by Hans Koppel
‘Red.’
For some unknown reason, their daughter preferred the cheat’s version with ready-made tomato sauce to Ylva’s far tastier variant.
When it was served later, Sanna would be obliged to pick out with surgical precision any life-threatening traces of onion and red pepper before she could eat. Other than that, she showed remarkable interest in whatever was put on the table. If there was any cause for complaint, it was the time it took for her to eat. A Tibetan monk couldn’t have been less concerned about time.
Mike gazed out at the street and wondered if he should give Ylva a quick call, after all. Find out if she was going to come home for supper. He decided not to. For tactical reasons. It wasn’t because he was proud.
A year ago, Ylva had had an affair with one of her clients. A restaurant owner with no notable qualities other than a cheesy grin that Ylva couldn’t seem to get enough of.
Mike had kicked up a storm. It was a soap opera from start to finish, or at least reminiscent of an episode from one. Mike was totally dependent on his wife and would rather that she was unfaithful to him for the rest of his life than be forced to live without her.
And yet, in weaker moments, hate was his companion, it latched on to him and walked beside him, too close, constantly tapping on his shoulder, demanding attention and energy.
Do something, the voice insisted. Do something.
In those moments, the world shrunk. The skies pushed down and hovered right above Mike’s head, like a basement ceiling.
He’d read somewhere that the person who was unfaithful often felt even worse. That it was all about confirmation and projected self-loathing, all that psychology bullshit that only they believed in and used to justify their behaviour.
Mike enjoyed playing the victim, to a certain extent. Not in the sense that he wanted everyone to know he was a cuckold, but in the privacy of his own home there’d be plenty of self-pity and accusing looks.
In the end, he went too far and Ylva gave him an ultimatum.
‘Things are the way they are. Either we put it behind us and move on …’
She was standing at the sink peeling potatoes when she said it. She paused, turned around with the peeler in one hand and a half-peeled potato in the other.
‘Or we’ll need to find another solution.’
Mike had never mentioned the lover’s name again.
The woman pulled Ylva’s hair hard and forced her face up.
‘How does she feel?’ she asked her husband.
She didn’t raise her voice even though Ylva was screaming and crying and talking incoherently about what had happened.
The woman didn’t want to miss a second of her humiliation, the long-anticipated retribution.
‘Like putting your cock in a bucket of hot water? She must be wide, she’s had that many in there.’
The woman pulled at her hair.
‘Well, are you? Wide?’
Ylva was crying and the snot ran from her nose. Her head bounced in time with the man’s thrusts. Her face was twisted with pain.
‘I think she likes it,’ the woman said. ‘She seems to like it. You’ll have to do it again, darling.’
Ylva pleaded with them.
‘Please.’
The woman leaned towards her.
‘I won’t do a thing,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll just watch.’
The movements quickened and then finally stopped. The man straightened up, out of breath, pulled on his pants and did up his trousers.
The woman let go of Ylva’s hair and straightened up as well. She walked in front of her husband and unlocked the door. She let her husband through and then followed.
‘You can be grateful there’s only one,’ she said, and closed the door.
10
Mike cooked the spaghetti and made the red mince sauce. The sophisticated recipe entailed browning the mince, adding Barilla tomato sauce and stirring. The food was served with ketchup and parmesan. Sanna had a Coke as it was Friday and Mike had a glass of red wine, because he felt like it.
‘How was school today?’
‘Okay.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Don’t know, all sorts.’
Sanna put some food in her mouth.
‘But you like school, don’t you?’
Sanna nodded as she chewed, mindful of keeping her mouth closed.
‘That’s good,’ Mike said. ‘You’d tell us if you weren’t happy, wouldn’t you?’
He immediately regretted it. It was a stupid question, leading. Excessive anxiety on the part of the parents that could end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortunately, Sanna’s thoughts were elsewhere. For once, she was eating quickly and shuffling her bottom restlessly around on the chair.
‘Finished,’ she announced and stood up.
She put her plate by the sink and went back to her film.
Mike cleared up in the kitchen and was struck by the guilt of TV parents. He went into the sitting room and sat down beside his daughter on the sofa. It was a cartoon DVD that they’d bought. Sanna had seen the film a hundred times before and knew it off by heart. For some reason, she liked watching films she’d already seen. As if her greatest pleasure was knowing what was going to happen.
‘This is a good bit,’ she said in advance and leaned in to Mike.
And then she laughed at something funny she knew was coming up. Mike smiled at the luxury of being able to sit beside his daughter and watch an idiotic film that would otherwise simply pass him by.
‘Shall we play a game?’ Sanna asked, as the credits rolled.
‘Absolutely.’
Sanna went and got a pile of spin-off products from various blockbusters. The rules were difficult to understand and the entertainment value zero.
‘Can we build a tower instead?’
‘You always want to build towers.’
‘I like towers.’
‘Oh, okay.’
Sanna sighed as she went over to the play boxes and came back with a plastic tray full of building blocks in various shapes and sizes.
