The woman who meets me at the harbour reminds me of my mother. Only a little slimmer, and her hair is darker and hangs far down her back. Her skin is paler as well, and looks oddly translucent in the bright sunlight. There’s a network of fine wrinkles around her eyes and she’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Her smile is warm when she takes me by the hand.
‘I’m Rachel,’ she says, tilting her head a little to the side so that her long hair falls across one of her shoulders.
‘I’m Samuel,’ I say and think that she’d be good-looking if she weren’t so old.
I had prepared what I was going to say, but as soon as I take her hand I forget everything, and my mouth dries up, like it’s filled with sand.
‘It’s great that you could meet today,’ she says. ‘Shall we walk while we talk?’
We walk down the gravel road next to the harbour. There is a man on the dock, sitting smoking on a flatbed moped. I suppose he’s waiting for the Waxholm company boat to Stuvskär. A little girl is sitting on the flatbed, eating a half-melted ice cream. It drips down onto her shirt and then onto the ground.
The sun is warm, and the sky is high and blue, but as soon as we walk into the shade beneath the big trees next to the supermarket, the air turns cool and humid, like a cold breath.
‘How old are you, Samuel?’ Rachel asks, without sounding suspicious. In fact, she sounds curious, but in a good way. Not like my mother, who always assumes I’m hiding something terrible. As if I were building a bomb in secret, or watching some kind of paedo porn, as soon as her back was turned.
I tell her that I’m eighteen, recently ‘took a break’ from high school and that I’m looking for a job. Then we talk for a little while about what kind of work I’ve done in the past. And, OK, I’m exaggerating a bit at this point, saying I worked part-time at Media Markt, which is almost true, and that I’ve coached a boys’ soccer team, which definitely has no connection to the truth.
After a while we arrive at a small headland.
Rachel points to one of the smooth rocks that extend out like a giant tongue into the sea.
‘Come on!’ she says, stepping over the ditch and heading through the tall grass without waiting for my answer.
I follow her and we sit down a few yards from the water.
The rock is warm from the sun and rough beneath my jeans. Every now and then the wind catches small, salty drops of water and throws them up at our feet. At one point a larger wave breaks, and we have to back up a couple of yards to avoid getting wet.
Empty beer cans are wedged into a crevice and an old cigarette butt rolls by, pushed by the light summer breeze. Seaweed floats in the foam next to the rock.
‘Isn’t it great?’ Rachel says, and I nod and look out over the sea.
Yeah, sure, it’s great, but it would be a hell of a lot greater if I had something to eat. I’m completely broke. I’ve shoplifted sandwiches from the supermarket twice. But there are limits to how many times I can get away with that.
Besides, they only have weird sandwiches with avocado, hummus and tofu.
‘It’s one of the biggest advantages of living out here,’ Rachel continues. ‘Being close to nature. The sea.’
She closes her eyes and turns her face towards the sun.
‘So, why are you interested in the job?’ she asks. ‘I mean, there’s not much going on out here. It might get pretty boring for a young guy like you.’
The question surprises me a little.
‘I like it calm,’ I answer hesitantly.
‘Good,’ Rachel says. ‘That’s good.’
Then she falls silent, and I’m struck by a thought: she might expect me to ask her something too; to act like I’m actually kind of interested in the so-called job.
‘So what’s wrong with your son?’ I ask, picking up a small, flat stone and flicking it away.
It skips a few times across the water surface before disappearing into the blue depths.
‘Jonas was in an accident almost two years ago and suffered a brain injury. He was in hospital for several months, but in the end Olle, my partner, and I decided to take him home. And that’s when the circus began.’
Rachel falls silent and her mouth narrows.
‘The circus?’
She nods.
‘I think Jonas had ten different home aides in three months. It just wasn’t working. And the council was not exactly cooperative. In the end, we decided to care for him ourselves.’
‘You and Jonas’s father?’
‘Olle isn’t Jonas’s father, but he still helps as much as he can. We sold the apartment and bought the house out here. I quit my job as a pharmacist and started working remotely, as a project manager for a pharmaceutical company. Olle is a writer, so he has a fairly flexible job. But we need some help. We can’t leave Jonas alone for too long. He’s bedridden and suffers from epilepsy. We don’t really know how conscious he is, though he does have moments of clarity. But we can’t risk, for example, that he might fall out of bed or have a seizure when we’re not there.’
