‘Lilian,’ Marie-Louise says tentatively. ‘What’s that?’
‘Sorry? What’s what?’
Lilian raises her head and Jan sees that she still has the snake on her cheek. Her weekend tattoo.
‘On your cheek... Have you painted something on your cheek?’
‘This?’ Lilian runs her fingers over her face, and seems surprised when she notices that her fingertips are slightly black. ‘Oh, sorry, that was for a party... I forgot to get rid of it. Sorry. I’m really sorry.’ She coughs loudly and suppresses a belch, and the smell of alcohol spreads across the table.
Marie-Louise frowns. ‘Lilian, could I have a word with you in private?’
Lilian closes her mouth. ‘What for?’
‘Because you are far from sober.’ Marie-Louise’s voice is no longer gentle.
Lilian looks at her for a few seconds, then she gets up and leaves the table, her lips tightly pressed together. She walks out of the room after pausing to address the others: ‘I am not drunk,’ she mutters. ‘I am hung-over.’
Marie-Louise follows her. ‘Back in a moment.’
Both women seem to have repaired to the cloakroom; that’s where their voices are now coming from. The conversation begins as a quiet discussion, but the volume rapidly increases. Marie-Louise’s voice remains controlled, but Lilian responds with loud questions.
‘Can’t a person go out and relax after work? Wind down a little bit? Or are we all supposed to dedicate our lives to the kids, just like you’ve done?’
‘Calm down please, Lilian — the children can hear you...’
‘I am fucking calm!’
Around the table you could hear a pin drop. Hanna and Andreas keep their eyes lowered, and Jan can’t think of anything to say.
The tirade continues: ‘You’re sick, that’s your problem! You need to get some help!’
Is that Lilian or Marie-Louise? Jan can’t tell; the voice that is yelling is too shrill.
‘And you’re so fucking perfect! I just can’t do it any more, I can’t be like you... The nut jobs can look after their own fucking kids!’
That must be Lilian, Jan realizes.
Marie-Louise’s response is cold and curt: ‘Lilian, you’re hysterical.’
Hysteria is no longer an acceptable term, Jan hears Dr Högsmed saying inside his head.
The quarrel is making Andreas look ill; he shudders and gets to his feet. ‘I’ll go and see to the children.’
He goes into the playroom and soon Jan hears jolly nursery rhymes from the CD player, drowning out the loud voices from the cloakroom.
But like most arguments, this one soon comes to an end. After a few moments the front door slams shut; there is a brief silence, then Marie-Louise is back, smiling once more.
‘Lilian has gone home for the day,’ she says. ‘She’s going to have a little rest.’
Jan nods without speaking, but Hanna asks softly, ‘Is she getting any help?’
Marie-Louise stops smiling. ‘Help?’
‘To cut down on her drinking,’ Hanna says calmly.
Jan can feel the tension in the air.
Marie-Louise folds her arms. ‘Lilian is not a child. She is responsible for her own actions.’
‘But the employer also has a certain level of responsibility,’ Hanna insists. She sounds as if she is quoting from some legal document when she goes on: ‘If an employee is drinking too much there should be a treatment plan for their rehabilitation.’
‘For their rehabilitation,’ Marie-Louise repeats. ‘Well, doesn’t that sound marvellous?’
Hanna doesn’t look amused. ‘Is there a rehabilitation plan for Lilian?’
Marie-Louise stares at her. ‘There are many eyes on us here, Hanna,’ she says eventually. ‘Just bear that in mind.’
Then she turns and walks out of the staffroom.
There are only the two of them left at the table now. Hanna rolls her eyes at Jan, but he shakes his head.
‘Now she’ll think you’re a troublemaker,’ he says quietly.
Hanna sighs. ‘I care about Lilian. Don’t you?’
‘Well yes... obviously.’
‘So why does she drink so much? Have you given it any thought?’
Jan hasn’t given it any thought. ‘To get drunk,’ he says eventually.
‘But why does she want to get drunk?’
Jan shrugs. ‘I suppose she’s unhappy. But there’s unhappiness everywhere, isn’t there?’
‘You don’t know anything... you just don’t understand,’ Hanna says, getting to her feet.
Jan stands up too. It feels good to leave the table, and equally good to think that he can soon go home. This has not been a pleasant Monday morning; the feelgood meeting was more about feeling bad.
He just wants to go home and get some sleep. He wants to be normal. He wants to look to the future, make a life for himself.
Never to be shut in again, he thinks.
He has no one to make a life with. Perhaps that is the worst thing of all. Not having someone to listen.
Rami had climbed off her bed and sat down on the floor next to Jan. In the end his story about the Gang of Four had captured her attention.
‘Had they locked you in the sauna?’
‘Not locked... there was no lock,’ he said. ‘But they’d jammed something up against the door. I didn’t know what it was, but it wouldn’t move. It was rock-solid.’
‘So you were trapped in the heat,’ Rami said.
He nodded.
‘How did you get out, then?’
‘I didn’t,’ Jan said. ‘It was Friday... Everyone had gone home.’
The silence in the sauna goes on and on. No doors slam. No caretaker pokes his head around the door and shouts ‘Hello?’ into the empty shower room.
The door refuses to move.
And the sauna is hot now. The air could get hotter, but it is hot enough already. As hot as the desert. Forty degrees perhaps, or fifty.
All he can do is grope around in the darkness, feeling his way across the pine floorboards. His hand touches a plastic bucket; he hears the water lapping against the sides.
There is wood everywhere inside a sauna. Bare wood on the floor and on the walls, with long planks fixed to the walls at two different levels. That is where you sit when you are having a sauna, or a crafty smoke.
Jan sits on the lower plank for a while. He is sweating now.
Someone is bound to come.
Then he stops thinking for a while; his head feels kind of empty. The skin on his bottom is a bit sore, but he is calmer now. The Gang of Four have gone.
No one else comes. There isn’t a sound outside the door.
And it just keeps on getting hotter and hotter.
Jan was sitting on the floor in Rami’s room with his head bowed. She was holding his hand and he could feel her beside him, but in his mind he was alone. He was still inside the sauna.
‘I was unlucky,’ he said. ‘It was Friday, and the gym wasn’t due to open again until Monday.’
‘So what happened?’ Rami asked.
Jan looked at her. ‘I don’t know.’
He didn’t really remember very much, but now he started to think back. What did he actually do? How do you survive several days in a hot sauna?
Bang on the door. Keep on banging and banging, until you are quite sure that no one is coming. Peter Malm and his gang won’t be coming back. They have jammed the door and cleared off; they have already forgotten you.