‘Just wee-wee!’ she said. Then she turned her head to the side and stared at the wall, apparently unmoved by my putting on a clean nappy, the way she had done ever since she was a baby.
‘There we are,’ I said. ‘That’s you done.’
I grabbed her hands and pulled her up. Then folded her tights, which were slightly damp, and took them to the bag on the buggy, whereupon I dressed her in some jogging pants I found, and then the brown bubble-lined corduroy jacket she had been given for her first birthday by Yngve. Linda came in while I was putting on Heidi’s shoes.
‘I’ll be coming soon too,’ I said. We kissed, Linda took the bag in one hand, Heidi in the other, and they left.
Vanja ran at top speed down the hallway, with Achilles in tow, into what must have been the bedroom, from where her overexcited voice could be heard soon afterwards. The thought of going in and sitting at the kitchen table again was not exactly appealing, so I opened the bathroom door, locked it behind me and stood there motionless for a few minutes. Then washed my face in cold water, dried it carefully on a white towel and met my eyes in the mirror, so dark and in a face so rigid with frustration I almost started with alarm at the sight.
No one in the kitchen noticed that I was back. Except for a stern-looking little woman with short hair and ordinary angular features, who stared for a brief moment at me from behind her glasses. What did she want now?
Gustav and Linus were discussing pension arrangements, the taciturn man with the 50s shirt had his child, a wild boy with blond, almost white hair, on his lap, and was discussing FC Malmö with him, while Frida chatted with Mia about club evenings she and some friends were going to start. Meanwhile, Erik and Mathias compared TV screens, a discussion which Linus wanted to join, I could see that from his long glances and the shorter ones to Gustav so as not to appear impolite. The only person not deep in conversation was the woman with cropped hair, and even though I looked in every direction apart from hers she still leaned across the table and asked if I was satisfied with the nursery. I said I was. There was perhaps a bit too much to do there, I added, but it was definitely worth the investment of time; you got to know your children’s playmates, and that could only be good, I opined.
She smiled at what I said without any great fervour. There was something sad about her, some unhappiness.
‘What the hell?’ Linus said suddenly, thrusting his chair back. ‘What are they doing in there?’
He got up and went to the bathroom. The next moment he came out with Vanja and Achilles in front of him. Vanja had put on her broadest smile, Achilles looked rather more guilt-ridden. The sleeves of his small suit jacket were soaked. Vanja’s bare arms glistened with moisture.
‘They had their hands as far down the toilet as they could get them when I went in,’ Linus said. I met Vanja’s eyes and couldn’t help smiling.
‘We’ll have to take this off now, young man,’ Linus said, leading Achilles into the hall. ‘And you make sure you wash your hands properly.’
‘The same applies to you, Vanja,’ I said, getting up. ‘Into the bathroom with you.’
She stretched out her arms over the basin and looked up at me.
‘I’m playing with Achilles!’ she said.
‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘But you don’t have to stick your hands down the loo to do that, do you?’
‘No,’ she said, and laughed.
I wetted my hands under the tap, soaped them, and washed her arms from the tips of her fingers to her shoulders. Then I dried them before kissing her on the forehead and sending her out again. The apologetic smile I wore when I sat down was unnecessary, no one was interested in pursuing this little episode, not even Linus, who as soon as he returned continued the story about a man he had seen attacked by monkeys in Thailand. His face didn’t even break into a smile when the others laughed, but he seemed to inhale their laughter, as if to give the story renewed vigour, which it did, and only when the next wave of laughter broke did he smile, not much, and not at his own wit, it struck me; it was more like an expression of the satisfaction he felt when his face could bask in the merriment he had evoked. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he said, jabbing his hand in the air. The stern woman, who thus far had been looking out of the window, pulled her chair up and leaned across the table again.
‘Isn’t it tough to have two children so close in age?’ she asked.
