Albin knows better. There is no reason for anyone to be jealous of him. He might have been cute when he was little, but not any more. He is the shortest person in his class, his voice is still high and squeaky and he is not good at sports or anything boys need to be good at to be popular. That is a fact. Just like it is a fact that Lo wouldn’t have stopped talking to him unless something had happened.
Lo isn’t just his cousin. She was his best friend while she still lived in Skultuna. Then all of a sudden Aunt Linda decided they had to move and Lo had no choice but to go.
Lo, who could make him laugh like no one else, laugh so hard he almost panicked because it felt like the laughing would never stop. Lo, who told him the truth about how Grandma died. They cried together because suicide is so sad, but the secret, shameful thing about it was that he liked crying with Lo; it felt good. Finally there was something obviously sad, something they could share, unlike the other stuff, which he can’t even talk to Lo about.
‘No, Stella,’ a man’s strained voice exclaims somewhere behind Albin. ‘Stop that. Do you want to go straight to bed when we get on board? Do you, Stella?’
His questions are met with furious howling.
‘Then stop that right now. It’s not funny, Stella. I said no! No, Stella, don’t do that. Please, Stella, come on.’
Stella lets out another shriek and a glass shatters. Albin can feel his dad getting more and more agitated and his mum getting more and more nervous about him causing a scene. Out of the corner of his eye, Albin notices that familiar movement. The jerk of his dad’s head as he empties his pint. His face is even redder now.
‘Maybe they’re stuck in traffic,’ his mum says. ‘It’s rush hour; lots of people trying to get home from work.’
Albin wonders why she bothers. When his dad is in this mood, there is no way to calm him down. He just gets more worked up when you try.
‘We should have picked them up on the way,’ he says. ‘But then Linda would probably have made sure none of us made it on time.’
He rolls his glass back and forth between his palms. His voice is already sort of fuzzy around the edges and seems to sit further back in his throat.
‘I’m sure she’ll be here,’ his mum says with a glance at her watch. ‘She wouldn’t want to disappoint Lo.’
His dad just snorts. His mum stops talking, but it is too late now. The silence between them makes the air thick and hard to breathe. If they had been at home, this is the point where Albin would have gone to his room. He is just about to say he needs to go to the bathroom when his dad pushes back his chair and stands up.
‘Abbe, another Coke?’
Albin shakes his head; his dad moves off in the direction of the bar.
His mum clears her throat as though she is about to say something. Maybe about last night. That his dad was just really tired. Work stuff. And that with her needing so much help, he never gets to rest. But Albin doesn’t want to hear it. Tired. He hates the word tired, their code word for the unspeakable. His dad is always like this, especially when they are going somewhere or doing something that should be fun. He ruins everything.
Albin pointedly pulls his history textbook out of his backpack, which is slung over the back of his chair, and finds the section they have a test on next week. Frowns. Tries to look properly absorbed by scorched-earth tactics, even though he already knows it practically by heart.
‘So fitting that you’re studying the Swedish Empire when we’re crossing the Baltic,’ his mum says.
But Albin doesn’t respond. He has made himself completely unapproachable to punish her, because he is even angrier at her. Mum could get a divorce so they wouldn’t have to live with him. But she doesn’t want to. And he knows why. She thinks she needs Dad.
Sometimes he wishes they had never adopted him. He would have done better in the orphanage in Vietnam. Or he could have ended up anywhere in the world. With another family.
‘Look who I found,’ his dad says, and Albin turns around.
His dad is holding another beer; Albin can tell from the white foam climbing up the side of the glass he has already started in on it. Next to him is Linda, her blonde hair falling loose over her shoulders. Her jacket is fluffy and pink like spat-out gum. She bends down and hugs Albin. Her cold cheek presses against his.
But where is Lo?
Albin doesn’t spot her until Linda moves around the table to hug his mum. He hears his mum make the same old joke she always does – Apologies for not getting up – and Linda chuckle like she has never heard it before. But the world around Lo seems to fade until she is the only thing he can make out clearly.
