A strong smell of small children and wet raincoats hit her as she opened the door. The porch was a sea of brown mud, with the cheery command ‘Hello! All shoes off!’ on a colourful sign above the shoe-rack.
Anne wiped her feet half-heartedly: the state of the doormat suggested that it wasn’t going to make any difference. Then she tiptoed into the hall where all the little blue shelves, an alcove for every child, were full to overflowing with children’s clothes, stuffed toys, drawings, photographs of holidays, birthdays, Christmases.
She took a deep breath, about to call to her daughter, when she caught sight of the woman in the door to the kitchen.
Tall, thin, with long, strawberry-blond hair in soft curls over one shoulder. A Palestinian shawl.
Anne blinked.
So ridiculously medieval, wearing a Palestinian shawl.
The woman stiffened when she saw Anne, her eyes taking on a look of slight panic.
‘I…’ she began, collecting herself. ‘My name’s Sylvia, I’m Sylvia.’
She took a few steps forward, and held out her hand.
Anne stared at the woman, nausea growing like a tornado in her stomach, unable to lift her hand or return the greeting.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. The words sounded brittle and echoey to her own ears.
Mehmet’s new woman, his fiancee, his future wife, the woman who was carrying his new child, she was standing in front of her looking confused and pretty terrified.
‘I… was going to pick Miranda up, but she said that you…’
‘It’s my week,’ Anne said, unable to understand why her voice was coming from so far away. ‘Why are you here?’
Sylvia Pregnant Fiancee ran her tongue over her lips and Anne noticed they were sensual, she was beautiful. Sylvia was much more beautiful than she was. Jealousy and spite pricked her eyes like knives, warping her sight. She was beside herself with spite and humiliation and realized at that very moment that she had lost, and if she allowed herself to look destroyed then she would be. She would have to construct some self-respect for herself.
‘I must have got it wrong,’ Sylvia said. ‘I thought I was supposed to be collecting her today. I thought it was my day.’
‘Do you start all your sentences with “I”?’ Anne said, suddenly able to move again, her legs manoeuvring past Sylvia Beautiful Pregnant Fiancee and into the kitchen to a yell of ‘Mummy!’
Miranda flew into her arms, holding an apple-core in one hand, and buried her sticky mouth in her hair.
‘Darling,’ Anne Snapphane whispered. ‘I bet you almost blew away today!’
The girl leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
‘They had to tie me down,’ she said. ‘Then I flew like a kite all the way to Lidingo.’
Anne laughed, the girl wriggled loose and ran past Sylvia Beautiful without taking any notice of her stepmother. She called over her shoulder, ‘Can we have pancakes for tea? Can I break the eggs?’
Anne walked up to Sylvia, who was in her way by the door.
‘Sorry now?’ she said dully.
‘I feel so sick,’ Sylvia said, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘I don’t understand how I could get it so wrong. Sorry. It’s just… I feel so ill the whole time. I spend all my time being sick.’
‘Get an abortion, then,’ Anne said.
Beautiful Sylvia flinched as though she’d been slapped, her face turning bright red. ‘What?’ she said.
Anne took a step closer, breathing right into the other woman’s face. ‘The worst thing I know,’ Anne said, ‘is spoiled bitches whining. You really expect my sympathy?’
Pregnant Lovely Sylvia took a step back and hit her head on the doorframe, mouth and eyes wide open.
Anne Snapphane walked past her, feeling her face blazing. She went over to her daughter who was putting her clothes on and chattering about different sorts of pancake batter. She took her hand and left the nursery, Sylvia’s offended muteness at her back.
25
Annika was frying fish-fingers and making mashed potato from powder, something she never did when Thomas was home. Thomas was used to well-made, proper food; his mother had always placed great importance on having good ingredients, but then it could hardly have been that hard. The family had owned a grocery shop, after all. It wasn’t as if her beloved mother-in-law suffered from the strain of working in the shop itself. She just went down and picked out what she wanted without paying, and looked after the accounts, so of course she had time to cook.
Thomas had never peeled a potato for himself. Ready-made food had been a complete mystery to him when Annika turned up with her tins of ravioli. His children, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy to eat reshaped fish and powdered mash.
‘Do we have to eat the red stuff?’ Kalle asked.
She had dutifully placed cubes of red pepper on their plates, which they were now both picking out.
She was itching to get going. She knew she had at least four hours’ work ahead of her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You can watch a film if you want. Which one would you like?’
‘Yay!’ Ellen said, throwing her arms out and knocking her plate to the floor.
Annika got up and picked up the plate, which had survived, and the food, which hadn’t.
‘
‘No!’ Annika said, noticing that she was shouting. ‘Not that one!’
The children stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘But we got it from Grandma,’ Kalle said. ‘Don’t you like Beauty?’
She swallowed her stress and knelt down by the children.
‘
Both children shook their heads in silence.
‘Exactly,’ Annika said. ‘But Beauty still has to love the Beast, because if she loves him enough then she’ll be able to save him.’
‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’ Kalle said. ‘That she saves him.’
‘But why would she do that?’ Annika said. ‘Why would she save the Beast, when he’s only been horrid to her?’
She could see the boy’s confusion, and Ellen’s uncomprehending eyes, and put her arms round Kalle.
‘You’re a good boy,’ she whispered to him. ‘You don’t know how horrid people can sometimes be. But there are horrid people, and you can’t cure them with love.’
She stroked his hair and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Why don’t you watch
‘Only if you watch it with us,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s so scary.’
‘What about
‘Yay!’
Thirty seconds after she had started the film, there was a buzzing sound from the depths of her bag. She ran into the bedroom, shut the door and emptied the contents of the bag on to the unmade bed. The cord of her mobile had got tangled up with the spiral binding of one of her notebooks.
It was Q.
‘I’ve checked the quotes you mentioned.’
She pulled out the right notebook and a pen.
‘And?’ she said, sinking to the floor with her back against the bed.
