asked, ‘Could I stay the night?’
‘Yes.’
Teresa had to ward off a few questions, but in the end it was decided that she would catch the train at one o’clock on Sunday instead. When she had hung up she was just about to start explaining to Theres that she didn’t want to be a nuisance and so on, but Theres pre-empted her by pointing at the telephone and asking, ‘Can you use that?’
Teresa had stopped puzzling over all the strange things about Theres, and simply answered, ‘Yes.’
Theres took a piece of paper out of a drawer, handed it to Teresa and said, ‘Ring this man.’ Teresa read through the letter from Max Hansen, and saw that there was both a mobile number and a landline.
‘What do you want me to say?’ she asked.
‘I want to make a shiny CD. With my voice on it. That you can use as a mirror.’
‘He says he just wants to meet you. Discuss things.’
‘I will meet him. Tomorrow. You will come with me. Then I’ll make a CD.’
Teresa read through the letter again. As far as she could work out, it was the kind of letter every girl and boy with artistic ambitions dreamed of receiving. But she noticed it was dated ten days earlier. ‘Have you had a lot of letters like this?’
‘I’ve had one letter. That one.’
Teresa looked at the two short lines of numbers and tried to work out what to say when she had rung one of them. It was all too weird. ‘Are you seriously telling me you’ve never used a phone? You’re joking, right?’
‘I’m not joking.’
Teresa pulled herself together and picked up the phone, keyed in the landline number. As it was ringing she glanced through the letter again. Apart from the fulsome words about Theres’ talent, it had a businesslike tone. Teresa straightened up and tried to make herself bigger and more confident than she was. When a voice at the other end said, ‘Max Hansen speaking’, she cleared her throat with a deeper timbre than necessary and said, ‘Good evening. I’m calling on behalf of…Tora Larsson. She has asked me to tell you that she would like to meet you.’
There was silence at the other end for a few seconds. Then Max Hansen said, ‘Is this some kind of joke?’
‘No. Tora Larsson would like to meet you tomorrow. In the morning.’ Teresa thought about her one o’clock train and quickly added, ‘At ten o’clock. Tell me where.’
‘But this is just completely…why can’t I speak to Tora herself?’
‘She doesn’t like using the telephone.’
‘Oh, right, she doesn’t like using the telephone. And can you give me one good reason why I should believe any of this?’
Teresa held the phone up in the air and said to Theres, ‘Sing. Sing something.’
Without a second’s hesitation Theres started to sing Teresa’s poem. It sounded even more beautiful a cappella, if that were possible. Teresa brought the phone back to her ear and said, ‘Tell me where.’
She heard papers rustling at the other end, a pen moving across a sheet of paper. Then Max Hansen said, ‘The Diplomat Hotel on Strandvagen-do you…does she know where that is?’
‘Yes,’ Teresa lied, trusting in the wonders of the internet.
‘Ask for me in reception,’ said Max Hansen. ‘Ten o’clock. I’m looking forward to it. Really.’
Max Hansen’s voice sounded different now. If it had been deliberately distant at the beginning of the conversation, now it sounded all too close, as if he wanted to crawl out of the telephone and whisper directly into Teresa’s ear. When they had said goodbye, Teresa sank back on the sofa.
It was as if she had ended up in the middle of some spy story. The meeting at the hotel, brief messages, cryptic phone calls. She had no control, and didn’t know whether she found that unpleasant or exciting. Once again there was the chance to take a leap, become someone else. Someone who could handle this situation. She would try.
Theres sat down next to her on the sofa. Teresa told her about the meeting, the time and place, and Theres merely nodded and said nothing.
They sat there side by side. After a while they both leaned back, almost simultaneously. One of them started the movement and the other completed it. Their shoulders were touching. Teresa could feel the faint warmth of Theres’ body. They just sat there, not moving. The clock ticked on the coffee table.
Theres felt for Teresa’s hand, and their fingers intertwined; they sat completely still, gazing into the dark rectangle of the TV screen where they could see themselves as two distant figures, sitting in a room far away. There was a faint overlap where their shoulders met, as if their sweatshirts were sewn together.
When Teresa looked at their hands after a long time, she thought the skin on her fingers was flowing out across the back of Theres’ hand, and that the tips of Theres’ fingers were beginning to melt into her own knuckles in the same way. She stared at their hands and thought it would take a knife, a sharp knife to separate them; there would be a lot of blood.
‘Theres?’
After the long silence the single word was a big bird that flew out of her mouth and thudded around the room, bumping into the walls.
‘Yes.’
‘Who were Lennart and Laila?’
‘I lived there. There was a house. I was in a room. I was hidden.’
‘What happened?’
‘I made them dead. With different tools.’
‘Why?’
‘I was scared. I wanted to have them.’
‘Did you stop being scared after that?’
‘No.’
‘Are you scared now?’
‘No. Are you scared?’
‘No.’
And it was true. Some level of fear had been Teresa’s companion for so long that she had been unable to see it, had accepted that it was as much a part of her life as her own shadow. It was only now that she caught sight of it. As it left her.
As soon as Max Hansen had ended the call and carefully stored the caller’s number, he rang the Diplomat and booked one of the larger rooms he often used for business.
He found it difficult to sleep that night. So much was unclear about this Tora. He usually had a better handle on things before a crucial meeting, he would have had the chance to see how the land lay, suss out the situation, soften up the other party if necessary. This time he hadn’t a clue; he hadn’t even managed to speak to the lady in question. Which meant he had no idea how to plan his strategy. The hours of the night crawled by as he went through possible scenarios, parrying objections and considering manoeuvres that would lead to the desired result.
He was fairly sure that Tora Larsson was a genuine talent who could be a pretty good earner with a little moulding, a few nudges in the right direction. He was lucky to be first on the scene. So far so good. But then there was the other matter. Simply put, he wanted to fuck her. He wanted her signature on his contract and he wanted her body, at least once.
If Max Hansen took a step to one side and looked at himself objectively, he could see that he was a complete bastard. He wasn’t stupid. But there was nothing he could do. His mouth went dry and his fingers began to itch as soon as he thought about the meeting with that cool little beauty. He had no choice. And he had long ago stopped taking that step to one side, and with a self-loathing that bordered on smugness had concluded:
