Free The Winter War by Philip Teir

It’s like she can only see her own point of view, and she always thinks that she’s kicking below the belt, when in reality her work has to do with inflating her own ego. But of course it doesn’t matter – she’ll do fine. People love that kind of shit. Come here,’ said Malik, and Eva leaned towards him.
    When they got to Eva’s flat, Malik wanted to get high. He claimed to have an inexhaustible supply of Ritalin pills because his doctor had diagnosed him as having ADHD. He’d tried several times to offer some to Eva, but she had a mental block about taking drugs in the middle of the day. She’d tried cocaine at parties, and the first time she’d felt so hyper that she almost chewed her cheeks to shreds. But after a while she started liking the effect it had on her – she felt sharp and smart, and she enjoyed talking to people, without getting into those sorts of embarrassing conversations that often happened if she was drunk.
    Malik crushed up a pill and snorted it off the cover of one of Eva’s art books, an expensive volume about the Pre-Raphaelites that she’d bought at the National Gallery. Soon afterwards, he wanted to have sex with her. And since he was high, he’d want to spend a long time at it – the drugs seemed to increase his sexual appetite. She didn’t mind. Eva thought there was something in the physical act that seemed more comprehensible and pure than the art she’d been trying to create during the past two months. When he entered her from behind, she couldn’t help feeling a certain ecstatic pride that she’d made it this far – none of her friends back home in Finland had ever moved further away than to Stockholm.

six
    WHEN KATRIINA FIRST MET MAX she was already twenty-two – which seemed terribly grown-up at the time – and he was laying the foundation for his career at the department. In the afternoons, Max used to sit in student cafés, gathering a small audience around him to listen to his ideas and argue. The group included Veronica Pimenoff, Risto Repo, JP Roos, Anssi Sinnemäki, Kari Rydman and Matti Wuori. Katriina thought Max talked too much and was hopelessly self-absorbed, but he was cute, and she thought it might be possible to do something about that annoying side of his personality. Apparently he’d never met a girl who dared to challenge him.
    He said as much later on, when they became a couple, and then many times after they were married. ‘You’re so cruel,’ he would say, with pride in his voice. ‘I’ve never met anyone who could put me in my place as expertly as you can. Don’t stop.’
    It took a long time before she met his parents. They lived in Österbotten, and it was clear to Katriina that Max was nervous about introducing her to his father, in particular. The fact that Max was a Finland–Swede was not something to which she’d given much thought, but for him it was apparently a big deal that her first language was Finnish and not Swedish. Max’s father, Vidar, was active in local charity, as well as local politics, and Max didn’t think he’d easily accept having a Finnish-speaking daughter-in-law. When Katriina finally did meet them, she realised at once why Max had been so concerned. Ebba and Vidar were a typical post-war couple: he was a domineering alcoholic and she was his stoically submissive wife.
    â€˜Can’t you see how badly your father treats your mother?’ Katriina asked Max after their first visit. She had witnessed how much Vidar drank and how he then verbally terrorised Ebba, accusing her of one thing after another. But Max got upset and refused to discuss the matter. Until the end of his life Vidar never fully accepted Katriina, but he was always kind to his grandchildren. When they visited, he would sit down in his chair to watch TV, hunching his portly body over another seven per cent can of beer, but he