‘Axel, you have to wake up now. It’s time to go to day-care.’
They arrived a bit late, just as she had planned. The children were already sitting on the floor in the playroom waiting for the session, and all the parents had hurried off to their jobs. Axel hung his jacket on the hook and at the same moment Linda came in from the kitchen with the fruit bowl in her hands.
‘Hi, Axel.’
‘Hi.’
A quick smile in her direction and then her gaze on Axel again.
‘Come on, Axel, let’s go in. The session is starting soon.’
There was a calm about her. The hatred felt almost enjoyable. All her energy was focused and she herself was without guilt. None of this ever had to happen, they were the ones who were forcing her. It was odd how a couple of unfamiliar earrings in one’s shower could sharpen the senses.
Her words sharpened to spear tips.
‘Oh Linda, have you got a moment? There’s something I have to say.’
She could see a glint of fear in the other woman’s eyes and was enjoying her power.
‘Yes, of course. Axel, go in and sit down, then I’ll come in and we can wave out the window.’
He did as she said. Maybe he could sense her resolve. He vanished into the playroom and she turned back to Linda, looked at her for a while, conscious of the nervousness her silence was creating. Linda stood perfectly still. Only the fruit bowl in her hands was shaking.
‘Well, it’s like this . . . it’s a bit difficult to talk about but . . . I still wanted to do it for Axel’s sake.’
She fell silent again, resting in her advantage.
‘It’s just that . . . we’re having a few problems at home right now, Henrik and I, and I thought it would be good if you heard about it, with regard to Axel, I mean. I don’t know how aware he is but . . . in any case I do know how much he relies on you here at day-care, and it will probably be even more important for a while until we’ve managed to sort all this out.’
Linda’s eyes searched the room in the hope of finding something to fix her gaze on.
‘I see.’
I see? Weren’t you the one who was so damned fantastic to talk with?
‘I just wanted to tell you this, for Axel’s sake.’
‘Sure. Naturally.’
They stood motionless. It was clear that Linda wanted nothing more than to be allowed to leave. Maybe this was how they found each other. Realised that they shared the same improbable cowardice, always wanting to flee from anything that could be considered a real conversation.
Eva held her fast with her gaze.
‘What a nice jumper you’re wearing, by the way.’
Linda looked down at her jumper as if she had never seen it before.
‘Thanks.’
Yes, little Linda. Now you’ve got a little something to wonder about.
‘Will you tell Axel that I’ll wave to him in the window?’
‘Of course.’
‘And thanks for listening.’
She smiled and put her hand confidingly on Linda’s forearm.
‘It feels so good to be able to tell you this. I’m sure that everything will work out. Every marriage has its ups and downs from time to time.’
She smiled, and maybe that’s what Linda was trying to do as well.
‘We’ll come to get him at four as usual.’
She kept her hand on Linda’s arm a moment too long before she turned to go.
He still wasn’t awake when she got home. The door to the bedroom was closed, and she continued into the kitchen and put on some coffee. She had called in to work from her mobile. It was a serious flu she had come down with, and the doctor had given her a sick note, so it was probably best if Håkan took over her project for a while.
She took out the guest bed with the fold-down legs that had been a wedding present from Cissi and Janne. It was still in its original box and had barely been used.
Never before had an idea been so clear, so pure, so utterly free of hesitation and doubt. There was only a single driving force, and it was so powerful that it shoved everything else aside, justified every step she took, every thought.
One step at a time. It was the here and now that mattered. The future that she wanted no longer existed, he had taken it away from her.
Now she just had to see to it that he lost the future he wanted too.
And he wouldn’t even know what hit him.
She finished making up the guest bed and stopped outside the bedroom door. She tried to smile a few times to practice her expression, but she mustn’t overdo it. She had to try to behave like the Eva he thought he knew, the one who existed twenty hours ago, or else he would be suspicious.
She pressed down the handle with her arm and pushed open the door with her foot. He was awake and raised himself up on his elbow.
‘Good morning.’
He didn’t reply.
Didn’t you hear me say good morning, you fucking pig?
He lay silent, staring at her as if it were a sharp axe and not a tray she held in her hands.
‘What’s that?’
She took a step into the room.
‘It’s called breakfast in bed.’
She was at his side and resisted the temptation to dump the hot coffee in his face. He sat up and she carefully set the tray over his legs.
‘You don’t have to worry, I don’t intend to seduce you. I just want to talk a little.’
She smiled into the darkness, well aware that this was an even greater threat.
Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, as far from him as she could get without leaving the room.
He sat quite still, pinned down by the tray straddling his legs.
‘As you may have noticed, I wasn’t home last night.’
‘No. It would have been nice if you’d said something before you left.’
She swallowed. She couldn’t let herself be provoked. The new Eva was a good, fine person who understood that he must have been worried.
