The Ice Princess

They laughed. Erica pulled her coat tighter even though it was still damp and headed out into the rain.

The rain had transformed the snow to slush, and she drove a bit below the speed limit just to be on the safe side. After wasting almost half an hour trying to get out of Hisingen, where she had ended up by mistake, she was now approaching Uddevalla. A dull rumble in her stomach reminded her that she had totally forgotten to eat all day. She turned off the E6 at the Torp shopping centre north of Uddevalla and drove into McDonald’s. She gulped down a cheeseburger as she sat in the parking lot and was soon back out on the motorway. The whole time her thoughts were filled with the conversations she’d had with Henrik and Francine. What they had told her created an image of a woman who had built high defensive walls around herself.

What Erica was most curious about was who could be the father of Alex’s baby. Francine didn’t think that it was Henrik’s, but no one could ever be completely sure what happened in other people’s bedrooms, and Erica still reckoned it was a possibility. If not, the question was whether the father was the man that Francine hinted Alex had gone to meet every weekend in Fjallbacka, or whether she had a lover in Goteborg.

Erica had got the impression that Alex was leading some sort of parallel life. She did as she liked, without worrying about how it would affect those close to her, and Henrik in particular. Erica had the feeling that Francine had a hard time understanding how Henrik could accept a marriage under those conditions. She also thought that Francine disdained him for that reason. Yet Erica could understand all too well how these sorts of things happened. She had been observing Anna and Lucas’s marriage for many years.

What depressed Erica most about Anna’s inability to change her situation was that she couldn’t help wondering whether she was part of the reason for Anna’s lack of self-respect. Erica was five years old when Anna was born. From the first instant she saw her little sister she had tried to protect her from the reality she carried round with her like an invisible wound. Anna would never have to feel alone and rejected because of their mother’s lack of love for her daughters. The hugs and loving words that Anna did not get from her mother, Erica supplied in abundance. She watched over her little sister with motherly concern.

Anna was an easy child to love. She was totally immune to the sadder aspects of life and took each moment as it came. Erica, who was old beyond her years and often upset, was fascinated by the energy with which her sister loved every minute of her life. Anna took Erica’s anxieties in stride but seldom had the patience to sit on her lap or let herself be cuddled for very long. She grew up to be a wild teenager who did precisely whatever she pleased, an unflappable and self-centred girl. In moments of clarity, Erica admitted to herself that she had probably both protected and coddled Anna far too much. She was just trying to give her what she herself had never received.

When Anna met Lucas she became easy prey. She was enthralled by his surface charm but failed to see the stifling forces underneath. Slowly, very slowly he broke down her joie de vivre and self- confidence by playing on her vanity. Now she sat in Ostermalm like a lovely bird in a cage and did not have the power to realize her mistake. Every day Erica hoped that Anna of her own free will would reach out her hand and ask her for help. Until that day, Erica could do no more than wait and remain available. Not that she’d had any great luck with relationships herself. She had a long string of broken relationships and promises behind her; she was usually the one who had broken them off. There was something that snapped whenever she reached a certain point in a relationship. A feeling of panic so strong that she could hardly breathe; she had to clear out, lock and stock, without looking back. And yet, as long ago as she could remember, Erica had paradoxically yearned to have children and a family. She was now thirty-five and the years were slipping away from her.

Damn it, she had managed to repress the thought of Lucas all day long, but now he had got under her skin again, and she knew she would have to find out how vulnerable her position actually was. She was altogether too tired to deal with it now. It would have to wait till tomorrow. She felt an acute need to relax for the rest of the day, without thinking about either Lucas or Alexandra Wijkner.

She punched in a speed-dial number on her mobile.

‘Hi, it’s Erica. Are you two at home tonight? I thought I’d drop by for a while.’

Dan gave a warm laugh. ‘Are we at home? Don’t you know what tonight is?’

