Erotic Refugees (23 page)

One of the staff came by to add
another candle to the table. They were both silent until he’d
passed.

“
Well go on,” Alice said.
“Say something, I can see you want to.”

“
But … I don't get it.
What stupid thing could Andy possibly do? I mean he seems like a
nice guy—”

“
I didn't say he wasn't
nice, Eoin. But he did something I told him not to do, that he
promised not to do, and it started a destructive fight between me
and Johan that hasn't really stopped yet. I suppose our marriage
was already over, in most ways. But it could have ended in a much
better way than that.”

Eoin nodded, not knowing what
to make of this new side of Alice, the side that maybe didn’t
always know what it was doing. “And why didn't you just tell me
this before?”

Alice stared into her latte and
stirred it slowly with the long spoon. “Well, because it's painful,
and I didn't expect Andy to just pop up like that again.”

“
Maybe if you went to
talk to him—”

She gave him a fierce look.
“Why would I want to talk to him? I told you, he started the
collapse of my marriage—”

“
And you didn't have
anything to do with that, did you? You’re completely in the clear,
morally speaking.”

“
No,” she hissed. “I'm
not. And I know that. But you don't know the whole story. It could
have been handled without the mess it all turned into. And that's
why I don't want to see Andy, not now, and not on Gotland either.
There's just too much that's his fault, and I don't plan to bring
all those things up again. You’re welcome to come, and Rob too.
Just get the ferry to Visby and I'll pick you up there.”

“
Oh,” Eoin said, a little
off-balance as he hadn't counted on being re-invited to her summer
house. “Um, good. I suppose I could come, I don't have any plans. I
don't think Rob does either. So yes, good then.”

“
Perfect,” Alice said.
She reached out and patted his hand again. She smiled warmly. “And
now let's steer this away from old pain, agreed? And just get on
with things. Like, for example, this wrong girl of yours, and
what's happening with this website. This single-parent thing. Isn't
it done yet?”

“
Oh the site, the site!”
Eoin said, suddenly bubbling over with gossip. “Just wait until you
hear this!”

Alice nodded, her eyes playful
behind the glass she'd raised to her face.

“
Oh good sir, do
tell.”

After they parted company Eoin
wandered through the Old Town. The cobbles were dry now, since it
hadn't rained since the morning. The clouds had thinned out too,
allowing the sun to paint splotches of orange light on the old
buildings. It was starting to feel a bit like summer again.

He pressed his way through a
gaggle of American cruise-ship tourists and slipped up a side
street. He made a few turns and suddenly found himself passing by
Malone’s. People sat at the tiny tables outside, chattering away in
a range of languages and accents, Irish among them. Eoin's thoughts
wandered to Rob, and then to Karen, and finally to the fact that he
now knew where she was. It occurred to him he should probably share
this information with Rob, who would be very anxious to hear
it.

He called him as he wandered
down Stora Nygatan on his way to the water's edge. Hopefully he
could find a place there to sit and absorb the summer sun before
the clouds massed to consume it again.

The mobile rang six times
before it was answered. “Hi Rob, it's—”

“
Eoin!” Rob said
excitedly. “I was just goin' to call ye this minute! I worked it
out, man! I know who nicked the idea and gave it to Diamond
Date!”

“
What?” Eoin said,
shifting the mobile to the other ear. “You do? Well who was it
then?”

“
Well,” Rob said, “it was
really weird! I was just reading the paper and they had an article
about Internet dating, so I thought, right, interesting, maybe
relevant, yeah? And they were talking to the guys who started
Diamond Date and—”

“
Come on Rob, who was
it?”

“
Wait, I'm gettin' there!
So I'm reading this and lookin' at their names, and one of the
surnames is Jemte. That sticks out cos it’s unusual, and then it
hits me that I know another person called Jemte. I remember she
said her brother was involved in a few online things, and I put it
together—”

“
Jesus Rob, who is it?
Who told them?”

