The Hanging Girl

29

End of March 2014

After Shirley had spoken to Pirjo, she rolled up the two-tone belt and placed it on the windowsill. It lay there beside her toiletry bag and all the books she’d brought from home. Neither intrusive nor forgotten.

She calmed herself with reassurances that Wanda must be in Jamaica. Right enough, she’d tried to contact people there, but were they the right people, the right telephone numbers, the right questions and answers? When she thought back to her memories with Wanda, there seemed to be fewer and fewer details about who she was—her background and future ambitions—that she could be totally certain of. Wanda had said that she wanted to go to Öland, but she’d always been a warm-blooded and spontaneous woman, so how could Shirley know with any certainty that something or other hadn’t happened in the meantime that changed her plans? She couldn’t.

Nevertheless, from time to time she couldn’t resist letting something slip about the Wanda mystery if the opportunity presented itself.

She told in colorful detail about how her best friend had become fascinated, yes, almost seduced, by Atu’s personality and presence, and about how she’d totally unrealistically thought she’d become his chosen one. In the beginning, the other disciples laughed a little at this ambitious story, but after a while, as it became more and more worn, interest decreased and irritation grew.

“Some of us think that you should choose your words more carefully, Shirley,” said one of the men who worked with the carpentry team. “The story with the belt is creating unease and a lot of unsubstantiated speculation. We’re not happy about it. Maybe you should consider leaving the academy if being here gives you so many negative feelings.”

They weren’t necessarily harsh words, but Shirley was paralyzed by them. Was she making herself a pariah? Did people really think that the place would be better without her?

Shirley didn’t want to be a pariah, she wanted to be popular and liked, and so for that reason Shirley buried the story of Wanda Phinn.

When her course period was successfully completed, it was her intention to apply for permanent admission, and her innermost desire was for this to be granted. As the months had gone by, she imagined with more and more certainty that it was here she should spend the rest of her life. Yes, and it was maybe even here that she’d find a life partner.

Valentina was one of the ones she could talk about her future dreams with, because in that respect they weren’t much different. At a few communal assemblies she’d seen her with a guy who she’d seemingly set her eye on, but that had come to an end, and afterward the two women had begun to chat together. Throughout most of Shirley’s course period, Valentina had worked with the center website and advertising, but at her own request had been moved to internal maintenance, suddenly making her much more visible and present.

They told each other about their unfortunate backgrounds. About how they’d escaped both bullying and harassment and been elevated to a new and better life.

Shirley was astonished when Valentina began telling the story of her miserable time in Spain, because when Shirley looked around among all these well-functioning people, it had never crossed her mind that most of them had had experiences similar to her own before they came here. She’d seriously imagined that she was the only person here that fortune had never smiled down on. And now she’d found a like-minded friend, who was also able to tell her that her story was far from unusual.

“Everyone here has skeletons in their closet they don’t want to be confronted with, Shirley. Remember that, and listen to Atu next time he says he ‘sees you.’ He knows who you are, and he accepts you for who you are.”

It was with that realization that they came to be really close to one another in so many respects. Not since Malena had Valentina had such a good friend here as Shirley, she told her. And Shirley was flattered and moved.

Naturally, it wasn’t forbidden to talk about life outside the center, but for many it just didn’t seem natural. This certainly wasn’t how Valentina and Shirley felt, with many common interests and favorite topics of conversation being the order of the day. “Even though you grow up in Seville, George Clooney can still give you as many steamy dreams as someone who grew up in Birmingham,” as Valentina put it. Just like Shirley, Valentina loved Enrique Iglesias more than his dad, Julia Roberts more than Sharon Stone, beer more than wine, and musicals more than opera.

They rattled off hundreds of things they either hated or loved, and every time they ended up in stitches over how similar they could be in spite of significant cultural differences.

Disciples didn’t normally sit in each other’s rooms. Even so, there were times when these two women sneaked into each other’s room so they could hang out together and have a laugh.

It was on one of these evenings that Valentina noticed the belt on the windowsill and was given the true and unabridged version of what had gone through Shirley’s mind when it turned up.

Valentina listened to the story with great interest. It was obviously the first time she’d heard it.

And when Shirley was finished, shrugging her shoulders over how stupid it had been of her to have such thoughts, Valentina turned her head away and sat staring out of the window without saying a word for a long time.

Shirley thought she’d behaved like an idiot by transgressing an inviolable boundary. That she’d violated the confidence and friendship that Valentina had shown her and that it was now irreparable.

She was just about to say sorry and that it was all just nonsense, and that over time she’d become totally convinced that Wanda Phinn was now living her own peaceful life somewhere else in the world, when Valentina turned toward her with a look that you didn’t normally see in that place.

“It reminds me of a strange and very unpleasant dream I had the other day,” she said with dark eyes. “But I don’t know if I should tell you about it.”