Betrayal

Pork tenderloin au gratin and roasted garlic butter potatoes. And a nice Rioja from ’89. A hundred and seventy-two kronor she had paid for it.

She might just as well have served the liquid from the toilet brush holder. The fact was, she had once thought about doing just that.

They didn’t say a word to each other during the meal; all necessary communication was relayed through Axel. He was allowed to light the candles on the table and now he sat there in his special chair and thought they were having a cosy evening. He had no idea that the cosy evenings were over for good in this house, and that the man who had taken them away from him was sitting at his right side and gulping down his food, all so he could go back to his den as quickly as possible.

Henrik gave her a quick look, stood up and took his plate.

‘Are you done?’

She nodded.

With his other hand he lifted up the oven-proof dish with the pork tenderloin and went over to the counter.

She just sat there, amazed that he hadn’t burned himself; surely the dish was still hot.

With mute efficiency he began clearing the table, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.

The family dinner was over.

It had lasted seven minutes.

‘Axel, your programme’s starting. Come on, I’ll turn on the TV.’

Axel slid down from his chair and they went into the living room.

She sat there with her wine glass; he had forgotten to take it from her when he cleared the table. The wine bottle was more than half full, he had hardly touched it.

The first time the phone rang it was a quarter to twelve. Axel had fallen asleep in front of the TV at about eight, and Eva carried him in to the double bed. The rest of the evening she had spent alone on the sofa, sitting there staring at the flickering pictures on the screen. When the phone rang, Henrik happened to be out of his fortress and in the bathroom. She reached the phone first.

‘Eva,’ she said.

Not a sound.

‘Hello?’

Someone hung up.

She stood there with the receiver to her ear and felt the rage building. That fucking slut! She couldn’t even leave them in peace on a Friday night when he was home with his family.

She heard him flush the toilet and the bathroom door opened. He stood in the doorway.

‘Who was that?’

She put down the receiver and did her best to seem calm, leafing through a catalogue that lay on the kitchen counter.

‘I don’t know, they hung up.’

A shadow of uneasiness flitted across his face.

And then he vanished into his office again. The door was scarcely shut before the phone rang again, cutting through the silence.

She reached it first this time too.

‘Yes?’

Again a click. And then another ring as soon as she put down the phone. This time she didn’t say a word, she just stood there listening to someone breathing.

And then suddenly there was a voice.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, this is Eva.’

‘Hi, this is Annika Ekberg.’

Jakob’s mother.

‘Jakob’s mother from day-care. Sorry for calling so late, you weren’t in bed already, I hope.’

‘No, no problem.’

‘I just have to ask you something. This may sound crazy, but Åsa, Simon’s mother, just called me and said that Lasse had received a strange email from Linda Persson at the day-care centre.’

‘A strange email?’

‘Yes, you could call it that. A love letter.’

‘What?’

‘That’s right.’

‘To Simon’s father?’

‘Yes, and that’s not all. We checked our email and we got one too.’

‘A love letter?’

‘Exactly the same one they got, word for word. I assume it’s for Kjelle and not me, but it wasn’t clear. Kjelle is mad as hell. In the email it sounds like they have some kind of love affair going on.’

‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense.’

‘No. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Don’t you think it’s some kind of mistake?’

‘I don’t know. It was sent from her email address at work. It’s possible that she meant to send it to somebody else, but it seems rather stupid. And if it was some kind of joke, then it’s not very funny.’

‘No, it certainly isn’t.’

‘I just wanted to hear if Henrik got one too.’

She suddenly felt unusually alert.

‘Wait just a second, I’ll check. No, actually I’ll have to hang up so we can go online. I’ll ring you in a few minutes.’

‘OK.’

She hung up. She wanted to do this in peace without having Jakob’s mother on the line. A slight smile was spreading inside her in the dark when she went up to the door and opened it without knocking. The stone was rolling. Where she wanted it to stop she didn’t know; for some reason she didn’t even care. Everything was ruined anyway. The goal was to do harm in return. Punish him.

He was sitting at his desk with his hands in his lap and staring straight ahead. The computer had gone into standby, and some coloured circles were snaking across the screen. He turned his head a little when he heard her come in.

But he didn’t look at her.

‘Who was that?’

‘Annika Ekberg. Jakob’s mother from day-care. Have you checked your email recently?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, this is completely incredible. Both Jakob’s and Simon’s fathers got love letters from Linda at daycare.’

Even his spine revealed his reaction. For a few seconds too long he sat perfectly still before he turned his head and looked at her. Just a quick glance; his eyes flicked timidly at hers and then back to the screen.

