The Golden Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  “I’ll try,” Faye said.

  A brief silence followed.

  “When are you coming into the office?” Kerstin asked.

  “I’m probably not coming in today, Chris needs me.”

  “Go to Chris,” Kerstin said. “I’ll hold the fort here.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Chris’s doorbell echoed shrilly in the stairwell. Faye hadn’t called ahead to say she’d be coming—she hardly ever did. Chris’s door was always open for her, she still had her own key. She waited and listened. After a while she heard slow footsteps inside the apartment, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.

  Chris looked tired. Her face was gray and she had big, dark bags under her eyes. When she saw it was Faye her face cracked into a weary smile.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought it was a burglar.”

  “And yet you opened the door.”

  “I needed someone to take my frustration out on,” Chris said as she bent down to unlock the white metal grille.

  “Poor burglars. They wouldn’t stand a chance. Have you eaten anything?”

  “Not since yesterday. I haven’t got any appetite, I don’t even feel like drinking champagne. That gives you some idea of how bad it is. I was thinking of asking the hospital if I can take it intravenously instead.”

  Chris lay down on the sofa while Faye made coffee and looked through the fridge and pantry for something to force into her. All she could come up with were two crispbreads with cod roe. Chris took a few bites before pushing the plate away with a grimace.

  “The cod roe is Johan’s. I never liked it even when I was well.”

  She wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “Why didn’t you say?” Faye said. “If you’d said you didn’t like it I’d have gotten you something else.”

  Chris shrugged.

  “The chemo seems to have killed my taste buds. I thought that might mean I could actually eat the stuff. But not even chemo can get my taste buds to accept it. I’ve tried telling Johan that it’s horrible, but he refuses to listen.”

  “So what are your doctors saying?” Faye asked gently as she moved the plate.

  “Do we have to talk about it?”

  “No. But I’m worried.”

  Chris let out a deep sigh.

  “It’s not looking good, Faye. Not good at all, in fact.”

  The hairs on the back of Faye’s neck stood up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly that. The treatment hasn’t had any effect whatsoever. Well, apart from the fact that I feel sick the whole time, I keep throwing up and I’ve started to lose my hair. But at least I’m thin, so I don’t have to go to the gym anymore.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Chris waved her hand dismissively.

  “Can’t we talk about something else? Act like you normally do. What’s new?”

  “You’re not reading the papers anymore?”

  Chris shook her head wearily. Faye went out into the hall, pulled the crumpled copy of Dagens Industri from her bag and returned with it. She put it down on Chris’s lap.

  After a quick glance at Faye, Chris opened the paper and leafed through the article.

  Faye ate the rest of the crispbread while Chris read. She didn’t share her friend’s opinion of cod roe.

  “This is incredible,” Chris said, folding the paper. “Did you expect them to write this much?”

  “No. And it gets better: the evening papers and Dagens Nyheter have joined in, along with the online media. There’s pretty much a witch hunt on Facebook and social media.”

  “You must be delighted?”

  “I don’t want to count any chickens.”

  “You’re more boring than me, and I’m the one who’s dying! We need to celebrate this somehow. I wonder how quickly I can get hold of a drip full of cava?”

  “There’s no need, Chris. We can celebrate later, when it’s over. When you’re better.” She forced herself to smile. “So how’s life as a newly engaged woman?”

  “Wonderful. Well, as wonderful as it can be when you’re being sick three times an hour. Johan’s brought me breakfast in bed every day.”

  “But you’re not eating?”

  “No, but he doesn’t know that. And I haven’t got the heart to tell him that if I ate it I’d be throwing up his lovely breakfast half an hour later.”

  “When’s the wedding?”

  “That’s the problem. Johan wants to get married within a year and all that. I don’t know what it is with young people today, they really are incredibly conservative. I don’t think I can deal with that.”

  Faye refrained from pointing out that Johan, who was only five years younger than Chris, could hardly be described as young. She looked at Chris sternly instead.

  “You need to tell him that,” she said, in a stricter voice than she’d intended.

  She didn’t want Johan to put any pressure on her friend. Chris had time. She had to have time.

  “The problem is that it might not happen otherwise. I’ve got some uninvited tumors that want to gate-crash the party.”

  “The treatment will help. It has to.”

  “We’ll see,” Chris said, and turned her face away from Faye. Soon after that she fell asleep.

  Faye laid a blanket over her and patted her knees when she tucked her in. Then she crept quietly out of the apartment and locked it using her own key.

  Faye felt deflated as she walked down the stairs. Chris had always been able to see the funny side of everything, but now she seemed to have resigned herself to dying.

  The financial news on Swedish Television was showing a downward graph to illustrate the collapse in Compare’s share price during the day. Pictures of the entrance to Compare’s head office on Blasieholmen were intercut with shots of the gates to the house on Lidingö. But no one had been able to get hold of Jack.

  “Where could he be?” Kerstin murmured as she sat beside Faye, hunched toward the screen.