‘Yes and no,’ I answered. ‘It is a bit wearing. But it’s still better with two than one. The single-child scenario seems a bit sad, if you ask me… I’ve always thought I wanted to have three children. Then there are lots of permutations when they play. And the children are in the majority vis-à-vis the parents…’
I smiled. She said nothing. All of a sudden I realised she had an only child.
‘But just one can be brilliant too,’ I said.
She rested her head on her hand.
‘But I wish Gustav had a brother or a sister,’ she said. ‘It’s too much with just us two.’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘He’ll have loads of pals in the nursery, and that’s great.’
‘The problem is I haven’t got a husband,’ she said. ‘And so it’s not possible.’
What the fuck had that got to do with me?
I sent her a look of sympathy and concentrated on preventing my eyes from wandering, which can easily happen in such situations.
‘And I can’t imagine the men I meet as fathers to my children,’ she continued.
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘These things sort themselves out.’
‘I don’t believe they do,’ she said. ‘But thank you anyway.’
From the corner of my eye I detected a movement. I turned and looked towards the door. Vanja was coming my way. She stopped right next to me.
‘I want to go home,’ she said. ‘Can’t we go now?’
‘We have to stay for a just a little longer,’ I said. ‘Soon there’ll be cake too. You want some of that, don’t you?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Do you want to sit on my lap?’ I asked.
She nodded, and I moved my wine glass and lifted her up.
‘You sit with me for a bit, and then we’ll go back in. I can stay with you. OK?’
‘OK.’
She sat watching the others round the table. I wondered what she was thinking. How did it seem to her?
I observed her. Her blonde hair was already over her shoulders. A small nose, a little mouth, two tiny ears, both with pointed elfin tips. Her blue eyes, which always betrayed her mood, had a slight squint, hence the glasses. At first she had been proud of them. Now they were the first thing she took off when she was angry. Perhaps because she knew it was important for us that she should wear them?
With us her eyes were lively and cheerful, that is if they didn’t lock and become unapproachable when she was having one of her grand bouts of fury. She was hugely dramatic and could rule the whole family with her temperament; she performed large-scale and complicated relational dramas with her toys, loved having stories read to her but watching films even more, and then preferably ones with characters and high drama which she puzzled over and discussed with us, bursting with questions but also the joy of retelling. For a period it was Astrid Lindgren’s character Madicken she was mad about, and this caused her to jump off the chairs and lie on the floor with her eyes closed; we had to lift her and think at first that she was dead, then realise she had fainted and had concussion, before carrying her, with eyes closed and arms hanging down, to her bed, where she was to lie for three days, preferably while we hummed the sad theme from this scene in the film. Then she leaped to her feet, ran to the chair and started all over again. At the nursery’s Christmas party she was the only one who bowed in response to the applause and who obviously enjoyed the attention. Often the idea of something meant more to her than the thing itself, such as with sweets; she could talk about them for an entire day and look forward to them, but when the sweets were in the bowl in front of her she barely tasted one before spitting it out. However, she didn’t learn from the experience: the next Saturday her expectations of the fantastic sweets were as high again. She wanted so much to go skating, but when we were there, at the rink, with the small skates Linda’s mother had bought for her on her feet and the little ice hockey helmet on her head, she shrieked with anger at the realisation that she couldn’t keep her balance and probably wouldn’t learn to do so any time soon. All the greater therefore was her joy at seeing that she could in fact ski, which happened once when we were on the small patch of snow in my mother’s garden trying out equipment she had come by. But then too the idea of skiing and the joy at being able to do it were greater than actually skiing; she could function quite happily without that. She loved to travel with us, loved to see new places and talked about all the things that had happened for several months afterwards. But most of all she loved to play with other children, of course. It was a great experience for her when other children at the nursery came back home with her. The first time Benjamin was due to come she went around the evening before, inspecting her toys, worried stiff that they were not good enough for him. She had just turned three. But when he arrived they got on like a house on fire and all prior concerns went up in a whirl of excitement and euphoria. Benjamin told his parents that Vanja was the nicest girl in the nursery, and when I told her that — she was sitting in bed playing with her Barbies — she reacted with a display of emotion she had never manifested before.