Page 29

1998

Kaya expects Miika to be out with the reindeer when she returns from exercising the dogs that morning, and he is. Feeding his beloved beasts, spreading lichen around the enclosure, checking their fur. She’ll miss those animals when she’s gone. But they don’t mean anything to her any more. Let them keep Miika company. Her stupid husband and his stupid deer. He’ll probably kill the dogs. He won’t bother with them, if Kaya isn’t there to feed and run them.

She waves at Miika, but he ignores her. She isn’t surprised.

She just needs to act natural for the next couple of hours. She only wants a few things from the house. Some clothes to keep her going, her sketchbook. Everything else she can leave. When she ‘goes’ to work tonight, she’ll seize her chance.

She has enough money to last a couple of months in Helsinki. She can get a job as soon as she arrives and work until the baby is born. Then, when the time comes, she will have plenty of savings, along with the help she’ll get from the state, to manage on her own for a while. As soon as she’s able, she’ll find childcare and return to work, then it’s just a matter of building a life. Other women do it, all the time. Kaya has already shown that she can survive the worst situations. This one, without any men, will be a piece of cake.

Maybe, eventually, she’ll even move beyond Finland. She’s always wondered what it would be like to live near the Mediterranean.

Kaya smiles and lets herself into the house.

She busies herself making some food in the kitchen. Miika’s favourite dinner. She doesn’t want to give him any inkling she’s leaving him this very day.

She hopes he chokes on the dinner.

How quickly she went from being happy and thinking they might have a future together to not caring if he lives or dies. When he slapped her, he slapped the hope out of her. She knew how things would be. Even after he apologised, she knew the bigger she got, the worse it would get. His love for her is conditional. It doesn’t extend to raising another man’s child. He’d force her to choose, or do the choosing for her. And now Kaya is done with men making choices on her behalf.

To hell with Miika.

She slips upstairs every few minutes to put an item in the bag she has stashed under the bed.

A couple of hours before she should be leaving for work, she rings her parents’ home. There’s no answer.

Kaya starts to feel upset.

She just wants to hear her mother’s voice. It’s going to be a few days before she calls again and she fears that when she goes, people might worry she’s had an accident.

She doesn’t like the idea of her mother and father worrying about her and it will take Kaya time to find the courage to ring them from Helsinki and tell them why she’s there.

Miika comes in and sees her on the phone when she’s dialling a second time.

‘Just ringing Mom,’ Kaya says.

He grunts and goes to the kitchen.

The phone rings out again and Kaya replaces the receiver, a lump in her throat.

Maybe she’ll try to phone them from a garage when she’s on the road. If not, she’ll just have to suck it up for a day or two. Perhaps her mother will guess what’s happened. Perhaps she’s been waiting for Kaya to run.

She slips upstairs, goes into the bathroom and flushes the toilet, then goes back into the bedroom and opens her wardrobe.

Her outfit for work is already laid out on the bed. Kaya only wants her drawing book now. She’s stashed it in the back of the wardrobe, behind her shoes. Miika has never been interested in looking in the book but, still, it’s become like a diary to her and she didn’t want to take the chance of him picking it up absentmindedly. These days, she either has it with her or it’s well hidden.

Kaya reaches for the book but all her fingers find is empty space.

‘I saw you, you know.’

She hadn’t heard him come up.

Kaya’s head whips around. She gets off her knees and faces her husband.

He’s holding her book in his hand.

‘When I passed the garage earlier. I saw his car and yours parked outside; the two of you trying to hide in the front seats like teenagers. Is that where you fucked him? In your car? He wouldn’t even shell out for one of those hotel rooms they keep building, no?’

‘Miika—’

‘I suppose he couldn’t have you in his house. With his wife there. Unless you waited for her to be out visiting her sick mother. Cancer, isn’t it? Did you have sex in their bed while his wife was visiting her dying mother, Kaya?’

He flicks open the drawing book while Kaya stands there, trembling, shame running through her.

To have it thrown at her like that, like she’s some thoughtless. . . slut.

Kaya is mortified. She suddenly feels very, very small.

He’s in the doorway. If she runs for it, he’ll block her way.

‘Did you fuck him in my bed, Kaya? These could be our sheets.’

Miika turns the book around to show her the page on which Kaya had drawn her lover.

‘Did you really think I’d rear his child with you? Or that I’d let you run off and make a fool of me? Where do you think you’re going, anyway, with your bag? And the car that I paid for? Whore! You filthy, lying whore!’

Kaya’s cheeks are on fire. Something rushes through her; the strength of the emotion takes away all the embarrassment and apology and humility.

She suddenly stares at Miika and sees him for what he is.

‘How fucking dare you?’ she says. ‘You, of all people. You brought me up here. You think I wanted this life? To be a little wife to a fucking reindeer farmer in the middle of nowhere? To make you dinners and clean your house and lie on my back while you grunted over me for two fucking minutes once a week, with the smell of alcohol on your breath? To be your punching bag because your life hasn’t worked out how you wanted it? What the hell else were you ever going to do, Miika? You were always going to end up here. Taking over your father’s farm, drinking and beating up some woman. I wasn’t. I settled for you. That’s all it was. Taking what I thought was the best of a bad bunch. You were a disappointment. I was going to do something better. And I still am. Now, get the fuck out of my way.’

Miika is staring at her, completely stunned at her outburst. Kaya is practically standing on her tippy toes, she’s so full of rage. If he tries to hit her now, she’ll hit him back. And she won’t just hit him. She’ll kill him. She won’t stop until he’s dead.

But to Kaya’s absolute surprise, Miika doesn’t hit her.

He gets out of her way.