Red Wolf

Now she just had to land on her feet.

Sunday 22 November

39

Thomas reached for the coffee-pot and found it was empty. He felt himself getting annoyed, his jaw clenching. He sighed quietly and glanced at his wife on the other side of the kitchen table. She was on her fourth mug, had drunk the whole pot, which he had made, before he had managed to get a single cup. She didn’t notice his frustration, was deeply immersed in an essay by a professor of Islamic studies on the question of exactly who could be regarded as an Iraqi. She had pulled her hair into a messy knot on top of her head, idly brushing aside a stray lock that had fallen in front of her eyes. Her dressing gown was loosely tied; he could see her smooth skin beneath the towelling.

He looked away and stood up.

‘Do you want more coffee?’ he said sarcastically.

‘No, not for me, thanks.’

She didn’t look up, paid him no attention.

I may as well be part of the furniture, he thought. A means of her living comfortably and writing whatever damn articles she feels like.

He composed himself and filled the little pan with more water. At home in Vaxholm they had always had an electric kettle, both at his parents’ and during his marriage to Eleonor, but Annika thought that was unnecessary.

‘Just another machine. We’ve got so little space as it is. Besides, it’s quicker to boil water on the gas stove than in a kettle.’

She was right about that, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his space was shrinking. She took up so much bloody space. The more she took, the less there was left over for him.

Before the business with the Bomber he hadn’t seen it so clearly. Back then, everything happened slowly, his space was stolen a piece at a time without him noticing. The children arrived and she got the editor’s job and of course he did his bit, but then everything went back to normal while she was at home and could look after the apartment and the kids. And now he was suddenly expected to retreat to his little corner and hand over his life to her.

He looked at his wife as the pan of water began to bubble. Sharp and edgy, slight, with soft breasts. Vulnerable and fragile and hard as nails.

She must have felt him looking at her, because she looked up at him, confused. ‘What?’ she said.

He turned away. ‘Nothing.’

‘Right,’ she said, picking up the paper and leaving the kitchen.

‘Hang on,’ he called after her. ‘Mum rang and asked us to Sunday lunch. I said yes; hope that’s okay?’

Why am I asking? he thought. Why am I apologizing for accepting an invitation to visit my own parents?

‘What did you say?’

She walked sternly back into the kitchen, he turned and looked at her, standing there with the newspaper dragging on the floor.

‘Twelve o’clock,’ he said. ‘Lunch in Vaxholm.’

She shook her head, steaming with disbelief. ‘How can you say yes to something like that without even asking me?’

He turned back to the stove, pouring water into the cafetiere.

‘You were on your mobile again; I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘This is disturbing me more. I’m not going.’

He was seized by an overwhelming and unreasonable impulse to shake her until the knot of hair on the top of her head came loose and her teeth shook and the dressing gown slid from her shoulders.

Instead he closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, addressing his reply to the ventilation unit. ‘I’m not going to end up with the same crap relationship with my parents that you’ve got with yours.’

He heard from the rustling of the newspaper that she’d left the kitchen.

‘Okay,’ she said expressionlessly from the hall. ‘Take the children, but I’m not going.’

‘Of course you’re coming,’ he said, still to the ventilation unit.

She came back into the kitchen. He looked at her over his shoulder; she was naked apart from her socks.

‘And if I don’t?’ she said. ‘Are you going to hit me over the head and drag me there by my hair?’

‘Sounds good,’ he said.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she said.

His eyes were drawn to her buttocks as she walked back down the hall. Sophia was much more curvy, and her skin was pink. Annika’s had a green tint; in the sun she quickly went a deep olive-colour.

She’s an alien, Thomas thought. A little green woman from another planet, scratchy and shapeless and unreasonable. Was it possible to live with an alien? He shook off the thought with a gulp. Why was he making everything so damned hard for himself? There was a way out. He had a choice. He could get back the life he missed, living with a soft and pink woman with humanity and apple hair who would welcome him into her attic apartment.

Good grief, he thought, what am I going to do?

The next second the phone rang.

No, he thought. It’s her. What’s she ringing here for? I said she could never call here.

A second ring.

‘Are you going to get that?’ Annika called from the shower.

A third.

He grabbed the phone with throbbing temples, trying to find some saliva in his mouth.

‘Thomas and Annika,’ he heard himself say with a dry mouth.

‘I have to talk to Annika.’ It was Anne Snapphane. She sounded like she was suffocating, and he felt such a huge sense of relief that he could feel it in his balls.

‘Of course,’ he said, breathing out. ‘I’ll get her.’

Annika climbed out of the bathtub, grabbed a towel and left a trail of wet footprints behind her as she walked to the phone. The sharp stone twisted and turned in her chest, the angels humming anxiously in the background. She avoided looking at Thomas as she passed him and picked up the phone, his coolness made her keep her distance from his back.

‘Have you read the paper this morning?’ Anne Snapphane said, her voice hoarse and tight.

‘Have you got a hangover?’ Annika said, pushing the cheese away to make a place on the kitchen table. Thomas sighed loudly and moved two millimetres to make space for her.

‘Like a bitch, but that doesn’t matter. Bjornlund has shut down the channel.’

Annika pushed the bread away to make more room.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

‘The Minister of Culture has just made me redundant. Says so in the paper.’

Thomas demonstratively turned ninety degrees away from her, his shoulders screaming out that he was actively distancing himself.

‘What? I’ve just read it.’

‘Top of the front page.’

Annika leaned forward and took hold of the first part of the paper as Thomas was reading it to peer at the