The Drowning

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘Hmm …’ said Patrik. ‘No, I think we’ll cook fish sticks and mashed potatoes instead. Okay? We’ll save the poop sausages for another day.’

  His daughter thought about this for a moment and then graciously nodded her agreement. Fish sticks it was.

  Sanna paced back and forth. The boys were sitting in front of the TV in the living room, watching Bolibompa. But she just couldn’t settle in one place. She kept wandering through the house, gripping her mobile phone in one hand. Every once in a while she would punch in his number.

  No answer. Christian hadn’t answered his phone all day, and one disaster scene after another had played out in her mind. Especially after the news about Magnus, which had shocked all of Fjällbacka. She’d checked Christian’s email at least ten times during the day. It felt as if something was building up inside of her, growing stronger and stronger until it demanded to be either denied or confirmed. Deep inside she almost wished that she could find something to blame him for. Then at least she would know and have some outlet for the anxiety and fear that kept gnawing at her.

  In reality, she knew that she was going about things all wrong. With her need to be in control and her constant questions about who he had met and what he’d been thinking, she was driving him further away. She knew this on a rational level, but the emotions she had were so overwhelming. She felt that she couldn’t trust him, that he was hiding something from her, that she wasn’t good enough. That he didn’t love her.

  The thought hurt so much that she sat down on the kitchen floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. The refrigerator was humming behind her back, but she hardly noticed. The only thing she was aware of was the hollowness inside of her.

  Where was he? Why hadn’t he called? Why couldn’t she get hold of him? Resolutely she tapped in his number again. Christian’s mobile rang and rang, but there was still no answer. She stood up and went over to look at the letter lying on the kitchen table. It had arrived today, and she had opened it at once. The message was as cryptic as ever. You know you can’t escape. I’m inside your heart, and that’s why you can never hide, no matter where in the world you may go. The handwriting in black ink was very familiar. With trembling fingers, Sanna picked up the letter and held it to her nose. It smelled of paper and ink. No perfume or anything else that might hint at the identity of the sender.

  Though Christian persisted in maintaining that he didn’t know who had written the letters, she didn’t believe him. It was that simple. Fury rose up inside her, and she flung the letter on to the table, turned on her heel, and dashed upstairs. One of the boys called to her from the living room, but she ignored him. She had to know, she had to find out the answer. It was as if someone else had taken over her body, as if she no longer had control of herself.

  She started with the bedroom, pulling out the drawers in Christian’s bureau and tearing through the contents. She took everything out, carefully examining each item, and then ran her hand over the inside of the empty drawers. Nothing. Absolutely nothing other than T-shirts, socks, and underwear.

  She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. What about the wardrobes? Sanna went over to the large pieces of furniture that covered one entire wall and methodically went through them. Everything that belonged to Christian ended up tossed on the floor. Shirts, trousers, belts, and shoes. She found nothing personal, nothing that would tell her anything more about her husband or help her penetrate the wall that he’d constructed around himself.

  Faster and faster she pulled out his clothes. Finally only her own dresses and other clothing were left. She sank down on to the bed and ran her hand over the coverlet that her grandmother had stitched. She possessed so many things that revealed who she was and where she had come from. The coverlet, the dressing table that had once belonged to her other grandmother, the necklace that her mother had given her. Not to mention all the letters from friends and family members, which she kept in boxes in the wardrobe. There were also school yearbooks neatly stacked on a shelf, and her graduation cap safely stored away in a hatbox next to her dried bridal bouquet. So many little things that were part of her personal history, part of her life.

  She suddenly realized that her husband didn’t have any such things. Apparently he wasn’t as sentimental as she was. Nor was he inclined to collect things. But there had to be something. No one went through life without holding on to at least a few mementos.

  She jabbed at the coverlet with her fists. The suspense was making her heart beat faster. Who was Christian? Who was he really? An idea occurred to her, and she suddenly sat very still. There was one place she hadn’t yet searched. The attic.

  Erik swirled the glass in his hand, studying the deep red colour of the wine, which was lighter towards the rim. The sign of a young wine, he’d learned at one of the countless wine classes that he’d attended.

  His whole life was on the verge of collapsing, and he couldn’t really understand how this had happened. He felt he was being carried by a current so strong that there was nothing he could do to resist.

  Magnus was dead. One shock had merged with another, so it was only now that he could really take in what Louise had texted to his phone. First the news that she’d heard Magnus’s body had been found, and almost at the same time Cecilia had announced that she was pregnant. Two events that had shaken him to the core and that he’d learned within thirty seconds of each other.

  ‘You could at least answer me.’ Louise’s voice was harsh now.

  ‘What?’ he replied, realizing that his wife had said something to him, but he’d obviously missed what it was. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I asked you where you were today when I sent you the message about Magnus. I rang your office first, but you weren’t there. Then I tried you several times on your mobile, but I just got your voicemail.’ She was slurring her words, as she’d done all evening. She had probably started drinking sometime in the afternoon.

  Disgust welled up in his mouth, mixing with the wine and giving it a bitter bouquet of steel. He found it nauseating that she had lost control of her life so badly. Why couldn’t she just pull herself together instead of looking at him with that martyr expression and her body full of wine from a box?

