Every seat is full by the time the train reaches Lund, and Klara can’t decide if that’s good or bad, if a packed car makes her more or less likely to be recognized. She pulls up her hood and sinks back into her seat. As the train rolls out of Lund, she takes out the phone she bought in Germany and opens her secret email.
Camp Nou, tonight 20:00, she writes to Gabriella.
Almost as soon as it’s sent, a reply arrives.
Camp Nou?
Klara looks up from the phone. Damn! Gabi doesn’t remember that’s what the kids in the suburb of Bergort called their little AstroTurf field. It’s a perfect place to meet – far from any spots they might have under surveillance, like Gabi’s apartment or office.
The AstroTurf field in Bergort, she writes back. She wants to ask Gabi how she’s doing, what happened. But she’s afraid that they’ve already communicated too much over the phone, knows it’s risky, even if she’s using a secret email address and a burner phone. Better to meet face to face. The answer arrives immediately.
Okay. See you there.
*
She gets off the train at the Stockholm central station just after four o’clock in the afternoon and makes her way through the early rush hour traffic towards the subway. It’s good that everyone is on the move, she thinks – no one is paying attention to her. She pulls her hoodie down as far as it will go, and the stocking cap beneath it.
It almost doesn’t feel real to be back in the hustle and bustle of the subway. Klara takes a deep breath of that familiar and oxygen-deprived air. It smells like humanity and city and stone; it smells like Stockholm and, even though she’s never lived here, that scent along with the clattering of the train and the crackling voice over the speakers somehow makes her feel like she’s home.
*
The red line south. Klara looks around the subway car as it rattles and jumps further and further away from the inner city, and at each stop the number of blonde, blue-eyed commuters becomes fewer. She’s not riding this train to the end. Not yet. Just to the porous and ever-shifting border of gentrification.
The Skärholmen neighbourhood is a mix of classic Swedish housing projects and a new, fresh shopping centre and condominium development. There’s also an open-air market just outside the subway: Asian tapas, junkies and coffee chains. Genuine, but gentrified enough to have its sharpest edges rubbed off.
But Klara’s not headed to one of the new condos with Miele kitchens, she’s headed to the concrete block of rental apartments on Äspholmsvägen. She checks the address Jacob scribbled again, crosses the square, passing by the last few stalls in the market that haven’t packed up for the evening yet.
She doesn’t want to use the map on her phone, but a helpful drunk outside the subway station points her in the right direction of the address after she declines his offer to personally guide her there.
It doesn’t take long to find the right apartment building, and Klara takes out her phone to check the time. Just as she takes note that it’s just a few minutes past six, she hears a voice behind her.
‘Are you waiting for someone?’