You're Mine Now (11 page)

Magnus gave Anna a lift to the bus stop, leaned across the seat and kissed her on the lips.

‘Have a good day, darling.’

‘You too. See you this evening.’

Anna got out and waited until the car had disappeared from sight before taking her mobile phone out of her handbag and turning it on. It seemed to take forever to connect to the provider. Anna stared at the display screen, every second a painful wait in expectation of what might happen. Nothing, she could confirm after about thirty seconds. Had she wound herself up unnecessarily? Lain awake half the night, twisting between the sheets, because of some fear she’d made up? Was it she who had an overactive imagination, not he who was harassing her?

The bus came and she got on, nodded to a couple of familiar faces and walked down the aisle to the back. She had just sat down when her phone started to vibrate. The screen showed an undisclosed number.

‘Anna.’

‘Hi, it’s me,’ said Erik. ‘Am I calling at a bad time?’

‘I’ve just got on the bus.’

‘Can you talk?’

‘I’d rather not. What’s it concerning?’

‘“What’s it concerning?”’ Erik mimicked, as if she had expressed herself far too formally. ‘I just want an answer to one question, or maybe a couple.’

‘Please.’

‘I’m sorry, but I think you can spare the time to answer a couple of questions, I think you owe me that much.’

‘I’m sitting on the bus.’

‘You said. So you can just answer yes or no, okay?’

Anna took a deep breath.

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘One: do you know how insulting it was when you, out of nowhere, accused me of stalking you?’

‘What kind of a question is that?’

‘It’s a simple yes or no question. Do you understand how…?’

‘I heard. And yes, I do understand.’

Anna glanced quickly around the bus to make sure that no one she knew could hear, then leaned forwards and lowered her voice when she spoke on the phone.

‘It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, I hope you understand that.’

‘Well, I have to say, you managed to all the same.’

‘And I really do apologise for that. I was only trying to make myself clear.’

‘The end justifies the means, in other words?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You can trash my honour and reputation as long as it serves your purpose?’

‘I really didn’t want to trash your honour and reputation. Look, I’m sitting on a bus. Can you email me instead?’

‘No, now that I’ve finally got hold of you, I do in fact want some answers.’

‘What do you mean, finally?’

‘Your mobile has been switched off all morning.’

‘It’s only eight o’clock.’

‘And?’

Anna looked around again. The man on the other side of the aisle was twitching a bit, but that wasn’t a problem.

‘But that’s exactly what I mean,’ Anna said. ‘You can’t just call me at any time of day or night, don’t you understand that?’

‘It’s your phone, isn’t it?’ Erik retorted. ‘Just say it’s someone else.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Why not? Can’t you lie? Do you get embarrassed? Does Mr Wimpy ask who it is?

‘That’s out of order,’ Anna snapped. ‘Well out of order.’

‘So it’s okay for you to be out of order and accuse me of this and that, but it’s not okay for me defend my honour in any way? A simple yes or no question. Answer it.’

‘Right, I’m hanging up now.’

‘Okay, so that’s the way we’re playing? Anna, let me say just one thing: you have no idea how much I’ve got on you. Believe me, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of me.’

Anna disconnected the conversation and turned the screen off, but kept the phone in her hand. She looked around. The passengers close by who might have heard something were looking in the other direction. Their faces were almost consciously turned away. Or was she just imaging that?

How loud had she been talking? What had she said? She tried to recall her own answers. Had she made a scene? Fortunately the faces she’d recognised when she got on the bus were sitting further forwards and could hardly have heard any of the conversation, but there were eyes and ears everywhere on a rush-hour bus in Helsingborg.

Anna considered getting off and waiting for the next bus. But then she risked meeting someone she knew who would ask why she was getting off there and not at her normal stop. That was the town she lived in: nosy, prying and well informed. It was probably wiser to stay where she was. When the bus stopped at Knutpunkten in the centre of Helsingborg, the last of the silent witnesses got off and Anna’s pulse slowed down a fraction.

What did he mean when he said he had so much on her? Had he somehow managed to salvage the photos on his mobile phone? Had she disclosed some deep secret to him? Promised him her love? She hadn’t said anything derogatory about Magnus, she knew that. She would never do that, not under any circumstances. So what did Erik have on her? Did he know of any crimes she’d committed? Or was it just something he said?

