‘OK. But can’t you come over one day, Teresa? It’s such a long time since we had a proper chat. And listen, we can play Tekken! I’ve got a…’
‘Bye Johannes. Bye.’
She ended the call. Then she wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach and leaned forward, then down as far as she could until there was a rushing noise in her head and it started to hurt. She straightened up and it flowed away. Her skull emptied as the blood poured back down her body and her anxiety abated.
She tore a sheet of paper into tiny, tiny pieces which she pushed in her mouth and chewed. When the paper had turned into a soggy ball, she spat it out into the waste paper basket. She was grateful that she was alone. Her defences were weak; if anyone had wanted to harm her, this would have been the perfect opportunity.
It was quarter past eleven, and the auction was over. She checked her messages and found an email from the website telling her she had won. No one else had put in a bid, and the wolf skin was hers for six hundred kronor.
She knew exactly what she was going to do with it, and where she was going to suggest for Sunday’s meeting.
‘He wrote. Max Hansen.’
‘What did he write?’
‘That he knows. About Lennart and Laila. And the room. When I was little. How they ended up dead.’
‘So what’s he going to do, then?’
‘An album. With our songs.’
‘No, I mean what’s he going to do with what he’s found out. About you.’
‘Nothing.’
‘What? Is that what he wrote, that he’s not going to do anything at all?’
‘If I don’t do anything, he won’t do anything. That’s what it said.’
They were sitting right at the back of the number 47 bus from Sergels Torg. A few families with children were sitting towards the front, but the seats closest to them were empty. It was the middle of April, and the streams of tourists heading for Djurgården had not yet got under way. Teresa leaned forward, resting her elbows on the full rucksack at her feet as she tried to think.
It was hardly likely to be in Max Hansen’s interests to reveal what he knew about Theres; it was just an empty threat.
Or was it?
The girl who grew up in a cellar and turned into a cold-blooded murderer. It was just the kind of story people loved. Teresa had never thought about Theres’ story in that way before, but she could see it now. The newspaper screamers. Day after day. A story that would run and run, and plenty of free advertising for the album. Could Max Hansen be such an evil bastard? Could he?
As the bus crossed the bridge Teresa straightened up and took a deep breath, drumming the heels of her boots on the floor. It was pointless to speculate. She would concentrate on what was happening now.
Twelve girls had said they were coming. The youngest was fourteen, the oldest nineteen. Theres had told her a little bit about each of them, but Teresa found it difficult to separate the monosyllabic accounts and link them to the names. Miranda and Beata and Cecilia and two Annas and so on.
She remembered Miranda from that time in the apartment, and Ronja was the name of a girl Theres said had tried to kill herself three times, once by eating glass. That had stuck in Teresa’s mind, because it was so extreme. Ronja. No doubt her parents had had something else in mind when they chose the name.
They got off outside Skansen. Teresa heaved the rucksack onto her back and headed for the Solliden entrance. Theres didn’t follow her. She was stuck outside the main entrance, gazing up at the sign. When Teresa turned back, Theres asked, ‘Is this Skansen?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it?’
‘A zoo. And some old buildings, that kind of thing. Why do you ask?’
Theres frowned. ‘I’m going to sing here.’
‘What? Or rather…when? How come?’
‘I don’t understand. Am I going to sing to the animals?’
Teresa looked at the big, ornate letters above the entrance. She knew there were concerts here sometimes, and so of course…
‘Just hang on a minute,’ she said. ‘When are you going to sing here?’
‘In the summer. Max Hansen wrote. Sing Along at Skansen. Good publicity.’
‘You’re performing at Sing Along at Skansen?’
‘Yes. Otherwise he’ll tell about Lennart and Laila.’ Theres’ tone of voice altered slightly, and Teresa sensed that she was just regurgitating something Max Hansen had written when she went on, ‘Then Jerry will go to prison. I’ll end up in the loony bin with all the other nutters. Why am I going to sing to the animals?’
Teresa took off her rucksack and put it on the ground. Then she sat down on it and asked Theres to sit next to her. She took her hand.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘First of all. You’re not going to sing to the animals. There’ll be people there. Thousands of people. Adults and kids and teenagers. It’s shown on TV. Millions of people watch it. That’s what it’s about, OK? Sing Along at Skansen.’
Theres nodded. Then she shook her head. ‘That’s not good. A lot of people is not good. I know.’
‘No. And secondly. You are not going to end up in a loony bin. And if you do, I’ll be coming with you. We’re both just as screwed up, OK? Whatever happens to you, happens to me. That’s just the way it is. But this business with Max Hansen…I don’t know what we’re going to do.’
‘We’ll have to make him dead.’
Teresa laughed. ‘I should think he’ll be bloody careful around us from now on. But we’ll have to think of something.’
‘Yes. That’s good. Now let go of my hand.’
Teresa didn’t let go. When Theres tried to pull away, she held on more tightly. ‘Why don’t you like it when I take your hand?’
‘You’re not to take my hand. It’s my hand.’
The leap of logic distracted Teresa, and Theres pulled away and stood up. Teresa stayed where she was, looking at her own hands. Take my hand. People took things from one another. She was not to take Theres’ hand. Of course.
