Cinderella Girl by Carin Gerhardsen

half past nine and so far there were few people in the large dance hall, but soon they would be flocking in, once people had finished dinner. There were a few scattered groups in the big hall, mainly at the window tables. Another group was sitting around the long bar.
    She braced one foot against the footrest and heaved herself up on to one of the tall stools closest to the entrance in the half-moon-shaped bar. The bartender was turning glasses further down and did not seem to have noticed her. Syrupy-sweet dance music echoed in the mostly empty space and she was thinking about what to order when an older man sat down on the bar stool next to hers. Automatically she turned towards him, but he took no notice of her, looking instead at the bottles lined up on the shelves behind the bar. He had a somewhat slovenly, almost ravaged appearance: unpressed white shirt, unwashed hair that was too long over his ears, and he didn’t seem to have shaved for several days. Jennifer could see that he was continually tensing his jaw.
    ‘What are you drinking?’ he asked suddenly, still without looking at her.
    He sounded almost unfriendly and a shiver of distaste passed through her.
    ‘Nothing,’ Jennifer answered, preparing to leave.
    ‘What are you doing in the bar then?’ he continued.
    ‘I was going to get a beer, but –’
    ‘Two beers!’ he called to the bartender, who nodded in response.
    ‘But I don’t want –’
    ‘I realize that,’ the man interrupted her again. ‘Things don’t always turn out the way you want, do they?’
    He turned towards her for the first time and openly let his gaze sweep over her body. He hardly seemed interested in her face. His eyes were rather small and he looked harried. She had no desire to talk to this man, but she would probably have to endure it until the beers were finished; a beer was not cheap, after all. Jennifer didn’t know where to direct her gaze, so she started fumbling in her handbag for her mobile phone. She had turned it off when Joakim started calling her and sending text messages, but now she turned it on again to have something to do with her hands. As soon as the phone was on it signalled that she had received several messages. They were all from Joakim, and she couldn’t bear to think about him right now, so she turned the phone off again.
    It struck her that maybe she should make a slight gesture of gratitude towards the man, since he was treating her to a drink, so she rooted out a packet of mints from her bag and extended it to him without saying anything. But he just shook his head with the same forbidding look. The bartender came with the two beer glasses and she took a few substantial gulps from hers at once, while the man paid with a crumpled hundred-kronor bill that he fished out of his back pocket.
    ‘Thanks,’ said Jennifer, but then couldn’t think of anything else to say, so she sat in silence, gazing down into her beer.
    ‘So you’re drunk again today,’ he said suddenly.
    Who was he? He was seedy, but not enough to be part of her mother’s gang and besides, she knew them all pretty well by now. Jennifer hesitated for a moment before she answered.
    ‘What do you mean, “again”? I don’t get drunk every day exactly.’
    She looked around self-consciously to avoid looking him in the eyes; her gaze fell at last on her own hand, nervously fingering the beer glass. She quickly raised the glass to her lips and took in half the beer at one go. He placed one hand on her shoulder, but not to calm her.
    ‘Yesterday and today,’ was all he said.
    Jennifer tried to pull away from his hand, but couldn’t. She looked around again and made eye contact with a man sitting at a table just behind them. The hand was pinching her shoulder a little harder now, and she turned towards the heavy-handed man and looked him right in the eyes.
    ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ she spat out. ‘I’ll get drunk if I want to.’
    He hissed at her with his