High Risk

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  As they parked the car, they saw columns of smoke rising into the air. There were a number of riot vans, and the police were setting up barricades. “Be careful,” Oliver said gravely, and she thought his concern was kind of sweet. “Wait here and I’ll go check where we’re allowed to go,” he said, disappearing. Ambra waited ten minutes. When he returned, all he said was, “We can leave. There’s nothing to write about.”

  It was only once they were in the car heading back that she realized she should have protested, but she kept quiet. When they reached the office, Oliver went to speak to the news editor, and an hour or so later his piece was published: an article on the riot, full of action-packed eyewitness reporting. Her name didn’t appear anywhere.

  “What the hell is this?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We went out there together, but you did the whole thing yourself.”

  “I preferred to do it alone. You didn’t even dare go over. I was more hands-on.”

  “Are you joking?”

  He gave her a questioning look. She didn’t say a word. But it cost her the job that year. Oliver got the post. She applied for a new temp position the following year and eventually got herself a permanent job. And she had learned an important lesson along the way: Never trust anyone.

  “And on Breaking News, Ambra is chasing people about the factory fire. How’s that going?” Grace asked, bringing Ambra back to the present.

  “I need to talk to the commander. A witness got in touch. She was about to be locked in.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Good to have some sob stories, too, to lighten the mood,” Oliver said with a laugh.

  It was his laugh that was hardest to defend yourself against. You were supposed to tolerate it, to show a sense of humor.

  “Yeah, well I’ll try to stick to your high level, Oliver,” she said drily.

  He crossed his pumped-up arms in front of him. “You can’t take a joke, or what?”

  For a second, her mood turned. “The problem is that your jokes are just so fucking boring.”

  The room was dead silent, and everyone was staring. Not at her or at Oliver, but at the door, which had opened without Ambra noticing. Standing in the doorway was Aftonbladet’s editor-in-chief, Dan Persson. And judging by the way he was looking at her, he had heard her every word.

  She felt herself go red, probably until she was glowing like a stop sign. The room was still silent, as if she had farted loudly and no one knew how to react. How could she have such bad luck? The editor-in-chief never moved among the mere mortal reporters; he was rarely even in the office. What was he doing here?

  “Lively atmosphere in here, I see. Grace, could I have a quick word?” he said.

  Grace nodded. “We were done anyway,” she said, disappearing from the room.

  The meeting came to an end. Ambra grabbed her computer and walked back to her desk with heavy steps.

  She buried herself in work until lunch, tried not to think about how she had embarrassed herself. People said stupid things all the time. Though not in front of his highness, the editor-in-chief. For a moment or two, she thought about asking Parvin whether she wanted to grab lunch, but her bravery deserted her. She walked down to the water’s edge instead, along Norr Mälarstrand, letting the wind clear her mind. She allowed her thoughts to drift to something entirely different.

  Tom.

  Those kisses. The sex. The feelings.

  Jesus, all these feelings she was developing for Tom. How did she even go about starting to sort them out? He had literally saved her life. How was she meant to react to something like that? And to everything else that had happened between them?

  She looked out at the water, the lone gulls. What did she want from life, exactly? She wanted to write about important things and make a difference, of course. But what else? Did she want kids, for example? A family of her own? Did she even have what it took to be someone’s life partner, someone’s mother? Other people seemed so convinced that they were good enough for everything, but she constantly doubted herself. It wasn’t exactly rocket science to realize it was linked to her childhood, but sadly it didn’t help to know that people who were constantly abandoned developed this feeling of being different from everyone else; that insight didn’t help at all. All the same, she couldn’t quite shake it off. The one thing that never let her down was her work. Her job was her security, and over the years Ambra had thought that was enough. The men she met hadn’t exactly been strong arguments in favor of anything else.

  But now . . .

  If anyone was to come up to her and say, Ambra, you can have Tom Lexington, how would she feel then? If Tom was available, not just physically but also emotionally, would she want him? Would she dare want a man like him? Because Tom was a real man. Not a man-child who was afraid to commit to anything, not an anxious intellectual with an easily bruised ego; he was the real deal. Not that it made any difference right now. She had given him an out when they’d parted in Kiruna. Typical her. Told him not to worry, played it so nonchalantly, all so she wouldn’t get hurt later. Why did she say that? That it was okay. It didn’t feel even slightly okay, and she didn’t have an ounce of interest in trying to understand why he wanted stupid Ellinor rather than her.

  She paused, turned around, bought a boring and expensive sandwich from 7-Eleven, and walked back toward the building with her head bowed. It was only when she was a few meters away that she noticed the small group smoking by the doorway. Typical. More humiliation, precisely what she needed.

  She approached and tried to seem as indifferent and cool as she could. But it was difficult when she saw Dan Persson surrounded by a group of men. The Cool Dudes. The Guys. Dan Persson smoked, that was common knowledge, and more than one reporter had started hanging around outside, chatting; competing to see who could offer the boss a cig. The head of Investigative was there, too. He laughed at something Oliver said, and maybe she was imagining it, but it felt like they were laughing at her.