She hoisted up the rucksack again and went ahead of Theres along Sollidsbacken, outside the railings. On the miniature map she had printed off from the internet the distances had looked quite short, but when they reached the Solliden entrance she realised they had almost a kilometre still to go. A bus passed on Djurgårdsvägen; presumably the buses went all the way. She would bear that in mind for next time. If there was a next time.
They turned off onto Sirishovsvägen. Teresa looked at her map, and once they had passed the Bellman gate they walked another hundred metres along the wire fence, peering through the netting.
‘They’re not here,’ said Theres.
Teresa looped her fingers through the wire and slowly scanned the terrain. She had imagine a more open area, but the wolf enclosure was a landscape of trees with new leaves, bushes and stones strewn over hillsides. Their natural environment. She knew there should be seven wolves in there, but there was no sign of any of them.
Her gaze stopped at an oddly shaped rock, and she gasped. It was a block of stone, but its strange shape was due to the fact that there was a wolf lying right on top. It was lying completely still, looking in their direction.
‘There,’ she said, pointing it out to Theres. ‘There.’
Theres stood right next to her, pressing her body against the fence so that she could get as close as possible. They were caught in the wolf’s field of vision, and a faint breeze was blowing towards their backs. Presumably the wolf had picked up their scent. Teresa’s stomach flipped over. Right now you’re thinking about us. What are you thinking? How do you think?
They stood there for a long time, clinging to the fence and looking at the wolf looking back at them. They were together. Then the wolf began to lick the fur on its paws, and left them.
‘Why are you unhappy?’ asked Theres.
Only then did Teresa discover that her eyes were wet, and tears had run down her cheeks.
‘I’m not unhappy,’ she said. ‘I’m
happy. Because I’ve arrived.’
They spread blankets on the ground in front of the wolf enclosure. Before Teresa pulled the wolf skin out of her rucksack, she glanced over at the rock. The wolf had left its post, which was a good thing, because as she placed it in the centre it felt like a kind of blasphemy. As if she were not worthy.
She and Theres sat down on the blankets with their backs to the fence and waited. In the message calling everyone to the meeting, they had explained that Teresa who wrote the lyrics would also be coming. She didn’t feel like Teresa who wrote the lyrics. She was a little lone wolf, and a strange pack was moving closer.
‘Theres?’ she asked. ‘Have you played them all the songs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you told them about yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lennart and Laila and…everything?’
‘Yes. Everything.’
It was as she suspected, and there was really only one question she wanted to ask. She was afraid of the question because she was afraid of the answer, but she asked it anyway.
‘Theres. What is it that makes me different from them?’
‘You came first. You wrote the words.’
‘But otherwise we’re similar?’
‘Yes. Very similar.’
Teresa lowered her head. What had she thought? That she was unique and the only person in the whole world with whom Theres could have contact, the only person who could love Theres? Yes. That’s exactly what she had thought, until she walked into Theres’ apartment and found the pack gathered. Now she had the final confirmation that she had been an idiot.
Very similar.
The first group of seven girls was approaching from the bus stop. There was one consolation to be found in Theres’ painful honesty: perhaps the pack wasn’t as alien as she had thought. She watched the seven girls, and even from a distance there was already something she recognised in their movements, the way they walked, as if their footsteps might damage the ground.
Teresa undid her boots, pulled the laces tighter and said, ‘But they haven’t made anyone dead, have they? None of them?’
‘No.’
‘And do you think they could?’
‘Yes. All of them.’
Teresa looked at the little group who had now reached the fence, and her eyes narrowed. A new plan took its first uncertain steps in her brain. Then she waved and smiled.
All of them.
When the girls came over to say hello, Teresa felt elevated in a way she had never experienced before. She was treated with respect, as if she were giving an audience. She couldn’t help it; she enjoyed it. She had never been the focus of so much positive attention.
They praised certain phrasing or individual lines, some said that her lyrics described exactly how they felt themselves, and that they wished they could write like that. After a few comments in that vein Teresa sought refuge in false modesty, and said that it wasn’t really anything special, anyone could have…and so on.
In spite of the fact that the other girls regarded her as an authority, they still spoke the same language. It was a different matter with Theres. They treated her like something made of the finest porcelain, speaking quietly and not daring to touch her. When Theres spoke they listened, their bodies tense with concentration.
What Theres said was nothing remarkable, but of course Teresa knew how it worked. Theres had the ability to say exactly the right thing to the right person, the self-evident truth that that particular person needed, expressed with that elusive, subjugating tone in her voice that made it into more than truth, into The Truth.
After exchanging greetings and chatting for a while, the girls sat down around the wolf skin and immersed themselves in their own thoughts, or ventured some tentative comment.
Teresa hadn’t expected it, but when they were all assembled and she looked around the group—how they sat, the way they moved their hands, how they looked—she concluded that she was probably the strongest person there. She had nothing to be afraid of.
On the other hand, she was the one who had known Theres the longest, the one sitting by her side. What would she have been without Theres? A little grey mouse, scurrying along by the wall and trying to be invisible. Maybe. Or maybe not. In any case, she looked at the others with tenderness in her eyes. When little Linn started to look as if she might burst into tears, Teresa felt no jealousy as Theres crept over to her and whispered in her ear until she was calm again.
