Free The Hummingbird by Kati Hiekkapelto Page A

come to an agreement about that.’
‘You didn’t want to stay at home for a while?’
‘I was on maternity leave for almost a year with the youngest one. But you know what it’s like – when you’ve got an enormous mortgage you’ve just got to keep working. We built our house a few years ago. To be honest with you, I’d simply had enough of being at home. It can be lonely and fairly boring; I’m not really cut out to be a nursery teacher. For me this job’s a way of letting off steam, it means the kids don’t get on my nerves as much. You’re not supposed to say things like that out loud, are you?’
‘Nowadays we can, thankfully. Where did you build your house?’
‘In Savela, on a plot of land that used to belong to my parents-in-law. You should come and visit some time. Where do you live?’
‘Koivuharju.’
‘Oh God.’
Anna laughed. There was something very attractive about Sari’s directness.
They walked through to the weights room. The bare concrete walls were bleak and the place stank of testosterone. There weren’t many weight machines, mostly dumbbells and free weights. It’s a male world, thought Anna as she picked twenty kilos from the rack, slid them on the ends of a bar and lay down on the bench. Sari started off on the exercise bike.
Three sets of twelve repetitions. Her chest muscles were in agony. Anna was out of breath; her arms were trembling under the strain. A pair of hands helped her with the final push; a familiar-looking man in a tight sleeveless T-shirt, his arms solid as a rock.
‘Hi, I’m Sami,’ the man greeted her. ‘We saw each other yesterday at the car park.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Anna as she got up from the bench. She walked towards the rack of free weights. The man followed her.
‘Do you fancy meeting up some evening? Friday maybe? Wecould grab a bite to eat somewhere,’ he said without beating around the bush. He came up so close to her that they were almost touching. Anna felt awkward. She didn’t need a date at the moment. Particularly not with another police officer.
‘I don’t know,’ she stumbled. ‘I’ve just moved and everything’s a bit up in the air. I’m not sure I’ll have the time.’
‘I got the impression you might have been interested,’ said Sami.
Menj a picsába, thought Anna. One wink, and men imagine all kinds of things.
‘Well, that was, you know … I didn’t mean anything by it,’ she awkwardly tried to explain.
‘What about your friend, then? Good-looking lass. Better looking than you.’ Sami seemed hurt and fixed his gaze on Sari.
‘We’re both spoken for,’ Sari shouted from the exercise bike.
‘I doubt it,’ quipped Sami, his expression impassive.
‘Why don’t you go and have a wank in the changing room,’ said Sari. At the other side of the gym, two officers chuckled.
Anna too gave a smirk. Sari was great. How did she have the balls? Sami slung his heavy free weights back on the rack with an indignant clatter and left the room.
‘What a jerk,’ Sari puffed. ‘This is the downside of working in a male-dominated profession: hormonal dickheads everywhere you look. Hey, now it’s your turn to spill the beans. Have you got family here? Where are you from? I want to hear everything. I think it’s just great that we’ve got a foreigner on the team, though you don’t seem much like an immigrant.’
Anna had no desire to talk about herself, though she knew there were some questions she’d have to answer sooner or later, over and over again. Why did you come to Finland was the most common, and it irritated her no end. Though people generally asked out of sheer, benevolent curiosity, Anna always felt there was another dimension to the question: did you have a good reason for coming, one that we real Finns can find acceptable, or did you simply come here in search of a better life?
The question always aroused a sense of guilt, making her feel like an unwanted guest whose secret had been revealed. Anna saw nothing wrong