‘Oh, really. What did it say?’

He had never been a very good liar. Couldn’t he hear how he sounded? How his forced indifference was an insult to her intelligence.

‘I don’t know. They wanted you to check whether you got anything.’

She went over and stood by his side, well aware that this way he’d be forced to display the correspondents on his latest emails.

He recovered quickly.

‘I just checked. There wasn’t anything.’

‘Check again.’

‘Why?’

‘See if you have something now.’

‘I was just in to check it five minutes ago.’

He was irritated now. Irritated and scared.

This was quite enjoyable.

‘Five minutes ago I was talking on the phone. You couldn’t have checked it then, could you?’

He gave a deep sigh. Showed with all his body language how annoying he found her.

‘OK, maybe it was eight minutes ago. I didn’t look at the clock.’

‘Why don’t you want to check it?’

‘Damn it, I told you I just checked!’

An unpleasant tone of voice. So scared and so easy to upset. Imagine how much better you’d feel if you made an effort and looked at the truth, you fucking coward.

‘Give me the phone.’

‘Who are you going to call?’

‘Annika.’

He gave her the cordless phone and she glanced at the telephone list on the notice-board. Annika answered after the first ring.

‘Hi, it’s Eva.’

‘How’d it go?’

‘No, he didn’t get anything, he says.’

There was silence on the line.

Henrik sat as if paralysed, staring at the writhing snake on the screen.

She was busy thinking of her next move. Then she smiled to herself, looked at the back of his head and began talking. Let each syllable stab into him like a knife.

‘I still think we ought to give Linda a chance to explain herself. I have a hard time believing she meant to send those emails, but the rumour will probably spread like wildfire. I think we should phone everyone and arrange a meeting at the day-care on Sunday evening. I can take care of it if you want.’

She heard Jakob’s mother sigh on the other end.

‘I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes at that meeting.’

If only you knew what she does with them off.

‘No, me neither. Really. But what else can we do? This way at least she’ll have a chance to explain.’

Henrik still sat as if paralysed when she hung up.

The back of his neck was flaming red from all those stabs.

She fell asleep right away that night. The exhaustion took its toll, but at the same time she felt secure again. In complete control. Nothing could touch her. Everything was already destroyed.

Plan A had gone to hell despite all her struggles in recent years. Now it was Plan B that mattered. She only needed to rethink it a bit. It was up to her if he succeeded in crushing her or not, her own choice. Not that she would ever give him the satisfaction. On the contrary, she would see to it that he paid for his betrayal, both financially and emotionally. She would crush him instead, and then when he was fully aware of what had happened it would be too late. Then he would be left standing there.

Alone.

She woke up when the phone rang. Automatically her eyes looked at the clock radio. Who the hell called people at 6.07 on Saturday morning? Didn’t she have any manners?

She reached out for the cordless phone and answered before the second ring.

‘Hello.’

Henrik turned over on his side with his back to her and slept on.

Someone was breathing in her ear.

‘Hello?’

No answer.

She threw off the covers, got up and left the bedroom. In the office she closed the door behind her.

‘Did you want something? If so, it’s probably better to say what it is now that you’ve called and woken us up.’

Utter silence. Yet she could hear that she was still on the other end.

There was so much she had wanted to say. So many words screaming inside in the dark that wanted to get out. But she was forced to restrain herself, not reveal that she knew, otherwise she’d lose her advantage. Plan B would be ruined.

‘You can go to hell!’

She hung up.

It was impossible to go back to sleep. She crept in under the covers again and lay for a while staring at the ceiling. Axel cuddled up to her, moving his warm body closer. She turned over on her side and looked at his beautiful, peaceful face. The sudden pressure over her ribcage caught her unaware. She took a few breaths to try and relieve the pain, but the air refused to stay in her lungs. It forced its way out as if unable to stand being inside.

She turned over on her back but the pain increased, radiating out into her left arm and forcing her to grimace. Don’t cry, steel yourself now! Think of something, try to concentrate on something else.

Home. Metre by metre she moved through her childhood home, remembering every step on the stairs, the creak of each floorboard. The way the curved handle on the front door felt in her hand, the sound of Mamma’s and Pappa’s calm voices filtering up through the wooden floor in her room when she went to bed, the way the Bakelite light switch in the old servant’s bedroom always slipped back if you didn’t turn it round twice.

And then the annihilating knowledge that her own son would never be able to quell his anxiety as an adult by remembering his safe childhood home. She had put so much energy into trying to create a home for him.

He would scarcely remember that once they had been a complete family.

Her failure was unforgivable.

The punishment eternal.

But she had no intention of carrying the blame alone.