Say something, anything. You just need to think about something else, she thought as her pulse raced.
“My brother’s daughter, Jeanette, is the same,” Klara said, saving her. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve had to listen to my sister-in-law and brother talking about how beautiful, fantastic, and talented she was.” She smiled wryly. “What talents? If she had any, she certainly never developed them. They fussed over her for years, and now she’s exactly like you described, Anne-Line.”
The feeling in her breast subsided a little, replaced by a strange warm sensation that brought forth her anger. Why couldn’t this disease take one of these useless wenches instead of her?
“So I assume Jeanette is now on benefits and has been given a long list of job offers and apprenticeships?” Anneli forced herself to ask.
Klara nodded. “She begged for a work placement at a hairdresser’s for years, and when she finally got it she only lasted half a day.”
A few of the others looked up. Clearly they were interested in what Klara had to say.
“Jeanette was told to clean up during her lunch break, which she protested and said was totally unfair, but that wasn’t the excuse she came back home with!”
“What did she have to say for herself?” one of them asked.
“She said that she became so depressed listening to all the clients’ problems. Simply couldn’t deal with it!”
Anneli looked around. They sat there frowning, but this was Anneli’s daily life. How often had she and the job center tried to find work placements and jobs for girls like Jeanette who couldn’t cope with them when it came to it?
Why hadn’t she just studied economics like her father had recommended? She could have been sitting with all the crooks in the parliament, enjoying the perks of the job instead of being burdened with this mismatch of dysfunctional girls and women. They were like dirty water in a bath, and Anneli wanted to pull the plug!
She had called four very well-dressed girls into a meeting today, all of whom had been unemployed for a long time. But instead of humility and basic ideas about how they might improve their situation, she was met with shameless demands for handouts from the public purse. It was really annoying, but, as always, Anneli had tried to lure them into her trap. If they didn’t want to learn anything and couldn’t hold down a placement, they’d have to accept the consequences. The law could help her that far.
Anneli’s experience told her that these four harpies would be back before long with sick notes declaring them unfit for work, and the reasons would be myriad; when it came to that area there was no limit to their initiative: depression, dodgy knees, bad falls against the radiator with subsequent concussion, irritable bowel syndrome, and a long list of other ailments that could be neither observed nor checked. She had tried to get her line manager to take a stand against the doctors’ ridiculous diagnoses, but the subject was strangely too sensitive, so the doctors continued writing undocumented sick notes, as if that was all they were good for.
One of the girls had turned up today without having extended her sick note because she had arrived too late at the doctor’s office. And when Anneli had asked why, stressing how important it was to keep one’s appointments, the bimbo had answered that she had been at a café with some friends and lost track of time. They were so socially inept and incompetent that they didn’t even know when they should lie.
Anneli should have been shocked by the answer, but she was used to it. The worst of it was that it was girls like Amalie, Jazmine, whatever their names were, who were going to look after people like herself when she ended up in a nursing home one day.
Jesus Christ.
Anneli looked blankly into space.
When she ended up in a nursing home, she had thought, but who was to say that she would live that long? Hadn’t the doctor implied that breast cancer of this sort should be taken very seriously? That even if they ended up removing the breast that the cancer might already have spread? That they didn’t know yet?
“Why don’t you just stop working as a caseworker?” said Ruth, dragging her back from her own thoughts. “You’ve got the money.”
It was a really awkward question to answer. For almost ten years now, Anneli’s circle had been under the impression that she had won a large sum of money on a scratch-off card, a delusion she had done nothing to stop. All at once she had unrightfully obtained a certain status that would have been impossible for her to achieve any other way. People still saw her as a small, boring, surly grey mouse. That was the reality of it. Only now, she was a grey mouse shrouded in mystery.
Why did she use so little of the fortune on herself, they would ask? Why did she still go around in cheap rags? Why didn’t she buy expensive perfume or exotic vacations? Why, why, why? they asked.
She had cheered completely spontaneously when she scratched the card at work in the middle of the day; five hundred kroner was her record win. Her victory cry brought Ruth hurrying from the neighboring office to hear what all the commotion was about.
“I’ve won five hundred! Can you believe it? Five hundred!” Anneli had cheered.
Ruth was speechless. It was perhaps the first time she had seen Anneli smile.
“Have you heard? Anne-Line’s won five hundred thousand!” the woman had suddenly screamed, resulting in the news spreading like wildfire throughout the entire office. Afterward, Anneli had bought cakes for everyone, thinking that she had nothing against the misunderstanding under which they were all living. It elevated her status, made her a little more visible. That she couldn’t escape the lie and would later be teased for her persistence was another matter. Anneli weighed the situation and found the balance to be in favor of recognition rather than her alleged stinginess.
And now here was Ruth asking why she didn’t just quit her job. What on earth could she answer? Maybe it was just a matter of time before the question answered itself. Before she was no longer in the land of the living.
“Stop working? And who would replace me?” she answered seriously. “A girl of Jeanette’s age? A fat lot of good that would be.”
“The first generation to be less educated than our parents!” agreed one of the others, who persisted in her belief that the bob was a fashionable haircut. “And who would employ someone who can do nothing?”
“Paradise Hotel, Big Brother, and Survivor!” one of them answered in jest.
But it was hard to see the funny side.
—