Blood Cruise Read online

  Calle shakes his head incredulously. He met them once, when he spent a few nights at Pia’s house on Åland. They had both been mid-puberty and it was like something from a poor version of The Exorcist, all slamming doors, stomping and deranged shrieking. And Pia had just got divorced. But she still found the energy to listen to his problems. God, he had been so young then.

  ‘Do you have any plans while you’re on board?’ Pia asks.

  ‘I’m counting on getting a guided tour tonight,’ Vincent says. ‘And Calle has booked us spa treatments tomorrow.’

  ‘Nice,’ Pia says, and turns to Calle. ‘But, hey, if you really want to show Vincent something special, we should take him up to the bridge when you’re done eating.’

  She makes it sound so natural, like she only just thought of it. Calle gives her a grateful look.

  ‘Do you think that would be okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Sure. Berggren’s in charge tonight, and you know him, right?’ she says. She looks at Vincent again. ‘After 9/11, we’re not really supposed to let people up there, but I’m sure the captain will make an exception for you two.’

  ‘That would be awesome,’ Vincent says. ‘But only if we’re not in the way.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ Pia says. ‘I’ll come and get you at the end of this sitting. I can probably get away for a bit around then.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Calle says.

  ‘No problem,’ Pia says, and winks at him. ‘Filip says hi, by the way.’

  After she leaves, Calle knocks back his champagne, and Vincent tops up both their glasses.

  ‘She seems cool,’ he says.

  ‘She is,’ Calle replies. ‘She was the one who gave me the courage to quit and go back to school.’ And I thanked her by disappearing from her life, he adds to himself.

  ‘What did you mean about being lost?’ Vincent says, and grabs a langoustine. ‘Lots of partying or what?’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly. I was drunk almost every night after work.’

  A few times he’d been caught with elevated blood alcohol levels the next morning. Nurse Raili, who was in charge of the breathalyser, had been sorry to have to report him. He had been brought in for a talk with Captain Berggren and the general manager, told this was his last chance. He’d promised not to drink again, but of course he did.

  ‘It wasn’t just that,’ he says. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  ‘Try. I’m curious.’

  ‘Well, I thought this gig was just temporary. But time kept passing. It was like … I made more money than I could have dreamed of at that age. With all the add-ons, I netted almost twenty-five thousand kronor a month. Plus tips. And you spend hardly any of it, except on alcohol, and they sold that to us at a discount. There’s this thing called the slop ration; it’s like a ration you can buy for your own private consumption for practically nothing. And my friend Filip used to give me free drinks in the bar where he works.’

  He breaks off, pausing to think. How to explain what it was like? ‘This bizarre world is like a bubble and anything outside the bubble starts feeling a bit unreal after a while.’

  ‘Don’t you ever miss them?’ Vincent asks.

  Calle ponders the question, playing for time by picking the meat off a lobster tail. He can’t remember ever having a better time than on this ship. Pia and Filip were the best friends he has ever had. But he always knew he had to move on before he got stuck. He just didn’t know how.

  And there had been things he couldn’t stand. But it was only afterwards, when he returned to the normal world, that he realised how much he had grown accustomed to it. The extreme macho culture on board. The Finns who claimed all Swedes were gay. And the Swedes who did everything to prove the Finns wrong. The casual racism. Their shop manager, who with a significant look might say that it was looking ‘dark’ on the gangway today. Or Lill, who was in charge of the perfume section and openly complained that it’s actually really difficult to find a scent that suits the Africans, because they smell so different. The persistent myth that Arabs brought their own camp stoves to cook in their cabins, because they were too cheap to eat in the restaurants. And Calle hates himself for not having put his foot down more often. More forcefully. For not asking who it was who had seen all these Arabs with their camp stoves. But he had been too young, too much of a coward.

  Instead, his strategy had been to assume the role of the ‘fun gay guy’. He took every opportunity to score cheap points with gay jokes before someone else could beat him to it. He made himself completely harmless to the macho guys. Slipped into the role of the girls’ finger-snapping, bitchy gay friend. It was so easy. Too easy. In the end, he barely knew who he was underneath it all. Only Pia and Filip saw other sides of him.

