The sun had gone down but would be up again in a few hours. She lay there quietly, looking around her bedroom.Restless, she threw off the covers, pulled on a dressing gown, and went out to the kitchen.She drank a glass of water and then went into what was once the maid’s room, a little cubbyhole behind the kitchen where she had set up her office. She switched the computer on, hesitating a few moments before opening her half-finished doctoral thesis.Who knew if it would ever get finished?She sighed. She was actually extremely interested in her research subject, so she didn’t know why she never got it done. She had already spent several years of academic life on it, studying minor criminals and their thought processes, patterns of behavior, and motives.She had grown up among petty thieves on a farm out in the forests of Norrland in the north of Sweden.The great majority of her family hadn’t done an honest day’s work in the whole of their miserable lives.She scrolled up and down the text, reading sentences and whole paragraphs at random.Maybe she could get going on it again, finish it, and finally get her degree.Why on earth did she find it so difficult?Everything she did ended up half done, no matter whether it was work or relationships.She switched off the computer and went back into the kitchen.The perfect partner didn’t exist, she knew that much, and, god knows, her knowledge was based on extensive research.