  “He’s probably locked away with frowning PR consultants who are trying to tell him how to deal with this.”

  “Will that do any good?”

  “I doubt it. But the PR consultants will be able to send in some hefty invoices for all that wasted advice.” She turned to look at Kerstin. “You went to see Ragnar today, didn’t you? How was it?”

  Kerstin shook her head. “You know I don’t want to talk about him.”

  Faye nodded and did as Kerstin wanted. This time.

  For every hour that Jack managed to evade the reporters, their frustration seemed to grow. When Julienne came into the living room, Faye discreetly changed the channel. She got ready to put her to bed, but Kerstin offered to do it instead. A special bond had grown up between Faye and Kerstin, with Julienne as the glue. These days Kerstin pretty much only used her apartment to sleep in, and Faye wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The sound of laughter was coming from Julienne’s room and Faye smiled. She had Julienne and Kerstin in her life, couldn’t she be happy with that? Did she have to crush Jack? Julienne had always worshipped her dad, and children needed both their parents. Even if Jack didn’t always have time for his daughter, and even if Julienne sometimes cried before visits to her father. Faye knew that was natural for children with divorced parents. Eternal separation anxiety.

  Faye honestly didn’t know if Jack loved Julienne. He had always treated her like a princess, but sometimes it felt like she was primarily a beautiful accessory that he enjoyed showing off to the world. And a father’s love wasn’t necessarily unconditional, she was all too aware of that.

  Faye allowed herself brief moments of doubt, but she knew there was no alternative. Jack had ground her down, humiliated and betrayed her. He had discarded the family that she had sacrificed everyt
hing for. Men had held power over her throughout her whole life. She couldn’t let Jack get away with it.

  She decided to skip the rest of the news bulletin and went out into the kitchen to get a glass of wine. When she returned to the living room and was reaching for her iPad, she got a message from Jack.

  I need to see you, he wrote.

  Where? she replied.

  A minute passed before her mobile buzzed again.

  Where we first met.

  * * *

  • • •

  Rain was falling steadily as Faye shut the door of the taxi and ran at a crouch to the door of the N’See Bar. There were three guys in their twenties nursing beers at one table. Jack was sitting right at the back. The same place she and Chris had been sitting sixteen years before.

  Jack was sitting with his head bowed over his half-drunk beer.

  The bartender nodded to her.

  “Two beers, please.” She guessed Jack’s glass would soon be empty.

  The bartender filled two glasses and Faye carried them over to Jack’s table.

  He looked up and she put one of the glasses down in front of him.

  “Hi,” he said with a sad smile.

  He looked vulnerable. Small.

  His dark hair was brushed back and one wet strand was hanging forlornly over his cheek. He was pale, his skin looked puffy. His eyes bloodshot. She had never seen him this dejected. Faye had to suppress a first instinct to put her arms around him, comfort him, tell him everything was going to be all right.

  “How are you?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “This…this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Her last ounce of sympathy vanished when she realized just how sorry he felt for himself. He was absolutely wallowing in it. He hadn’t spared a thought for how it must have felt for her to lose everything. Become a social pariah, isolated, rejected. She had experienced everything he was going through now and more besides. And he hadn’t felt the slightest sympathy for her then. So why should she be any different?

  But in order to get what she wanted she had to give him what he wanted.

  “What are you going to do?” She made her voice soft.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  She wondered how to phrase it. He mustn’t resign, because then everything would have been in vain. That would leave him as just another businessman who had turned out to be greedy. And there were plenty of those in the world. Jack’s downfall needed to be far more spectacular than that.

  She had to persuade him to stay on. She wanted him to have a long way to fall. And it was as if her mere presence made him more ready to fight. He looked at her with a fresh glint in his eye. In the background Carly Simon’s “Coming Around Again” was playing. She’d always liked that song. That said, her own heart had felt smaller since Jack broke it. As if it had shrunk.

  “That all happened over ten years ago,” Jack said. “How can it even be news? I was young and hungry back then. You do what you have to, it’s business. The only thing people care about is results. No one gives a damn about how you do it. But now? It must be envy. People hate anyone who’s successful. They hate people like you and me, Faye. Because we’re smarter than they are.”

  Faye didn’t answer. Suddenly they were “we” again. And after all those years of telling her how stupid she was, here he was talking about how intelligent she was. Rage washed over her and she gripped her glass tightly. Jack went on with his tirade. His voice was whiny and he had flushes of red on his neck. She’d never seen that before.

  “You can’t get rich in this fucking country if you don’t help yourself. Maybe our methods were a bit rough, but they weren’t fucking illegal. Retirees ought to know how to hold on to their own money, I mean, we’re talking about adults here. Responsible for their own decisions. In this fucking country everything’s always someone else’s fault, someone else has to clean up the mess, someone else has to take the blame. Then the witch hunt starts, even though the only thing you’ve done is build up a successful business, provided jobs for a shitload of people, and contributed to the country’s GDP.”