“
Bloody Kajsa,” Rob
said.

Eoin slowed his pace and
pressed the mobile to his head. “Kajsa? You mean that girl you used
to see?”

“
Yeah. We didn't break up
so well, and I guess she thought, just to show me a thing or
too…”

Eoin swung his head back and
groaned loudly. People passing by quickened their pace, trying not
to catch his eye. He pressed the phone back to his ear.

“
So let me get this
straight. You tell her our idea, you dump her horribly, and then
she tells her brother so he can steal it? Jesus Rob, why didn't you
just give her the keys to your flat and a bag of shit to smear on
your furniture? I mean, bloody hell, what a balls-up!”

“
Well at least now we
know,” Rob said. “But what the hell do we do about it? Wasted all
our hard work, didn't she?”

Eoin came to the water's edge,
where it seemed every teenager in Stockholm had gathered to enjoy
the sunshine. They lounged about on the wooden walkway like
cigarette-smoking seals. He found a vacant place by the water and
claimed it quickly, stretching out his legs in relief.

“
Well,” he said to Rob.
“Unless you're talking about hiring a hit man, I don't think
there's much we can do. Even if she did it, you'll probably never
be able to prove it. We can't sue them, and we can't even prove we
had the idea first, can we?”

There were a few moments of
silence before Rob spoke.

“
You think?”

“
Yes Rob, I do think.
We’ll have to let it go. I guess Kajsa got her revenge on you,
didn’t she? She won and you completely lost.

“
Or rather, we all
did.”

Chapter
24

Rob tapped his fingers on the
plastic window ledge as he studied the scenery sliding past outside
the train. It wasn't terribly exciting, as it was just the
outskirts of a city. But it was a city he'd never been to before,
in a country he'd never been to either, so that made it at least
noteworthy.

He continued to stare, as it
was really too early to do much else. He'd taken the night train
from Stockholm and had spent eight hours being bounced around on an
uncomfortable bed in a room he'd shared with five professional
snorers. Actual sleep hadn't been part of the deal. The day was
bright and cheery but Rob didn’t count on being either of those
things for quite a few hours yet, or possibly not until
tomorrow.

The train finally slid to a
halt in Copenhagen’s central station, which was pretty dead at this
time of the morning. Rob swung his bag onto his shoulder and
stumbled out of the train where he paused for air. The air
displeased him so he lit a cigarette and added some smoke to it,
and that made him feel a bit better. He slid onto a bench, pulled
out his mobile and stared at Karen’s number.

It was really early, but maybe
that might be a good time to catch her. She was at least sure to be
at home, right? Unless, he added with a mental frown, she was in
somebody else’s home, which was less good. But her mobile would
anyway be there. Karen and her whole generation never seemed to
turn off their mobiles at all and used them as alarm clocks,
calendars, notebooks and, if Eamonn could be believed (which was
doubtful) even occasionally as vibrators.

He pressed the dial button and
slipped his foot through the strap of his bag with a shifty glance
around. As the call connected he leaned back on the bench and
yawned so hard that his eyes watered.

“
Bro?” came a drowsy
voice after a few rings. “What happened?”

Rob winced. Of course, she'd
assume something bad had happened when a relative called early in
the morning. That was stupid of him.

“
Nothing, it's all fine.
All's well.”

“
Oh,” she said dreamily.
“Alright then. Mad. Look, I just started on the new stuff for the
site, if you're in a big hurry then I can have it over—“

“
No rush with that. But
listen, guess where I am. Go on now, have a guess.”

From the fumbling and grunting
on the other side Rob assumed that she was getting out of bed and
putting something on. Socks? A bathrobe? Or maybe a bunny outfit
for the seedy strip club where all the naïve country girls ended
up?

“
Um,” she said, and
cracked a yawn of her own. “At early mass maybe? I don't know, it's
not a good time for the quiz and all.”

“
I'm in Copenhagen,” he
said with a grin. “Heard it was nice this time of year. And it is
too, right?”

