The Ice Princess (31 page)

‘Did you know?’

Erica hesitated. ‘Yes, but not until very recently.’ She hesitated again. ‘I urged Dan to tell you.’

Pernilla nodded. ‘What should I do?’

The question was rhetorical, so Erica let it go unanswered.

Pernilla went on. ‘I knew that from the start I was just a way for Dan to get over you.’

Erica began to protest, but Pernilla stopped her with a wave of her hand.

‘I knew that was true, but I thought things changed with time and that we really loved each other. We get on well and I trusted him completely.’

‘Dan loves you, Pernilla. I know he does.’

Pernilla didn’t seem to be listening to her; she kept talking while she gazed into her coffee cup. Erica saw that she was gripping the cup so hard that her knuckles were white.

‘I could live with it if he was having an affair and blame it on an early mid-life crisis or something. But I can never forgive him for getting that woman pregnant.’

The fury in Pernilla’s voice was so strong that Erica had to fight an impulse to move back. When Pernilla raised her head and looked at Erica, the hatred in her eyes was so fierce that Erica felt an icy premonition. She had never before seen such a white-hot, intense fury. For a brief moment she wondered how long Pernilla had actually known about Dan’s relationship with Alex. And how far she would be prepared to go to exact revenge. Then she rejected the idea as quickly as it had appeared. This was Pernilla, a housewife with three children, married to Dan for many years, not a raging fury-acting as an avenging angel against her husband’s lover. But there was still a cold ferocity in Pernilla’s eyes that scared Erica.

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. I just had to get out of the house. That was the only thought I had in my head. I couldn’t even look at him.’

Erica sent a sympathetic thought to Dan. He was surely in his own private hell right now. It would have felt more natural if it were Dan who had come to her for comfort. Then she would have known what to say, which words would reassure him. She didn’t know Pernilla well enough to know how to help. Perhaps it was enough just to listen.

‘Why do you think he did it? What wasn’t he getting from me that he got from her?’

Now Erica understood why Pernilla had to come to her instead of going to one of her many close friends. She believed that Erica possessed answers about Dan. That she would be able to give Pernilla the key to why he’d acted the way he had. Unfortunately, Erica would have to disappoint her. She had always known Dan as honesty incarnate; it had never even occurred to her that he might be unfaithful. She was never as shocked as when she rang the last number called on Alex’s telephone and heard Dan’s voice on his voicemail. If she were really honest, she would admit to feeling a great disappointment at that moment—the disappointment of discovering that someone she was close to was not the person she had always thought he was. That’s why she understood that Pernilla, besides feeling betrayed and deceived, had also begun asking questions about who Dan really was—this man she had lived with all these years.

‘I don’t know, Pernilla. I was actually terribly shocked. It wasn’t like the Dan I know.’

Pernilla nodded. It seemed to console her a bit that she wasn’t the only one who’d been fooled. She nervously picked at invisible threads on her baggy cardigan. Her long, dark-brown hair with traces of a permanent had been hastily pulled back in a knot, giving her an unkempt look. Erica had always been a bit scornful about the way Pernilla looked; she should have been able to do a lot more with her appearance. She kept getting her hair permed even though permanents went out of fashion at about the same time mid-length men’s jackets did. And she always bought her clothes from cheap mail-order department stores, with low prices and a fashion sense to match. But Erica had never seen her look this shabby.

‘Pernilla, I know it’s incredibly hard just now, but you’re a family, you and Dan. You have three wonderful girls and you’ve had fifteen good years together. You shouldn’t do anything hasty. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone anything he’s done. Perhaps you can’t stay together after this. Maybe it’s impossible to forgive him. But wait to make any decisions until it’s sunk in a little. Think carefully before you do anything. I know that Dan loves you; he told me that as recently as today. I also know that he deeply regrets what he did. He told me that he wanted to break it off with her and I believe him.’

‘I don’t know what to believe anymore, Erica. Nothing of what I believed before was true, so what should I believe now?’

There was no answer to that, and the silence settled heavily between them.

‘What was she like?’

