Gina made an extra pass across the floor with the vacuum cleaner. She glanced over to Peter’s office. He looked up, half raised his hand in the air, and smiled tentatively as though he didn’t dare give her a full smile. Gina stopped mid-vacuum and awkwardly raised her own hand in a quick response before she looked back down and continued her work. So odd. The next time she looked over, his head was down, bowed over the computer. Only the two of them were left in the office, and he seemed to have plenty to do.

She went to his room and hesitantly knocked on the door frame.

“Hi,” he said. “Come in. Is it okay if I work while you vacuum?”

As though she was allowed to have an opinion about that.

“Sure.”

Peter was focused on the screen, his eyes darting about it as he wrote the occasional line on a notepad on his desk while she moved around the room.

“Thanks,” he said when she was done and had switched off the vacuum cleaner. “Were the trains running again yesterday?”

Gina frowned suspiciously. What did he mean by that? Did he expect her to thank him again? She had already done it, several times.

“Yeah,” she replied curtly.

“And today? Running like normal? I’m just asking since it’s a holiday.”

“It isn’t normally a problem,” she answered, still unsure of what was happening. Was he making small talk with her? Why?

“Were you studying today? Or is class over?”

“There are always lectures. We never really get any breaks. And they expect us to work on the weekends.” She nodded toward the kitchen. “I have to eat a little before I go.”

He stood up. “Do you mind if I join you?”

Gina shrugged. She could hardly say yes, didn’t know why she’d volunteered any information at all. She had always preferred to eat alone. People made comments about her food, and she hated it, but maybe she wouldn’t mind so very much if Peter joined her. He wasn’t quite as annoying as she used to think.

As Gina heated her food—rice, seasoned with cardamom, cloves, cumin, and vegetables—Peter took off the packaging from a readymade sandwich. She glanced at the plate spinning away in the microwave and wondered what Peter would say if she told him she had never bought takeaway coffee or a premade sandwich in her life. What did one of those cost anyway, with their glossy cheese slices and crisp salad leaves? Forty kronor? She could make several family meals for that.

She took out her plate. The spicy scent filled the room, but Peter said nothing, just fetched water for them both. He put down the glasses. Went to get a cup of coffee.

“How’s your father?”

Gina couldn’t help it. Her suspicion was automatic.

“What do you mean?”

Peter picked up his coffee. He drank a lot of it, she had noticed. Maybe that was what affected his sleep. With that thought, she made the connection, recalled their earlier conversation. “Oh, you mean his sleeping? Up and down. It’s hard to say what the reason is, really.”

She didn’t want to say any more than that. Didn’t want to tell Peter that her dad sometimes woke with a shout in the night—not as often as he used to, but still. She hadn’t told anyone how afraid she had been of those shouts when she was younger. How part of what held her tiny family together was the way each of them tried to protect the others from their fears, sorrows, and worries. They had seen so much. Amir had only been two, but she and her father had experienced horrors they never talked about. It was hard to explain to an outsider.

“Sleep is tricky,” Peter said, and Gina saw in his eyes something she had never expected: warmth.

He picked at his sandwich but didn’t eat it. He was so much thinner these days. Was it because he didn’t eat? There were so many things that caused people to lose their appetites. Depression. Anxiety. Cancer.

“What are you studying at the moment? In your course?”

“The whole first year is about the Healthy Human.”

“A whole year?”

“Yeah, there’s a lot to know before you can start the next chunk. Illnesses.”

He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed, and put it down. Wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Like what?”

She smiled. “Chemistry and biology. All the Latin terms.”

“You look so happy when you talk about medicine, I guess you really like it. I was terrible at school. When do you decide what to specialize in?” He picked up his sandwich again. Took a bite, chewed, put it down. She had always wanted to be able to eat like that, so controlled and well-bred; sometimes she practiced Swedish table manners when she was alone.

“You only choose when you’re finished. You do an internship and have to get your license. It’s a long way off.”

She put down the cutlery and took a sip of water. She could let her food digest for a bit, she decided. Could sit and talk with him for five minutes.

“And you? Do you enjoy your work?” she asked.

“Absolutely. It’s always been my dream to be a mediocre banker.” She laughed. He had nice eyes when he smiled.

When she stood up, Peter did the same. She washed and dried her things. Wiped her hands on a towel as he rinsed out his coffee mug. He hadn’t eaten most of his sandwich, but if she had to say something in his defense, he didn’t throw it away, simply put it back in the packaging.

“I need to go,” she said.

“Are you free tomorrow? It’s a holiday.”

“We don’t have any lectures. But they asked me to do a couple of hours here, so I’ll be in around lunch.”

“See you then,” he said. It wasn’t until she was on the metro that it struck Gina that Peter would clearly be working even though the First of May was a big spring holiday in Sweden.

* * *

They ended up in the kitchen the next day, too. Peter finished working at the same time as she switched off the vacuum, and again they sat down together. He poured her some water while she grabbed the napkins and warmed her food. She had a small plate of dumplings today, Dad’s samosas, and she debated whether to offer him one. But he had another sandwich, and she decided to keep her food for herself.

“Are you headed home after this?” he asked. “Or are you going out? It’s Friday.”

She almost laughed.

“No, I’m going home. I don’t go out much.” She wiped a deep-fried crumb from the corner of her mouth. Her father made delicious samosas. He helped out, when he could, in the cafeteria at the cultural center, and his dumplings had always been a big hit. “What about you? You going out?”

