Read More Bitter Than Death for Free Online

up her pen and making a note.
    “Can you tell the story from the beginning? What happened?” Aina asks.
    “It’s really a very . . . pathetic story,” Malin explains. “We met online, this guy and I, in a chat room, not on one of those shady sex sites or anything. It was a website for long-distance runners. I’m a runner, you know. Anyway, I knew who he was. It’s a really small world, you know, those of us who are involved in running on that kind of serious level, and he lives out in Värmdö too . . .”
    Malin’s voice fades away and to my surprise I can see that her hands are clenched onto her jeans-clad thighs with a convulsive tightness. On the surface she seems relaxed and open, but I conclude that this is actually very hard for her to talk about. Suddenly she exhales, a deep sigh escapes her, and she shakes her head a little.
    “I know you can never really know who someone is online, not truly. I mean not, like, for real. But we used to chat and then, after we exchanged email addresses and phone numbers, we started emailing and texting each other. It was . . . well, it was kind of like flirting, I admit. Although it’s not like there was anything graphic in those emails or text messages, nothing explicit, if you know what I mean. Although, okay, flirtatious and a little suggestive maybe. But there was absolutely nothing that . . . nothing that . . . would explain what . . . what happened.”
    Everyone nods, watching Malin, who pulls out a tube of lip balm in silence and holds it in her hand without using it.
    “And then one day we talked to each other on the phone and decided we should meet, just like that, at his place. I know, that was a huge mistake,” Malin says, shaking her head so that her short blond hair swishes around the top of her head like a helmet. She brushes her bangs to the side, raises the lip balm, and slowly runs it over her pale, full lips with a vacant expression on her face.
    “That was my first mistake, but not my last,” she said. “It was a Friday and I had been out for beer with a bunch of coworkers after work that day. We had just had our big bonus meeting at work. I sell advertising and every quarter we get a bonus check if our sales numbers are good enough, you know? And that day we’d all just found out that we had all made the cutoff, to get our bonuses, I mean. So everyone was feeling really . . . well, celebratory. To say the least. Everyone probably drank at least four, maybe five beers, me included. The problem was that I hardly ever drink. I mean, not that that’s really a problem, but . . .”
    Malin stops and looks at each of us one by one in silence as if she’s wondering if she can trust us, if we can be trusted, if we deserve to be trusted.
    “So I was drunk,” she admits. “I’m so incredibly stupid.”
    Another deep sigh. She lowers her head and clasps her hands around her knee. In a quiet, solemn way that makes me think of a nun or something. And suddenly she looks more sad than angry and there’s something in her facial expression, something in the deep furrow between her eyebrows, in the sharp lines around her mouth, that makes me think that she is older than she first seemed. There is something resigned and maybe a little cynical about her revelation.
    “I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t get it,” Malin wails. “How could I be so damn stupid? I went to his place, the home of this guy I’d never met, alone, drunk. What the hell was I thinking anyway? Then, when I got there—he livesdown in those apartment buildings by the beach, out by the sports field—I had such a strange feeling when he opened the door. He gave me this . . . this really weird look and kind of smiled, but not in a nice way. I had this feeling that he was laughing at me for some reason, like you would laugh at someone who had done something clumsy, you know, spilled a glass on the tablecloth or . . . Whatever, I could have turned