Once again Erica saw a cold fire burning far back in Pernilla’s eyes. She didn’t have to ask who she meant.

‘It was so long ago. I didn’t know her anymore.’

‘She was beautiful. I saw her here in the summertime. She was just like I wanted to be. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated. She made me feel like a peasant. I would have given anything to be like her. In a way I can understand Dan. Put me and Alex next to each other and it’s obvious who would win.’

Pernilla tugged in frustration at her practical but unfashionable clothes as if to demonstrate what she meant.

‘I’ve always been envious of you too. The great love of his youth who moved to the big city and left him behind to pine away. The author from Stockholm who really made something of her life and who came back here and boasted to us normal mortals once in a while. Dan always looked forward to your visits for weeks beforehand.’

The bitterness in Pernilla’s voice dismayed Erica. For the first time she really felt ashamed of her patronizing attitude towards Pernilla. How little she had understood. On closer examination, she had to admit that she’d found a certain satisfaction in noticing the difference between herself and Pernilla. Between her 500-kronor visits to a hair salon on Stureplan and Pernilla’s home perms. Between her designer clothes purchased on Biblioteksgatan and Pernilla’s off-the-rack blouses and long skirts. But what difference had it made? Why had she in her weaker moments been happy about that difference? She was the one who had left Dan. Was it only to satisfy her own ego, or had she actually been envious that Pernilla and Dan had so much more than she did? Deep inside had she envied them their family life and perhaps even regretted that she hadn’t stayed in Fjällbacka? That she wasn’t the one who had the family that Pernilla now had? Had she consciously tried to make Pernilla feel small because she was actually jealous of her? The thought was disgusting, but she couldn’t push it away. It made her feel ashamed to the bottom of her soul. At the same time she wondered how far she would have gone to protect what Pernilla had. How far had Pernilla been prepared to go? Erica gave her a thoughtful look.

‘What are the children going to say?’ It looked as though this was the first time it had occurred to Pernilla that she and Dan weren’t the only ones who would be affected. ‘It has to come out, don’t you think? That she was pregnant, I mean? What will the girls say?’

The thought seemed to panic Pernilla, and Erica did her best to calm her.

‘The police will have to be told that it was Dan who was seeing Alex, but it doesn’t mean that everyone will find out. The two of you can choose what you want to tell the girls. You’re still in control, Pernilla.’

This seemed to reassure Pernilla, and she took a couple of gulps of coffee. It must have been cold by then, but that didn’t seem to bother her. For the first time Erica felt truly angry with Dan. It surprised her that she hadn’t felt that way earlier, but now she could feel the fury building up inside her. Was he crazy? How could he throw away everything he had, attraction or no attraction? Didn’t he realize how good his life was? She clasped her hands in her lap and tried to convey her sympathy to Pernilla, sitting across the table. Whether Pernilla could take it in or not, she had no idea.

‘Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it.’

Their eyes met. Less than an hour had passed since Pernilla rang the doorbell, but Erica felt that she had learned a lot in that time, especially about herself.

‘Can you manage? Do you have anywhere to go?’

‘I’m going home.’ Pernilla’s voice was clear and firm. ‘She’s not going to drive me away from my home and my family. I won’t give her that satisfaction. I’m going home to my husband, and we’re going to work this out. But not without demands. Things will have to be done differently from now on.’

Erica couldn’t help smiling in the midst of all the misery. Dan was going to have a good deal to wrestle with, that much was clear. But it was nothing he didn’t deserve.

They embraced awkwardly at the door. With all her heart Erica wished Pernilla and Dan only the best as she watched Pernilla get into her car and drive down the road. At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a gnawing uneasiness. The image of Pernilla’s hate-filled eyes still lingered in her mind. In those eyes there was no mercy.

All the photos lay spread out on the kitchen table in front of her. All Vera had left of Anders now were pictures. Most of them were old and yellowed. It was many years since there had been any reason to take pictures of him. His baby pictures were in black-and-white, and then there were faded colour photos when he grew older. He had been a happy child. A little wild, but always happy. Considerate and polite. He had gravely assumed his role as the man of the house. Sometimes a bit too seriously perhaps, but she had let him have his way. Right or wrong. It was so hard to know. Perhaps there was much she should have done differently, perhaps it hadn’t mattered? Who could tell?

