Last Will (53 page)

She screamed the last word, so hard that saliva flew from her mouth and hit his face. He stopped in the middle of taking a step toward her and let his arms fall to his sides.

“Aha,” he said. “And there it is.”

“What?” she said, dizzy from a lack of oxygen.

“What you really think of me. Why you never touch me. Why our marriage has become a fucking charade of
home decorating
and
garden design
.”

He turned away and threw his arms out, walking around the room shouting.

“I’ve been living a fucking lie! I’ve been walking around like the biggest fool in the whole damn world, believing that what I could see was the truth, and I’ve been trying and trying to be supportive and appreciative and interested in your idiotic picture-book idyll …”

She ran over and slapped him in the face with the palm of her hand, not hard, just to get him to shut up.

“You spoiled, egocentric pile of shit,” she said, and noticed to her own surprise that her voice sounded fairly calm. “I love you, and the children love you, and you’ve got a job where you’re appreciated, and I’ve just spent six million on a house for you, you get food on the table, and you’re
whining
! You just sulk and moan and make excuses, and now you’ve come up with a way of shifting the blame onto me.”

“You think you know the answer to everything,” he said, and Annika could see his hands were shaking. “You think you know everything, you and your pals at the paper.”

Annika looked at her husband, at his ill-concealed anger, and was suddenly filled with utter contempt.

“Oh, well done,” she said. “As if the newspaper could have anything at all to do with the fact that you were unfaithful.”

He was so angry he could hardly speak.

“You’re so fucking smug,” he managed to splutter. “Berit, for instance—today she wrote a whole load of crap that she knows nothing about. You’re just the same …”

“That’s bullshit,” Annika said.

“… does she really believe all those lies about that Jordanian terrorist? Does she seriously believe everything she writes?”

He genuinely imagines that he’s the injured party here, Annika thought, feeling her anger dissolve into astonishment. He’s seriously standing here in front of me, thinking that he’s the victim in this whole story.

“You’re incredible,” she said. “You’re the one who’s been fucking around, but somehow you’re the one we should all feel sorry for.”

Thomas threw out his arms again, turned his back on her, dug his fingers through his hair, then spun around again.

“You never do anything wrong!” he yelled. “You’ve been lying and pretending and fooling me for months, and it’s the same with everything you do. You decide what the world looks like, and anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an idiot.”

Annika folded her arms on her chest, capping the gesture with a dismissive snort.

“You really have turned into an arrogant little shit,” she said, leaning back against the breakfast bar.

Thomas took a long stride toward her and raised his hand.

She made a real effort not to blink.

“Great,” she said. “Go on, hit me. That’s all that’s missing.”

“The Danish royal family,” he said. “The crown prince, the princess, and their baby. He was going to blow them and himself up during a visit by the American navy in February.”

“Just you dare hit me,” she said.

He lowered his arm.

“He’s killed children, Annika. He was trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The official version is that he was helping his parents on a farm in Jordan, when really he was learning about different sorts of explosives close to the Khyber Pass. We’ve got evidence, Annika. There are things you don’t know. There are so many things you haven’t got a clue about.”

“Oh, aren’t you important?” she said. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

It looked like he was about to cry.

“You never gave me a chance,” he said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Annika swallowed and rubbed her forehead. The room was spinning around her.

“How did you find out?” she said, suddenly feeling drained. “Did she call you?”

“Of course she did. She wanted us to meet again.”

Annika snorted with laughter, with a vehemence that cut into her own brain.

“God, that’s pathetic,” she said.

“I’m on my way there now,” Thomas said.

Annika fell quiet so abruptly that all sound died away. She stared at him, at the shirt collar she had ironed, at the stubble she could almost feel, at his broad shoulders and messy hair.

“If you go,” she managed to say, “if you go now, you can never come back.”

He stared at her with his new, unfamiliar, narrow eyes, his terrible, red, dead eyes.

“Okay,” he said, then turned around and walked away.

And she watched him walk over the parquet floor and pick up his briefcase and open the front door and look out at the gray drizzle, and he stepped over the threshold and the door closed behind him and he didn’t look back once.

She put the food on the table. She told the children to sit down and eat. She poured milk and served the rice and even managed to eat a few mouthfuls herself.

“Why were you shouting?” Kalle asked, and Annika closed her eyes.

“We’re just tired,” Annika said.

“Where’s Daddy?” Ellen asked.

“He had to go back to work,” Annika said.

The children ate almost nothing, their appetites spoiled by Magnum ice creams. She didn’t make them finish their plates, and let them watch a film as she cleared the table and started the dishwasher.

All her movements were jerky, like in an ultrarapid film. It felt as though she wasn’t quite in the same reality.

“Mommy,” Kalle said. “I’m tired.”

She sat down on the sofa and took him in her arms.

“That might be because of the bump on your head,” she said. “Shall we have an early night?”

“I want to sleep with you, Mommy,” Ellen said, cuddling up beside her on the sofa.

“Me too,” Kalle said, curling up on the other side.

She held on to her children with both arms and struggled to hold back the tears.

“You can both sleep with me,” she said. “How does that sound?”

“What about Daddy?” Ellen asked.

“There’s room for him too,” Annika said, taking them both by the hand and pulling them up from the sofa. “Off we go!”

They settled down on either side of the big double bed, and she sat with them for a long time, reading stories and talking and whispering and hugging them.

I have the children, she thought. He can’t take the children away from me.

When they had drifted off and she had drawn the bedroom curtains, she left the room, carefully shutting the door behind her, and went to look in their bedrooms.

Ellen was a creative little soul, fussing and making things all day long, and everything around her bore the signs of her incredible drive and energy.

Kalle was more reserved, liked sorting things into alphabetical order, lining his cars up in neat rows.