The point was to build the tower as high as possible. They each put on one block at a time, and the one who made it topple was the loser. Mike was careful to lose convincingly. He had no time for parents who competed with their children.
He had discussed this with some colleagues. One of them refused to let his children win. And it was the right thing to do, his colleague argued, because one of his sons had just recently been selected for the junior national handball team.
Mike didn’t understand his reasoning. With the best will in the world, he couldn’t see the point in playing handball for the national junior team.
He and Sanna made towers from building blocks until it was time for bed.
‘When’s Mummy coming home?’ Sanna asked, as she settled down under the duvet.
‘She’ll be here soon,’ Mike said.
‘How soon?’
‘Very soon.’
‘I want to stay up until she comes.’
‘No go, I’m afraid.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know exactly when she’s going to come home. But by the time you wake up first thing tomorrow morning, she’ll be in her bed, I promise. And you’ll have to be a little bit quiet, won’t you, as Mummy will be tired.’
Ylva was still lying on the bed. She couldn’t get up. Only a couple of hours ago she’d wished her colleagues a good weekend and walked down the hill to catch the bus home. The man and the woman had been waiting for her, offered her a lift. Ylva couldn’t say no. You couldn’t really, could you, when new neighbours who’ve just moved in offer you a lift.
Everything had been planned, the rape as well. The cellar room she was in had been built especially for her.
Ylva was only a hundred metres from her own house, where her husband and daughter were waiting for her to come home.
Or maybe they weren’t. Ylva had mentioned that she might go out for a glass of wine
with her colleagues after work. Would Mike dare to call? Probably not. He wouldn’t want to seem weak. When would he realise that something was wrong?
Ylva rolled over on to her side, with some difficulty. Her body was sore and it hurt to move. It took all her energy just to try. She lay there, gasping for breath.
The TV was on.
It was dark outside, the streetlamps glowed in a kind of white halo that made the rest of the picture dark and grey. It was difficult to see the silhouette of their house. But Ylva saw that the light in Sanna’s room was still on.
How long would it be before Mike called the police?
Would they let her go before then? They couldn’t keep her here.
Could they?
The thought was too much to take in. Of course she would report him. Ylva would report both of them. What had happened twenty years ago didn’t really matter.
Couldn’t they understand that what had happened had tormented her too? Not in the same way, obviously. But that didn’t make it any easier. In a way, it made it worse. They didn’t have the guilt, never needed to think about what they could’ve done.
A day hadn’t passed when Ylva hadn’t blamed herself. She had gone through all the stages of denial and self-loathing, without finding peace. Ylva would just have to live with it.
She manoeuvred herself off the bed, staggered over to the door on shaky legs, pushed down the door handle and pulled. It was locked. There was a peephole in the door. Ylva tried to look through it, but realised it was fitted the other way round. So that they could look in from outside.
She kicked the door but just hurt her foot and so started to hit it with the flats of her hands in the hope that the sound might be audible on the other side. She stopped to listen for footsteps, but only heard her own sobs. She ended up banging on the door hysterically and screaming as loud as she could.
Ylva didn’t know how long she did this for, but when she finally turned her back to the door and sunk to the floor, she had no feeling left in her hands.
She cried and cried, but eventually lifted her eyes and discovered that the cellar room she was in was done out like a studio apartment.
She put her hands flat on the floor and got up with great difficulty. She went over to the kitchenette and opened the fridge. It was empty, except for a half-tube of Primula.
There was a door in the wall opposite the kitchenette. Ylva opened it. A bathroom with a toilet, shower and sink. No window, just a fan, high up on the wall.
Ylva closed the door and looked around. The walls were plastered breeze blocks. The room was twenty square metres, max, just a small corner of the cellar.
Ylva remembered all the pallets of building materials that had been left outside the house, waiting for the new owners. The Poles, who spoke very little Swedish, had tried to answer the questions from inquisitive neighbours.
The cellar. They were going to do something in the cellar. Build a music studio, they thought.
When he’d finished the story, Sanna lay there and traced the pattern on the wallpaper with her finger, as she usually did. She’d asked again when Mummy was coming home and Mike had felt almost guilty.
‘Am I not good enough?’
He said it as a joke, but underlying the words was a hurt.
‘Mummy will be back soon. She just went out with some friends for a while. Grown-ups have to be allowed to play with their friends too, sometimes.’
Mike thought he sounded false when he said that, but Sanna didn’t seem to react.
Fifteen minutes later, he woke up and saw that she was asleep. He hoped that she’d fallen asleep before him, but had his doubts. Carefully, he raised himself up on one elbow. The bedsprings creaked and groaned under his weight but Sanna slept on.
Mike left the bedroom door open. He recalled the feeling of horror when he’d woken up in total darkness as a child with no idea where he was. He didn’t want Sanna to have to go through the same thing.
He went down to the kitchen, opened the fridge and looked at the contents without finding anything tempting. He went through the cupboards and was happy to discover a half-full bag of peanuts behind the cereal. He decided that he deserved them, as a brave and currently-as-good-as-single parent, and poured himself a whisky to go with them.
