Page 9

1998

The next time Kaya sees her lover is at work. He’s sitting with friends tonight, at a table across from the bar. He doesn’t really belong in that circle but he’s good at acting like he does. He tries to catch her eye while she’s serving a group of customers. The group consists of more of the ubiquitous developers, up from Helsinki. This lot have visited several times in the last couple of months. They’re almost regulars at this point but they still don’t know Kaya’s name; they don’t even acknowledge her existence when she serves them. Kaya, like all the other locals, is just another face that can be roped into serving the many tourists these men want to attract to the area, while they live in their nice apartments in Helsinki and private villas out by the lakes below the capital.

He comes to the counter when she’s free, to the side where they normally take in the dirty glasses. She can tell he’s been contributing plenty to the bar’s profits tonight. His eyes are glassy; he smiles at her but it’s lopsided.

Almost a week has passed since she turned up at his house looking to speak to him. Almost a week since he left her standing in the cold on his doorstep, refusing to even allow her in to dry off and warm up.

She’s thought of him every second since but she knows he hasn’t thought about her. He’s thinking about her now, though. She can see it in the way he’s drinking her in as she bends over to fill the glass-washer, her skirt riding up her thighs at the rear.

His wife is tending to her invalid mother up in Riutula.

He expects Kaya to come home with him tonight. He expects her to allow him to fuck her, even after how he treated her.

‘Kaya,’ he whispers, his voice silky and familiar. ‘Aren’t we friends any more?’

She shrugs. She’s not so good an actress that she can pretend his slight to her didn’t happen. She’s still stinging. She’s only twenty-two and some hurts are worse than others.

‘Kaya, pudding.’ He gives her the puppy dog eyes that always work, the look that leaves her begging for him even when she knows everything between them is so wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I freaked out. You know how much I worry. For you and for me.’

It sounds like he means the apology.

Or Kaya wants to believe him so badly, she’s happy to fool herself that he does.

‘I know,’ she says, quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have come to your home.’

He shakes his head, makes a little admonishing gesture with his finger, then winks as he strokes his chin.

‘Not that I don’t like it when you’re naughty,’ he says.

She feels her insides melt. Is that all it takes, she chides herself. Him turning on the charm, him wanting you again?

Yes, she’s sorry to admit. She so badly needs to feel wanted, she’ll forgive almost anything.

Not that she won’t make him work a little harder. She’ll expect him to worship her. She’ll want him to say all the right things. But she needs things to be okay between the two of them. For everything that’s to come.

She’ll go home with him after her shift. Her husband is always asleep when she gets in, anyway. His day on the farm starts in the middle of the night; when she’s on night shifts in the bar, their paths barely cross and he’s used to her ‘working’ late.

She always has time to wash the scent of her lover off her body before her husband can sniff him on her.

Yes, she’ll go home with this man who’s causing her so much turmoil. She’ll let him take her clothes off and she’ll let him fuck her and when he’s happy, when he’s sated and lying in her arms, she’ll ask him if he’s noticed the changes in her body, if he’s already sensed the difference.

His wife can’t have children.

Kaya wonders if that’s what will tip it for him. The chance to be a father.

Once he’s on board, he’ll protect her from her husband.

He’ll protect her and he’ll protect his baby.

The child that is a ticking time bomb in Kaya’s womb.