She could see him in front of her: her first love, her childhood friend, her fiancé, the sports star. Sven Mattsson who loved her more than anything else in the world, Sven who worshipped her so much that no one else could get close to her but him, couldn’t even talk to her, and she wasn’t allowed to think about anyone else but him, actually, nothing else but him. Anything else
would be punished, and he punished her, he punished her and punished her until the day he stood before her by the furnace in the Hälleforsnäs works with his hunting knife in his hand.
She turned away from the image, stood up and shook it off, shrugging it off the same way she shrugged off her nightmares, the familiar nightmares that came back after that night in the tunnel, the men from Studio Six who were discussing what to do with her, Sven with his bloody knife, her cat flying through the air with its guts hanging out.
And now Thomas was unfaithful.
Right now he was probably in bed with blonde Sophia Grenborg, maybe he was entering her right now, maybe they were licking each other or relaxing in each other’s sweat.
She stared at the yellow shadows, planted her feet firmly on the wooden floor, the newly sanded floor that she had varnished three times. She folded her arms over her chest and forced herself to breathe slowly. The apartment responded to her with gentle caution.
How much was she prepared to sacrifice to hold her life together?
She had a choice. It was just a matter of making a decision.
The realization made her shoulders relax, and it was suddenly easier to breathe. She went over to her computer and logged on to the internet. In the darkness she looked up Sophia Grenborg in Stockholm in the census results, getting a load of hits.
The woman she had seen with Thomas outside NK was in her thirties, or slightly younger. Certainly not over thirty-five.
Annika narrowed the search.
As the representative of the Federation of County
Councils in a research project looking into threats to politicians, she couldn’t be younger than twenty-five.
She removed anyone born after 1980.
Still too many.
She logged out and went into the Federation’s own website, and looked among the employees.
She spelled her name with ‘ph’. So incredibly bloody anally retentively absurdly sodding pretentious.
Back to the other website and the name search.
Sophia Grenborg. Just the one. Twenty-nine. Lived in Upper Östermalm, born in Engelbrekt parish. Oh how terribly, terribly bloody smart.
She printed out the page through the fax machine and logged out. With the printout in her hand she rang the duty desk of the National Police Board and asked for a copy of the passport belonging to the person with Sophia Grenborg’s personal identity number.
‘Ten minutes,’ the officer said tiredly.
Without making a sound she checked that the children were asleep, then crept out into the Stockholm night.
It had started to snow. Wet flakes materialized against the dirty grey sky, falling onto her face when she looked up. All sounds descended half an octave, striking her eardrums with doubt and deception.
She hurried through the snow, leaving damp tracks behind her on the pavement.
The entrance to the Stockholm Police Headquarters was on Bergsgatan, two hundred metres from her door. She stopped at the big electric gates, pressed the pedestrian intercom and was let into the oblong cage that led to the door itself.
The copy hadn’t arrived yet, so she was told to take a seat for a few minutes.
She sat down on one of the chairs along the wall, swallowed and refused to feel bad.
All passport photos in Sweden were still public documents and could be requested at any time. There had been discussions about restricting access, but so far no decision had been taken.
I don’t need to explain myself
, she thought.
I don’t need an excuse
.
When she was given the envelope she couldn’t wait to see if she was right, and turned away from the reception desk and pulled out the Polaroid picture.
It was her. No doubt at all.
Sophia Grenborg.
Her husband was walking around Stockholm kissing Sophia Grenborg.
She put the photograph back in the envelope and went back to her children.
Margit Axelsson had believed in the innate power of human beings all her life. She was convinced that every individual had the power to influence events; it was just a matter of will-power and engagement. As a young woman she had believed in global revolution, that the masses would be freed and cast off the yoke of imperialism as the world rang out with hymns of praise.
She stretched her back and looked out over the room.
Today she knew that you could act on a large scale, or on a small scale. She knew that she was making a contribution, day by day, in her work with the children at the nursery, the collective future, everyone’s responsibility, but also in her work here, in the ceramics room of Pitholm’s People’s Hall.
The Workers’ Educational Association had always believed that those who had received the fewest of society’s resources should be compensated through education, cultural activities and opportunities. She regarded it as justice applied in the educational and cultural sphere.
Study groups were a lesson in democracy. They took as their starting point the belief that every individual has
the capacity and desire to develop themselves, to exert influence and take responsibility, that every individual is a resource.
And she saw how the members grew, young and old alike. When they learned to handle the clay and the glazes their self-confidence grew, their understanding of the opinions of others, and, with that, their ability to actively influence what went on in the society around them.
She had to remind herself of this as she stood beside her sculpture.
She had had to live with the mistakes of her youth all her life. Not one day had passed without her peace of mind being disrupted by the thought of the consequences of her actions. For long periods the impact was small, superficial, life and work functioned as a plaster on her guilt. But other days she could hardly get out of bed, paralysed with rage at her own inadequacy.
Those days had got fewer over the years. Nonetheless, she knew they took their toll, had always known that the guilt she carried would kill her. She wasn’t just thinking about how overweight she was, how the comfort eating helped her through the bad patches, but about the gnawing away of her own psyche, her inability to fend off anxiety. She was often ill, had an unusually poor immune system.
And now he was back.
All those years she had had nightmares about him, turning round quickly in dark alleyways and imagining him behind her, and now he was really here.
Her reaction hadn’t been as violent as she had imagined.
She didn’t scream, didn’t faint, just noticed her heartbeat quicken, and felt slightly dizzy. She sank onto a chair in the hall with the yellow dragon in her hand, his
unpleasant, childish signal that they should meet up at their old meeting place.