Vera smiled when she saw one of her favourite photos. Anders was sitting on his bicycle, proud as a peacock. She had worked a lot of extra evenings and weekends to buy him that bike. It was dark-blue and had a seat that was called a banana seat. According to Anders, it was the only thing he would ever want in his whole life. He had longed for that bike more than anything, and she would never forget the expression on his face when he finally got it on his eighth birthday. He spent every free moment riding around on that bike, and in this picture she had managed to catch him in motion. His hair was long and curly, hanging below the collar of his shiny, tight Adidas jacket with the stripes on the sleeves. This was the way she would always remember him. Before everything began to go wrong.

She had been waiting a long time for this day. Every telephone call, every knock on the door had brought the fear. Maybe this particular call, or this knock, would bring the news that she had dreaded for so long. Until now she had hoped that this day would never come. It was unnatural for a child to die before his parent, and that was probably why it was so hard to imagine the possibility. Hope was the last thing to die, and she had continued to believe that things would work out somehow. Even if it took a miracle. But there was no miracle. And there was no hope. The only thing left now was hopelessness, and a pile of old yellowed photographs.

The kitchen clock was ticking in the silence. For the first time, she saw how shabby her home looked. For all these years, she had done nothing to the house, and it was obvious. She had held the dirt at bay, but she couldn’t clean away the indifference that clung to the walls and ceiling. Everything was grey and lifeless. Wasted. That was what depressed her the most. Everything that had been wasted and squandered.

Anders’s happy face mocked her from the pictures. It spoke more clearly than anything else of how she had failed. It had been her task to keep him smiling, to give him faith, hope, and above all love to face the future. Instead she had mutely watched as everything was stripped away from him. She had neglected her job as a mother, and she would never be able to rid herself of the shame.

It occurred to her how little evidence there was that Anders had ever lived. The paintings were gone, the few pieces of furniture he’d had in the flat would soon be discarded if no one wanted them. In her home, none of his things remained. He had either sold them or destroyed them over the years. The only thing that proved that he had really existed was a handful of photos lying on the table in front of her. And her memories. Of course, he would exist in the memories of others as well, but as a drunken wino, not someone to be missed or mourned over. She was the only one who had happy memories of him. Sometimes it had been hard to summon them up, but they were still there. On a day like today they were the only memories of him that surfaced. Nothing else was allowed.

The minutes turned to hours, and Vera sat at her kitchen table with the photographs in front of her. Her joints grew stiff. Her eyes began to have a hard time distinguishing the details of the photos as the winter darkness slowly strangled the light. But it didn’t matter. She was now completely, mercilessly alone.

The doorbell echoed through the house. It took such a long time before he heard anyone inside that he was about to turn round and go back to the car. But after waiting a while he heard someone cautiously coming to the door. The door opened slowly inward and he saw Nelly Lorentz giving him a puzzled look. He was surprised that she answered the door herself. He had envisioned a stiff butler in livery who would graciously invite him in. But maybe nobody had butlers anymore.

‘My name is Patrik Hedström, and I’m from the police in Tanumshede. I’m looking for your son Jan.’

He had rung the office first but was told that Jan was working at home today.

The old lady didn’t raise an eyebrow but merely stepped aside and let him in.

‘I’ll call Jan, just a minute.’

Slowly but elegantly, Nelly walked in the direction of a door that opened onto a staircase to the floor below. Patrik had heard that Jan had the cellar flat in the luxurious house.

‘Jan, you have a visitor. The police.’

Patrik doubted that Nelly’s frail old voice could really be heard downstairs, but footsteps on the stairs proved him wrong. A look filled with hidden meanings passed between mother and son when Jan came up the stairs into the front hall. Nelly nodded to Patrik and went into her room, and Jan came towards Patrik with outstretched hand and a smile showing a lot of teeth. Patrik had the sudden image of an alligator in his mind. A smiling alligator.