  And then there had been his own cynicism, which had grown more intense the longer he stayed on board. Seeing all that drunkenness. Spending all day every day with people in their most primitive state. And worst of all had been the ones who went on a booze cruise as an ironic gimmick, like some kind of common-people safari, pointing and laughing.

  He would have lost all faith in humanity if he had stayed.

  Thinking about how genuinely happy Pia had been to see him makes the lobster turn to ash in his mouth. Why did he ever stop calling her?

  Well, first it was the years of studying in Alnarp. That had been a new bubble, and every time he went up to Stockholm, he had just wanted to see Vincent. They had realised they were not an exception to the rule of long-distance relationships being hard. Then he got a job – a new bubble – and it had been easy to forget Pia and Filip, to tell himself all they had shared was the job. The job and the partying.

  Now he realises Vincent is waiting for an answer. Does he miss them?

  ‘We’ve been in touch a bit on Facebook,’ he says, chewing, ‘but it’s hard. You know how it is.’

  His phone beeps. Calle carefully wipes his hands on the linen napkin on his lap and makes sure the phone is angled away from Vincent so he can’t see the screen as he reads the text.

  HE’S A PERFECT TEN! EVERYTHING READY IN THE SUITE, SEE YOU SOON / PIA.

  Madde

  Dan Appelgren is looking at Madde from the laminated poster next to the stairs. He is wearing a dapper, Mafia-style suit and is laughing with one hand behind his neck, almost as if he is embarrassed in front of the camera, despite being so fucking fit. He is so fucking sexy. Dan definitely looks like he knows how to fuck. Like he knows what he wants and how to take it.

  ‘Mummy misses you too,’ Zandra coos into her phone. ‘Lots and lots.’

  Dan is somewhere on this ship right now, and the thought makes Madde’s stomach flip. She checks the corridor they came from. She knows there is a split-level suite up here on deck nine. Maybe that is where he is staying. He might have been taking a shower at the same time as her, just a few feet away. Madde shoots him one last quick glance before starting down the stairs.

  ‘And tomorrow night, around this time, I’ll come pick you up from Daddy’s,’ Zandra says.

  Madde had hoped to get Zandra to come out with her tomorrow night. They could have partied all the way back from Finland and then hit the town. Zandra claims her ex refuses to swap days, but Madde isn’t convinced Zandra really tried to talk him around. Everyone is so old and boring these days. Everyone has children and everything has to fit around them. Sometimes they are too tired to go out even when they are free. Like pensioners. And Madde wonders what things will be like when she is unemployed, when she doesn’t even have a social life during the day.

  Don’t think about it, she admonishes herself. Don’t ruin tonight, the time we actually do have together, before it even starts.

  ‘You’re going to have a lovely night, aren’t you?’ Zandra continues, and Madde wishes she would wrap it up already.

  They reach deck eight, right by the entrance to Charisma Buffet.

  ‘Say hi to Daddy,’ Zandra says. ‘I probably won’t be able to call tonight, but I promise I’ll think about y
ou when I go to bed. Of course, sweetheart. Don’t be sad. Lots of kisses. I love you. Bye. Lots of kisses. It’ll be all right. Love you, bye.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Madde asks as they pass through the open doors.

  ‘I think I managed to calm her down,’ Zandra says. ‘She had a bad dream about me.’

  Madde only half listens. A blond, skinny guy with bulging eyes greets them. Madde has never seen him before.

  ‘You’re late,’ he says testily after crossing them off the list. ‘You only have an hour and fifteen minutes before the next sitting.’

  ‘So?’ Madde says. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Table twenty-five,’ he says, pointing to a plan. ‘It’s one of the tables on the right, near the windows.’

  ‘I know,’ Madde says impatiently. ‘We’re regulars.’

  ‘Oh my God, what a grumpy little fucker,’ Zandra says as they make their way between the tables.

  ‘Right? It’s not like we’re late for the Nobel dinner.’

  But she actually doesn’t give a toss about the bovine maître d’. Lovely smells are reaching her from the long buffet tables and the room is packed.

