had played, but there were melodies and moods among the other songs that also demanded lyrics. Fragments of sentences popped up in Teresa’s head and she wrote them down in her notebook. She couldn’t really get her head round what she was doing. It was possibly the most fun she had ever had in her whole life.
When they had listened to all the songs Teresa flopped against the back of the sofa, her brain exhausted. They had been busy for several hours, and towards the end she had started jotting down disjointed words to the melodies she was hearing, as if in a trance. She had always thought she hadn’t got much imagination, but this didn’t feel as if it had anything to do with imagination. She was just writing down what the music said.
It had started to get dark outside the balcony window, and Teresa gazed blankly at the top of a street lamp which was illuminating individual snowflakes as they fell. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. ‘Shit! Shit, shit, shit!’ She spotted the telephone on the coffee table. ‘I just have to…can I…can I use your phone?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Theres. ‘I can’t.’
The alarm clock next to the telephone was showing half past five. Her train had left ten minutes ago. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the receiver hard against her ear. It was Goran who answered. He sighed deeply when he heard what had happened. Then he offered to get in the car and come pick her up.
Teresa saw herself sitting next to her father for almost three hours, trying to avoid answering his questions because she didn’t want this day to be questioned and subjected to explanations.
Theres was standing in front of her watching with interest as Teresa put her hand over the mouthpiece and
