The Golden Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  Faye got out of the car outside the hospital only a few hours after she had last left it. During her visit the day before Chris had barely been able to speak, her voice had been so fragile, her eyes so tired, her body so weak. The wedding ring she had worn with such pride was far too big for her thin fingers. It fell onto the floor twice while Faye sat there telling her how much she loved her.

  Faye had wept in the car on the way home, realizing that it would soon be over. And when Johan called an hour or so ago to say she should come straightaway, she rushed out of the apartment.

  On arriving at the hospital, she hesitated in the entrance, wondering: How do you say goodbye to your best friend? How do you say goodbye to your sister? How the hell are you supposed to do that? She bought some cigarettes and a bar of chocolate and sat down on a bench. Some blue-clad nurses were eating lunch. Talking about their children. Two new parents were carefully carrying a baby toward the parking lot. They stopped every thirty feet, leaning over the stroller and smiling as they admired the little miracle.

  Faye threw the pack away after two cigarettes, stuck the chocolate in her bag, and made her way to the elevator.

  “Chris is going to die,” she murmured to herself as the doors closed. “Chris is going to die.”

  The corridor was completely silent. Her footsteps echoed. She stopped outside room number eight and knocked before opening the door. Johan looked up as she walked in but didn’t speak. He turned back toward Chris and stroked her hair.

  Faye walked around the bed and stood next to him.

  “There’s not long left,” he said. “She’s not responsive at all now, she’s in some sort of coma. It…she’s never going to wake up again. I don’t know what I’m going to do, how am I ever going…?”

  His face contorted. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

  “She’s so small, so alone,” he whispered, wiping his eyes.

  Faye didn’t know what to say. She just put her hand on top of Johan’s and Chris’s interwoven hands.

  “At least she’s not in any pain,” Johan went on. The words came out jerkily. “What will they do with her when she’s gone? I don’t want her to be taken off to the basement like some dead animal and left there all on her own.”

  He fell silent.

  Faye leaned back. Her chair creaked.

  “Can I have a few minutes with her on my own?” she whispered.

  Johan flinched. Then nodded.

  He stood up, put his hand on her shoulder, then walked slowly out of the room. Carefully, as if she were worried about waking Chris, Faye moved to the chair he had been sitting on. The seat felt warm.

  Faye leaned closer to Chris, her lips nudging her ear.

  “It hurts so much, Chris,” she said, fighting back tears. “It hurts so much that I’m going to get old without you. That all those dreams we had, of moving to the Mediterranean, opening a restaurant, sitting outside playing backgammon, getting blue-rinsed hair…that none of that’s going to happen. Right now it feels like I’ll never be happy again. But I promise you that I’ll try. I know you’ll be angry with me if I don’t…”

  She cleared her throat, breathed air into her lungs.

  “What I want to say is that I’ll never forget you. Being your friend for the past sixteen years has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m sorry I’ve never told you the truth about who I am. About what I am. I was scared you wouldn’t understand. I should have trusted you. I should have told you everything. But I’m going to tell you now, in case you can hear me…”

  In a whisper she told Chris her secrets. About the accident, about Sebastian, about her mom and dad. About Matilda and the darkness. She didn’t hold anything back.

  When she had finished she stroked Chris’s hair and touched her lips to her cheek. That was her last goodbye.

  She fetched Johan. Then they sat in silence as life left Chris. Seven hours later she drew her last breath.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Faye left Chris’s room Johan was still sitting motionless with his forehead on his wife’s cold hand. She took one of the big bouquets of flowers that had filled the room with her. She got in the car, googled an address, and started to drive. Her eyes were dry now. There were no tears left. She was empty, dried up. Her secrets were safe with Chris.

  She parked under the shade of a large oak tree in the parking lot and walked toward the entrance. The door wasn’t locked. She looked around warily. The lobby and corridor were empty. She could hear voices from a room farther along the corridor, it sounded like the staff was on a coffee break.

  She counted the doors. The third door on the right, Kerstin had said. Without asking why Faye wanted to know. She walked quickly toward it, pushed the door open firmly but silently, and stepped inside. She didn’t feel scared. Just empty. She felt the loss of Chris as bluntly as if she’d had one of her arms amputated.

  She had been hiding her face behind the bouquet of flowers in case anyone came into the corridor. She put it down on the chest of drawers to the side of the door. Yellow roses. Very apt. She knew yellow roses signified death, something their sender must not have been aware of.

  She heard deep breathing from the bed. She crept toward the top end. The blinds were closed but faint light was filtering into the room. Ragnar looked weak. Pathetic. But Kerstin had told Faye enough about him for her not to be fooled. He was a bastard. A bastard who didn’t deserve to live, not when Chris’s body was growing cold in another hospital bed.

  Faye reached carefully for a pillow lying a little way down the bed. The sound of loud laughter in the corridor made her start, but it soon faded away. The only sounds were Ragnar’s breathing and the ticking of an old clock.

