The Ice Princess (4 page)

From their first day at school Erica and Alex had been inseparable. Erica was tremendously proud that Alex had chosen her as a friend. Alex was like a magnet to all who came near her. Everyone wanted to be with Alex, yet she was totally oblivious to her popularity. She was withdrawn in a way that displayed a self-confidence which Erica now, as an adult, perceived as very unusual for a child. And yet Alex was open and generous and showed no sign of shyness despite her reserved manner. She was the one who chose Erica as her friend. Erica never would have dared approach Alex on her own. They were inseparable until the last year before Alex moved away and then vanished from her life for good. Alex had begun to withdraw more and more, and Erica spent hours alone in her room mourning for their lost friendship. Then one day when she rang the doorbell at Alex’s house, nobody answered. Twenty-five years later Erica could still remember in detail the pain she felt when she realized that Alex had moved without even mentioning it to her, without saying good-bye. She still had no idea what had happened. Being a child, she’d put all the blame on herself and simply assumed that Alex had grown tired of her.

Erica manoeuvred her way with some difficulty through Göteborg in the direction of Särö. She knew her way around the city after having studied there for four years, but back then she hadn’t owned a car, so in that respect Göteborg was still a blank space on the map. If she could have driven on the bike paths things would have been much easier. Göteborg was a nightmare for an insecure driver, with plenty of one-way streets, roundabouts with heavy traffic, and the stressful ringing of trams coming at her from every direction. It also felt as though all roads were leading to Hisingen, northwest of the city. If she took the wrong exit she was bound to end up there.

The directions that Henrik had given her were clear, and she found the address on the first try, managing to stay out of Hisingen this time.

The house exceeded all her expectations. An enormous white villa from the turn of the last century, with a view of the water and a small gazebo that held the promise of warm summer nights to come. The garden, now hidden beneath a thick white mantle of snow, had been carefully laid out. Because of its sheer size, it would demand the tender care of a skilled gardener.

Erica drove down an avenue of willow trees and through a tall wrought-iron gate onto the gravel courtyard in front of the house.

Stone steps led up to a substantial oak door. There was no modern doorbell; instead she banged hard with a massive door-knocker. The door was opened at once. She had almost expected to be greeted by a housemaid in a starched apron and cap, but instead she was received by a man she realized at once had to be Henrik Wijkner. He was unabashedly good-looking, and Erica was glad she had devoted a little extra effort to her appearance before she left home.

She stepped into a huge entrance hall and saw immediately that it was bigger than her entire flat back in Stockholm.

‘Erica Falck.’

‘Henrik Wijkner. We met last summer as I recall. At that restaurant down by Ingrid Bergman Square.’

‘Yes, that’s right. At Café Bryggan. It seems like an eternity ago that we had summer. Especially considering this weather we’re having.’

Henrik muttered something polite in reply. He helped her off with her coat and showed her the way to a parlour off the hall. She sat down gingerly on a sofa. Even with her limited knowledge of antiques she could tell the sofa was old and probably very valuable. She said yes to Henrik’s offer of coffee. As he pottered about with the coffee and they exchanged comments about the wretched weather, she watched him surreptitiously, concluding that he didn’t look particularly bereaved. But Erica also knew that it might not mean anything. Different people had different ways of grieving.

He was casually dressed in perfectly pressed chinos and a sky-blue Ralph Lauren shirt. His hair was dark, almost black, and cut in a style that was elegant but not excessively fastidious. His eyes were dark brown and gave him a slightly Southern European look. She happened to prefer men who looked considerably more rough-and-tumble, but she couldn’t help being affected by the attractive power of this man who looked as if he’d stepped right out of a fashion magazine. Henrik and Alex must have made a strikingly good-looking couple.

‘What an incredibly lovely house.’

‘Thank you. I’m the fourth generation of Wijkners to live here. My paternal great-grandfather had the house built early in the last century and it’s been in the family ever since. If these walls could talk…’ He made a sweeping gesture and smiled at Erica.

‘Well, it must feel strange to have so much of your family’s history around you.’