  He shook his head in frustration.

  “The big mistake is if you dare to make a few kronor for yourself, because that pisses people off. Communist bastards. Like fuck am I going to let them destroy everything I’ve built up!”

  He gulped down the last of the beer Faye had bought him and waved at the bartender for another. Faye looked at him. It was as if she was seeing him for the first time. He was behaving like a whiny child who’d had his favorite toy taken away. He wouldn’t last long if he behaved like this in front of the media.

  She had to find a way to calm him down. He was going to be roasted slowly, not burned out quickly like a firework.

  “Jack,” she said softly, putting her hand on top of his. “I agree with everything you’re saying. But you need to present it in a less aggressive way. Tell them you were young, that you’re different now. Maybe go to one of your old people’s homes and spend a day doing volunteer work. Invite the media. Win back people’s trust.”

  She imagined Jack visiting an old people’s home. The reporters would see through him, obviously, and it would make the whole thing far worse. He’d be slaughtered.

  But it would draw things out.

  “Yes, maybe.”

  Jack looked thoughtful. The red blotches on his neck started to fade.

  “Think about it, anyway. What is the board saying? Henrik?”

  “Naturally they’re worried. But I’ve explained that this will blow over. No one wants me to resign, there’s no one better suited than me.”

  He stretched. Despite everything, he remained convinced of his own superiority, his invincibility. She resisted the urge to drive her Jimmy Choo heels into his Gucci shoes. Ugly Gucci shoes at that. He used to dress better when she was his wardrobe adviser. Ylva seemed to want Jack to dress like a Russian oligarch. For each year with Ylva he became less coordinated and more covered in labels.

  “No, of course not,” Faye said sweetly. “It’s good that they appreciate that.”

  He met her gaze.

  “I…I’m pleased you had time to meet me. I know I wasn’t always easy to live with. What happened with Ylva…that’s just the sort of thing that happens, the sort of thing you can’t help…”

  He was starting to get a bit drunk, and seemed to be having difficulty focusing.

  “She doesn’t understand me the way you do. No one does. No one ever has. I don’t know what I was thinking…”

  Faye looked down at their interwoven hands.

  “I’ve grown up, Faye, I’m more mature. I don’t think I was ready. But now I realize that I made a mistake. It didn’t mean anything, not really. I just wanted…everything.”

  His voice was pathetic and pleading. He was slurring noticeably. He was stroking the back of her hand with his thumb, and it took all of Faye’s self-control not to snatch her hand away. She was so angry that there was a rushing sound in her ears. Why had she never realized how weak he was before now? Why had she refused to see it? And only seen what she wanted to see, filling in the gaps for herself? As if Jack was a huge paint-by-numbers project. An unfinished one.

  “Try not to think about that,” she said in a low voice. “It is what it is. The most important thing right now is for you to get through this.”

  He looked around.

  “It looks the same as it did when we met here that first time. Do you remember?” His face brightened.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “I was sitting where you are now, Chris was sitting here.”

  Jack nodded. “Imagine if we’d known about all the things we’d go through, the way everything would turn out. I was crazy about you. God, those were the days. Everything was so…”

 
“…uncomplicated,” she concluded.

  Anger was still roaring in her ears. Shutting out everything except Jack’s saccharine, maudlin voice.

  “Yes. Exactly. Uncomplicated.”

  A short silence followed, then she cleared her throat.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to fight,” Jack said. “I’m going to get through this.”

  He squeezed her hand one last time.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Faye said. She only hoped Jack hadn’t noticed the bitter undertone.

  Three days had passed and Compare’s share price had dropped to seventy-three kronor. A number of senior business figures had spoken out to say that Jack’s position was becoming untenable. Shareholders were starting to sell their stocks. Jack’s invitations to speak at two seminars were withdrawn. He had given an interview, not to Dagens Industri—the paper which had first released the video—but to Dagens Nyheter. Talking about how highly he valued the older generation. That the whole thing was a complete misunderstanding, the video had been taken out of context, it was so many years ago, it was all a failure of communication, someone was trying to sabotage a successful business.

  Excuses, excuses, excuses.

  The public hated it. And they hated Jack. The National Retirees’ Association said it was impossible to understand why he hadn’t accepted responsibility and left the company.

  But the board declared that they still had confidence in him. As worried as they might be about what would happen if Jack remained CEO, they were even more frightened at the prospect of the company having to survive without him. Jack was Compare. Which was exactly what Faye had been counting on, knowing that would lead to his downfall.

  While Chris was having one of her chemo sessions, Faye called her broker in the Isle of Man and asked him to buy ten million kronor worth of shares in Compare. The share price stabilized somewhat when it became clear that not all investors had lost faith in the company. While she was buying up a slice of Compare, she was also giving Jack some breathing space. The calm in the eye of the storm. Before she made her next move.