Erotic Refugees (12 page)

He checked page two of the
guest book, just in case, and suddenly yelped as if he'd been stung
by a wasp. Right there, sandwiched between “Nice ass” and “What's
up honey?” was a comment from none other than Middle Mum. Eoin
pressed his face against the laptop screen until there was no
doubt. It was definitely her.

Middle Mum called herself
RosieCotton and in the tiny photograph she was holding what looked
like a badminton racket. He saw too that it was a recent comment,
from only a few days ago. He leaned back in his chair and tried to
focus, realising that this opened up all kinds of new and tangled
possibilities.

So Middle Mum was single and
dating, or else in a very complicated relationship. And soon she'd
know that Eoin was also active on Diamond Date and had stumbled
upon Anja's profile, since Anja would tell her all about it.

There was only one way to patch
up the situation (besides calling Alice, which he wasn’t going to
do). He topped up his wine glass and settled down to compose a
message to Anja. He had to move fast before she noticed he'd been
viewing her profile and decided to send a pissed-off message to him
instead, wondering why he hadn't called her. That could on no
account be allowed to happen. Eoin was not quite sure why, but that
would without a doubt be the worst thing ever.

He tapped in the final full
stop and sat back to read it. “Hi Anja.” His throat was dry; some
wine would fix that. “We have to stop bumping into each other like
this! I hope you're well. I meant to get back to you after the
midsummer party, sorry it took so long. So, I was wondering, do you
want to have a drink next week? Eoin.”

He studied the message—friendly
and neutral and saying just enough. He moved a few words around,
studied it some more, moved the words back, ran it through a
spell-checker and gave it a final glance-through. Maybe he should
break it up into paragraphs? Or maybe—

Oh, what the hell. He pressed
send. Then he jumped up, filled his wine glass, checked on Damien,
dusted a few shelves, turned the toilet paper in the bathroom so it
hung the right way around after Damien had moved it earlier,
straightened his shoes in the hall, checked on Damien again,
cleaned out the fragments of food in the sink with the red bendy
scraper, and then slid back into his chair.

Messages: none.

He groaned and scratched his
head furiously. He checked Anja's profile again and saw she was now
offline. But was she offline because of his message, or was she
just offline in general?

Eoin went back to her guest
book. What had Middle Mum written there? Nothing exciting, just
some “Hi girl, hope you're good, see you over the weekend!” kind of
stuff. His fingers itched. There was Middle Mum, her shiny black
hair and summery laugh just a few clicks away, but nevertheless
totally unclickable.

It just wouldn't work,
arranging to meet Anja for a date while at the same time flirting
with her friend. It would make him look like a complete dick as
well as making things unbearably complicated, and they were already
complicated enough. No, there was no way whatsoever that Eoin could
contact Middle Mum on the dating site. He'd just have to forget
about it, no matter how tempting it was, or how tanned and lean her
arms were, or how brightly her eyes sparkled…

Suddenly a very dangerous
thought popped into his head. Oh no, he couldn't do that—could he?
Something that dishonest? Well why not? It wasn't evil, it was just
a bit, well, edgy. But definitely not evil.

Eoin glanced at his wine glass.
How many times had he filled it tonight? Surely not enough to
affect his judgement. Because this was clearly a very good idea.
And as he continued to consider it, the better it became.

He grinned. Yeah, why not? He
sipped some wine, studied Middle Mum's photograph once more, and
got down to work.

This, without a doubt, would be
brilliant.

Chapter
14

Rob stood, hands on hips, and
stared at the tottering pile of crap crammed into his little
chicken-wire basement. What the hell were all these things? He
didn't remember getting a single one. Did he go shopping when he
was drunk? Did somebody else break in and leave their own stuff
behind? Did this tangle of boxes, suitcases and old furniture
somehow breed and multiply when he wasn't looking?

Worse than this mountain of
unexpected detritus was the fact that the one thing he actually
wanted, the little fold-out bed, was hidden somewhere behind it.
This wasn't good at all, and not a job that could usefully be done
this early on a Monday.