  Ambra gave them a quick nod as she passed, and then she was finally inside. She had always suspected that Oliver added fuel to Dan’s dislike of her whenever he got the chance.

  She sat down at her desk. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered in her hair. She quickly checked the news sites, opened her e-mails, and read the latest from Lord_Brutal900 as she took a bite of her sandwich.

  You traitorous bitch. You think you’re something. Why don’t you just give up and throw yourself under a train?

  She paused before she deleted it, then washed down her sandwich with coffee and scanned through the rest of her messages.

  For the rest of the day, she barely looked up from her screen. It was only at seven that she finally switched everything off. By then, the last of the night shift had arrived. The people who never got to go out, who never met anyone, and who wrote articles that were the journalistic equivalent of empty calories and trans fats. She gave them a brief nod. They were pale, looked tired and disillusioned. Like they knew they were at the end of the line.

  She caught sight of herself in the elevator on the way down, saw her bleak expression and realized she herself was probably a step closer to becoming one of those pale, ignored night reporters. She did up the zipper on her coat and stepped out of the elevator. No matter which way you looked at it, her career wasn’t going in the right direction.

  Chapter 40

  Tom parked his Volvo on the street outside his apartment in Stockholm. It wasn’t like him to be so impulsive, but once he’d made up his mind after the call with Mattias, he’d acted quickly. He’d packed that night and left Kiruna long before dawn the very next morning. He drove all day, saw the sun rise from the road, took short breaks along the coast, saw dusk transformed into darkness, and finally arrived in Stockholm, and Kungsholmen, late that night. It was a long journey, but he was used to challenging himself and had endured far worse in the past.

  He entered his building and took the elevator to the top floor, unlo
cked the door, stepped inside, and put his bags down on the floor in the hallway. The apartment looked the same as it had when he’d left it just over two months earlier, bare and impersonal. There was a pile of mail, mostly flyers, on the doormat.

  In the kitchen the refrigerator was echoingly empty, the majority of cupboards barely used. He put down the pile of mail, turned on the faucet, and took a jar of Nescafé from an otherwise-empty cupboard.

  It felt strange to be back there, in a home that was his and his alone. By the time Ellinor had found out that he had “died” in Chad, she had already moved on and was in Kiruna with Nilas. While he was being held prisoner, she’d leased their apartment. As luck would have it, she put most of his personal things into storage, probably hadn’t known what to do with them and hadn’t wanted to burden his mother and sisters, who were grieving for him.

  Tom filled the brand-new kettle and waited for it to boil. The past fall had been strange, to put it mildly, for everyone involved.

  When he’d returned to Sweden from Chad, he’d spent a few days in the hospital. They ran tests, treated infections, gave him a drip with nutritional fluids. David Hammar came to visit him there, and when Tom asked, David recommended a realtor he knew.

  The realtor came to the hospital, showed him pictures of three apartments, and Tom had chosen this one without even going to view it. He needed somewhere to live, and this place was closest to the office.

  He took his coffee and moved over to the window. He could see water from every window in the apartment. The rooms were arranged in a line along the Karlsberg Canal, and after three months’ imprisonment in the desert, he felt a sea view would be the best rehabilitation. So he bought it and moved in. The apartment was in great shape, recently renovated in shades of white and gray, but he had owned it for less than three weeks when he broke down at work and left for Kiruna, so it was still anonymous and virtually unfurnished. He’d bought a bed, a couch, and a dining table as soon as he was back on his feet, chose them solely based on whether they were available for immediate delivery. There were boxes of his things from storage stacked against the walls, but he hadn’t unpacked even a fraction of them yet, had just taken out some clothes and tracked down the necessities. But despite the impersonal feeling and the stacks of boxes, it still felt good to be back, he realized.

  With the coffee in his hand, he quickly toured the rooms before he returned to the kitchen. He spread out the mail on his kitchen table. The majority were ads, but he found a letter from his mother between a cheerful coupon offer and a Christmas catalogue from NK. She must have sent it just before the forwarding to Kiruna kicked in.

  When Tom opened the envelope, he saw a Christmas card inside, full of his mother’s neat writing. She was a teacher, taught Swedish to high school students, and was one of the few people who still wrote letters by hand. It had been tough when he had reading and writing problems at school, to have a mom who was a teacher. It should have made things easier, but he felt only shame, and her well-meaning attempts to help him mostly ended in arguments and harsh words from his side. Yes, he was only a child back then, but he still felt guilty about how he’d acted during those years.

  Dear Tom,

  I think of you every day, and hope you are doing well. I hope you’ll celebrate Christmas with us. You’re more than welcome, and we’re all longing to see you. Or if you want to come by between then and New Year, perhaps? We’ll adapt to whatever you want, and I understand if you prefer to take it easy, I just want you to know that we’re thinking of you and love you very much. I’m sending you a few pictures of the girls and all the grandkids.

  Big hugs, Mom

  She had enclosed a group picture of his siblings’ children in Santa hats. Except for one of them who was wearing what looked like a Batman mask. He laughed. He had four young nieces. They had grown since he’d last seen them. He studied the photo and got that familiar feeling of guilt in his chest. He wasn’t much of an uncle, or a brother. Or a son, for that matter.

