was how they found each other. Realised that they shared the same improbable cowardice, always wanting to flee from anything that could be considered a real conversation.
Eva held her fast with her gaze.
‘What a nice jumper you’re wearing, by the way.’
Linda looked down at her jumper as if she had never seen it before.
‘Thanks.’
Yes, little Linda. Now you’ve got a little something to wonder about.
‘Will you tell Axel that I’ll wave to him in the window?’
‘Of course.’
‘And thanks for listening.’
She smiled and put her hand confidingly on Linda’s forearm.
‘It feels so good to be able to tell you this. I’m sure that everything will work out. Every marriage has its ups and downs from time to time.’
She smiled, and maybe that’s what Linda was trying to do as well.
‘We’ll come to get him at four as usual.’
She kept her hand on Linda’s arm a moment too long before she turned to go.
He still wasn’t awake when she got home. The door to the bedroom was closed, and she continued into the kitchen and put on some coffee. She had called in to work from her mobile. It was a serious flu she had come down with, and the doctor had given her a sick note, so it was probably best if Hakan took over her project for a while.
She took out the guest bed with the fold-down legs that had been a wedding present from Cissi and Janne. It was still in its original box and had barely been used.
Never before had an idea been so clear, so pure, so utterly free of hesitation and doubt. There was only a single driving force, and it was so powerful that it shoved everything else aside, justified every step she took, every thought.
One step at a time. It was the here and now that mattered. The future that she wanted no longer existed, he had taken it away from her.
Now she just had to see to it that he lost the future he wanted too.
And he wouldn’t even know what hit him.
She finished making up the guest bed and stopped outside the bedroom door. She tried to smile a few times to practice her expression, but she mustn’t overdo it. She had to try to behave like the Eva he thought he knew, the one who existed twenty hours ago, or else he would be suspicious.
She pressed down the handle with her arm and pushed open the door with her foot. He was awake and raised himself up on his elbow.
‘Good morning.’
He didn’t reply.
Didn’t you hear me say good morning, you fucking pig?
He lay silent, staring at her as if it were a sharp axe and not a tray she held in her hands.
‘What’s that?’
She took a step into the room.
‘It’s called breakfast in bed.’
She was at his side and resisted the temptation to dump the hot coffee in his face. He sat up and she carefully set the tray over his legs.
‘You don’t have to worry, I don’t intend to seduce you. I just want to talk a little.’
She smiled into the darkness, well aware that this was an even greater threat.
Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, as far from him as she could get without leaving the room.
He sat quite still, pinned down by the tray straddling his legs.
‘As you may have noticed, I wasn’t home last night.’
‘No. It would have been nice if you’d said something before you left.’
She swallowed. She couldn’t let herself be provoked. The new Eva was a good, fine person who understood that he must have been worried.
‘I know, that was stupid. I apologise, but I had to get out of here for a while.’
He didn’t give in, but made use of the occasion to share some of his guilty conscience.
‘Axel was sad and wondered where you were.’
She clenched her fist and concentrated on the pain her nails caused as they dug into her palm.
If you want to talk about guilt, then let’s do that. Who causes him the most harm.
‘I was out walking all night.’
She dropped her gaze and stroked her hand across the blue-checked sheet.
‘I was thinking about everything that’s happened here at home recently, how we’re not getting along, how we act towards each other. I realise that it’s just as much my fault that it’s turned out like this.’
She looked up at him but had a hard time reading his reaction. His face was blank. He had been ready for strife and conflict and clearly didn’t know how to act when she lay prostrate at his feet.
She smiled into the darkness again.
‘I’d like to apologise for getting so angry about that thing about Maria at Widman’s. Just to clear the air a bit, I realise that it’s great that you have her to talk to, that it might actually be a good thing for us. If she’s as smart as you say she is, she can probably help us get through all this.’
His expression made her lower her eyes again. She turned her head so that he wouldn’t notice her smile and then kept talking with her face turned away.
‘I know that you’ve been feeling bad for a while, and you said yourself that you don’t think it’s fun any more.’
She looked at him again.
‘Why don’t you go away for a little while? Think about how you want things to be, what it is you want. I’ll take care of everything at home in the meantime, it’s completely OK. The main thing is that you feel good again.’
He sat utterly still.
Well, Henrik, now it’s a little harder, isn’t it?
She stood up.
‘I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you need me, I always have been even if I might not have been good at showing it sometimes. I’ll do my best to try and improve. I’m here, and I always will be.’
Now he looked almost sick. His thighs were pressed against the underside of the tray and some of the coffee in the cup sloshed over the edge and ran under the plate of sandwiches.
She was amazed that she ever could have touched him. He sat there looking so pitiful and timid that she wanted to hit him.
Get up damn you, and stand up for yourself!
She backed towards the door. She had to get out of the room before she lost control.
The last thing she saw was how he lifted the tray aside. She left the bedroom, continued downstairs and went straight to the gun cabinet.
There was no parking ticket on his car when he came out. It didn’t surprise him much, he only noted it as something natural. For the last time the main doors had slid aside when they sensed his presence, but this time they hadn’t tossed him out into fear and loneliness, longing for the next time he would be allowed inside. This time they had slid aside deferentially and wished him well in his new life.
Now it would all begin. Everything he had gone through up till now had been a test of whether he deserved what now awaited him. He could forgive life for the injustice after injustice. Together with her everything would be repaid.
For the last time he turned on to Solnavagen and took a right towards Essingeleden. The rush-hour traffic was over and the trip home took him only the eighteen minutes it usually did.
Or rather, as it
