Stina Jackson

'I don't agree with the old man,' he said. 'All his talk about killer viruses and sickness. Yeah, stuff like that will happen, but not enough to bring an end to all humanity. A virus is simply a way of keeping the population down.'

‘Mickael Varg broke into my place last night.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I came home and I found him in the garden. He’d jumped out of Lina’s window. Twisted his ankle.’
‘So why didn’t you call me?’
‘I took care of it.’
Hassan screwed the stopper back in the flask and sighed.
‘Dare I ask what you did with him?’
‘I didn’t offer him tea and cakes, if that’s what you’re hoping. But I let him go.’

‘Do you want me to get you home?’
‘And what am I supposed to do there?’
‘Rest. Eat. Take a shower. Watch Netflix. Things normal people do.’

‘Where are your brothers tonight?’ she asked instead.
‘I made them stay at home.’ He smiled. ‘I wanted you to myself.’
Meja gasped. Looked at the water and saw it pulsating in tune with her feelings. The wind carried with it a chill and the smell of pine needles, but she wasn’t cold now. Carl-Johan leaned his cheek on her forehead.
‘But Göran would like to know if you’ve got a sister,’ he said.
Meja smiled.
‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters. At least, none I’m aware of.’
‘It must have been lonely, growing up like that.’
She shrugged.
‘And your dad, where’s he?’
Meja swallowed and the tingling in her stomach was replaced by anxiety.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He left before I was born. I never knew him.’
‘That’s so sad.’
‘It’s hard to miss what you haven’t had.’
‘You’re strong,’ said Carl-Johan. ‘I can see that. I’d never cope. I’d be nothing without my family.’

The midnight sun would drive people from their lairs and fill them with longing. They would laugh and make love and become crazy and violent. Some might even disappear. They would be blinded and disorientated. But he didn’t want to believe that they died.

‘I don’t belong here,’ she said, as the fire crackled and sent sparks into the sky. ‘I feel lost.’
Carl-Johan took her hand and put his lips on an open graze running across the back of it. It gave her goose-bumps and she shivered.
‘I’ll teach you everything I know,’ he said. ‘And when I’m finished it’ll feel like you were born in the wilds.’