She tidied a few things away in their rooms, clothes and drawings and pens, and as she was bending down to pick up an apple core and ice-cream stick, despair crept up on her, sneaking up from behind where she had no way of stopping it.

Thomas
, she thought.
Oh God, I really do love you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!

The telephone rang and she dropped Ellen’s drawing book and ran downstairs. It’s him, it’s him!

How silly we’ve been! How thoughtless and destructive! Of course we can sort it out, we’ve got so much to lose.

She grabbed the receiver and heard how happy her own voice sounded:

“Hello!”

“What did you do?” a woman’s voice said.

Who … ?

“Hello … ?” she said again.

“This is Benjamin’s mother. What did you do? Did you threaten to kill
my child?
”

Oh, here we go. She screwed her eyes shut and pressed one hand to her forehead.

“Yes,” Annika whispered, “yes, I did.”

The woman sounded like she was exploding.

“Are you completely mad? You go round threatening to kill
little children?
”

“Yes,” Annika said. “And do you know why?”

“You should be
locked up
! How can you be walking around
free
?”

“Your son threw my son off a two-meter-high jungle gym. He had to have ten stitches in his forehead and he had a concussion. The doctors had to do a scan to make sure there wasn’t bleeding in his brain. Your son could have killed my son, and you and your husband didn’t give a damn.”

“That’s not the same,” the woman said. “Not as bad as you threatening to kill little children.”

“No,” Annika whispered, sinking onto a chair. “It’s not so bad. Do you know what’s really bad?”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“What?” the woman said.

“What’s really bad,” Annika said, “is that I mean it. And if my son ever did anything like that to another child, I hope their parents would scare the shit out of him as well.”

“You can’t mean that,” the woman said, now sounding more surprised than angry.

“Yes I can,” Annika said. “And I hope you get on well enough with your child that you can explain to him that what he did was wrong. It was wrong of me to threaten him, I can see that perfectly well, but I’m serious. If he attacks Kalle again I won’t be responsible for what I do.”

“You’re a grown-up, you have to set a good example,” the woman said, sounding less aggressive now.

“Tell me,” Annika said. “What would you have done if Kalle had hurt your son so badly he had to have a brain scan?”

The woman was silent for a whole minute.

“Probably the same as you,” she said.

“Good,” Annika said. “Thank you.”

She hung up, and suddenly felt that the world was toppling over.

The cat was clamped into the stereotactic contraption, there was a nail sticking out of Lars-Henry Svensson’s eye,
did you threaten to kill my child?

Thomas’s raised hand, ready to strike, the bandage on Kalle’s forehead, Bosse’s mute plea beside her in the car,
if you go now, you can never come back
.

She got up on unsteady legs, staggered over to the bathroom next to the front door and threw up.

You decide what the world looks like, and anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an idiot.

He’s killed children, Annika.

Panting, she clung onto the toilet seat and felt her pulse hammering as a headache in her temples.

I’ve got to talk to someone, she thought. I can’t just sit here.

Slowly she made her way up to the children, opening the bedroom door as quietly as she could. She went into the room, listening to their gentle breathing. They were both fast asleep.

He’ll come back, she thought. Daddy will come back.

She looked out through the bedroom curtains. There was a light on in Ebba’s house. She was back from visiting her cousin up in Dalarna.

The walls were closing in on her—what if he didn’t actually come back?

Was she just going to sit here and wait?

She went back out onto the landing, shutting the bedroom door behind her, went into Ellen’s room, out of Ellen’s room, into Kalle’s room, out of Kalle’s room.

Would they be all right for a little while if she went over to see Ebba?

But what if Thomas called?

She couldn’t go out if Thomas was going to ring.

But she could redirect the calls, then they wouldn’t wake the children up either.

She went downstairs and looked out of the picture window next to the front door.

Was there someone moving about outside?

Maybe Thomas was coming home?

I can’t just sit here, she thought.

She tapped in the command to redirect her calls, then typed in her cell-phone number. She checked that there was still enough power left in the battery, then put her cell phone in her pocket and headed for the front door.

It was dark outside, even though it was an early summer’s evening. The clouds lay like wet concrete across the sky.

The suburbs really are miserable in bad weather, she thought. All the color disappears, leaving nothing but shades of gray. In the city there was room for everyone, the streets and squares were public spaces where no one could get upset about anyone else’s presence. Out here everything felt much more cramped, even though there was much more space.

Why am I thinking this now? she wondered. How can I be worrying about peace and harmony between neighbors at a time like this?

As if he had heard her thoughts, Wilhelm Hopkins emerged onto the road in front of her. He pointed at a red sports car that was parked outside her house.

“I’ve had enough now!” he said loudly. “This is the last time. I’m calling the police!”

Annika didn’t even glance at him.

Ebba’s red Volvo was parked on the gravel drive in front of her house. The fountain was switched off and the dog pen was empty.

Annika went up the steps and rang the doorbell, hearing it echo inside. Francesco was quiet, and she couldn’t hear any footsteps. The echo faded away, and she went back down to the garden again and looked around.

The car was making little clicking sounds, as if it had just driven a long way and was still cooling down. There were lights in the first- and second-floor windows. She went back to the front door and rang again.

No response.

She looked out at the road.

No sign of Wilhelm Hopkins.

Hesitantly she leaned against the door and tapped on the leaded glass.

“Ebba … ?” she said. “Ebba, are you there?”

Maybe she wants to be left in peace. Maybe she’s had a long drive and is lying upstairs in the bath and doesn’t want to get the whole house wet by coming down to answer the door …

There was a sound from inside the house, as if something had been dropped on the floor.

Annika stopped on the steps.

“Ebba!” she called, pressing the doorbell hard. “Ebba! Is anything wrong?”

The door flew open and Annika took a step back in surprise.