  She looked around the room with the pillow in her hands. Impersonal. No photographs, no personal belongings. Sun-bleached walls and a tatty acrylic rug on the floor. The old man’s smell hung in the air. That stale, slightly cloying smell of old people when they fell ill.

  Slowly she raised the pillow and held it above Ragnar’s face. She felt no uncertainty. No anxiety. He had reached the end of his time on earth. He was nothing but a lump of flesh, deadweight, another evil man who had left women scarred and crying in his wake.

  She leaned forward. Used her whole weight to press the pillow over his face, blocking his mouth and nose. Ragnar jerked a bit when he found he couldn’t breathe. But there was no strength in his movements. Just some feeble twitching in his hands and feet. Faye barely had to exert herself in the end.

  After a while he lay still. No more twitching. No movement. Faye held the pillow in place until she was quite certain Kerstin’s husband was dead. Then she put the pillow down on the bed, picked up the bouquet of yellow roses, and crept cautiously out.

  Only when she was in her car driving back to the city did her tears for Chris start to flow.

  FJÄLLBACKA—THEN

  I LOOKED AT THE FURROWS on the policeman’s face. His expression was one of sympathy, but he wasn’t seeing me, not the real me. He saw a gangly teenager who had lost her brother and now probably her mother as well. I could tell he wanted to put his hand on top of mine as we sat there at the kitchen table and was grateful that he didn’t. I’ve never liked being touched by strangers.

  I had called the police at five o’clock in the morning and they took Dad away an hour or so later. I was so tired I felt like laying my head on the tabletop and shutting my eyes.

  “When did the noise stop?”

  I forced myself to stay awake, to listen to his questions. To provide whatever answers I needed to.

  “I don’t know, sometime around three, maybe? I’m not sure, though.”

  “Why did you get up so early?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I always get up early. And I…I realized that something had happened…Mom would nev
er leave the house as early as that.”

  He nodded seriously. Again with that look that told me he wanted to comfort me. I hoped he would continue to resist the urge.

  I didn’t need comforting. They had taken Dad away.

  “We’re still looking, but I’m afraid we’re very concerned that something may have happened to your mom. There’s some evidence to suggest that. And from what I understand, your dad has a history of…violence.”

  I had to make an effort not to laugh. Not because there was anything remotely funny about the situation, but because it was so absurd. A history of violence. Such a bloodless phrase, such a concise summary of the years of terror within these walls. A history of violence. Yes, that was one way of putting it.

  I knew what they wanted, though, so I just nodded.

  “There’s still a chance that we might find her,” the policeman said. “Unharmed.”

  And now it came. The hand on my hand. Sympathetic. Warm. How little he knew. How little he understood. I had to make a real effort not to snatch my hand away.

  The weeks passed. The newspapers were told that Jack had been fired. The news that the company had a new owner who was promising to get to grips with things and conduct a thorough ethical review of the business meant that Compare’s shares had risen to more normal levels again, while Jack sank ever deeper and seemed completely lost. It was as if time had suddenly decided to intervene in Jack’s life: he aged, his hair turned gray quicker than he could dye it, and his movements became slower, wearier.

  He tried to put a brave face on things. After all, he was still a multimillionaire. He assured the business press that he would soon be back. But he would call Faye at night, clearly drunk, babbling about the old days. About the people he had let down, about Chris, about all the sacrifices he’d made.

  Faye managed to show sympathy but thought he was pathetic. She detested weakness, and he was the one who had taught her that. Jack’s meltdown merely made it easier to crush him.

  He broke off his friendship with Henrik because he believed his friend had betrayed him by remaining on the board of Compare. Neither Henrik, Jack, nor anyone else on the board had any idea that she was the new majority shareholder in Compare, because she only communicated with them via her British lawyers.

  It was time to take the final step. It was Ylva’s turn now.

  Her tears for Chris were gone. It was strange how quickly things came to seem normal. She thought about her, missed her every day, every hour, but she had accepted the fact that she was gone. Accepted that nothing was going to bring Chris back.

  Maybe Chris would have tried to stop her if she’d known what Faye was planning. Now she’d never know.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jack was standing outside the door when Faye and Julienne came home with the groceries. When she texted that afternoon to ask if he’d like to come over he had accepted almost instantly.

  “Hello, my darlings,” Jack said, clumsily wrapping one arm around Julienne. “I thought you were two angels walking toward me.”

  “Flatterer,” Faye said as he pecked her cheek.

  Close up she could smell the drink on him.

  He smiled dumbly at her.

  “What have you got there, then?” He pointed at the bags.

  “I thought I’d make my bolognese,” she said.

  “Great!” he exclaimed, taking the bags from her.

  He slung Julienne’s backpack over his shoulder and held the door open.

  “How are you doing?” Faye asked as she unlocked the door to the apartment.

  Jack was swaying slightly.

  “Oh, fine.”

