THE MOTIONLESS, FLICKERING picture. Always the same. 18.30 hours. She has only a few minutes to wait. Then she is sitting opposite him, saying no when he asks her if anything in particular has happened.
‘It’s unusual for you to call. You’ve never called in between our sessions before,’ he says.
She nods.
‘Have you been to see Rauna?’ he asks.
She nods.
‘How’s she doing?’
‘All right,’ she says.
He does not reply, but puts his head on one side and looks through the window into the darkness.
‘You said something about a picture …’
‘No,’ she says.
‘No?’
‘No. You said something about a picture, and I said I see one, always the same picture.’
‘You’re right. That’s how it was,’ he says.
She nods.
‘Would you like to talk about the picture?’
‘What would you like to talk about?’
‘About Little My.’
He says nothing, and she smiles. She has succeeded in surprising him. She can see that from looking at him, and she likes it.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Tell me about her.’
‘Not about her, about me,’ she says.
‘About you, then. Tell me about yourself.’
‘I was Little My on the day I met Ilmari. I was working in Moomin World on the beach in Naantali. It’s a children’s theme park. The Moomin family.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’ve been there.’
‘Do you have … children?’
‘A son.’
‘You have a son?’ she says. ‘How … how old is he?’
‘Seven.’
She looks at him for a long time, and after a while she realises that she is trying to see from his face whether he is telling the truth. She looks away.
‘I didn’t know you had children,’ she says.
‘Only him. My son, Sami.’
‘Why did you never say so?’
‘You’re the only one of my women patients who knows,’ he says. ‘It’s not usual for me to talk about myself during sessions. So you were working at Moomin World?’
‘Yes … yes, I was being Little My. The red-haired little girl. In the vacation before I began my training I’d been in a theatrical company engaged for Moomin World. I was much too big for Little My, but because of my red hair I got the part.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Very much. It was hot in the costume, but in the evening I always jumped straight into the water, and that was …’
‘That was … wonderful.’
He does not reply.
‘It was so good that I can hardly believe it really happened.’
‘And that was when you met Ilmari?’
‘Yes, he was there with one of his groups. As you know, he looked after children with learning difficulties. Autistic kids.’
‘Yes.’
‘The children were … unusual. I didn’t know that before. I wanted to give them some fun, and they just didn’t react.’
He nods.
‘They weren’t friendly, they weren’t unfriendly, it was as if they weren’t there at all.’
He nods.
‘The children were the way I feel now,’ she says.
‘Describe what you feel more closely.’
‘I don’t want to. I want to talk about Ilmari.’
‘Then tell me about Ilmari.’
‘He was looking after the children. He came to Moomin World with them, and he was the only one in the group who laughed. At my jokes. Well, I was playing Little My, so I had to be funny. Then they left. They went on somewhere else, and I had to see to the other children. That evening I’d taken off my costume, and there was Ilmari suddenly standing beside me, saying Little My was bigger than he’d thought.’
He has put his head on one side again. Not far. He probably doesn’t even know he does that.
‘Next day he was there again. And the day after that. We swam together. That was always the best part of it for me. Washing the sweat off my body in the evening.’
His head tilts to the other side.
‘Yes, that was how it began.’
‘And some time you will have to talk about how it ended,’ he says.
His head is bolt upright now.
‘So that you can begin again,’ he says.
‘I wonder who’s being Little My at the theme park now,’ she says.
He looks past her, glancing at the time.