The silence that met her at the other end of the line was alarmingly total. Erica thought hard but couldn’t recall that there was anything special about this evening. Not a holiday, nobody’s birthday. Dan and Pernilla had been married in the summer, so it couldn’t be their anniversary.

‘No, I really have no idea. Tell me.’

There was a deep sigh on the line and Erica realized that the big event had to be sports-related. Dan was an enormous sports fan, which sometimes caused a bit of friction between him and his wife Pernilla. Erica had found her own way of retaliating for all the evenings she had to spend looking at some meaningless sporting event on TV when they were together. Dan was a fanatic follower of the Djurgarden hockey team, so Erica had taken on the role of rabid AIK fan. Actually she was totally uninterested in sports in general and hockey in particular, and so it seemed to annoy Dan even more. What really got his goat was when AIK lost and she didn’t seem to care.

‘Sweden is playing Belarus!’

He sensed her lack of comprehension and heaved another deep sigh. ‘The Olympic Games, Erica, the Olympics. Aren’t you aware that such an event is going on…?’

‘Oh, you mean the football match? Yes, of course I know about that. I thought you meant that there was something special tonight besides that.’

She spoke in an exaggerated tone, clearly showing she had no idea that there was a match tonight. She smiled because she knew Dan was literally tearing his hair out over such blasphemy. Sports were not a joking matter for him.

‘But I’ll come over and check out the match with you so I can see Salming crush the Russian defence…’

‘Salming! Don’t you know how many years it’s been since he retired? You’re kidding me, right? Tell me you’re kidding.’

‘Yes, Dan, I’m kidding. I’m not that daft. I’ll come over and check out Sundin, if that suits you better. Incredibly cute guy, by the way.’

He sighed heavily yet again. This time because she had been sacrilegious enough to speak of such a giant in the hockey world in terms other than purely athletic.

‘All right, come on over. But I don’t want a repeat of last time! No yakking during the match, no comments about how sexy the players look in their shinguards, and above all, no questions about whether they’re wearing jockstraps and if they wear underpants over them. Understood?’

Erica suppressed a laugh and said seriously, ‘Scout’s honour, Dan.’

He grunted. ‘You’ve never been a scout.’

‘No, precisely.’

Then she pressed the off button on her mobile phone.

Dan and Pernilla lived in one of the relatively new row-houses in Falkeliden. The houses stood in straight lines, climbing up along Rabekullen Hill, and they looked so much alike that it was almost impossible to tell one from the other. It was a popular area for families with children, mainly because the houses had no ocean view whatever and thus hadn’t climbed to such dizzying prices as the neighbourhoods closer to the sea.

The evening was much too cold to take a walk, but the car protested vehemently when she forced it up the icy hill, only moderately sanded. She turned into Dan and Pernilla’s street with a deep sigh of relief.

Erica rang the doorbell, which instantly set off a tumultuous tramping of little feet inside, and a second later the front door was pulled open by a little girl in pyjamas with feet-Lisen, Dan and Pernilla’s youngest. Fury swelled up in Malin, the middle girl, who thought it was unfair that Lisen got to open the door for Erica, and the squabble didn’t die down until Pernilla’s firm voice was heard from the kitchen. Belina, the oldest girl, was thirteen, and Erica had seen her down by Acke’s hot-dog kiosk surrounded by some downy-cheeked boys on mopeds when she drove past the square. Dan and Pernilla were certainly going to have their hands full with her.

After the girls each got a hug, they vanished as fast as they had appeared and left Erica to hang up her coat in peace and quiet.

Pernilla was out in the kitchen fixing dinner, with rosy cheeks and an apron with ‘Kiss the Cook’ printed in huge letters on it. She looked to be in the midst of a critical stage in her preparations, and merely waved a bit distractedly at Erica before she turned back to her pots and pans, steaming and sizzling. Erica continued into the living room, where she knew she would find Dan, ensconced on the sofa with his feet on the glass coffee-table and the remote control grasped firmly in his right hand.