It is Lo, but it is not Lo, not the Lo he knows, anyway. He can’t stop staring. She is wearing mascara, which makes her eyes look bigger and paler. Her hair has grown long and it is a bit darker, the colour of honey. Her legs look impossibly long in the tight jeans she is wearing, which end in a pair of leopard-print trainers. She removes her scarf and leather jacket. Underneath, she is wearing a grey jumper that has slipped off one of her shoulders, revealing a black bra strap.
Lo looks like those girls in his school who would never in a million years say hi to him.
This is much worse than a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding could have been rectified.
‘Hey,’ he says, tentatively, hearing in that short syllable how childish his voice sounds.
‘Big shock to find you hovering over a book,’ she says.
She’s wearing a perfume that smells like caramel and vanilla, and when she speaks he catches intermittent puffs of sweet mint from the gum she is chewing. She gives him a quick hug and he can feel her breasts pressing against him. Albin is almost afraid to look at her when she straightens back up, but her new, adult face has already turned away. She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. Her nails are painted black.
‘Oh my, Lo, how you’ve grown,’ his mum says. ‘You look really pretty.’
‘Thanks, Aunt Cilla,’ Lo says, and gives her a hug as well, a much longer one than the one she gave Albin.
Mum reaches up to get her arms all the way around Lo’s back.
‘But you’re bloody skinny these days,’ his dad says.
‘Well, she’s growing,’ his mum replies.
‘I hope that’s the only reason,’ his dad says. ‘Boys like a little something to hold on to, you know.’
Albin just wants his dad to shut up, right now.
‘Thanks for the info,’ Lo says. ‘My number one goal in life is to make guys like me.’
The silence that follows lasts half a beat too long, then his dad laughs.
Linda launches into an interminable monologue about which route they took from Eskilstuna and exactly what the traffic was like every single inch of the way. Dad drinks his beer in silence, passive, while Mum tries her best to look fascinated by Linda’s narrative. Lo rolls her eyes deep into her skull and pulls out her phone; Albin seizes the opportunity to study her furtively. At length, Linda gets to how hard a time they had finding a parking spot near the terminal and then she is finally done.
‘Still, you made it; that’s what matters,’ his mum says with a glance at his dad.
‘Maybe we should go join the queue,’ he replies, and empties his glass.
Linda’s eyes follow the glass as he sets it down on the table. Albin gets up, puts his history textbook in his backpack and pulls it on.
The queue on the other side of the glass partition is growing and Albin notices that it has started moving forward. He checks the clock on the wall. Only fifteen minutes until departure. People sitting at the tables are getting their things together, finishing their drinks.
Mum checks over her shoulder and starts reversing in her wheelchair, apologising all the while. The people behind her have to push their table aside to let her to pass. She toggles the joystick on the armrest back and forth.
‘It’s like parallel parking, this,’ she says in that slightly too cheerful tone of voice that means she is stressed.
‘Are you all right?’ Lo says, and his mum replies, ‘Of course, sweetheart,’ in that same forced-cheery voice.
‘Are you looking forward to the cruise?’ Linda asks, ruffling Albin’s hair.
‘Yes,’ he replies automatically.
‘I’m glad somebody is,’ Linda says. ‘I thought I was going to have to chain Lo to the car to get her here.’
Lo turns to them and Albin tries not to show how hurt he is. She hasn’t looked forward to seeing him at all.
‘You didn’t want to come?’ he says.
‘Yeah right. Going on a cruise to Finland is my number one advice to the general public.’ She doesn’t even talk the same any more. There’s a new whiff of mint as she sighs. ‘Mum refuses to let me stay home alone.’
‘This isn’t the time for that discussion, Lo,’ Linda says, and stares at his mum and dad. ‘You should be happy boys hit puberty later. This is what you have to look forward to.’
Lo rolls her eyes again, but somehow also looks pleased.
