As he moved into position he could hear Theres’ voice like a rhythmic mumble, rising and falling as if she were singing a lullaby. When he got closer, he could hear what she was saying.
‘You mustn’t be afraid.’
‘No.’
‘You mustn’t get upset.’
‘No.’
‘You are little. They are big. They do bad things. They will be dead. They are angry because they will be dead. You are little. You will not be dead.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You will live forever. You are not in pain. You do not hurt anyone. You have a lovely song inside your head. They have ugly words. You are soft. They are hard. They want your life. Do not give your life to them. Do not give them tears. Do not be afraid.’
Her voice had a hypnotic quality that made Jerry start to sway back and forth where he stood. He too was touched by the message. Do not be afraid, do not be afraid. The fear he had felt in the shop was washed away, like words written on the shore. He had never heard Theres’ voice like this. It was caressing, inviting, healing. It was the voice of a mother comforting her child, it was the voice of a doctor telling the patient that everything will be fine, and it was the voice of the person who takes your hand in the darkness and leads you out.
Despite the fact that the voice wasn’t even speaking directly to Jerry, he swayed along with its rhythm and believed the simple truth it revealed: There was nothing to be afraid of.
As he swayed he lost his balance and moved his foot to straighten up. Theres heard it, and turned around. For a second she gazed into his eyes, looking at him like a stranger. Then her eyes slid away and she stood up. The other girl got up too. She was holding her head high now, relieved. Jerry shook himself as if to wake himself from a dream he didn’t really want to leave.
On the way home Theres said in her normal voice, ‘You mustn’t lie. You’re not to lie.’
‘What?’ said Jerry. ‘I haven’t lied. Everything turned out just the way I said.’
Theres shook her head. ‘You said the little girl wouldn’t be harmed. She was harmed. The big person harmed her. What you said was wrong.’
Yes, thought Jerry. Bloody good job, too.
During the late summer they would still sit jamming with the guitar sometimes, writing outlines of songs, but something had changed between them. After the incident in the shop Jerry had the feeling that he had unequivocally been moved into the category ‘big people’, and could therefore no longer be trusted. That it was only statistics that made Theres accept his presence: he hadn’t tried to kill her yet, and therefore was probably unlikely to do so in the future.
He thanked his lucky stars that she couldn’t remember how their acquaintance had started. He really had been trying to hurt her then. Perhaps she did remember somehow, and it was lying there beneath the surface, smouldering away as a lingering suspicion of evil intentions. But he had been a different person then. Or had he? Do we ever really become a different person?
Perhaps not. But people change. When Jerry looked back at his youth, he could hardly grasp what kind of person had broken into summer cottages and run wild. He seemed like the bad guy in some obscure old film.
It was when he sat on the cellar steps in his childhood home looking at the remains of his parents smeared all over the floor that he had taken the step. No. It was just after that. When he had decided to protect and care for the person who had murdered them. He could have made a very different choice. But at that critical moment he took a step in an unexpected direction and set off along a new road. Since then he had continued on that road, and it was taking him further and further away from his former self. It was just visible, far far away, and soon it would have to start sending postcards if it wanted to communicate with him.
Two months before Max Hansen sat down to write his message to Theres, she got a letter from TV4 congratulating her on a successful audition, and inviting her to present herself at Studio 2 in Hammarbyhamnen for sound check and make-up five hours before the program was to be recorded. There was also a new contract which involved signing over all her rights to everything.
Jerry couldn’t work out what idiotic impulse had made him set this particular ball rolling. The papers and the contract made it clear that he had no control whatsoever, that TV4’s machinery had both him and Theres firmly in its grasp. They were no longer the ones rolling the ball; the ball was rolling along with them inside it.
He might have been able to hide the papers and forget the whole thing if it hadn’t been for the fact that Theres was expecting them to arrive. Some girl at the auditions who had got through last year but fallen at the last hurdle had explained the whole thing to her. Theres knew exactly what was going on, and knew the date even before the papers arrived. There was nothing he could do.
Besides which, he felt the same as he had when it came to the auditions. However nervous Jerry was about the whole thing, a part of him was curious to see how things might go. The ball again. Something has been set in motion, and must be allowed to complete that movement.
They practised ‘Life on Mars’ and when the day of the recording arrived Jerry gave Theres precise instructions. The incident in the shop haunted him, and he was pushed to the very limit of his patience as he explained to Theres over and over again that whatever happened, she was not allowed to harm the big people.
‘What if they want to make me dead?’
‘They won’t do that. I promise.’
‘But if they do?’
‘They won’t. They won’t do you any harm at all.’
‘But they’ll want to. They always want to.’
And so on and so on. The time when they would need to leave was drawing closer and closer, and Jerry still wasn’t sure he had got anywhere. He turned to the last inducement he could come up with: ‘OK. Bugger all that. But listen to me. I’ll be furious if you do anything. Furious and upset.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…because it’ll cause all kinds of problems.’
Theres was quiet for a little while. Then she said, ‘You want to protect the big people.’
‘Think that if you want. But actually, I just want to protect you. And myself.’
Jerry had to use all his powers of persuasion to get his own pass at TV4, but after all it wasn’t exactly unknown for Idol contestants to want someone with them to provide support. He promised to stay in the background and not disrupt the preparations for the recording.
He went and sat right by the edge of the stage as Theres tested microphones and sang to the backing tape that had been prepared for her. As usual her voice gave him goosebumps, and all activity in the studio seemed to stop completely during the three minutes the song lasted.
Then Theres was given instructions on how to behave with regard to the cameras, and Jerry started chewing his nails when he saw her body stiffen as a choreographer gently took her by the shoulders to move her into the right position. Jerry was on the point of leaping out of his seat to explain the choreographer’s instructions, but the young man-who in Jerry’s opinion was almost certainly gay-was so soft and flexible in the way he moved that Theres never seemed to perceive him as a real threat.
Jerry couldn’t hear what was said, but he could see that Theres was listening to the instructions, looking at the cameras and into the cameras. When she sang the song again, she moved her body and her eyes in a way that suggested she had embraced the choreography, at least to a certain extent.
It was time for lunch, and when Theres quietly accepted that she couldn’t sit among the rest of the contestants eating baby food, Jerry began to relax slightly. She was adapting to the situation in spite of everything, and perhaps it was all going to work out.