Little Star

To be fair, Johannes noticed the change in her, and when he asked she told him the same story she had dished up to Goran, with a little more detail. Friend in Stockholm, brilliant time and so on. She also let slip that they made music together. Johannes was pleased for her.

As far as her school work went, it was a different story. Her mind was elsewhere. She sat through an entire social studies lesson on the difference between Democrats and Republicans, and literally grasped not one word apart from the fact that someone called Jimmy Carter used to grow peanuts. He might have been a president of the USA. That was the sum total of her knowledge after a forty-minute lesson: that Jimmy Carter used to grow peanuts.

The fact was that the following sentence had suddenly come to her: Fly to the place where wings aren’t needed. It was an exciting sentence, a good sentence. But clumsy. Impossible to find a rhyme. And what did it mean? That you should go to a place where you would no longer need to run away. Yes, something along those lines.

Fly to the place where you need no wings. Better. Rhymes with sings. Go where your heart sings. No, that was ugly. Fly high until your heart sings. Better.

She had scribbled down odd words and sentences on the sheet of paper with Democrats / Republicans written at the top. The information about Jimmy Carter and his peanuts had slipped through when she paused for thought, but she hadn’t written it down. Then she started to play with the word rings. Rings in the water, on fingers, sitting in a ring. And so on. Then the lesson was over.

On the Saturday she caught the train to Stockholm again. Jerry had agreed to give Maria a call in order to lend credibility to Teresa’s interpretation of the role. He told her the girls had had a brilliant time together and confirmed that Teresa was very welcome to stay with them any time, then he went off to see his girlfriend and left the two of them in peace.

They worked on the songs and watched Dawn of the Dead. In the evening they rang Max Hansen and arranged to meet at the hotel the following day, in the restaurant.

Then there was something Teresa wanted to do, but she found it hard to ask. In spite of the fact that it was a completely normal thing between two friends, she felt embarrassed. Perhaps because they weren’t just two friends. She sat there fiddling with her mobile phone, and couldn’t quite bring herself to ask. As if Theres sensed her difficulties, she came straight out with it, ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I’d like to take a photograph of you.’

‘How?’

‘With this.’ Teresa held up her phone, pointed it at Theres, then took a photograph and showed it to Theres on the display. Theres stroked the surface of the phone and asked how it worked. Teresa couldn’t really explain that, of course, but they spent a while taking photographs and looking at the pictures. Theres even took a couple of pictures of Teresa which Teresa secretly deleted, because she thought she was so ugly.

***

The wound in Max Hansen’s back had been stitched and was healing well, but the damage to his self-esteem was another matter. The incident in the hotel room had knocked him off balance. He spent four days shut in his apartment drinking heavily, looking through his old films and trying to masturbate, but without success.

He watched only the films featuring the most submissive and obliging girls, the ones who had got on their knees or spread their legs at the first hint. It didn’t help. In the weary movements of their hands, in the passive acceptance of their bodies he seemed to see a threat that finished his erection before it had even started.

Tora Larsson had taken from him his only real pleasure. Drunk almost to the point of unconsciousness, he sat flicking through images of young, naked bodies and felt nothing but fear and a faint masochistic enjoyment of his own fear.

On the fifth day he woke up with a hangover that felt like being buried alive. Instead of a hair of the dog he took two strong painkillers and a long shower. When he had dried himself and put on clean clothes the situation had improved to the point where he merely felt like shit.

One thing was absolutely clear: Tora Larsson was his biggest opportunity for a long time, and he had no intention of messing it up. But she would pay for what she had done to him; she would literally pay, in hard cash.

Towards the afternoon, when he had had a couple of whiskies after all, just to restore the chemical balance in his body, his new strategy was ready.

This industry was killing him; it was time to pack it in. Tora Larsson would be his final project, and he would put everything he had into making her a success. She didn’t seem to have a clue about anything, and he intended to amend his standard contract so that it gave him the maximum return.

Then people in the industry could say whatever they liked, piss on his hall carpet and encourage everyone to boycott him and whatever the fuck they could think of. He would rake up his money and put all this behind him, head off somewhere with a better climate, wash down his Viagra with cocktails with a little umbrella in them and live life for as long as life was there to be lived.

When Teresa rang him on the Saturday he was as nice as pie. He asked her to pass on his apologies, as far as he was concerned the whole thing was forgiven and forgotten, and now it was a matter of looking to the future. The world was their oyster and Tora was his number one priority.

During the afternoon he made some calls. A studio and producer posed no problems, but as he suspected his good name wasn’t enough to persuade any record company to pay for a demo. However, he eventually managed to strike a deal with Ronny Berhardsson at Zapp Records, which was owned by EMI. They’d known each other for years, and Max Hansen had supplied him with a couple of artists who had at least recouped their production costs.

Ronny said Zapp could cover the cost of studio time, but the rest would have to come out of Max’s own pocket. Ronny had seen Idol, and even if he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as Max, he agreed that the girl had potential. It was worth a shot.

As Max Hansen got ready to leave for the meeting, he was careful not to omit a detail he had forgotten last time. He took Robbie with him.

Robbie was a sun made of metal, a happy face the size of a fivekronor piece surrounded by five stubby points. Max had won it at the Tivoli theme park in Copenhagen when he was eight years old, on a family visit with both sets of grandparents.

He could no longer remember why he had called the little smiley sun Robert, later shortened to Robbie, but it had accompanied him throughout his life as his lucky charm. The last thing Max did before leaving the apartment was to kiss Robbie on the nose and tuck him in his jacket pocket.

Wish me luck, buddy.

He got to the restaurant fifteen minutes before the agreed time, ordered sashimi and read through the contract he had prepared the previous evening. It gave him the rights to fifty per cent of all Tora’s income from future recordings and appearances. He was hoping that the girl or girls would have so little idea about this sort of thing that fifty-fifty would sound perfectly reasonable.

He would of course need the signature of a parent or guardian, but his intention was to get the project moving first, so that this person would feel obliged to accept his terms if the whole thing was to go ahead. The scheme was not without risk; there was a reason why he’d brought Robbie along.

Max had finished his sashimi and begun to worry that the meeting would be a wash-out when the freak appeared by the entrance to the restaurant. Teresa, that was her name. Max Hansen got up and went to meet her.

Then Tora appeared, and Max had to turn to Robbie’s other particularly useful quality. The sight of that beautiful creature sent a stab of fear through him. He hadn’t thought he would react like this, but a week of brooding darkly on what had happened in the hotel room had got into his bones. He started to shake and pushed his hand into his jacket pocket, clasped his hand around Robbie’s protruding points. The fear in his heart shot down his arm and gathered around the pain in his hand. A seemingly relaxed pose: left hand in his jacket pocket, right hand outstretched, hello there, welcome. They sat down at the table.