‘I know, that was stupid. I apologise, but I had to get out of here for a while.’
He didn’t give in, but made use of the occasion to share some of his guilty conscience.
‘Axel was sad and wondered where you were.’
She clenched her fist and concentrated on the pain her nails caused as they dug into her palm.
If you want to talk about guilt, then let’s do that. Who causes him the most harm.
‘I was out walking all night.’
She dropped her gaze and stroked her hand across the blue-checked sheet.
‘I was thinking about everything that’s happened here at home recently, how we’re not getting along, how we act towards each other. I realise that it’s just as much my fault that it’s turned out like this.’
She looked up at him but had a hard time reading his reaction. His face was blank. He had been ready for strife and conflict and clearly didn’t know how to act when she lay prostrate at his feet.
She smiled into the darkness again.
‘I’d like to apologise for getting so angry about that thing about Maria at Widman’s. Just to clear the air a bit, I realise that it’s great that you have her to talk to, that it might actually be a good thing for us. If she’s as smart as you say she is, she can probably help us get through all this.’
His expression made her lower her eyes again. She turned her head so that he wouldn’t notice her smile and then kept talking with her face turned away.
‘I know that you’ve been feeling bad for a while, and you said yourself that you don’t think it’s fun any more.’
She looked at him again.
‘Why don’t you go away for a little while? Think about how you want things to be, what it is you want. I’ll take care of everything at home in the meantime, it’s completely OK. The main thing is that you feel good again.’
He sat utterly still.
Well, Henrik, now it’s a little harder, isn’t it?
She stood up
.
‘I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you need me, I always have been even if I might not have been good at showing it sometimes. I’ll do my best to try and improve. I’m here, and I always will be.’
Now he looked almost sick. His thighs were pressed against the underside of the tray and some of the coffee in the cup sloshed over the edge and ran under the plate of sandwiches.
She was amazed that she ever could have touched him. He sat there looking so pitiful and timid that she wanted to hit him.
Get up damn you, and stand up for yourself!
She backed towards the door. She had to get out of the room before she lost control.
The last thing she saw was how he lifted the tray aside. She left the bedroom, continued downstairs and went straight to the gun cabinet.
There was no parking ticket on his car when he came out. It didn’t surprise him much, he only noted it as something natural. For the last time the main doors had slid aside when they sensed his presence, but this time they hadn’t tossed him out into fear and loneliness, longing for the next time he would be allowed inside. This time they had slid aside deferentially and wished him well in his new life.
Now it would all begin. Everything he had gone through up till now had been a test of whether he deserved what now awaited him. He could forgive life for the injustice after injustice. Together with her everything would be repaid.
For the last time he turned on to Solnavägen and took a right towards Essingeleden. The rush-hour traffic was over and the trip home took him only the eighteen minutes it usually did.
Or rather, as it used to do.
When he got home to Storsjövägen he backed up to the front entrance and shut off the engine. He climbed out and opened the boot. He had a lot to do today, and it was best he began at once.
* * *
The packing boxes lay in the cellar. He picked up four of them and took the lift up to the studio. It smelled stuffy when he opened the door, but he didn’t feel like airing it. Instead he opened up two of the boxes and lined the bottoms with newspaper. The hibiscus had lost one of its two pink flowers, and the one that was left had withered into a shrivelled strip. He tossed the pot, dirt and all, into one of the cartons. For two years and five months he had seen to it that all her potted plants stayed alive, but now that was all over.
He was no longer responsible for their lives.
The boxes were heavier than he thought when they were full of dirt, and he had to drag them out to the lift. When he looked round one last time and made sure that all life in the flat had been emptied into boxes he closed the door behind him, locked both locks and threw the key through the mail slot.
Never again.
He continued to his own flat.
Some of the painting frames were too big to fit into the cartons, so he had to break them up.
When the walls were bare the flat looked completely naked. Just as naked and unblemished as he himself would be. He would cleanse every thought, every memory, clean every nook and cranny to make room for the love he had found.
Utterly pure and without guilt he would receive her, making himself worthy.
He opened the wardrobe and took out her clothes that he had brought down from the studio, shoving them down amongst the paintings. Her scent had long since left them, but they had still kept him company when the loneliness felt too oppressive.
Now he didn’t need them any more.
Never again.
He had to put the last box on the passenger seat. The clock on the dashboard read only eleven thirty, and that was much too early. He would have to wait for evening in order not to attract too much attention. On the other hand, he would have to carry the boxes the last stretch of the way; it was only a matter of driving up to the Boat Club, and that would take him a while. He would rather have done it on the wharf, but he knew that was impossible. Yet he could do it on the beach right next to it. No one would see him from the path, but the bonfire would be visible from the south side facing Söder. But surely he could light a fire if he wanted to, and it would have to take place near the wharf.