  “And Ylva? She must be due any day now? Are you looking forward to it?”

  Faye knew he hated talking about Ylva.

  “She’s fine, I guess. She’s gone to stay with her parents, so I’m footloose and fancy-free. Your text came at just the right time.”

  She started to unpack the bags on the island.

  “You didn’t say if you’re looking forward to the baby’s arrival.”

  “I think you know my feelings about that. I’ll love the child, obviously, but I…I know who my family is. My real family.”

  She felt like hitting him, but instead took a deep breath and smiled coquettishly.

  “So the grass wasn’t greener on the other side?”

  “No, that’s one way of putting it.”

  “What are you going to do now?” she said as she started to brown the meat. “Now that you haven’t got Compare?”

  Jack opened the fridge, found a carrot, rinsed it, and stuck it in his mouth.

  “No need to worry, people know what I’m capable of. By the way, that campaign you’re running…”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t think that pop star’s right for Revenge. I’ve had a look at your figures, and it seems to me…”

  Her brain flared and her body tensed. Who did he think he was? But Jack didn’t notice, he just kept going, coming out with one nugget of advice after the other.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she said once he had finished.

  Breathe, she told herself. Maintain the façade. Stick to the plan.

  When they sat down to eat Faye was struck by how unreal it all felt. They were sitting at the kitchen table talking in a way she used to dream about when they were married.

  She had spent so many years hoping and longing for this.

  “I’ve missed this dish, Faye,” Jack said, helping himself to more. “No one makes bolognese like you.”

  He joked with Julienne and praised her for the things her teacher had said about her at the last parents’ evening, telling her how proud he was of her.

  Why couldn’t we have had this, Jack? Faye wondered. Why couldn’t you have been satisfied with us?

  * * *

  • • •

  Julienne’s eyes started to droop at half past nine. She protested at first when Jack picked her up, then let him carry her to her bedroom. When he returned he stood, looking slightly lost, between the sofa and the television.

  “Well, I’d better get home.”

  “You can stay a bit longer, can’t you?”

  “Would you like me to?”

  Faye shrugged and snuggled up against the arm of the sofa.

  “It makes no difference to me. So if you’ve got other plans…”

  He reacted to her nonchalance with the eagerness of a puppy.

  “I’ll stay,” he said, and sat down. “Would you like more wine?”

  “I’d love some,” she said, pushing her glass across the table. “There’s a bottle of whiskey, if you’d rather have that.”

  “In the kitchen?”

  She nodded. Jack went out and she heard him rummaging about.

  “In the cupboard above the freezer,” Faye called.

  Another door opened. A clink of bottles.

  “This is a good one. Where did you get it?”

  “I was given it by some foreign investors,” she lied.

  Robin had actually left it behind a few weeks ago when he stayed over. They had made love five or six times that night. Her crotch tingled at the memory.

  When Jack returned to the sofa he sat down close to her, pulled her legs toward him, and laid her feet on his lap. He started to massage them. She closed her eyes as her feet warmed up.

  “You know, it could be like this every night,” Jack said after a while.

  She shook her head.

  “You’d get bored after a couple of weeks, Jack. Now go and turn the shower on instead of talking nonsense.”

  “The shower?”

  “Yes, the shower. If we’re going to have sex, I don’t want you stinking of stale alcohol.”

  Jack’s ears flushed red and Faye had to
stifle a smile as he hurried off to the bathroom. While he showered Faye put her laptop on the shelf opposite the bed, and switched the camera on.

  Jack was smiling when he came into the bedroom, but Faye felt nothing. Having sex with him was just a means to an end.

  Afterward they lay panting side by side on the bed. His eyes twinkled hopefully.

  “What do you say about me leaving Ylva and moving in here?”

  “That’s impossible, Jack.”

  “But you’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?”

  “The fact that I’ve forgiven you doesn’t mean I want to live with you again.”

  “I could invest in Revenge, help you run everything. It’s starting to get really big now, are you sure you can handle it? I mean, I’ve got far more experience of running a company than you have. There’s a big difference between being an entrepreneur and setting up a company, and actually keeping it going. You’ve done a fantastic job, but I think it’s probably time for you to let the professionals take over.”

  This little man, whom she had maneuvered out of his own company, believed he could still tell her what was best for her.

  Faye forced herself to stay calm. To focus on the goal.

  “I don’t need any more investment,” she said. “Don’t worry about Revenge.”

  “I only want to protect you and Julienne. Look after you.”

  You should be worrying about protecting yourself, she thought. Keep an eye on what’s happening behind your back. Sleep with one eye open. I’ve already crushed you. Now there’s just Ylva left.

  “It would be best if you left now, Jack,” she said.

  “Have I made you cross?”

  Those puppy-dog eyes again, but they’d lost all their power.

  “Not at all, but I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow and I don’t want Julienne to see you here. You know it would only confuse her.”

  “It would do her good if we became a real family again.”