She glanced at him. He was smartly dressed and clean shaven, and he smelled faintly of aftershave. He looked better than she’d seen him for a long time. She had actually been surprised he even turned up today. A holiday on a Friday meant a long weekend, and not even the most junior of careerists had turned up; she and Peter were the only ones in the entire office. He had to be going out later, to Stureplan, or somewhere like that. On her way home from work, she was often shouted at by rich, drunk Stureplan guys who looked just like Peter and his colleagues. Sometimes they just made lewd comments, talked about her various body parts, which was bad enough. But sometimes they shouted for what seemed like an eternity about how they’d never been with a black girl. Gina would tell herself she didn’t care, but it got under her skin, all the years of comments and glances, and she avoided places where she was 100 hundred percent certain she’d get at least one comment about her appearance. It was enough that she was often the only non-white person at work.

Peter shook his head. He had eaten the whole sandwich today. “I’m not going anywhere. I can give you a ride home if you like. It’s a holiday. The trains surely aren’t running like normal.”

“That’s nice, but you don’t have to. I’ve used public transport my entire life. I like it.”

“I know I don’t have to,” he said calmly. “But I’d like to, that’s why I’m asking. If you want, of course.”

She thought of the comfortable car, the quick journey home. Once was nothing, but twice? That was stupid.

She hesitated.

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“I kept the radio station you chose last time,” Peter said as he steered the car out of town. He was a good driver, calm and patient. It had surprised her last time. She looked out of the window. This part of the journey was her favorite, when they had just gotten into the car and her entire body could relax, when the city passed them by and she could watch it from the outside.

“Are they waiting for you at home?”

“Yes.”

“How is that?”

“Good. We’re really close.”

Dad, Amir, and she—they were a little unit, they completed one another. But she was the strong one, the one who moved out in the big, wide world. They relied on her.

“Sounds nice.”

“I worry about my brother sometimes.”

She said the words quietly, didn’t know where they came from. Why had she said it?

“You do?”

She looked away from Peter, out through the window. “He’s not sick or anything like that, but he never goes out. He just sits at home. In his room. Playing video games.”

“How old is he?”

“Thirteen.”

“Then he’s much younger than you?”

“Yes, he was only two when we left Somalia.”

“So your father, he came alone with two small children? All the way from Somalia? It must’ve been tough.”

“Yeah.”

“Your mother?”

“Dead.”

Peter was silent as if he sensed she didn’t want to talk about her mother. “Doesn’t he go to school?” he asked after a moment. “Your little brother, I mean.”

Gina pulled at her purse. She had no one to talk to about this, didn’t want to worry her father. Peter was unexpectedly easy to confide in. “Yeah, but he doesn’t have any friends. I don’t know. He gets mad when I try to talk to him about it.”

“Maybe it’s too much like a performance,” Peter suggested. “Having friends.”

She hadn’t thought of it like that. Her brother’s loneliness always felt like a lump in her chest, and she just wanted to help him. To get him out more.

Peter changed gears. They were already approaching Tensta. “Does he want friends?”

“Don’t know. He says he doesn’t, but I have no idea.”

“Maybe he had a bad experience. Makes it easier to be alone.”

Gina was silent, her interlocked hands resting on top of her bag. She twisted the simple ring on her index finger. Amir had given it to her, when he was five or six; bought it at the market in Tensta, with his own money. Why hadn’t she realized before? That she was only making things worse by nagging him about needing friends. Was it the same for Peter? She rarely saw him talk to anyone. Not at work and not in other social situations, either. The fact was, Peter seemed lonely. So lonely that he might give a cleaning lady a ride home just to have someone to talk to.

“Relationships are tough,” he said, his eyes on the road. They sat in silence, listening to the radio. “Are there any Somalian bands?” he asked after a while. “Ones that are famous abroad, I mean?” He had smoothly changed the subject, and she was grateful for that.

“Not really. I’m actually not all that interested in my cultural heritage.”

He gave her a surprised glance. “Why not?”

“I see my future in Sweden.”

“But you like Somalian food?”

She laughed. “Yeah, a lot.”

He pulled up outside her door. “Here we are,” he said quietly.

“Thank you. I’ll see you at the wedding tomorrow, I guess? I’m working the reception.”

“I didn’t know that.”

She had said yes when the wedding organizer called; the pay was good, and it was nothing she hadn’t done before. But now she wondered if it would be awkward. Would Peter say hello, or would he pretend he didn’t know her at Åsa Bjelke’s super-wedding?

“How are you getting there?” he asked.

She blinked. He couldn’t be serious. “You know you can’t give me a ride, right? You’re a guest. I’m staff. It would be weird.”

“But …”

“They’re paying for cabs,” she quickly interrupted him. Her voice was curt, but she couldn’t help it. She felt so exposed, and as usual she reacted by lashing out. She hadn’t taken the psychiatric class yet, but she knew it was a classic defense mechanism against feelings of inferiority and she hated it.

But Peter was a close friend of Åsa Bjelke’s; they both grew up in Djursholm, the most expensive and elitist community in the entire country, and they belonged to the upper class, moved effortlessly in the highest of social circles. Just what did she think she was doing, exactly?

“You know that’s what I am, right? Staff. A cleaning lady, a maid.”

“But you said … I didn’t mean … I thought you liked your work?” He sounded confused. “Gina, did I say something wrong?”

She stepped out of the car, got tangled in the seatbelt, struggled free.

“Bye,” she said, slamming the door and heading quickly indoors without looking back.

She had only herself to blame, she thought as she waited for the elevator. She almost hoped he would pretend not to know her tomorrow. She leaned her head against the elevator wall. She was an idiot.