  ‘I was out running an errand.’

  ‘An errand?’ Louise took another sip of her wine. ‘Oh, right. I can just imagine what sort of errand that might be.’

  ‘Stop,’ he said wearily. ‘Not today. Not today of all days.’

  ‘Why not today?’ She sounded like she was eager for a fight. The girls had gone to bed a while ago, and now it was just the two of them. Erik and Louise.

  ‘One of our closest friends was found dead today. Can’t we have a little peace and quiet tonight?’

  Louise didn’t reply. He saw that she was embarrassed. For a moment he pictured her as the young girl he’d met at the university: sweet, intelligent, quick-witted. But the image quickly vanished, and what he saw was the slack skin and the teeth stained purple by the wine. Again he had that bitter taste in his mouth.

  And then there was Cecilia. What was he going to do about her? As far as he knew, this was the first time that any of his mistresses had got pregnant. Maybe he’d just been lucky. But now his luck had run out. She said she wanted to keep the child. She had stood there in her kitchen and coldly told him that. No argument, no discussion. She told him because she felt that she had to, and to offer him the opportunity to participate. Or not.

  All of sudden Cecilia seemed so grown-up. The giggling, naive demeanour was gone. He stood there, facing her, and he could tell from her expression that for the first time she was seeing him for who he really was. And it had made him squirm. He didn’t want to see himself through her eyes. He didn’t want to see himself at all.

  People had admired him his whole life, and he’d always taken their praise for granted. Some people feared him, and that had been equally rewarding. But Cecilia, holding a protective hand over her stomach, had looked at him with contempt. The
ir affair was over. She had presented the options open to him. She could keep quiet about who was the father of her child, in return for a significant sum of money deposited in her bank account on a monthly basis, starting with the birth and continuing until the child turned eighteen. Or else Cecilia would tell Louise and then do everything she could to rob him of all honour and respect.

  As Erik looked at his wife, he wondered if he’d made the right choice. He didn’t love Louise. He constantly betrayed her and hurt her, and he knew that she would be happier without him. But it would be difficult to give up what he was used to. There was nothing appealing about a bachelor’s life, with stacks of dirty dishes and mountains of laundry waiting to be washed. Or eating Findus frozen meals in front of the TV, and seeing the girls only at the weekend. Louise had won because it was more convenient, and because she was entitled to half of his assets. It was the simpler solution. But he was going to be paying big-time for this convenience for the next eighteen years.

  For almost an hour Christian sat in the car a short distance from the house. He could see Sanna moving around inside. He could tell from her body language that she was upset.

  He didn’t have the energy to deal with her anger, her weeping and accusations. If it hadn’t been for the boys … Christian started up the car and headed up the driveway to prevent himself from completing that thought. Every time he felt the love for his sons swelling inside his chest, he was overcome with fear. He had tried not to let them come too close. Tried to keep the danger and the evil at bay. But the letters had made him realize that the evil was already here. And his love for his sons was deep and irrevocable.

  He had to protect them, no matter what the cost. He couldn’t fail again. Then his whole life and everything he believed in would be changed for ever. He leaned his head against the steering wheel, felt the plastic touching his forehead, and waited to hear the front door open at any moment. But apparently Sanna hadn’t heard the car, and he had a few more seconds to compose himself.

  He had thought that he could create a sense of security by shutting off the part of his heart that belonged to his sons. But he was wrong. There was no escape. And he couldn’t help loving them. So he was forced to fight, facing the evil eye to eye. Confront what for so long he had held inside of him; but now the book had opened it up. For the first time he thought that he shouldn’t have written that novel. Everything would have been different if it didn’t exist. At the same time he knew that he hadn’t acted of his own free will. He had been forced to write it; he had been forced to write about her.

  Now the front door opened. He raised his face from the steering wheel. Sanna stood in the doorway, shivering, with her cardigan wrapped tightly around her. The light from the hall made her look like a madonna, albeit clad in a nubbly jumper, and with slippers on her feet. She was safe. He knew that as he looked at her. Because she didn’t touch anything inside of him. She had never been able to do that and she never would. She wasn’t someone that he needed to protect.

  But he did have to answer to her for his actions. His legs felt heavy and numb as he climbed out of the car. He pressed the remote to lock the doors and walked towards the light. Sanna took a step back into the hall, staring at him. Her face was very pale.

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach you. Over and over again. I’ve tried since lunchtime, and you haven’t bothered to answer. Tell me that your mobile was stolen, or that it was broken. Tell me anything that could reasonably explain why I haven’t been able to get hold of you.’

  Christian shrugged. He had no explanation.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, taking off his jacket. His arms felt numb too.

  ‘You don’t know?’ She spoke the words haltingly, and even though he had closed the front door, she was still hugging her arms around her body as if she were freezing.

  ‘I was tired,’ he said, well aware of how lame that sounded. ‘It was a rough interview this morning, and then I had to meet with Gaby, and … I was tired.’ He didn’t have the energy to tell her what happened at the meeting with his publisher. All he really wanted to do right now was go upstairs and crawl under the covers so he could fall asleep and forget about everything else.