Rob wondered if he should go
get some coffee. That place up on Hornsgatan did some great
cappuccinos, plus you could sit there and read all the newspapers.
Maybe there were some jobs in the papers, or a cute waitress to
ponder, or—

But no! This had to be done.
Karen was on her way and there was nothing ready for her. At the
very least he wanted the bed ready so if she popped up late one
evening he wouldn't be forced to give her his bed and have to kip
on the floor.

He tucked in his t-shirt and
got down to work. He hauled, pulled and tugged, cursing as items
slid from their perches and clattered onto his head. He uncovered
books, bags, boots, shelves, blankets, and a dozen boxes from
electronic items that had long since ceased to be. Finally, with
the sweat sticky on his bare arms, he took a step back to survey
the newly arranged mess, and reached the one inescapable
conclusion—no bed.

He glared at the miscellaneous
crap that wasn't his fold-out bed, daring it to part like a Red Sea
of rubbish to reveal what he was looking for. But no such luck, the
bed simply was no more. Rob pulled up a stool—when exactly had he
bought a stool?—and sat on it.

So where was it then? Had he
lent it to somebody? Or had Hanna, his ill-advised live-in
girlfriend from a couple of years back, taken it when she'd emptied
his basement of her possessions, along with some of his that she'd
liked the look of?

Yeah, Hanna, that was it. The
mistake that just kept on giving. As he stared at the bedless mess
a dark and hopeless realisation settled on him. He didn't get that
feeling very often but when he did he knew there was no point in
fighting it. Even though he'd rather poke out his own eyes with a
fork, he would have to submit to it, body and soul. Not only submit
but embrace it, welcome it, take the pain and suffering like a man.
That was the only way to overcome it, to beat the horrid festering
evil of which no other evil could ever be an equal.

There simply was no other way
out. He would have to go to Ikea.

Eoin wondered why Rob had
texted him to ask what time he got off work, and why he'd sent a
minimalist reply of “Okay, see you then” when Eoin had said it
would be about five.

What was Rob up to? Probably
squeezing in a daytime tumble with some woman before it was time
for Eoin to head over and spend the evening working on the website.
He couldn’t deny he was looking forward to it. There had been
nothing to do in work, and he'd spent the morning making
flow-charts and sketches for the project. Then, with that out of
the way, he'd wasted the afternoon fretting about what to do with
Alice.

He had sent her a text message
on Saturday—Hi Alice, how goes it?—but her reply, coming some time
after, had not left him encouraged.

Doing my best, 2 sick kids,
running out of coffee, see you Monday!

She hadn't called him back, not
all weekend. Something was definitely wrong and Eoin was at a
complete loss about how to deal with it. It had to do with Andy,
obviously, but what was he supposed to do about that? How did Alice
and Andy even know each other? Would Andy tell him? Was he allowed
to ask? Would Alice tell him if he pushed her? Or was he imagining
a problem where no problem existed?

Either way, she hadn't been in
work today either. Alice did travel quite a bit as the HR manager
but it still felt a bit too strange, and Eoin didn't like
strange.

He turned his mobile over in
his hands, tingling with self-doubt, hoping Alice would call but
not prepared to call her himself. The plus side of all this
fretting about Alice was that his fretting about Anja was
temporarily on hold. She had agreed (quite cheerfully) to meet him
for a drink on Wednesday. His plan concerning Middle Mum was also
coming along but had to be taken slowly. It was a fine plan,
despite its inherent dishonesty, and he would keep it to himself
until he got it rolling. Alice, assuming she would ever speak to
him again, would surely be proud of him.

He returned his attention to
his sketches and decided that a trip to the stationery room was in
order as he'd soon need a highlighter pen in another colour.

That cheered him up. A trip to
the stationery room, on a day like this one, was really about as
exciting as it got.

Just before five Eoin closed
his laptop and stuffed his notes and sketches into his bag. There
was no jacket to worry about, just a light sweater, and then he was
off. There was no sign of Rob in the lobby downstairs, or outside
on the steps by the door. Eoin glanced at his watch and looked
around, wondering if he should call him.

