The Defenceless Read Online Free PDF Page B

deserted; there was nobody in sight.
    ‘What do we do now?’ asked Jenni.
    A drunken woman staggered out of the pub and lit a cigarette. Soon afterwards a man appeared and began hitting on the woman.
    ‘Let’s go to my place,’ said Katri. ‘We can think what to say about this. If we talk to my mum first, then maybe your parents won’t start asking about the cigarettes.’
     
    Anna’s studded trainers gripped the icy path. The frosted air tingled pleasantly at the back of her throat. The running track through the woods behind Koivuharju had been turned into a skiing track, so Anna had to run along the cycle paths. She enjoyed skiing too, but for that she needed a stretch of ice covering the open sea and the sight of a distant horizon, the bright, clearly defined contour of the skyline. Anna didn’t like pre-prepared skiing trails through the woods. The aimless freedom of vast expanses of ice, that’s what she wanted to find on her weekend-morning skiing trips that took her kilometres from the shore.
    Her run that evening was fast and short: half an hour at full pace, then home to shower and smoke a cigarette. She’d managed to keep her New Year’s resolution – only one a day – though she’d made the promise with a cigarette in her mouth, tipsy with champagne, as the fireworks from the town hall in Kanizsa crackled and fizzed above her, diamonds, balls, glitter and coloured stars all exploding across the sky, people laughing, hugging and wishing each other a happy New Year. Réka’s circle of friends, many of whom Anna had known since they were at nursery school together, had organised a party. They had reserved a pub on the outskirts of town, ordered food from a catering service, played hits from the 90s, danced and drank the night away. Just before midnight they had gone into the town centre to watch the fireworks, like most people in Kanizsa on New Year’sEve. Her mother had been there too, with her own friends. Anna had never seen fireworks this spectacular in Finland. In Kanizsa there were sometimes displays of fireworks in the middle of summer. For Anna it was one of the most exhilarating things in the world, an unexpected set of fireworks on a warm, dark summer’s night. She hadn’t seen Ákos among the partygoers.
    At the party she’d also met Béci, a boy who used to hide Anna’s satchel and pull her hair when they were in first grade. Béci had been living in Budapest for the last ten years and Anna hadn’t seen him since she’d left; until that moment she’d forgotten he existed. But he had remembered Anna. After the fireworks had ended they bought some beer from a kiosk and walked down to the chilly banks of the Tisza and sat on the old swings suspended on metal chains, garish flakes of red, yellow and green paint flaking from the wooden seats. They reminisced about their childhood as the rusted bolts gave ear-splitting shrieks beneath their combined weight. When Anna began to feel cold, they’d snuck back to Béci’s parents’ house and up to the boy’s bedroom on the top floor, a room that hadn’t been decorated in at least ten years. The next morning Béci’s mother had insisted on cooking breakfast and Anna couldn’t bring herself to decline. It was embarrassing. It felt like being fifteen again.
    Anna nervously crushed the stub of her cigarette into the ashtray and wanted to light another one. She’d had to go home with him, hadn’t she? Now Béci had tried to contact her in Finland, too; Réka had given him Anna’s email address and telephone number. A fene egye meg.
    She forced herself to forget the idea of a second cigarette, went back inside and agonised over whether or not to call Ákos. Eventually she called him. Her brother was drunk, but not too much, and said he was at home by himself watching TV, the television Anna had given him. Anna couldn’t hear the sound of the television. She asked whether Ákos had remembered to apply for his unemployment benefit, whether