  ‘Have the boys gone to bed?’ he asked, walking past Sanna. He accidentally brushed against her, and she wavered but stayed on her feet. When she didn’t answer his question, he repeated it.

  ‘Have the boys gone to bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Christian went upstairs to his sons’ room. They looked like little angels as they lay in their beds. Their cheeks flushed, and their eyelashes like tiny black fans. He sat down on the edge of Nils’s bed and stroked his blond hair as he listened to Melker snuffling in his sleep. Then he stood up and tucked the covers more snugly around both boys before he went back downstairs. Sanna was still standing in the same spot in the front hall. He began to sense that her attitude wasn’t due to the usual complaints and accusations. He knew that she checked up on him in every way she could, that she read his emails and phoned the library with contrived excuses just to see if he was really at work. He knew all about this and had accepted it. But something else was going on.

  If he’d had a choice, he would have turned on his heel and gone back upstairs to make good on his thoughts of climbing into bed. But he knew it was no use. Sanna had something she wanted to say, and she was going to tell him what it was, whether he stood here in the hall or lay in bed.

  ‘Has something happened?’ he asked, and suddenly his whole body went cold. Could she really have done it? He knew what she was capable of.

  ‘A letter came today,’ said Sanna, finally deciding to move. She went into the kitchen, and he assumed that he was supposed to follow.

  ‘A letter?’ Christian sighed with relief. Was that all it was?

  ‘The same as usual,’ said Sanna, tossing the envelope down on the table in front of him. ‘Who keeps sending you these letters? And don’t tell me that you don’t know. I don’t believe it for a second.’ Her voice rose to a falsetto. ‘Who is she, Christian? Is she the one you went to see today? Is that why I haven’t been able to get hold of you? Why is she sending you these letters?’ The questions and accusations poured out of her. Christian wearily sank on to a chair closest to the window. He held the letter in his hand without looking at it or reading it.

  ‘I have no idea, Sanna.’ Deep in his heart he almost had an urge to tell her. But he couldn’t.

  ‘You’re lying.’ Sanna began to sob. Her head drooped, and she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jumper. Then she looked up. ‘I know that you’re lying. There’s some woman, or at least there has been. Today I ran around the house like crazy, looking for something that would give me the slightest hint about the man I’m married to. And you know what? There was nothing. Nothing! I have no idea who you are!’

  Sanna was screaming at him now, and Christian let her anger wash over him. She was right. He’d left everything behind – who he was and who he had been. He’d left them all behind. But he should have realized that she would refuse to be forgotten, to remain in the past. He should have known.

  ‘So say something!’

  Christian gave a start. Sanna was leaning forward, spraying saliva as she shouted at him. Slowly he raised his arm to wipe off his face. Then she moved her face even closer and lowered her voice so she was almost whispering.

  ‘But I kept on looking. Everybody has something they don’t want to reveal. So what I want to know is …’ She paused, and he felt his skin prickling with alarm. She had a look of satisfaction on her face that was new and frightening. He didn’t want to hear any more, didn’t want to play this game any longer, but he knew that Sanna would proceed relentlessly towards her goal.

  She reached for something lying on one of the chairs on the other side of the kitchen table. Her eyes were shining with all the emotions that had been stored up during their years together.

  ‘What I want to know is, who does this belong to?’ Sanna said, holding up so
mething blue.

  Christian saw at once what it was. He had to fight his instinct to tear it out of her hands. She had no right to touch that dress! He wanted to tell her that, shout the words at her, and make her understand that she had crossed a line. But his mouth was dry, and he couldn’t utter a single word. He stretched out his hand for the blue fabric, which he knew would feel so soft against his cheek and which would rest so lightly in his hand. She took a step back, holding it out of reach.

  ‘Who does this belong to?’ Her voice was even lower now, barely audible. Sanna unfolded the dress and held it up in front of her, as if she were in a shop and wanted to see if the colour suited her.

  Christian didn’t look at her; his eyes were fixed on the dress. He couldn’t bear to see it sullied by anyone else’s hands. At the same time, his brain was working in a surprisingly cold and methodical way. The two worlds, which he had so carefully kept separate, were about to collide, and he couldn’t reveal the truth. It could never be spoken aloud. Yet the best lie was always the one that held fragments of truth.

  Suddenly he felt completely calm. He would give Sanna what she wanted. He would give her a small piece of his past. So he started talking, and after a while she sat down to listen to his story, although he told her only part of it.

  Lisbet’s breathing was irregular. It had been months since she had slept in the double bed upstairs. Eventually her illness had made it impossible for her to manage the climb to the bedroom, so he’d fixed up the guest room on the ground floor for her. He’d made the small room as comfortable as possible, but no matter what he did, it was still the guest room. And this time the cancer was the guest. It occupied the room with its smell, its tenacity, and its portent of death.

  Soon the cancer would leave them, but as Kenneth lay there listening to Lisbet’s halting breath, he wished that the guest would stay. Because it wouldn’t be leaving alone; it would take along the dearest person in his life.