thinking about them? Your old tormentors.’
Jorgen didn’t look happy.
‘When I opened the yearbook it was like going back in time,’ he said.
‘You wanted to wave your bank book under their noses?’
‘At least a balance statement from the cashpoint. I thought I might just happen to stand in front of them in the queue and leave my receipt in the machine. What d’you reckon?’
Calle Collin shook his head and smiled.
‘Do you understand the extent of your illness?’
‘Everyone else is invited to class parties and reunions all the time, but not us,’ Jorgen said.
‘And I’m bloody grateful for it,’ Calle retorted. ‘And you should be too. Didn’t you see that film,
‘I thought it was done automatically with some kind of database,’ Jorgen said, in a distant voice.
‘What?’ Calle asked, without any real interest.
‘The invitations,’ Jorgen replied, ‘to class reunions.’
Calle sighed loudly, finished his beer and pointed at Jorgen’s half-full glass. He nodded. Calle got up and went to the bar. Jorgen pulled the yearbook over and studied the class photo again. They were so young in the picture. But he still wanted to hold them to account, each of them, for all the shit they’d put him through. In Jorgen’s eyes, there was no time limit. Even though there were plenty who’d had it worse.
Calle put the two beers on the table and sat down.
‘You’re completely fixated,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Haven’t you got more important things to think about?’
Jorgen shrugged. ‘It’s not that, it’s just …’
‘Just what?’
‘I don’t know. It would just be so cool to know what’s happened to them all.’
‘Because you’re a big cheese now?’ Calle said.
‘No, not at all.’
Jorgen pretended to be insulted. Calle sent him a cynical look.
‘Well, maybe,’ Jorgen said, eventually. ‘But is that so strange? Look at me.’ He tapped the yearbook with his finger. ‘I don’t exist.’
Calle scrutinised his friend for a long time. He didn’t smile.
‘What?’ Jorgen asked.
‘I don’t think it’s very nice.’
‘What?’
‘What you’re doing,’ Calle said. ‘Look at me: unmarried, no children, a reporter for a weekly. I do saccharine interviews with washed-up TV celebrities and village eccentrics, write racy short stories about young women at their peak, twenty-seven years old. Short stories that are read by women who are seventy-two. Same numbers, just inverted. I have no ambitions, no prospects. My only luxury in life is ice-cream in summer, a beer in the pub and sometimes, when the urge takes me, a trip to the cinema in the middle of the week.’
‘And you’re complaining?’ Jorgen said.
9
Breaking-in violence
Nearly all women who are forced into prostitution give evidence of breaking-in violence and rape by their pimp. Violence is used to establish a clear power structure, and the perpetrator effectively breaks down the victim’s initial resistance. Anyone who has been subjected to violence or threats of violence knows what the long- term psychological consequences of this are. Violence is the clearest expression of power.
The woman released the handcuff that kept Ylva’s left hand locked to the head of the bed. Ylva massaged her wrist and pulled up her knees.
The man and the woman stood on either side of the bed. Ylva didn’t know who to look at.
‘Listen,’ she tried, ‘we need to …’
The woman leaned forward with feigned interest.
‘Need to what?’
‘Talk,’ Ylva said, and turned to the man with pleading eyes.
He had his hand down his trousers. What was he doing?
Ylva looked at the woman, who was smiling at her.
‘Yes, talk, certainly. You can talk and we can listen. Sit here and listen to what you’ve got to say, try to understand. That’s certainly one way of doing it.’
The man played with his penis, got an erection.
‘Give me your hands,’ the woman said to Ylva.
The man undid his trousers and stepped out of them, pulled down his pants. His hard-on was visible under his shirt.
‘Your hands,’ the woman repeated.
Ylva threw herself off the bed, in the direction of the locked door. The man quickly caught up with her. He grabbed hold of her arm, spun her round and hit her across the cheek again with his open hand. He twisted her arm up behind her back and pushed her in front of him over to the bed.
Ylva kicked and screamed, which only seemed to make the couple more determined. The woman pulled Ylva’s jeans down to her knees. The man shoved her across the bed. The woman went round to the other side and yanked Ylva’s head up by the hair.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Ylva cried.
‘No,’ the woman said. ‘You didn’t.’
Just then, Ylva felt the man force himself into her.
Her eyes smarted with the pain and her vision blurred. But still she could see the woman smiling at her.
‘When’s Mummy coming home?’
‘I don’t know, sweetheart. She said she might go out with some people from work.’
‘Again?’
‘She didn’t know for sure.’
‘She’s always out.’
‘No, sweetheart, she’s not.’
‘Always, all the time,’ Sanna said, and flounced off to the sitting room and the TV.
She stopped in the doorway and turned round.
‘What’s for supper?’
‘Spaghetti and mince.’
‘Red?’
‘Red.’
For some unknown reason, their daughter preferred the cheat’s version with ready-made tomato sauce to Ylva’s far tastier variant.
When it was served later, Sanna would be obliged to pick out with surgical precision any life-threatening traces of onion and red pepper before she could eat. Other than that, she showed remarkable interest in whatever was put on the table. If there was any cause for complaint, it was the time it took for her to eat. A Tibetan monk