‘Yes and no. But it is a great responsibility. In the footsteps of my ancestors and all that.’

He chuckled softly and Erica didn’t think he looked particularly weighed down by responsibility. She, however, felt helplessly out of place in this elegant room and struggled in vain to find a comfortable way to sit on the lovely but spartan sofa. Finally she perched on the very edge and carefully sipped her coffee, which was served in small mocha cups. Her little finger twitched a bit but she resisted the impulse. The cups were perfect for crooking one’s little finger, but she suspected that it would probably seem more of a parody than a sign of sophistication. She also struggled briefly when confronted with the plate of cakes on the table, but lost the battle in a duel with a thick slice of sponge cake. She estimated it at ten Weight Watchers points.

‘Alex loved this house.’

Erica had been wondering how to broach the real reason why she was sitting here. She was grateful when Henrik himself brought up the topic of Alex.

‘How long did you live here together?’

‘Ever since we were married, fifteen years. We met when we were both studying in Paris. She was reading art history, and I was trying to acquire enough knowledge about the business world to run the family empire. And I did, but just barely.’

Erica strongly suspected that Henrik Wijkner had never done anything ‘just barely’.

‘Directly after the wedding we moved back to Sweden, to this house. My parents were both dead, and the house had stood empty for a couple of years while I was abroad, but Alex immediately began to renovate it. She wanted everything to be perfect. All the details in the house, all the wallpaper, rugs and furniture, have either been here since the house was built and restored to its former appearance, or else they were purchased by Alex. She went round to, well, I don’t know how many antique dealers to find exactly the same items that were in the house when my great-grandfather lived here. She had stacks of old photographs to help her, and the result is fantastic. At the same time she was busy setting up her own gallery. I still don’t understand how she found time to do everything.’

‘What was Alex like as a person?’

Henrik took his time before answering the question.

‘Beautiful, calm, a perfectionist to her fingertips. She might have seemed vain to people who didn’t know her, but that was because she didn’t easily let anyone into her life. Alex was the sort of person one had to fight to get to know.’

Erica was acutely aware of what he meant. Alex’s air of remoteness was both intriguing and marked her as stuck-up, even as a child. Yet the same girls who called her that often fought the hardest to sit next to her.

‘How do you mean?’

Henrik looked out of the window and for the first time since she entered the Wijkner home, Erica thought she saw some feeling behind that charming exterior.

‘She always went her own way. She didn’t take anyone else into account. Not out of malice, there was nothing malicious about Alex, but out of necessity. The most important thing for my wife was to avoid getting hurt. Everything else, all other feelings, had to take a back seat to that priority. But the problem is, if you don’t let anyone through the wall out of fear that they might be an enemy, then you end up locking out all your friends as well.’

He fell silent. Then he looked at Erica. ‘She talked a lot about you.’

Erica couldn’t conceal her surprise. In view of the way their friendship had ended, Erica assumed that Alex had turned her back on her and had never given her another thought.

‘I vividly remember one thing she told me. She said that you were the last real friend she ever had. “The last pure friendship.” That’s exactly what she said. I thought it was a rather odd thing to say, but she never mentioned it again, and by that time I’d learned not to question her. That’s why I’m telling you things about Alex that I’ve never told anyone else. Something tells me that despite all the years that have passed, you still had a place in my wife’s heart.’

‘You loved her?’

‘More than anything else in the world. Alexandra was my whole life. Everything I did, everything I said, revolved around her. The ironic thing is that she never even noticed. If only she had let me in, she wouldn’t be dead today. The answer was always right in front of her nose, but she refused to see it. My wife had a strange mixture of cowardice and courage.’

‘Birgit and Karl-Erik don’t think she took her own life.’

‘Yes, I know. They assume that I wouldn’t believe she did it either, but to be honest, I don’t quite know what I think. I lived with her for over fifteen years, but I never really knew her.’