  Anticipation fizzes inside her like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.

  Madde grabs a tray and a plate, expertly piles it high with gratins and sauces and ham, egg halves and gravlax and shrimp, using the space on her plate as efficiently as possible, as though she is playing buffet Tetris. She skips the potatoes, bread, anything that is just filler. They walk to the taps, take two glasses each, filling all four to the brim with white wine, and toast as soon as they sit down. The wine is sweet and just the right temperature. She takes a picture of her food, manages to upload it on the second attempt. She digs in. So fucking delicious. It always is.

  Madde must have gone on the Charisma at least twenty times over the years. She was only little the first time. Her family had taken a trip down to Stockholm and rounded their vacation off with a cruise. Madde loved it. She sat here at Charisma Buffet, thinking this must be what it felt like to be as rich as the people on Falcon Crest. It was her first proper glimpse of another world beyond Boden, and the first time she realised she could be part of it. She just had to seek it out. In a way, it was because of the Charisma she moved to Stockholm. And Zandra had come with her, thank God.

  By now, Madde obviously knows that people who are properly rich would never be caught dead on a booze cruise to Finland. But it doesn’t matter. She can still get the same childish thrill from taking off like this. It is like giving everyday life the slip. A twenty-four-hour escape into a parallel universe.

  Zandra looks amazing tonight. She has put her hair up in pigtails; the hair ties have pink feathers on them, like her boa, and they make her look like the Zandra Madde got to know almost thirty years ago. The one who was bullied for her lisp and had overprotective parents, who already considered Madde a bad influence on their daughter.

  ‘I want another toast,’ Madde says, and notices to her surprise that she is already slurring her words. ‘To us. For being so fucking awesome.’

  Zandra raises her glass. ‘Hear, fucking hear,’ she exclaims, and downs the contents.

  Madde follows her lead. ‘You’re still my best friend, you know that, right?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ Zandra says with a giggle. ‘Who else would put up with you?’

  ‘Bitch,’ Madde replies, and takes a sip from her second glass of wine.

  Zandra lets out another giggle. One of her front teeth overlaps the other; Madde loves that snaggletooth. My God, she must be well on her way to being hammered if she is already getting sentimental.

  ‘And that thing about your job,’ Zandra is saying. ‘It’s going to be all right, right?’

  Madde takes another sip. ‘We have to go check out the karaoke later,’ she says.

  ‘Sure,’ Zandra replies. ‘I wouldn’t mind being Dan’s groupie.’

  ‘No, I already called dibs. Why don’t you snog those four Italians of yours instead?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d turn down a Quattro Stagioni,’ Zandra retorts.

  ‘I hope they’ll hold the cheese.’

  Zandra laughs like only she can: throws her head back, her large breasts jiggling in her cleavage, her tongue sticking out. It is impossible not to join in.

  And somehow the second glass of wine is suddenly empty too. But there is more where that came from. For almost a whole hour still they can eat and drink as much as they please. To be honest, Madde is full already, but there are so many more things to try. She pushes her plate aside when she gets up for more. The plates are like the towels: you can always get another. Someone will get rid of the used one.

  Albin

  His dad is telling a story about Irma, one of the carers who look after Albin’s mum when he is at work. Instead of doing her job, she always just sits at the kitchen table, smoking and flipping through magazines while going on and on about her dog or her love problems. Anecdotes involving her normally make Dad angry, but tonight he is in a good mood. They morph into funny stories; his mum and Aunt Linda laugh a lot.

  This is his dad at his best. He does a perfect impression of the carer, and he really paints a picture, telling the story. But he is constantly topping up his wine from the taps, apparently not noticing that Mum and Aunt Linda have barely touched their glasses.

  Why does he carry on drinking? Surely he knows how it ends?

  And why don’t Mum and Aunt Linda ever tell him off properly, instead of first egging him on with laughter and then reaching for the snarky comments and veiled looks once it is already too late?

  ‘She reminds me a bit of that woman we lived next to as children,’ Linda says. ‘That Jonsson or Johansson lady.’

  ‘Who?’ his dad says.