Mike took the nuts and whisky into the sitting room, switched on the TV and watched the end of a film he’d already seen. It was better than he remembered and gave him an inkling of why his daughter always wanted to watch the same film.
When the film had finished, he flicked through the channels without finding anything else to watch. He turned the TV off. There were no curtains in the sitting room and the blue glow of a television at this time of night might be misconstrued.
He went to get his mobile phone. No missed calls or apologetic texts.
It wasn’t fair that she hadn’t been in touch. After all, it hadn’t been definite that she was going out for the evening. She should have phoned to say whether she was coming home for supper or not.
In the end, Mike decided to give her a ring. Officially to make sure that everything was okay and to insist she got a taxi home. Simple concern, he convinced himself, nothing more. He wasn’t calling because he was in any way worried that she might be fluttering her eyelashes at someone, or chewing her lip in that deliberately provocative way.
Mike repeated to himself exactly what he was going to say before he picked up the phone.
Just a bit worried. Thought you might call to say whether you were coming home for supper or not. No, no, she’s fast asleep. We had a nice evening, building towers. No trouble at all. I’m off to bed now. Can you try to be a bit quiet when you come in, and I’ll get up early in the morning and pop down to the shop for some fresh rolls. Have fun. And don’t forget to take a taxi home.
But instead of extended ringing and then finally his wife’s voice, with a wall of loud music, laughter and happy shouts in the background, it went straight to voicemail. An automated voice told him which number he’d called and Mike pulled himself together.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said. ‘Your husband. Just thought I’d see how you’re getting on. I assume you’re out with people from work. Anyway, I’m off to bed now. Take a taxi home, please. I’ve had a drink and can’t drive. Sanna’s in bed. Big hug.’
He hung up and immediately regretted leaving the message. It didn’t sound natural, and saying ‘your husband’ sounded insecure, as if he was nervous and having a go at her, in a don’t-do-anything-stupid sort of way.
He sat there and stared at the display on his mobile phone. The screen image was of Sanna and Ylva on the swimming dock at Hamnplan, dripping with water, smiling happily at the camera with the Danish coastline in the background.
Hi, it’s me. Your husband …
11
Ylva heaved and gasped, tried to think straight. They had driven into the garage, carried her down some steps that swung ninety degrees to the right, west towards the water. They had walked along a corridor, two to three metres long and opened double doors into the room she was in now.
She compared this with her mental image of the house. She’d never been inside before, just seen it from the outside, but she knew that the ground plan was basically square.
Ylva realised that they’d built the room she was in more or less in the middle of the cellar, as far from the outer walls as possible. The breeze blocks that separated her from the rest of the cellar were more than a hundred centimetres thick. They may have insulated the walls even more behind the blocks.
They had built a music studio, a soundproof room where you could make as much noise as you liked without anything being heard outside. So basically, no matter how much she screamed, no one would hear her.
But the room couldn’t be completely sealed. There had to be an opening, some kind of ventilation. Oxygen could of course get in through the cracks and joins in the doors and walls, but an extractor would be bigger.
She quickly crossed the room again, opened the
cupboard doors, inspected the walls and ceiling, got down on her knees and looked under the bed.
There was a vent in the bathroom and in one of the corners of the room. Ylva took the chair from beside the bed and pulled it into position. She got up on it and put her mouth to the vent and shouted for help. Stretching at such an awkward angle gave her cramp in the neck and she found it hard to keep her balance. She almost fell off the chair a couple of times, but managed to stay upright by bending her knees. She screamed for help, desperate and scared.
She had no idea how much time had passed when she finally gave up in tears, climbed down from the chair and collapsed on the bed. She looked at the TV screen. The white halos around the street lamps were bigger and the lights in her own house had been turned off. It was night.
Ylva wondered whether Mike had tried to call her. She couldn’t be sure. Maybe he’d wanted to, but hadn’t dared. Mike was scared that she’d get irritated, that she’d think he was keeping an eye on her, clipping her wings. How many times had she not checked her breath when she felt that he was following her around? Ingratiating and happy to help, but also anxious and on guard.
And even though she’d never said it aloud, the sentence hung in the air and spoke volumes.
You can’t lock me up, Mike. It won’t work.
Mike dropped off to sleep quickly but woke up again just after two. He saw that Ylva wasn’t home yet, went to the loo and then came back to bed. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the light in the bathroom and sat down on the toilet for a piss, everything to increase his chances of going back to sleep, but as soon as he was under the covers again, he was wide awake. Red wine usually had that effect. It made him dozy and sleepy at first, but then he woke up with his heart going like the clappers. His brain immediately engaged and proceeded to take him on a twisting and shuddering big dipper ride. The associations were inevitably negative and dark.
Wherever Ylva was now. He could picture it. Her falling back on to a bed, quickly followed by an intent lover who kissed her passionately on the mouth and then on down her neck. The shirt being ripped off, wild, almost like a parody of a film, but to them, natural and real.