She knew he would seek her out. He wanted something more than just a group meeting like they used to have. The yellow dragon was simply a reminder, a way of bringing the Beasts back to life. He had already contacted the Black Panther – she knew that because the Panther had called her for the first time in thirty years to tell her, asking what she thought about the Dragon coming home.
She had merely hung up. Hadn’t said a word, just hung up and pulled the lead out of the socket.
But you never escape
, she thought, looking at the sculpture that she never managed to finish, the child and the goat and the profound communication between them, beyond words and visions, based on understanding and intuitive sensitivity. She could never quite manage to express that, and she wasn’t going to get any further tonight.
Her back ached, she moved heavily over to the damp blanket that stopped the piece from drying out and cracking. She wrapped it up the usual way, and tied it in place. She took off her apron, hanging it up with the others and going off to check the kiln and wash her hands. Then she went round and looked at her students’ creations, making sure they had covered their work correctly, that the finished pieces weren’t drying too quickly, gathering up some stray tools. She filled the kiln ready for firing the following day, leaving some space for the Friday group at the top.
She stopped in the door, listening to the silence. As usual on Thursdays, she was the last one out. She changed her shoes, pulled on her outdoor clothes, shut the door behind her and locked it with a jangling key-ring.
The corridor ahead of her was weakly lit and full of dark shadows.
She didn’t like the dark. Before the events at the airbase it had never bothered her, but since then the screams and flames pursued her in a way that made night prickly and threatening.
She started walking, past the pottery room, the woodwork shop and the model railway. She reached the end of the corridor and carefully went down the creaking stairs, past the cafeteria and library. She checked the doors, shutting and locking them.
The front door stuck in the cold, it always did. She managed to force it shut with a groan, and locked it with a tangible feeling of relief. She took several deep breaths before embarking on the slippery journey down to the street.
Snow was falling, thin and sharp, falling silently and gently in the still air. It had got considerably colder during the evening, the temperature continuing to plummet as the snowflakes stopped.
The new snow crunched under the rubber soles of her boots. She took her kick-sledge and pushed it ahead of her on squeaking runners down towards the main road.
I ought to walk more
, she thought.
Snow had settled on the porch, but her legs were frozen and she decided to leave it for Thord. She scraped her boots on the coir brush, unlocked the door and stepped into the hall.
She was so hungry she felt faint.
She pulled off her boots, hung up her coat, went into the kitchen without turning on the light, and opened the fridge door.
She had prepared a starter of prawns and eggs before she left, and took it over to the table, wolfing it down
so fast that she got mayonnaise on her nose. Afterwards she sat there panting, feeling empty inside, and stared at the sink, realizing how tired she was.
She had to open the nursery early next morning; she would have to be up at half past five to get there in time.
I should go to bed
, she thought, without moving.
She sat there in the dark kitchen until the phone rang.
‘Are you still up? You know you should be in bed.’
She smiled at her husband’s voice.
‘I was just going,’ she lied.
‘Did you have a good evening?’
She sighed gently. ‘That youngster can never get enough attention, she needs constant reassurance.’
‘And the sculpture?’
‘Nothing.’
A short silence. ‘You haven’t heard anything?’ Thord asked.
‘Heard anything?’
‘From them?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘I’ll be home at two. Don’t you lie there waiting, though.’
She smiled again. ‘I was just . . .’
They hung up and she climbed slowly up the stairs. The twiggy shadow of a snow-covered birch swept across the walls as a car drove past, headlights on full.
In spite of everything, she was lucky. The girls had grown into healthy, motivated individuals, good people with the right basic values that society needed. And Thord – her jackpot in life.
She ran a finger over the wedding photo that took pride of place on the landing.
She washed her face and brushed her teeth, undressed
and went onto the landing again. She folded her clothes and put them on a chair next to the linen cupboard.
She had just pulled on her nightgown when the man stepped out of the closet. He looked just as she remembered him, except a little heavier and greyer.
‘You!’ she said in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’
She wasn’t frightened. Not even when he raised his gloved hands and put them round her neck.
Panic only hit when her airway was blocked and the adrenalin shock reached her brain. The room tilted, she saw the ceiling arching over her and his face coming closer, his hands rigid as steel round her neck.
No thoughts, no feelings.
Only the muscles of her bowels relaxing and the unexpected warmth in her underwear.
Thomas walked into the apartment like a stranger, feeling like he’d been away for a long time. The attic flat on Grev Turegatan in Östermalm was light-years away, but now he was home, he felt it in his whole body. It was a huge relief to him.
Home, where he lived.
The apartment sounded like it usually did, with the gentle murmur of people sleeping and poor ventilation. The air was cool from the badly fitted windows and smelled of cooking, as usual. He hung up his coat, put his tennis racket and sports bag down on the hall floor, pulled off his shoes. He saw the reality of his deception in front of him, the unused sports kit, the dry towel.
He gulped and shrugged off the guilt. He padded in to the children in his socks, leaned over them, their wide-open mouths and pyjamas and stuffed toys.
This was reality. The attic flat in Östermalm was cold and calculated, the furniture studied and ingratiating. Sophia Grenborg’s flat was blue and stripped back; his home was warm and yellow with sleeping children and swinging streetlamps.
Then he went towards the bedroom, walking slowly on feet that grew ever heavier. He stood in the doorway and looked at his wife.
She had fallen asleep lying across the bed with her tights and top and underwear on, her mouth open just like the children’s. Her eyelashes cast long shadows across her cheeks. She was breathing deeply and evenly.
His eyes roamed across her hard body, edgy and muscular and powerful.
Sophia Grenborg was so white and soft, she whimpered all the while they made love.