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presence, but simply idling.
    Most people have fantasies. Dark, sexual, brutal, always affirming our own ego, always destroying whatever or whomever might be standing in our way. In our fantasies we are powerful. Very few people actually live out their fantasies. Those who do have found the key.
    The danger.
    The danger of being caught.
    The danger of doing the unmentionable.
    The adrenaline and the endorphins released at that moment provided the turbo charge—the fuel, the explosion that made the engine function at the peak of its capacity. That was why thrill-seekers sought new thrills, why serial killers became serial killers. It’s difficult to go back to idling once you’ve revved the engine. Felt the power. Discovered what it is that makes you feel alive.
The danger.
    “Is it really danger you’re talking about? Isn’t it excitement?” Stefan leaned forward as Sebastian fell silent.
    “Is this a language lesson?”
    “No, this is you giving a lecture.” Stefan poured a glass of water from a carafe on the table beside him and passed it to Sebastian. “Didn’t you used to get paid for doing that, instead of paying out yourself?”
    “I’m paying you to listen. To whatever I say.”
    Stefan smiled and shook his head.
    “No, you know why you’re paying me. You need help, and thesesmall digressions mean we have less time to discuss what we should really be talking about.”
    Sebastian didn’t reply. Didn’t change his expression one iota. He liked Stefan. No bullshit.
    “So let’s get back to your mother. When’s the funeral?”
    “It’s already taken place.”
    “Were you there?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I thought it should be a ceremony for people who actually liked her.”
    Stefan had looked at him in silence for a few seconds.
    “There you are, you see—we’ve got lots to talk about.”

    Outside the swaying carriage lay an attractive landscape. The train forged ahead through the fresh green meadows and forests northwest of Stockholm. It was just possible to catch a glimpse of Lake Mälaren in all its sparkling glory through the trees. For any other passenger this might have stirred thoughts of life’s possibilities. For Sebastian, exactly the opposite was true. He saw no possibilities in the beauty around him. He turned his gaze up to the ceiling. All his life he had been running away from his parents. His father, against whom he had battled ever since his youth, and his mother, quiet and dignified but never on his side.
Never on his side.
That was how he felt.
    Sebastian’s eyes filled with tears for a moment. This was something that had developed in recent years. Tears.
Strange
, he thought,
that I should have to discover something as simple as tears at my age.
    Emotional.
    Irrational.
    Everything he had never wanted to be. He went back to the only thing he knew that was capable of numbing his emotions: women. Another promise Sebastian had broken. He had kept to the straightand narrow from the moment he met Lily and had vowed to remain faithful to her. But with the excoriating dream that haunted him at night and the empty, meaningless days, he could see no other way out. The hunt for fresh conquests and the few short hours with different women filled his life, and his thoughts managed to overcome the feeling of powerlessness—for a while, at least. As a man, a lover, a predator, constantly on the hunt for new women, he was able to function. This was a skill he had retained in spite of everything. This both pleased and frightened him. The fact that he was everything he was. A lonely man who filled his time with the young and old, students, colleagues, married or unmarried. He didn’t discriminate against anyone. For him there was just one rule: she was going to be his. She would prove that he wasn’t worthless, that he was alive. He knew exactly how destructive his behavior was, but he welcomed it and pushed away the knowledge that one day he would probably have to find a