vanished out of sight for a moment. Jonas slowed down when he saw it pull into a parking space but kept going straight ahead, parked and climbed out. He rounded the corner towards Duvnasgatan and at the same moment the other man’s car door opened. A blonde woman about his age, maybe a couple of years older, came out of the building about ten metres farther down. Jonas pulled up his hood and started walking up the hill on the other side of the street, stopped by a shop window across from the parked Golf and stood there. He could see them in the reflection in the window, and nothing would ever surprise him again. The pieces didn’t fit together any more. For a brief second his eyes refocused and he suddenly read a sign inside the shop window: ‘To Let’. There was nothing else displayed in the empty window. But the reflection had even more to reveal. The woman who had just come out of the building and the man named Henrik who had just left his beautiful suburban home now stood embracing each other across the street. Quite still and almost convulsively they held on to each other, as if they might fall over if either of them let go.
They stood there like that for a long time. Long enough for him to attract attention in front of the empty shop window if they were capable of noticing anything outside their own sphere.
Who was this man? In the house he had just left, a woman was walking around who was everything a man could desire. And yet he stood here across the street in another’s embrace.
Without turning round Jonas started walking down the hill, back to his car. He felt confused now, wondering about what he had seen, and whether everything was as it seemed. A husband and wife who satisfied their desires elsewhere, with other partners.
Bloody hell.
He’d never put up with that.
The day he got married and someone really loved him for the person he was, the day someone truly saw him, he would never again look at anyone else. He would drag out all the passion inside him and make his woman a queen. He would worship her, do everything she asked, be there loving her every second. He would never fail. His love could work miracles if someone would only let it. If anyone would only accept it. Why could no woman see his capacity, see the inherent power in him? Why was there no one who wanted to accept all that he had to give?
Anna had known. And yet he wasn’t good enough for her.
A great longing came over him again, a longing for a way out of his loneliness. And then he thought of the man named Henrik, whom he had just seen in the other woman’s arms. A man who had everything anyone could ever want but was still not satisfied.
And Lind . . . Eva.
Eva.
What was it she had wanted of him when she went home with him?
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a car pass by his side window, but not until it was gone did he realise it was the Golf. The woman was sitting in the passenger seat.
He turned the key in the ignition and almost automatically rather than by making a conscious decision, he followed. Renstiernas Gata on the left and then Ringvagen to the turn-off at Nynasvagen. He didn’t care about keeping his distance any more, he might as well drive where he liked.
In fact he ended up driving all the way to a little out-of-the-way pizzeria halfway to Nynashamn. A hundred metres ahead he saw the Golf turn in and park. The restaurant didn’t look particularly luxurious or cosy, so he assumed it had been chosen because of its safe distance from the house in Nacka. Infidelity apparently required a certain caution. He knew that better than most. He felt his disgust grow when he saw them walk inside. His arm around her shoulders, protective, attentive. How could a woman be so stupid as to trust a man who at that very moment was betraying another woman?
It was all so incomprehensible.
He waited a while before he left his car, in no hurry as he read the laminated menu beside the door. They were seated facing each other at a table in the corner, and a man with a foreign appearance was taking their order. There didn’t seem to be much of a rush at the place, because only two other tables were occupied. At one table sat three teenage boys barely old enough to be drinking the beer they held. At the other sat a family with children who had just finished eating. And yet it wouldn’t seem too odd if he picked the table right next to them. He took a few steps to the table and just as he pulled out the chair he saw out of the corner of his eye the man named Henrik who was being unfaithful give back the menu. Jonas sat down and a second later he had the same menu in his hands.
His hands.
The hands that had caressed the same woman.
His own in unconditional love, the other man’s in unconditional betrayal.
And yet it was he, the other man, who had the right to touch her.
He pushed aside the menu on the table, not wanting to touch it. He tried to remember the name of some type of pizza from the text he had read on the placard outside the front door.
Then the man with the foreign appearance went back to the kitchen and the others started talking to each other. Without straining he could hear every word of their conversation even though they lowered their voices. And suddenly it was all so clear. Why everything had happened. Why it was predestined that he should catch sight of her when she was sitting under the red awning the evening before last, why the two of them should meet.
He had been given a task to perform.
He who believed that she had been sent to save him. It was precisely the opposite! He was sent to save her. Their deceitful, merciless judgement over two mediocre Quattro Stagioni pizzas. She, who wasn’t even here to speak for herself.
He couldn’t eat the pizza he had ordered. He left it untouched and asked for the check.
Their voices echoed in his head during the trip back towards Nacka.
‘When do you intend to tell her about us? I just can’t stand to go on like this much longer.’
‘I know. But there’s also Axel to consider. I have to arrange for a flat first so he can live with me as well.’
And that was when he had understood that some-where in the midst of all this self-absorption there was a son.
There was a son.
And here at a suburban pizzeria, hidden away in fear that someone might see him, sat his father with a whore eating pizza.
It was dark by the time he turned onto the street where he knew she lived. He stood outside the car and watched in fascination the play of lights from the top of the Nacka Masts a few hundred metres off. The sweeping lights that branched like straight streets through the cloud cover to vanish softly into infinity. Of course she lived underneath a searchlight, but all she had to do was head towards the light.
This time he walked straight onto the property, stopping at each window to peer cautiously through the darkened panes on his way round the house. He didn’t see her anywhere. Then he reached the back yard and saw the glow of a lamp through the big window next to the balcony door. He walked out onto the lawn so he wouldn’t come too close, not wanting to risk her catching sight of him. Not yet. Not until he was ready.
Then he finally saw her. With only a reading lamp lit she was sitting in an easy chair right next to the window. For a second or two he thought she was staring straight at him, but then he realised that her eyes were staring into the darkness surrounding him. He couldn’t resist moving closer. Step by step, with infinite slowness, he approached the balcony. Three steps up the stairs and then he was close to her. Right up close. Only a window- pane prevented him from reaching out and touching her. A book lay unopened on her lap, and he looked at her hands lying folded on top of it. The same hands that had caressed him and made him come alive. He had only one wish: to feel those hands against his skin once more. He had to subdue his desire, give her a chance to try and understand. He raised his gaze to her face. It was utterly devoid of expression, but then he saw that tears were running down her cheeks like white tracks against her skin.
O beloved, if I could only hold you in my arms. Don’t be afraid, I’m here with you, I’ll watch over you. I will prove my love to you. And when you understand what I’m prepared to do to win your love, then you will love me in return. Forever. And I shall never leave you. Never.
He suddenly felt his own eyes brimming over with gratitude. The two of them, together in tears, only a few metres apart.
Not even the thought of a night alone in the flat could frighten him now.