‘Not necessarily,’ his dad says. ‘All children are different. And it depends on how much they feel a need to rebel.’
Linda doesn’t respond, but after he turns his back she shakes her head.
They start moving towards the exit. His mum goes first, and Albin hears her say beep-beep a few times when tables are too close together or suitcases block her way. He looks away. Through the glass partition at the ticket barriers two guards study the people passing through the gates.
‘Isn’t it heartbreaking that she thought she could pull off a miniskirt?’ Lo whispers far too loudly when they pass the girl with the pink feathers around her neck.
‘Lo,’ Aunt Linda admonishes.
‘Maybe if we’re lucky the boat’ll sink when those two waddle aboard. Then this nightmare would be over.’
The Baltic Charisma
The Baltic Charisma was built in 1989, in Split, Croatia. She is 560 feet long, 92 feet across and has a carrying capacity of more than 2,000 passengers. But it has been a long time since the Swedish-registered cruiseferry was fully booked. Today is Thursday, and only about twelve hundred passengers are pouring in through the doors. Very few of them are children. It is early November; the half-term break is over. In the summer, the sun deck is crammed with deck chairs, but now it is empty aside from some of the passengers who came on board this morning, in Finland. They gaze out across a cold Stockholm, chilly despite the last rays of the setting autumn sun. Some are waiting impatiently for the Charisma to leave port so the bars can reopen.
*
The woman called Marianne is among the last in the flood of people who slowly stream across the gangway high above the parking lot. The long-haired man has put his arm around her. On the other side of the glass, the sun hangs low in the sky. Its slanted, golden light softens their faces. The tunnel turns sharply left, and now Marianne sees the ship. She is stunned by its size. It is taller than the block of flats she lives in. Storey upon storey of white-and-yellow painted metal. It should not float. She notices the bow is open, an enormous, ravenous mouth feeding on rows of vehicles. She wonders if that is the bow visor and the floor suddenly sways under her feet, as if she is already at sea. She thinks about the cabin she booked. The cheapest one available, underneath the car deck. Below the waterline. No windows. The ship seems to grow with every step she takes. The name BALTIC CHARISMA is written on its side in curlicue, the letters several feet tall. The pipe-smoking bird gives her a gargantuan smile. She wants to turn around, run back into the terminal. But she can hear the sound of a kitchen clock ticking in an empty flat, so she keeps on walking. Tries to ignore the sudden notion that they are animals, passively trudging through the corral on their way to the abattoir.
*
Andreas, the general manager, is standing by the entrance, advertising the karaoke night and the offers available in the tax-free shop, smiling as warmly as he can. The cruise director should rightfully be doing this, but he called in sick this morning. It’s the second time since the end of the summer. Andreas is well aware the cruise director has developed a drinking problem since he started working here.
*
The Charisma’s commander, Captain Berggren, is on the bridge, ticking off the boxes on the departure checklist with his staff. Soon, they will pilot the ferry away from the pier with the aid of the navigating officer and the lookout. They are intimately familiar with all the thousands of rocks and skerries and shoals in the Stockholm and Åbo archipelagos. Once the Charisma is out of the harbour, she runs on autopilot, and the captain hands control to his staff captain.
*
There is feverish activity in the staff quarters. The employees whose ten-day shifts start tonight have collected their uniforms and changed. Waiters are scurrying from the galley – the Charisma’s enormous, steaming kitchen, which supplies food to all the on-board restaurants – with enormous platters destined for the serving tables at Charisma Buffet. Some of them are still hungover after a night of partying. They gossip about who was called to the infirmary to have their blood alcohol levels checked that morning, and who didn’t come out of that so well. In the tax-free shop, Antti is conducting a run-through with his staff. When they open back up, half an hour after departure, an impatient line of customers will be waiting outside.
*
The water is perfectly still in the spa’s big, round hot tub. The surface reflects the clouds and sky outside the panorama windows. The massage benches are unoccupied. The heater in the sauna is quietly creaking away.