  Each of them had sent a message wishing him a happy new year. They loved and cared about him—he knew that—they were a loving, talkative, laughter-filled group, but he hadn’t spoken to any of them all fall. Hadn’t replied to their messages, hadn’t stopped by, hadn’t been in touch at either Christmas or New Year.

  He was ashamed.

  His youngest sister, the little one, was expecting her first child in the spring, but he hadn’t even spoken to her. He looked down at the Christmas card, at the heart his mother had drawn beneath “Mom” and his feelings of guilt became almost unbearable.

  His sweet mom.

  The shock when she’d found out that her only son was “dead” last fall had hit her hard.

  Tom grabbed his bags, carried them into the bedroom, and then called her. He couldn’t even remember when they’d last spoken. He was in such bad shape when he got home, had so much to deal with, he’d avoided her.

  Yes, he was a bad son.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said when he heard her familiar voice on the line. He could just see her. She still lived in the house where he and his sisters grew up, with her new husband. Though new . . . Mom and Charles had been married a long time now. She was probably still on Christmas vacation, though she was likely working anyway. Sitting with essays and exams, correcting, making comments. She was a popular teacher. He heard a quick intake of breath and then:

  “Tom! I’m so happy. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Thanks for the Christmas greetings. And all the other cards.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes.” He could hear the worry in her voice. She normally managed to hide it better, but things must have been tough for her lately. “I’m good, Mom. I went north for a while.”

  “But are you in Stockholm now? How long are you staying?”

  “I don’t know, awhile,” he replied evasively. This was the problem. If he gave them a little, they immediately wanted more. Suddenly, he could see the house in Kiruna, the forest and the empty expanses in front of him, could practically smell the clean air, see the stars. He could just get in the car and drive back up there, ignore everything else, push back all the obligations and duties and expectations to another day.

  “The girls are coming for dinner tomorrow. Would you like to join us?”

  “Maybe another time.” He couldn’t deal with seeing them all at once.

  “I can ask Charles not to be here if you’d prefer,” she said silently.

  Tom paused, shocked. She had never done that before, asked her husband to leave the house for his sake.

  “No, no, there’s no need for that. I just wanted to say hello, but I have to go now, Mom,” he said. He couldn’t handle more talking, suddenly felt emotionally drained.

  They said good-bye, but the phone rang again the minute he hung up.

  David Hammar, he read on the display. A friend he had also brushed off and ignored all fall, a friend who never let him down. Tom accepted the call, walked over to the window, and looked out. The sky was dark, no stars. The water was dark, too. He wondered whether the canal was already frozen over.

  “Hey, David,” he said quietly.

  “It’s damn good to hear your voice,” David said. “How are things?”

  “They’re okay,” he said, blocking out the anxiety that was lying in wait.

  Tom especially hated showing any weakness around David. Not that he liked showing weakness to anyone, but David Hammar was so damn competent and larger than life.

  “Where are you?” David asked, and Tom heard the sound of a child in the background. His daughter, Tom assumed, experiencing a moment of panic before he remembered that David and Natalia’s daughter was called Molly. He had missed her christening, though he could no longer remember why. Probably a work trip he could have just as easily sent someone else on.

  Tom hadn’t been a good friend these past few years, had prioritized all the wrong things. “I’m home. In Stockholm. I was in Kiruna.”
<
br />   “So you’re going back to work?”

  “Not yet. I have a lunch planned, but otherwise I don’t know.”

  David was silent for a moment. The child’s babbling had also gone quiet. “Alexander and Isobel got married last fall,” he said. “It was a quick civil ceremony, so they’ve decided to throw a party now.”

  “Yeah, they invited me,” Tom said. He hadn’t yet sent his RSVP, had totally forgotten about it.

  “Are you going to come?” David asked, an insistent note in his voice.

  Tom really didn’t like the idea of going to a party, but now he felt almost as if he had no choice.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said with a sigh.

  “Yes, do. But come. And bring someone if you want.”

  * * *

  After their call, Tom washed his cup, threw the ads and flyers into the recycling bin, wrote a shopping list, and turned on the broadband. He unpacked his bags, and just as he hung up the last sweater in the wardrobe, he received a message. It was from Ellinor. She was looking after Freja now, and stupidly enough he missed the dog already. Ellinor had sent him a picture of Freja lying on a rug, chewing a bone. He called her. Looked out at the water again, toward the white walls of Karlberg Castle on the other shore. He and Ellinor had been to officers’ balls in that castle. He used to study in its library, loved the military history of the place.

  “How’s Freja?” he asked.

  “She’s fine. How was the drive?”

  “I just spoke to David.”

  “Wow, it’s a long time since I’ve seen him. How is he? He has a kid now, right?”

  “Yeah, a daughter. Molly.”

  Neither spoke, a tense silence. Would things have been different if he and Ellinor had a child? Maybe. But neither of them had wanted one. Right? Suddenly, Tom wasn’t sure. Did they ever talk about it, or had he just taken for granted that their thoughts were the same? That they should wait.