As Gina made her rounds of the office in the financial building, she listened to a lecture through her headphones. It was what she normally did, record important lectures so she could listen to them whenever she had the opportunity. Some of them she had heard so many times that she knew them by heart. Cleaning flats and offices was a good job from that point of view. She was left to her own devices. The lecture she was listening to right now was one of her all-time favorites: Doctor Isobel Sørensen talking about catastrophe medicine at Karolinska Institutet last fall. Isobel Sørensen. Wow. If she had one wish, it was to be as cool as that woman one day.

Gina had been completely starstruck when she saw Dr. Sørensen at La Habana. And she was not easily impressed. As she scrubbed at a particularly stubborn coffee ring, Gina wondered what a woman like Isobel was doing with a man like Alexander. But then again she had never understood why women chose certain men. She herself had never felt more than mild affection for a man. But maybe that was just how things were when you’d lived in fear of being married off until you were eleven, and then had been constantly terrified of being raped by one of the men who helped you flee through Africa and Europe to Sweden. And life in the dangerous accommodations provided to asylum seekers hadn’t exactly increased her confidence in the nature of men either.

She moved on to the next desk, gave it a quick rub with a damp cloth, saw the pale children and blond wife framed in gold. She studied the photo thoughtfully. They all had photos just like this on their desks. Wives in pastel-colored cardigans, two or three well-groomed children. Some idyllic landscape in the background. The few women who worked in the office had a man in a suit and nearly identical children in their frames. If she was honest, Gina didn’t understand these men at all. The white upper class. The lottery winners. They were completely fascinating—it was as though they knew nothing about life. At best, they were just unconcerned playboys like Alexander. At worst, racist pigs who tried to steer her into a quiet room for a bit of a grope the moment they got the chance.

And then there were men like Peter De la Grip.

Gina glanced to the doorway; she could see Peter at his desk. He had his own corner office, and he was always the last to leave. In a way, she’d long seen Peter as the stereotype for all men in his position. Superior and condescending, unaware of how others in society lived. But then, last year, he had started to change. She cleaned for other families, and she knew what had happened that extraordinary day last summer. People gossiped, and she was used to vanishing into the background. So she knew that he had snapped at the board meeting. That he suddenly had turned against his own family, and that his parents since then refused to have anything to do with him. And that his pale, horrid wife had left him in a fury. It was pretty much all people had talked about for weeks. He seemed to be disappearing into himself. Bad spirits, the women in her village would have said. They were a superstitious lot, and she shuddered when she thought about them and their barbaric customs. By now Gina had studied medicine long enough to know that Peter was probably depressed. Like she cared. Yes, he had lost a lot of things: his wife, his job, his precious castle. But he was still rich. Had everything he needed. To her, he was just weird, with his mumbling and his awkward manner. Irritating. She emptied a trash can and switched to another lecture on her headphones. When she glanced back at Peter’s office, he was still there. Soon, his would be the only one left to clean.

She ran the vacuum over the floor. Emptied another trash can. She had counted them once. One hundred thirty-two. Plus the five big bags in the kitchen.

“Gina?”

She was so startled, she jumped. She pulled out one of her earbuds and stared, questioningly, at Peter.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Peter fell silent. Cleared his throat. “I spilled water on my desk. I just need to get a cloth. I didn’t want to scare you,” he repeated.

“I can mop it up,” she offered, reluctantly.

“No, no, I’ll get a cloth.”

She watched him disappear into the kitchen.

She pushed the earbud back into place. But now she couldn’t concentrate on the lecture. Did someone like Peter think he was better than other people? Just because he’d inherited a load of money? And if he did, why did it provoke her so much? All she had to do was ignore him. They’d often had discussions like this at home, she and her father. He thought it was caused by her feelings of inferiority. Gina hated that argument. She wasn’t inferior to anyone. Her Swedish was perfect. Though they’d only arrived in Sweden when she was eleven, she spoke without mistakes, just like her little brother. No, better—she spoke well and sounded educated. They were in agreement on that, she and her father. They knew that the demands placed on them were much higher than on any native Swede, and they had both studied nonstop once they got their residence permit.

Her father had taken a course in Swedish for immigrants, and coped well in the society that had opened its arms, if not its heart, to them. And that was why she had chosen to study medicine. Doctors were respected. She would be something, someone, and she would do it herself, without being dependent on anyone else.

Gina knew all too well that life was deeply unjust. The idea that life rewarded hard work was crap. She had never seen anyone work as hard as the women in Somalia, and they were hardly rewarded with riches and power. Life was a lottery, and her little family had been lucky, despite everything. Not lucky lucky, the way the De la Grip family was, but much luckier than many of her compatriots. Their father had fled with them, away from oppression and threats, and they had made it here. That meant the three of them belonged to the luckier ones. She would never waste the chance she’d been given. All you had, in the end, all you had, was your courage and your integrity.

She looked over at Peter’s door again. He had already dried the desk and was sitting with his head bowed. She had always been invisible in his world. A silent servant. Peter looked up and their eyes met briefly before he quickly started to leaf through some papers on his desk.

His office was the last one she needed to clean, so she headed over.

“Come in,” he said.

She cleaned the room quickly and efficiently, and left as soon as she could.

Once she was finally done for the evening, she rinsed the cloths, changed the bag in the vacuum, and placed the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. It was seven when she changed her shoes and picked up her jacket and purse from her locker. She would rush home—two subway trains and a bus, but with luck she should be home before eight. If Dad had had a good day, he would have made food. If he’d been in a lot of pain or slept badly, she would have to cook for the three of them before she got down to her studies.

The very last thing she did was wash her hands. Just as she had tied the belt on her jacket and was ready to leave, Peter appeared. Damn it, she had been planning to sneak out without talking to him. He reached the door at the same time she did. He had a briefcase in one hand and a thin jacket over his other arm. He quickly moved the briefcase to the jacket hand, opened the heavy plexiglass door, and held it open for her. They took the elevator in silence. She hurried out through the door before he had time to open it too.

Just as they were about to head in different directions, he said, “Bye, Gina. Thanks for today.” He disappeared around the corner.

Gina just stared after him in surprise.