Like a purification rite, once and for all.
On that September day two years and five months ago it had been raining for a whole week, but then like an omen the sky split open and turned bright blue two hours before she was to arrive. He had packed the picnic basket carefully. He had even made a quick trip down to Konsum and bought plastic champagne glasses so everything would be perfect.
As usual she was a bit late, twenty-six minutes to be exact, but she had wanted to finish something on a painting she was working on. It didn’t make that much difference; if he had waited a year he could wait another twenty-six minutes.
He had placed a checked kitchen towel over the basket and during the walk down towards Årstaviken she kept asking him what was in it. As usual she babbled on; it bothered him a bit that she didn’t seem to grasp the solemnity of the occasion. She talked about some gallery where she might get a chance to exhibit her paintings, and about how nice the man was who owned the place. The whole conversation made him uncomfortable. He hated it when she met people outside his control. He wanted to know everything she did, who she met and how she acted when she met them. A few weeks earlier he had mustered the courage to talk to her about it, explain how he felt. Something had happened after their talk, something that bothered him. For him everything he told her had been a sign of his boundless love, but somehow she must have misunderstood. It seemed as if she had pulled back the past few weeks. She had suddenly not been able to eat lunch with him as she usually did, and a few times she had pretended she wasn’t home when he knocked on the door of the studio, even though he knew she was there.
Now he would see to it that everything was all right again.
He had thought that they should sit on the bench across from the Boat Club, but when she saw that the gates were open she absolutely had to walk out on the wharfs. She chose the one on the right, and they walked past the few boats that were still in the water, waiting to be taken out for the winter. They walked to the end, and he set the basket down on the concrete. The bench would have been better. She came over and stood by his side, looking out over the water. A lock of her dark hair had slipped out of the clasp at the back of her neck and was lying across her cheek. He resisted the impulse to brush it aside, touch her face.
‘God, it’s so beautiful. Look at the Söder Hospital.’
He looked where she was pointing. The sun made the windows in the enormous white building glow as if fires had been lit inside each and every one of them.
‘I should have brought along my sketch pad.’
He knelt down and took the towel off the basket, placed it like a tablecloth on the concrete, and set out the champagne glasses.
‘Oh,’ she said, smiling in surprise, ‘it’s a party!’
He felt the nervousness now, almost changed his mind. In some way she didn’t seem fully there. Everything would be much easier if she met him halfway, tried to help him out. He took out the potato salad and the grilled chicken, reached for the sparkling wine and stood up.
Her smile. He had to touch her.
‘What are we celebrating?’
He smiled at her, couldn’t say the words, not yet.
‘Has something wonderful happened?’
Now she was looking at him with curiosity, really looking at him. For the first time in weeks he had her full attention. Finally she was back again, with him, where she should always be.
He handed her the glass with determination.
‘Will you marry me?’
He had fantasised about it for months. How her beautiful face would break into that smile that made her eyes narrow to slits. How she would come to him, come close, in complete trust and finally let him kiss her, touch her. She who had always had to struggle through life would understand that he intended to protect her, that he would never leave her, that she never had to be afraid again.
But al
l she did was shut her eyes.
She closed her eyes and shut him out.
A primal fear came over him. All the terror that she had protected him from for a whole year came flooding in like a great fury.
She opened her eyes and looked at him again.
‘Jonas. We have to talk.’
She took the glass from him and put it down on the wharf.
‘Come, let’s sit down.’
He couldn’t move.
‘Come on.’
She reached out her hand and placed it carefully on his arm, led him cautiously over to the edge of the wharf and got him to sit down. She stared out over the water.
‘I think the world of you, Jonas, I do, but what you said to me a few weeks ago scared me. I realised that maybe you’ve misinterpreted everything.’
I don’t want you to live here any more.
‘I’ve tried to explain things to you but . . . well, it’s my own fault that it’s gone this far, because I haven’t dared, I didn’t want to make you sad. Yes, and our friendship has been terribly important for me as well, I don’t want to lose it.’
I don’t want you to live here any more.
‘This man at the gallery I told you about, his name is Martin, we have . . . he and I have . . . oh, damn it.’
She looked away but in the next instant he thought he could feel her hand on his arm, though it could have been his imagination.
‘I’m so sorry that I didn’t say something sooner. I didn’t realise how you felt until you told me that you didn’t want me to see other people if you weren’t with me. And this thing with Martin. Well, now I might as well tell you the truth. I really believe I can say that I love him. At any rate, I haven’t ever felt like this before.’
He looked down at his arm. Yes, it was there. Her faithless hand lay there on his forearm.
She was touching him.
‘Forgive me, Jonas, but . . .’
Everything went white.
In the next instant she was in the water. Her face broke the surface, shocked and furious.
Betrayal Page 9