Karen didn't say anything.
There came the sound of running water and then a click that was
either somebody pressing the power switch on a kettle, or somebody
cocking a pistol. Rob sucked on his cigarette as a few more moments
of silence passed.

“
Look,” Karen said. “I'm
not going anywhere with you, alright? I'm fine here, and if the
mother wants you—”

“
Oh shite Karen, it's not
the mother, is it? She's no clue I'm here. It's just, if we have to
go and identify yer body at some stage in the future, I can just
see the slappin' around the head I'll get, and the whole 'why did
you believe her Rob? Why?' and then all the wailing. I just can't
stand that bloody wailing. I just want to see that yer
fine—”

“
But I am
fine—”

“
Sure ye'd say that. But I just
want to confirm, for my own peace of mind, that yer not living with
crack addicts in a corner of an underground car park! Because if
I'm telling the mother all's well I want to be sure I'm not lying
through my teeth. Not all of them anyway.”

“
Rob, I can actually take
care of myself—”

“
And when I see that with
my own eyes I'll leave ye be. But not before.”

There came a few more sounds
from Karen's end of the call. First a kitchen-ish banging and
scraping, and finally a slurping sound that caused Rob's stomach to
churn and reminded him he’d had no breakfast.

“
I can come to yer flat,
just tell me where—”

“
No, I'll meet you out,
not in the flat.”

“
Why?” Rob said, frowning
with suspicion. “It is a drug den, isn't it? With guns and bodies
stashed everywhere?”

“
Um, no bro, it's just a
mess, haven't done the dishes in like a week.”

“
Fine, just pick a place
that's easy for me to find. And when I say easy, I mean like Eiffel
Tower easy. I'm not in the best shape for talking to people and
gettin' directions.”

“
Front gate of the
Tivoli, the big carnival smack in the middle of town. Even babies
can show you the way. Although of course the babies will only speak
Danish.”

“
Right, see you there at
ten. Gives me time to get some tea. I'm assumin' there is tea to be
had in this country?”

“
Yeah bro, no problem on
the tea. Go wake yourself up a bit, and see you there. I'll be the
girl with the pirate tattoos and the parrot.”

Rob blinked. “What—”

“
Later!” And she hung
up.

Karen didn't have any tattoos,
although Rob noticed her hair was longer and sleeker than he
remembered and her clothes had taken a definite slide in the
black-is-best direction. Those high stompy boots didn't seem very
well adapted to summer mornings either. But thankfully there was no
parrot in sight.

“
What's all this?” he
said with a scowl.

“
It's clothes, bro. Nice
to see you too.”

Rob leaned over and gave her a
hug, which was a new thing for them. But people in Sweden hugged
each other constantly and now he figured it was just what you did
when you met family members. There was a new scent coming from her,
something dark and spicy and troubling.

When the hug was done, he
released his sister and studied her again. Something had changed
about her, something very basic. She was no longer the annoying and
distracted teenager with the few strips of multicoloured ribbon
sewn rebelliously onto the hem of her school-uniform skirt. Now she
was some confusing woman-thing with wild green eyes that blazed out
of her pale Irish face, all framed by that sea of mad black
hair.

Rob began to understand how she
could be seen, by some people at least, to be—and he could barely
bring himself to think the word—attractive. And not just in a
motherly “yes of course you're beautiful dear” kind of way, but
actually attractive, good looking, a true object of desire, with
cars slowing to a crawl as they passed and the wind ruffling her
hair and birds landing on her shoulders singing and everything.

Rob realised he wanted a
cigarette, and bad. He waved a hand accusingly across her torso.
“So this is …”

She looked down and up again.
“Well it's goth, obviously. I did wear this back home, you know,
just not on an average day around town. And never in the house.
It's not exactly easy to get away with looking like this back in
the arsehole of Ireland. And the mother would probably have tried
to bring in an exorcist.”