“Yeah, but what the fuck, I do know him. We’ve fucking worked together. But not so much that I know where the hell he lives! He lives with his fucking prawns somewhere, that’s all I know.”
Sami was thinking about the money. He was thinking about Karin, about her big belly and the way she nursed John. He was thinking about his big brother, who had called him “Lord of the Prawns” and laughed.
He thought about how, in just a few moments, he had gone from being a successful businessman in the import branch to a debt-ridden trainee chef with a criminal past.
“Shit!” he shouted, hammering his hands against the solid paneling of the German car. “Shit, shit, shit!”
6
This wasn’t where it was meant to happen.
Music was pounding from invisible speakers, so loud that she couldn’t hear her own panting breaths.
You’re hot then you’re cold, Katy Perry sang. You’re yes then you’re no.
Why, Alexandra Svensson wondered as she mirrored the energetic instructor with a series of quick squat jumps, could her life be summed up by three short minutes of a pop song? She didn’t want to be predictable. You’re in then you’re out. But it wasn’t her fault. She had to remember that. For once, it wasn’t her fault. Giving him an ultimatum had been the right thing to do. He couldn’t have his cake and eat it too.
That Thursday afternoon, there were twenty or so people working out at her branch of Friskis & Svettis in Ringen. Alexandra had gone straight after work, and there were just two men in the room. One of them was gay. The other was desperate. Neither of them was a suitable candidate.
High knees.
Arms spinning.
Alexandra Svensson came to the gym twice a week and had learned all the moves, but it wasn’t the place she would meet someone she could share her life with.
In the row in front of her, to the right, was Lena Hall.
Alexandra watched her friend in the mirror. Lena had an hourglass figure, and she always ordered a pastry of some kind when they stopped for a coffee afterward, scoffing it down in a couple of breathless bites and not thinking anything of it. But still, Lena’s knees were higher than the instructor’s, and she never seemed to sweat.
Life was deeply unfair, and Lena Hall was proof of that.
Lena and Alexandra were unlikely friends. They hadn’t known one another particularly long, but Lena was the type of person people felt like they knew, even if they had just met her. When the women sat down in Espresso House for their usual coffee—and pastry—after class, Alexandra would talk about work and Lena about clothes. Those were the roles they had assigned to themselves. Alexandra told a new story about her boss, and Lena spent half an hour on a dress she had seen online, one she wanted to buy even though it was too expensive and she hadn’t tried it on.
“I should do it though, right?” she asked.
“I don’t buy many clothes,” Alexandra replied.
She glanced at the time on her phone at regular intervals. She wasn’t really in a hurry to get back to her apartment in Hammarby Sjöstad, all she had planned was to stop off at the supermarket in Hammarby Allé and buy dinner. Alexandra gazed longingly at Lena’s pastry and decided she would add one of the mint dark chocolate bars from Lindt into her basket. She needed something to console herself with as she watched TV that evening.
Alexandra knew she shouldn’t keep thinking about the man she would probably never see again, she knew he was no great loss, that he was just a placebo.
But she couldn’t help it.
She had the ability to fall in love with the hope, she fell in love with love itself, and the actual object of her feelings wasn’t always that important. Not to begin with. But sooner or later, reality always struck. And the man lying asleep in her bed would transform from a handsome magician who had made her loneliness disappear into a snoring pig who talked about himself with his mouth full while he ate breakfast.
All the same, she wasn’t made for the single life.
She sighed.
“What?” Lena asked.
“No, nothing,” said Alexandra.
“You know what I’m talking about though, right?”
The truth was that Alexandra hadn’t been listening, so when she nodded she hoped there wouldn’t be any follow-up questions.
Lena had finished her pastry and asked for the bill. “See you on Tuesday?” she asked.
Alexandra nodded. Going to the gym had become more fun with Lena there, but more than twice a week was too much.
“Maybe we could try the yoga class too?” said Lena. “Did you get the invite?”
“What invite?”
“Was it yesterday? No, over the weekend? No, hang on, it was through the Facebook group.”
Alexandra shrugged. She had been on Facebook for a while now, but there were so many Alexandra Svenssons that everyone who ever contacted her seemed to be looking for someone else. It was easier not to take part.
“No,” she replied. “I didn’t see it.”
“Seemed totally reasonable. Four classes for two hundred kronor, something like that. Shall we go?”
Lena began to talk enthusiastically about yoga groups, and Alexandra found her thoughts drifting again.
Life, her mother had said just before she died of cancer one overcast November day seven years earlier, was like any old party. If you want to, you can stay by the bar and drink until you’re so drunk that you have to go to the toilet and throw up. Or else you can sneak home after dinner because you think everyone else is an idiot. Maybe you can try to have a deep conversation with some depressing guy who thinks he’s an artist. Or maybe you’ll dance the night away. Life is what you make of it, but it rarely gets better than that.
Alexandra had grown up with her mother. Just the two of them. Only four months had passed between diagnosis and death, and though it had now been seven years, Alexandra could still sometimes see her in her reflection.
She was home by seven, and an hour later she had eaten dinner. She washed up and then changed into a dressing gown and sat down on the sofa with her bar of chocolate. There was a film on TV about a female lawyer fighting the mafia. Being a lawyer was something Alexandra Svensson was still considering. She liked rules.
As anxious as she was about her loneliness, she was satisfied with her job. She worked at G4S out in Västberga, a huge multinational where she felt comfortable. She assumed she would find something else one day, maybe in the center of town, but she was in no rush. She was only twenty-four, she had her entire life ahead of her.
First, she needed to meet someone.
There were times when she could have gone home with absolutely anyone from work, cooked dinner and massaged his shoulders, just to avoid facing the loneliness awaiting her.
There were times when she woke at night, alone in her bed, curled up in the fetal position, and hugged a pillow.
There were times in the morning when she just wanted to scream to break the silence in her cramped, practical kitchen in Hammarby Sjöstad.
7
It was ten in the morning when Sami Farhan maneuvered the stroller into the elevator. For the first six months, they had just left it by the front door, but it had been stolen a few months ago. The new stroller Karin had bought with the insurance money had followed them up into the apartment ever since. What went on in the mind of someone who stole a stroller, Sami wondered, swearing to himself at the cramped elevator.
Out on the street, the light was unexpectedly bright. He slowly walked up Skånegatan, and the baby was asleep before he even reached the top of the hill.