The sound of a car horn made
him jump. He looked around, shading his eyes, and spotted somebody
waving to him from the window of a small green Toyota.

“
Come on in Eoin, yer
seat's all warm!”

Eoin hurried over to the car.
Rob was leaning out of the driver's window, a cigarette jammed in
the corner of his mouth and a gormless grin on his face. He thumped
the door panel.

“
Not the prettiest beast
in the paddock, but she'll do the job!”

Eoin nodded. “Right. Uh, Rob,
what's the car for?”

“
Slight detour Eoin,
sorry. Have to go to Ikea.”

“
Do we.” Eoin couldn't
suppress a shiver. Jenny had liked Ikea far too much, but he'd
never got used to the sheer scale of the place. All that choice,
unending oceans of choice flowing up to the distant roof and
leaving him feeling confused and ill. Give Eoin three or four
things to pick from and he was happy, but that much choice was
simply unhealthy.

“
Won't be long, just a
couple of things I need, and then we'll drive back! Still have
loads of time to work on the site!”

Eoin couldn't be bothered to
argue. Anyway, it could be nice to take a ride in a car. Neither he
nor Jenny had a license, and taxi rides in Stockholm, being so
expensive, were far from an everyday event.

He settled into the passenger
seat and pulled the creaky door closed. The car smelled of
cigarettes, and not just from Rob’s actual cigarette but from the
souls of other long-departed cigarettes.

“
Whose car is this
anyway?”

“
Eamonn's,” Rob said,
snapping his head around to check his reversing. The car made an
unnerving grinding sound as he forced the gears into position.
“Annika was away, and Andy doesn't like lendin' his car out. Well,
not to me anyway.”

“
But you have a license,
right?”

Rob gave a “duh” look which
Eoin took to mean yes. He drove a lively circle around the parking
lot, pulled out onto the road and headed south. The traffic was
light enough and even with the evening rush they didn't have to
hang around at any set of traffic lights very long. And anyway,
Eoin didn't mind. He had the window open, his sunglasses were on
and his elbow was sticking out. It was a nice feeling.

Rob's red shirt was rolled up
past the elbows. He had one hand resting lightly on the wheel and
the other, holding a cigarette, was dangling out the window. They
talked about the website as they moved along, with Eoin pressing
his hands to the dashboard every time Rob slid the car into an
intersection at a brash and adventurous speed. It was a bracing
trip.

Forty minutes later they pulled
into the vast parking lot of the world's biggest Ikea and Rob
brought the Toyota to a jerky halt. It was summer, and a Monday at
that, but half of the parking places were already taken. Going out
for the day to buy tea-candles, invisibly-supported shelves and
plastic mood-lighting seemed to be for the Swedes a legitimate
summer evening leisure activity.

“
So what was it then, a
bed?”

“
Yeah,” Rob said. “For my
sister, whenever the hell she shows up. And there's a whole bunch
of other stuff I need. Ye know, plates, cups, forks and all. Could
never have more than two people over without them eatin' off
saucers with their fingers. Time to fix that, I
figured.”

They sauntered through the
lobby and up the main escalator, their heads turning automatically
left and right to take in the cutting-edge bookshelves and TV
benches on display. They stepped into the first section, loud with
crying children and the clank and trundle of trolleys, and started
their grim circuit.

After having made it through a
fraction of the store, Eoin was already carrying a tottering pile
of knick-knacks and had to find a yellow “in store” bag to put them
all in. He studied each item as it slid it in, not having realised
that he needed that particular thing at all, but at the same time
sure it would make his life better in some small but significant
way. He shook his head in subjection. It must be some drug they put
in the air system, and all one could do was give in and
consume.

Rob had managed to find less to
buy than Eoin, probably because he'd yet to pick up the bed. He had
however located a kitchen set with six of everything, a couple of
towels, and a large plastic salad bowl. He slid in one more item, a
set of cheap kitchen knives, with a nod to Eoin. “Bribe for
Eamonn,” he explained.