A Nearly Normal Family(69)

“You have to trust the justice system.”

“No, you don’t. I wish I could, I really want to, but I don’t have to. I have to protect myself.”

Shirine raises her eyebrows as if she’s just come to a realization. I’m afraid that I’ve said too much.





60


The sun stayed through Saturday. I stretched out on a blanket in the botanical gardens and soaked up the summer’s first real warmth. That night we were sitting on Amina’s balcony, discussing whether we should go out. One second Amina was super stoked, while I was hesitant. The next second I was the one who was dying to party, while Amina wanted to back out.

“I’ve got a match tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t you have to work?”

I did. I had to work basically every day all summer.

“It shouldn’t be called work; my job isn’t actually hard work. It’s fun. Going to school was fucking hard, but working at H&M doesn’t take any effort at all.”

Amina laughed.

“Was school really that hard for you?”

“Maybe not so much for me, but it was for people who studied all the time.”

Amina was one of them, of course. I made it through with decent grades thanks to a solid base of previous knowledge, good sense, and my gift for verbal diarrhea. Amina, though, she had something I was missing. I think maybe you could call it a sense of duty, that ability to just accept certain things, to just plow through without questioning or protesting. She says it’s a second-generation immigrant thing, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, she’s always been like that. Amina nods obediently and does as she’s told, only to vomit out all her feelings afterward, while I get all worked up and cocky and spew out all my resistance in the heat of the moment.

“Okay, let’s stay home then,” I say. “We’ll sit around and wither away in pointlessness.”

A group of girls was making a happy racket down on the street, and Amina topped off our glasses with wine.

“What’s Chris up to tonight?”

“No idea,” I said. “Whatever thirty-year-olds do. Couples dinner? Bank meeting? Weekly grocery shop?”

Amina typed his name into Facebook.

“Private profile.”

“Not so strange, if you’ve been stalked before.”

“One mutual friend,” Amina said. “Stella Sandell. You’ll have to check out his profile.”

“Why?”

“To snoop, obviously.”

I took out my phone and searched for him. In his profile pic he was looking right at the camera and smiling, with messy hair and a gleam in his eye.

His page was basically empty. A status update here and there, photos from a couple of trips, a restaurant recommendation. Only 187 friends.

“Scroll through his cover photos,” said Amina. “People always forget to clean those up.”

I clicked on his cover photo, which was of an endless white beach in an orange sunset. There were two more. One was the logo of Liverpool FC. In the last one, Chris was standing in front of a tall stone wall. He was sunburned and red-eyed and holding a woman’s hand.

“Is that her? The ex?”

Amina yanked the phone from me.

“I don’t know.”

But it felt like I really did know. It had to be her. Linda.

The woman in the picture looked like a total supermodel. Curly blond hair, shining blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, and smooth peaches-and-cream skin.

“She doesn’t look like a psycho,” Amina said.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t like what I saw.

“Look at this,” she said, pointing at her own screen.

She had brought up a page of personal information. At the top was the name Christopher Olsen. The address was right, Pilegatan, Lund. Further down it said that he was involved with four different companies. He was unmarried and his birthday was in December. He would be thirty-three.

“Thirty-three? Didn’t he say—”

“He lied about his age.”

Amina stared at me, a concerned look on her face.

I hadn’t suspected a thing. Apparently Chris Olsen was a good liar.



* * *



I biked home in the warm night air. My purse dangled from the handlebars; all the windows were dark. Lund was slumbering.

When Chris called, my first inclination was to ignore it. I stood straddling my bike in the railway tunnel on Trollebergsv?gen with the vibrating phone in my hand. His name called to me from the screen, and at last my curiosity won out.

“Can’t you come over?” he said.

“Now?”

I looked at the time. Twelve thirty.

“Yes, now.”

He’d been at some fancy dinner in Helsingborg and sounded a little tipsy.

“I miss you,” he said.

It sounded like he meant it.

I was still plenty awake and up for some fun, slightly disappointed that Amina hadn’t wanted to come out with me.

“Okay, I’m on my way.”

What was the worst that could happen?



* * *



The door of the yellow brick building was open and I dashed up the stairs. Chris was wearing a checked shirt and a tie. He smelled like man and the air quavered between us.