  ‘Oh, you know. The one whose son was in my class. The boy who always wore the same clothes. I think he played bandy.’

  ‘I can hardly be expected to remember everyone you went to school with; I barely remember the ones in my class.’

  ‘No, I know,’ Linda agrees. ‘I’m just trying to help you remember the old lady next door. Well, maybe not an old lady, I guess. She was probably no older than we are now.’

  She tries to laugh at herself, but his dad is glaring at her impatiently. Albin feels sorry for her.

  ‘Her dog injured its hind leg one time and she wheeled it around in a pram all summer,’ Linda continues.

  ‘Right,’ his dad says. ‘That I remember. Maybe you should have led with that if you wanted to jog my memory.’

  Linda looks dejected.

  ‘So what about her?’ his dad wants to know.

  ‘That’s it,’ Linda says. ‘That was the whole thing. That she wheeled the dog around like a baby. I bet your carer would have done the same.’

  His dad takes a big gulp of wine. His face is expressionless.

  ‘Oh dear,’ his mum says. ‘Some people really do go crazy for their pets. But I guess they rather become part of the family.’

  She clears her throat and puts a piece of chocolate cake in her mouth. Albin picks up a piece of his own, dips it in cream. The edges are just the right level of chewy.

  ‘I love the stellar reception here,’ Lo exclaims, shaking her phone.

  The couple at the next table turn around to look at her.

  ‘Would you put that away?’ Linda snaps. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to spend a bit of time with us, you know.’

  Lo narrows her eyes at Linda, but she does put her phone away. ‘I guess I don’t have much of a choice,’ she says.

  Linda heaves a sigh and turns to Albin’s mum and dad. ‘Sometimes I think Lo’s phone has grown attached to her hand. She’s completely addicted to social media.’

  ‘Well, we don’t let Albin do any of that,’ his dad says. ‘He has to wait until he’s fifteen.’

  ‘I’m not exactly much better, but still,’ Linda says. ‘It’s like the more ways of communicating we get, the less we actually communicate.’

  �
��I love that you have such incredibly original opinions, Mum. Really.’ Lo’s eyes roll so far back Albin worries about them spinning all the way around.

  ‘But it’s true,’ Linda says. ‘You just sit there fiddling with your phone.’

  ‘Fiddling?’ A soundless little giggle escapes Lo.

  ‘Yes,’ Linda says. ‘Seems to me it’s all you’re interested in.’

  ‘Sorry if I forgot to take notes about all the fascinating things you’re saying.’

  ‘Lo, that’s enough!’ Linda is almost shouting. ‘I’m so fucking tired of your attitude! I’m taking your phone if you don’t cut it out right now!’

  ‘I already put it away,’ Lo mutters.

  The couple at the next table are watching the scene unfold, apparently finding it hilarious.

  ‘Isn’t the chocolate cake just delicious though?’ his mum says with a pleading look at Albin. ‘Do you remember that summer when you and Lo wouldn’t stop baking them?’

  Albin nods. They had been eight. They ate until their whole mouths tasted of chocolate, lying on the sofa together, watching film after film on the laptop.

  His mum had still been able to walk back then. She’d had long hair that she used to brush every night before going to bed. His dad’s hair had been more blond than grey. And his grandma had still been alive, even if Albin had never thought about her, because he had never met her. It was only after she died that his dad started talking about her when he had been drinking.

  ‘The two of you were unbelievable,’ his mum continues. ‘Between you, you could scarf down a whole cake. And you drank so much milk!’

  ‘Drinking milk is my number one advice to the general public. It’s, like, a bodily fluid.’ Lo is looking straight at Albin when she says that and, for the first time, he detects a hint of the old Lo.

  He giggles. Pulls his fork through the whipped cream and puts it in his mouth. Smacks his lips.

  Lo giggles too. ‘From a dirty old cow teat,’ Lo says.

  ‘Delicious,’ Albin retorts.

  Mum looks disappointed.

  If the grown-ups hadn’t been around, Albin would have reminded Lo that she used to suck on her mum’s boob when she was little. He laughs out loud as a shiver of revulsion runs down his spine.