His voice was still dry and matter-of-fact. Judging by his tone of voice he could have been talking about the weather, but Erica realized that her first impression of Henrik couldn’t have been more off the mark. The depth of his sorrow was enormous. He just didn’t put it on public display the way Birgit and Karl-Erik Carlgren did. Perhaps because of her own experiences, Erica understood instinctively that he was not suffering merely from grief over his wife’s death but also from forever losing the chance to get her to love him the way he loved her. It was a feeling with which she was intimately familiar.

‘What was she afraid of?’

‘I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times. I really don’t know. As soon as I tried to talk to her about it she would shut the door, and I never managed to get in. It was as though she harboured a secret that she couldn’t share with anyone. Does that sound odd? But because I don’t know what that secret was, I can’t say whether she was capable of taking her own life.’

‘How was her relationship with her parents and her sister?’

‘Well, how should I describe it?’ He thought for a long time before he replied. ‘Tense. As if they were all tiptoeing round one another. The only one who ever said what she thought was her little sister Julia, and she’s a very strange person in general. It always felt as if a whole different dialogue were going on underneath what was being said out loud. I don’t quite know how to explain it. It was as if they were speaking in code, and someone had forgotten to give me the key.’

‘What do you mean when you say that Julia is odd?’

‘As you probably know, Birgit gave birth to Julia quite late in life. She was already a good bit past forty, and it wasn’t planned. So Julia has somehow always been the cuckoo in the nest. And it couldn’t have been very easy to have a sister like Alex. Julia was not a pretty child. She hasn’t grown any more attractive as an adult, and you know how Alex looked. Birgit and Karl-Erik have always been extremely focused on Alex, and Julia was simply forgotten. Her way of dealing with it was to turn inward. But I like her. There’s definitely something underneath her surly exterior. I only hope that someday, someone will make the effort to find it.’

‘How has she reacted to Alex’s death? What was their relationship like?’

‘You’ll probably have to ask Birgit or Karl-Erik about that. I haven’t seen Julia in more than six months. She’s studying to be a teacher up north in Umeå, and she doesn’t like coming back here. She didn’t even come home for Christmas last year. As far as her relationship with Alex goes, Julia has always worshipped her big sister. Alex had already started boarding school when Julia was born, so she wasn’t home much, but whenever we visited the family Julia would follow her sister around like a puppy. Alex didn’t like it much but she left her alone. Sometimes she could get angry at Julia and snap at her, but usually she just ignored her sister.’

Erica felt that the conversation was nearing an end. In the pauses the silence in the house had been total, and she could sense that in the midst of all this luxury it had now become a lonely house for Henrik Wijkner.

Erica stood up and held out her hand. He took it in both of his, held it for a few seconds, then released it. He walked her to the door.

‘I think I’ll drive down to the gallery and look around a bit,’ she said.

‘That’s a good idea. Alex was incredibly proud of it. She built the business from the ground up, together with a friend from her student years in Paris, Francine Bijoux. Well, now her name is Sandberg. We used to socialize with Francine and her husband a good deal, although that became less frequent after they had children. Francine is probably at the gallery. I’ll give her a ring and explain who you are. I’m sure she’ll be glad to help out and tell you a bit about Alex.’

Henrik held open the door for Erica. With a last thank you, she turned away from Alex’s husband and walked to her car.

At the same moment that she got out of her car, the heavens opened up. The gallery was in Chalmersgaten, parallel to the main shopping street Avenyn, but after half an hour of looking for a parking spot Erica resigned herself and parked at Heden. It wasn’t so far away, really, but in the pouring rain it felt like ten kilometres. And the parking fee was twelve kronor an hour. Erica could feel her mood sinking. Naturally she hadn’t brought an umbrella with her, and she knew that her curly hair would soon look like a bad home-perm.

She hurried across Avenyn and just managed to dodge the number 4 tram that came thundering in the direction of Mölndal. After passing Valand, where she had spent many an evening during her student years, she turned left into Chalmersgaten.

Galleri Abstract was on the left, with big display windows facing the street. A bell over the door pinged as she entered, and she saw that the space was much bigger than it looked from outside. The walls, floor and ceiling were painted white so as not to distract from the works of art hanging on the walls.