I wasn’t running because I wanted an empire, or because I wasn’t enjoying my talk with Father Arthur, but because I wanted to be somewhere else.
I peeped through the small window in the Rose Room door, and saw Pippa holding a piece of paper up to an elderly audience of three. She pointed her finger to the edge of the canvas and swooped her hand down in a sweeping motion. When she had finished talking, she put down the paper, and it was then that she waved and beckoned for me to go in.
I shuffled in, feeling the eyes of the room on me and my pink pyjamas. I should have gone for my Sunday Best slippers.
‘Lenni, hi!’
‘Hi, Pippa.’
‘What brings you here?’
I struggled to think of how to phrase what exactly had brought me there. A long-dead man and his two unequally loved sons. A fish. A priest. An itching to do anything other than mind white-water rafting … None of those made enough sense to verbalize in front of a geriatric audience.
‘Fancy doing some painting?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘Pull up a seat and I’ll bring you some paper. The theme this week is stars.’
I turned to find somewhere to sit and there she was. Sitting all alone on the table at the back. Her hair catching the sunlight and shining like a ten-pence piece, her cardigan a deep shade of purple and her eyes set on the paper in front of her, on which she was sketching with a nubbin of charcoal. The mauve miscreant, the periwinkle perpetrator. The old lady who stole something from the bin. ‘It’s you!’ I said.
She looked up from her drawing and stared at me for the briefest of moments, letting me come into focus. Then, with recognition and delight, said, ‘It’s you!’
Lenni and Margot
I SHUFFLED OVER to her table.
‘I’m Lenni.’ I held out my hand.
She put down her charcoal and shook my hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Lenni,’ she said, ‘I’m Margot.’
The charcoal on her fingertips left several of her prints on the back of my hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You did me a great favour.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t really anything.’
‘It was something,’ she said. ‘It was. I wish I had a real way to thank you, but all I have to my name right now are several pairs of pyjamas and a half-eaten fruitcake.’
She gestured for me to sit down.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, and I knew she meant the Rose Room, but I think it’s best to be honest, so I told her the truth.
‘They say I’m going to die.’
There was a moment of silence between us as Margot studied my face. She looked like she didn’t believe me.
‘It’s a life-limiting thing,’ I said.
‘But you’re so—’
‘Young, I know.’
‘No, you’re so—’
‘Unlucky?’
‘No,’ she said, still looking at me like she didn’t believe it. ‘You’re so alive.’
Pippa came over to the table and placed some paintbrushes in front of us. ‘So, what are we talking about over here?’ she asked.
‘Death,’ I told her.
The crease that this word caused in Pippa’s forehead made me certain that she needs to go on a few away-day courses about how to deal with the dead and the dying. Because she’s not going to last long working at the hospital if she can’t even bear to hear the word. She crouched down beside the table and picked up one of the brushes.
‘It’s a very big topic,’ she said eventually.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I spent a whole day doing that seven stages of grief thing, and I got over it all in one go.’
Pippa pressed the dry bristles of the brush into the tabletop and they fanned out in a perfect circle.
When I was in primary school in Örebro, I accidentally tore the corner off a page in a textbook. Me and a boy whose name I can’t remember had been racing to see who could turn every page of the book the fastest. I’d been trying to turn the pages really quickly and one of them just tore straight off at the corner. My class teacher shouted at me and, I think because I didn’t look contrite enough, sent me to the head teacher’s office. It felt like I was being sent to the police. I was already sure that my parents would be told and that I would be in trouble for ever. My palms started sweating. Even walking along the corridor to the head’s office while everyone else was in class felt wrong, like I was somewhere I ought not to be.
The head teacher was a sturdy woman with icy silver hair and a pursed pair of lips that were always dressed in oily lipstick. I pictured her shouting at me and I had to work very hard not to start crying. When I got to her office, she was in a meeting and the receptionist told me to wait on one of the green chairs outside her door. A boy several years older than me named Lucas Nyberg was already sitting on the left-hand chair.
‘Are you in trouble?’ he asked me (although of course he asked it in Swedish not English).
‘Yes,’ I told him, and I felt my chin start to wobble.
‘I’m in trouble too,’ he said. And he patted the chair beside him. He didn’t seem scared or fazed about being in custody outside the head teacher’s office. If anything, he seemed proud of himself.
As I sat beside him, I was relieved. It was comforting to know that someone else was in trouble too. Lucas and I were sharing a fate and it felt so much better than going it alone.
And that’s exactly how I felt when Margot chose to break the silence by leaning towards me and