Apart from Ronja, none of these girls would pick up much support in the voting for prom queen. Several of them were a few kilos overweight, like Teresa, and about half had piercings: lips, nose or eyebrows. Beata’s appearance was Asiatic, and she was the only one who seemed to have naturally black hair; both Annas, Linn and Caroline had different-coloured roots.
Only Cecilia was actually fat, and she hid her body in coarse military clothing, but most of the others were dressed in bulky clothes that hid their shape. As for make-up, it covered the entire spectrum—from Melinda, who had birds’ wings drawn in pen at the corners of her eyes, to Erika who wasn’t wearing any make-up at all, and who was so colourless in general that she was almost invisible. Teresa guessed that hardly any of them were joiners: they wouldn’t be members of any club or society.
But Ronja was the exception. She was the oldest in the group at nineteen, and looked like the sporty type: football, probably. She was wearing Adidas trousers and a windbreaker, she was slender and her hair was blonde and straight. A more athletic, socially adept version of Theres. Not the prettiest girl in the class, but a perfectly acceptable candidate to wear the crown. And she was the one who ate glass.
A common denominator united them, and it was probably only Teresa who was aware of it: the scent of the girls. They all smelled more or less the same. Hardly any of them used perfume, and those few did so sparingly. But that wasn’t the scent they had in common, it was what lay beneath it. Fear.
It had been Teresa’s own bodily odour for so many years that she recognised it immediately. She could probably have sniffed her way to each and every one of these girls if they were on the same bus. A bitter, sweetish smell with a hint of flammable liquid. Coca-Cola mixed with petrol.
As the girls shuffled closer to one another and the conversations got going, there was a change in the air around them. The security of the pack made the scent diminish. Their bodies, their skin, ceased to exude fear as the conversations intertwined to form a single, unified melody.
‘…and I can feel the whole thing just falling apart…my mum’s got a new bloke and I don’t like the way he looks at me…they said I couldn’t come even if I paid…he came home in the middle of the night and he had a knife…and even though I try my best in every way…shook my little brother and he ended up with brain damage…have to wear earphones all the time so nobody can hear…and when I’m walking along, it’s as if it’s somebody else walking along…that I was completely worthless, that I had no chance…tried to hide under the bed, which was just so fucking stupid…the music I listen to, my clothes, how I look, everything…that noise, when I hear that noise I know…as if I didn’t exist…little tiny pinpricks all the time…just to walk away, leave it all behind…nobody but me…’
Teresa turned towards the enclosure just in time to see the wolf clambering up onto his rock once more, folding its paws in front of it then looking down on the group of girls with its ears pricked, as if it were listening to their conversations. Teresa turned back to the others and pointed.
‘That wolf,’ she said. ‘It’s looking at us. It’s wondering who we are. Who are we?’
The conversations died away, and they all looked up at the grey figure lying calmly watching them. Judging by the size, Teresa guessed it was a female.
‘Because we are something, aren’t we?’ she went on. ‘Together we are something, although we don’t know what it is yet. Do you feel it too?’
While the girls were talking, Theres had sat there humming quietly to h
erself, but now the humming turned into words, flowing out of her mouth like a song. Her gaze was turned inwards, and her hands hovered in front of her as if she were carrying out some complex invocation of which her voice was a part. In a second they were all swept up in its rhythm, and several of the girls began to sway in time with the melody of her speech.
‘All those who are afraid must stop being afraid. No one has done wrong. No one will be alone. The big people want us. They will not have us. I do not understand. But we are strong now. I do not understand we. We. We. I am small. We are not small. We are the red that comes out. We are what they want. No one will be allowed to touch us.’
When the flow of words ceased, there was absolute silence, and all the girls sat gazing into space with unseeing eyes. Then the silence was broken by a muted clapping. It was Ronja, bringing her palms together three times, applauding.
Teresa pulled the wolf skin towards her and took the plate shears out of her rucksack. She cut a strip off the skin and gave it to Linn, who whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and rubbed the coarse fur over her cheek. Teresa carried on cutting and handing out strips until everyone had a piece. Some put it in their pocket, but most sat stroking the grey, dense hair as if it really was a body they held in their hands.
‘From now on,’ said Teresa, ‘we are the pack. Anyone who harms one of us, harms us all.’
The girls nodded and stroked the wolf skin they now shared. Suddenly Ronja laughed out loud. She rocked back and forth, howling with laughter and waving the strip of skin around. Teresa looked at her, listened to the sound of her laughter and recognised something from her time in the psychiatric unit, from the other inmates. Ronja was a combination of letters, a diagnosis. She had some kind of mental illness that Teresa couldn’t put a name to.
When Ronja had finished laughing, she kissed the piece of skin several times, then knotted it around her arm with the help of her teeth before turning to Teresa.
‘You said just now that we are something, although we don’t know what it is yet. I can tell you what we are. We’re a gang of losers who like your songs. And we’re dangerous. Seriously fucking dangerous.’