Rachel must have seen my expression, because she puts a gentle hand on my arm.
‘There’s no need to worry. The job requires no medical training. It’s mostly about keeping him company. Reading aloud. Playing music. And helping out around the house. The hours are ten to four, five days a week. But right now Olle is away, so it could be a little more. The salary is 15,000 a month, but that includes food and lodging.’
Food. Lodging.
Just the thought of a soft bed and a real, home-cooked meal makes the proposal sound attractive, even if the salary is fucking shit.
Fifteen thousand. That’s what I used to earn in a week.
Six hours of work, five days a week, that’s thirty hours a week. If an average month has four and a half working weeks, that’s a total of 135 hours. This means an hourly wage of 111 kronor.
One hundred and eleven kronor, seriously?
But at the same time, I realise that it’s probably not that bad. If they’re paying off the books – which I suspect, but don’t dare ask – then it’s better than working at McDonald’s.
‘If you were to end up working for us, we can revisit the salary discussion after the first month,’ Rachel adds as if sensing what I’m thinking. ‘If everything works out, that is.’
I meet her gaze.
If everything works out.
Is she serious? Is she really offering me the job?
But in the next second she says:
‘You’ll send me your references too, right?’
I don’t manage to get out an answer.
‘Your boss at Media Markt, maybe?’ she suggests.
*
I’m still sitting on the rocks long after Rachel has left. Looking out over the sea and watching the sun set among the clouds hovering above the horizon. The air gets cooler and I take the hoodie out of my bag, remove some blades of grass and a dead beetle and pull it over my head.
How am I going to get references? And do I even want the job?
I think of Rachel, her pale skin and long, dark hair. And then I think of food and the feeling of sleeping in a freshly made bed with smooth sheets and a real pillow instead of a damp, fucking lawn.
It’s tempting.
But then a second image appears, me sitting on a stool feeding a drooling retard wearing an adult nappy with arms as crooked as the driftwood that lies wedged into the rocks below me.
No.
That would never work.
Besides: 111 kronor an hour? It’s a freaking joke.
A fucking goddamn insult.
I take out my phone.
Part of me wants to turn it on and call my mum, but what if Malte finds me again? Even though I went through my phone and turned off every location service, I still don’t feel safe.
I think about it, rubbing the metal between my thumb and forefinger.
If I just used it for a minute – could they really track me?
I turn on my mobile and check my messages.
No one has texted me since I left – not my mother, Alexandra or Liam.
It makes me immediately depressed.
That’s how important I was to them. That’s all I meant to them.
Suddenly the voice is there again, the evil voice.
You are nothing, Samuel. Don’t you get how happy they are to be rid of you?
I check Instagram.
Jeanette has posted a picture of herself in a bikini. She holds her hand in front of her mouth. Her index finger and middle finger form a V which her tongue protrudes from.
Three hundred and eighty likes.
The phone dings, and I look at the display.
It’s from Rachel:
Thank you for the lovely meeting today. If you’re still interested, the job is yours! Let me know as soon as you’ve decided!
As I read the message, the phone dings again. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I see it’s from Igor.
It says:
You are so fucking dead.
That’s all.
I drop the phone as if it were on fire. It falls off the rock with a bang and slowly slides over the smooth stones towards the water.
I jump down and manage to grab it the moment before it sinks into the sea.
Damn.
I thought Igor was in jail. Did the cops let him go?
I look around me, as if expecting him to be hiding in the shadows behind the trees, but everything seems fine.
The gravel road is empty and deserted in the dusk. Milky strands of mist caress the trunks of the pine trees, winding around the ferns and sliding over the stones. The wind has died down, and the waves lick the rocks slowly and rhythmically. The air is damp and raw, like a puff from Grandpa’s earth cellar.
Maybe I should contact Igor. Explain that I hid the money and took the bike to protect him, but I don’t dare.
And what if he’s not even the one who sent the message?
What if the cops are trying to draw me out?
Thoughts whirl around in my head. It feels like I’m stuck on a merry-go-round and can’t get off.
I need time.
I have to find out what happened to Igor. And I have to figure out how to get myself out of this bullshit.
All the time in the world won’t save you, loser.
I sink down on the rock and take out my phone. Hesitate for a second, shivering in the cold. Then I go to the message from Rachel and reply that I’ll take the job.