*
Down in the engine room, the engines are given a last once-over. If the bridge is the Charisma’s brain, the engine room is her beating heart. Chief Engineer Wiklund has just put in a call to the bridge, informing them that refuelling is complete and the fuel line safely disconnected. He studies his engineers through the window of the control room. Finishes his coffee and puts his cup down, looks at the orange doors of the crew lift. As soon as the Charisma has made it safely out of harbour and is striking out on its familiar route towards Åbo the staff chief engineer will take over and Wiklund can leave. He doesn’t need to come back until they are approaching Åland; he is planning to take a big nap.
*
The Charisma has pretty much seen it all. In the no-man’s-land of the Baltic Sea, inhibitions are lowered, and not only by cheap booze. It is as though time and space warp, as though the usual rules cease to apply. And the whole thing is monitored by four security guards, who are busy preparing for nightfall, each in their own way. Four people, tasked with maintaining order in the utter chaos that can be wreaked by twelve hundred people, most of them drunk, crammed into an enclosed space they can’t leave.
Outside the engine room, on the car deck, members of staff are giving passengers instructions in Swedish, Finnish and English. They have guided lorries, cars, caravans and two coaches to their designated places. Everything is carefully calibrated to ensure the ship’s stability. The air down here, where the sun never shines, is cool and smells strongly of petrol and exhaust fumes. Tired lorry drivers and road-tripping families move towards the lifts and stairs. Soon the car deck will be sealed, not to be opened again to passengers until right before docking on Åland. The big lorries are brooding silently in the dark like sleeping animals, tethered to the steel floor with heavy chains.
Everything is routine. The Baltic Charisma travels the same route, day after day, year round. She stops at Åland just before midnight. Reaches Åbo in Finland around 7 a.m., at which time most of the Swedish passengers will be sound asleep. In twenty-three hours, the Charisma will be docking in Stockholm once more. But on this particular cruise, there are two passengers unlike any the ship has ever seen.
A small blond boy, around five years old, and a dark-haired, heavily made-up woman have just climbed out of their caravan. They seem tired, gaze almost longingly at the harshly lit lift, but choose the poky stairs instead.
They both keep their eyes carefully lowered, meeting no on
e’s gaze. The thick layer of makeup can’t quite hide that there’s something wrong with the woman’s furrowed face. The boy has pulled up his hood, clutching the straps of his Winnie the Pooh backpack. They smell of lilacs and menthol and something else, something strange yet familiar, and people seem to have noticed, glancing furtively at them. The woman fiddles with an oval gold locket on a thin chain around her neck. Aside from the locket and a gold ring on her left ring finger, she wears no other jewellery. Her right hand is hidden in her coat pocket. She looks at the little creature next to her. His shoes slap against the vinyl carpet. The climb is much steeper for his tiny legs. There is so much love in her eyes. So much grief. But she is afraid of him too: afraid of losing him. Afraid that he is close to the edge, and afraid of what might happen if he steps over it.
*
Up on the glass-walled gangway, Marianne and the man called Göran walk through a plywood archway decorated with brightly coloured flowers. A woman with dark, frizzy hair points a camera at them; Göran smiles at the lens. The shutter clicks and Marianne wants to ask her to take another one – she wasn’t ready – but the woman is already pointing the camera at Göran’s friends. And then they step on board. Maroon carpet under their feet. The brass railings, the wood panel and faux marble walls and the smoked glass of the lift doors gleam in the warm lighting. An army of cleaners disembark. Grey uniforms, not a white face among them. Marianne barely listens to what the general manager has to say about the evening’s offerings, doesn’t recognise the name of the celebrity leading the karaoke.
Overwhelmed with impressions, Marianne’s fear melts away, leaving no trace whatsoever. Only anticipation remains. How is a person supposed to experience it all in just twenty-four hours? She is here now. And Göran’s arm around her tightens. Let the adventure begin.