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was still good-looking. Or, at least, good-looking enough to attract men like Jörgen Grundberg, and she aspired to nothing more.
    The tub had filled almost to the brim and when she lowered herself into the hot water, some of it was slopping over the side. She reached over the edge to try to save her suit, which she’d let drop on the bathroom floor. Instead, her movement set up a wave-motion and more water spilled onto the floor. She would have to try to dry the suit on the hot towel-rail.

    She leaned back, enjoying the bath. This was the kind of thing that gave life meaning. If one’s ambitions were modest, that is. At least living out of a rucksack had taught her to appreciate the small things in life that others took so much for granted. Lots of people didn’t even notice many simple sources of pleasure.
    Once, she too had led that kind of life, so she knew what she was talking about. Though it was getting to be a long time ago.
    She had been Miss Sibylla Wilhelmina Beatrice Forsenström, the Chief Executive’s daughter. That Sibylla had had a bath every day, as a matter of course, as if it had been a human right. Maybe it should be. Still, it had taken losing the opportunity to make her value the whole experience.
    Sibylla Wilhelmina Beatrice Forsenström.
    It wasn’t so strange that she’d never managed to fit in. She had been given a life-long handicap as a christening gift.
    Sibylla.
    Even the dullest of the children in Hultaryd’s school reached unexpected intellectual heights in their efforts to invent new rhymes on her name. It didn’t help that the Burgers ’n’ Bangers stall in the main square had the same name and helpfully drew attention to it by displaying ‘Sibylla’ on a back-lit sign. This added sausages – and many rude variants – to the range of useful allusions to build jokes round. When itgot out that she was called Wilhelmina Beatrice as well, everyone’s imagination seemed to know no bounds.
    Our child is unique! No doubt. But then, aren’t all children?
    Her parents’ stratagem worked on one level at least. In spite of their daughter spending years in the local school, which was full of common children from the lower classes, there wasn’t the slightest risk of her getting mixed up with them.
    Sibylla’s mother had always made a point of emphasising how special her daughter was, which of course gave Sibylla’s schoolmates every justification for ostracising her. It mattered very much to Beatrice Forsenström that Sibylla should know her position in the social hierarchy, but it mattered even more that everyone else should know it too. Nothing had any real worth to her, unless others valued it too and preferably found it very desirable. Beatrice derived her greatest pleasure from arousing admiration and envy.
    Almost all the parents of her fellow pupils were working in her father’s factory. Mr Forsenström was a leading member of the Local Council and his pronouncements weighed heavily. Most of the jobs and much else in Hultaryd depended on his say-so and all the children knew this. On the other hand, they were too young to be serious about the employment market and anyway most of them hoped for more in life thanstepping into their parents’ shoes. They didn’t want to spend their lives minding a machine at Forsenström’s Metal Foundry and felt they could get away with a bit of name-calling in the school corridors.
    Not that Mr Forsenström cared one way or the other.
    Managing the successful family firm kept him very busy. He had no time to concern himself with bringing up children and he wasn’t interested anyway. The excellent carpets in the Forsenström mansion showed no trace of a path beaten by him to Sibylla’s room. He left for work in the morning and came back in the evening. He ate at the same dining table, but was often engrossed in thought or checking through accounts