I tied them and stood up.
‘I’m ready,’ I said. Vanja stretched out her arms again. I lifted her, walked along the hall and stuck my head into the kitchen where four or five parents were chatting.
‘We’re off now,’ I said. ‘All the best, and thanks for a nice evening.’
‘Thank you,’ Linus said. Gustav half-raised his hand to his forehead.
Then we went into the hall. I patted Frida’s shoulder to catch her attention. She was standing by the wall, smiling, fully absorbed in the scene on the floor.
‘We’re off now,’ I said. ‘Thank you for inviting us. It was a lovely party. Very nice company.’
‘But doesn’t Vanja want to catch a fish?’ she said.
I made a very expressive kind of grimace, intended to mean something on the lines of ‘You know how illogical children can be.’
‘Right, right,’ she said. ‘Well, thanks for coming. Take care, Vanja!’
Mia, who was standing alongside, with Theresa in front of her, said, ‘Just a moment.’
She leaned over the sheet and asked Erik, who was on his haunches, if he could give her a goodie bag. He certainly could, and she passed it to Vanja.
‘Here, Vanja. You can take this home with you. And perhaps share it with Heidi if you want.’
‘I don’t want,’ Vanja said, holding the bag to her chest.
‘Thank you very much.’ I said. ‘Bye, everyone!’
Stella turned and looked at us.
‘Are you going, Vanja? Why?’
‘Bye, Stella,’ I said. ‘Thanks for inviting us to your party.’
I turned and went. Down the dark stairs, through the hall and onto the pavement. Voices, shouting, footsteps and the noise of engines rose and fell continuously in the street. Vanja wrapped her arms around me and leaned her head against my shoulder. Which she never did usually. This was Heidi’s way.
A taxi swept past with its roof light on. A couple with a buggy passed us; she had a scarf round her head and was young, twenty maybe. A rough complexion I saw as they walked past, her face was thick with powder. He was older, my age, and kept looking around nervously. The buggy was the ridiculous type with a thin stalk-like rod going from the wheels which the basket-seat with the child rested on. Coming towards us from the other side of the road was a gang of youngsters aged fifteen or sixteen. Black combed-back hair, black leather jackets, black trousers, and at least two of them wore Puma trainers with the logo on the toe, which I had always thought looked idiotic. Gold chains around their necks, slightly unsteady, clumsy arm movements.
The shoes.
Shit, they were still up in the flat.
I stopped.
Should I just leave them there?
No, that was too pathetic. We were right outside the door.
‘We have to go back up,’ I said. ‘We’ve forgotten your golden shoes.’
She stiffened.
‘I don’t want them,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But we can’t leave them there. We’ll have to take them home with us, and they don’t have to be yours any more.’
I dashed up the stairs again, put Vanja down, opened the door, stepped inside and grabbed the shoes without looking any further into the flat, but could not avoid doing so as I straightened up and met Benjamin’s eyes. He was sitting on the floor in his white shirt with a car in one hand.
‘Hi!’ he said, and waved with the other.
I smiled.
‘Hi, Benjamin,’ I said, closed the door behind me, lifted Vanja and went back downstairs. It was cold and clear outside, but all the light in the town, from street lamps, shop windows and car lights, seeped upwards and lay like a shimmering dome above the rooftops, through which no starry lustre could penetrate. Of all the heavenly bodies only the moon, hanging, almost full, above the Hilton hotel, was visible.
Vanja clung to me as I hurried down the street, our breath like white smoke around our heads.
‘Maybe Heidi wants my shoes?’ she said.
‘When she’s as big as you she can have them,’ I said.
‘Heidi loves shoes,’ she said.
‘Yes, she does,’ I said.
We continued for a while in silence. By Subway, the big sandwich bar beside the supermarket, I saw the white-haired crazy woman staring through the window. Aggressive and unpredictable, she walked back and forth around our district, more often than not talking to herself, always with her white hair tied in a tight knot, and in the same beige coat, summer and winter alike.
‘Will I have a party when it’s my birthday, daddy?’ Vanja asked.
‘If you want,’ I said.
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I want Heidi and you and mummy to come.’
‘That sounds like a nice little party,’ I said, shifting her from my right to my left arm.
‘Do you know what I want?’
‘No.’
‘A goldfish,’ she said. ‘Can I have one?’
‘We-ell…’ I said. ‘To have a goldfish you have to be able to take care of it properly. Feed it, clean the water and so on. And you have to be a bit bigger than four, I think.’
‘But I can feed it! And Jiro’s got one. He’s smaller than me.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to see. Birthday presents are supposed to be secret, you know, that’s the whole point about them.’
‘Secret? Like a secret?’
I nodded.
Oh bugger! Oh bugger! said the crazy woman, who was now only a few metres ahead. Warned by the movement, she turned and looked at me. Oh, her eyes were evil.
‘What are those shoes you’re carrying?’ she said behind us. ‘Hey, pappa! What are those shoes you’re carrying? Let me have a word with you right now!’
And then louder: ‘Bugger! Oh BUGGer!’
‘What did the old lady say?’ Vanja asked.
‘Nothing,’ I answered, squeezing her tighter to me. ‘You’re the best thing I’ve got, Vanja, do you know that? The very, very best.’
‘Better than Heidi?’ she asked.
I smiled.
‘You’re both the best, you and Heidi. Exactly the same.’
‘Heidi’s better,’ she said. Her tone of voice was completely neutral, as if she were stating an incontrovertible fact.
‘What nonsense,’ I said. ‘You little monkey.’
She smiled. I looked past her and into the large almost deserted supermarket, where the goods lay gleaming on each side of the narrow avenues of shelves and counters. Two women sat at their cash desks staring into the middle distance waiting for customers. At the traffic lights across from us a car was revving, and when I turned my head I saw the sound was coming from one of those enormous jeep-like vehicles that had begun to fill our streets in recent years. The tenderness I felt for Vanja was so great it was almost tearing me to pieces. To counteract it, I broke into a jog. Past Ankara, the Turkish restaurant with belly dancing and karaoke on the menu, and its door, where well dressed men from the east often stood in the evenings, smelling of aftershave and cigar smoke, but which was empty now, on past Burger King, where an incredibly fat girl, wearing a hat and fingerless gloves, sat alone on the bench outside devouring a hamburger, then over the crossing, past the Systembolaget and the Handelsbanken, where I stopped as the lights were on red, even though there were no cars in any of the lanes. All this while holding Vanja tight to my chest.