She could worry herself to death. What was important was to avoid any further conflict. No escalation.

She went into the publishing house, said a chirpy good morning to Renée in reception. No one who came in or went out of the building could fail to be smitten by her open, friendly smile. If there was anyone who was in the right place in this world, it was Renée.

Anna took the lift up to the editorial offices and went over to her desk. She turned on the computer and opened her email. The column of semi-bold headings rolled down the screen. The final and top email caught her attention.

Three exclamation marks. Theatrical was only his first name. Anna opened it.

Anna deleted the email and stared vacantly out of the window. She had assumed that Erik could write: after all, it was his job. Not even in the worst of the magazine’s sometimes corny love stories did the ground rock under someone’s feet, and only very occasionally did you nurture the moments you’d had together.

Was he mad? He had to be. Anna wondered if she’d been so caught up with his appearance that she hadn’t noticed? She couldn’t think of any other explanation. Her original desire was now a mystery. There was nothing more repulsive than stupidity.

Should she call him one last time, let him finish crying? Maybe it was for the best. Give him a chance to walk away without losing face. Because that was obviously where the problem lay, wounded male pride.

‘Good morning, early birds.’

Sissela announced her arrival in editorial in a loud voice. Any conversation with Erik Månsson would have to wait.

An automated voice told Kathrine that the service she required was handled by forty-three providers and she was number seventy-four in the queue. The estimated waiting time was thirteen minutes.

Kathrine switched to loudspeaker and turned on the computer. She had time to read the evening papers on the internet and play a game of patience before a real live person answered the phone and asked how he could help her.

‘Well,’ Kathrine said, and blushed even though she was alone. ‘You see, I’d like to know a bit more about a certain person.’

‘Personal ID number?’ said the employee at the national registry.

‘Whose? Mine?’

Kathrine already felt guilty. Prying into another person’s life was so abominable that she had to fight the instinct to apologise, put down the phone and find a wardrobe as quickly as possible where she could crouch down in the dark and chant to herself and the universe for forgiveness.

‘The person in question,’ said the man.

‘Right, yes, I’ve got his name and date of birth.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you want me to give it to you?’

‘That would help.’

Kathrine gave him what information she had.

‘Erik Månsson, Drottninggatan in Helsingborg,’ the man repeated, ‘yes, then there’s only this one.’

He read out the complete personal ID number and Katherine wrote down the last four digits.

‘What would you like to know?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kathrine said. ‘What information is available? Everything, I suppose.’

‘Everything,’ the man repeated. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here then. He was born in Stockholm. Lived at various addresses there until six months ago when he moved to his current address in Helsingborg.’

‘His last address in Stockholm?

He gave her the address and Kathrine wrote it down.

‘Thank you so much.’

‘Is that all you want?’ the man asked.

‘Is there more?’

‘I see here that his mother is dead, died on 4 July 2010.’

Kathrine caught her breath. Of all the things Anna had told her, his tasteless lie about his mother’s death was what had made her react most. So it wasn’t a lie? Had he been telling the truth and then regretted it? Maybe he’d just laughed off the terrible tragedy because he realised it was far too personal and not something to be shared with just anyone. In which case, it changed everything.

‘She can’t have been that old,’ Kathrine commented.

‘She was born in 1968,’ the man said.

‘1968?’ Kathrine exclaimed. ‘So she was only sixteen when she had Erik?’

The national registry man assumed that it was a rhetorical question and didn’t answer.

‘Does it say what she died of?’

‘No, it doesn’t. Anything else?’

‘Is there more?’

‘Not much. His father moved to Finland in 1985, the year after his son was born.’

‘Thank you so much, I’m so grateful,’ Kathrine said.

‘Not at all,’ said the man.

‘Just a moment. What was his mother called?’

‘Anneli Månsson.’

‘And where was she living when she died?’

‘At the same address as her son.’

No editorial job was so demanding that Sissela didn’t find time to slander those who weren’t there. Anna had stopped listening, but was still forced to nod in agreement at regular intervals. The alternative was actively to take a stance and cause conflict, which wasn’t worth the effort. When the telephone started to ring, it was a relief. Anna lifted the receiver, pressed the red flashing light and answered.

The half-second pause told her that it was Erik on the other end.

‘Can you talk?’ he asked.

‘You’re ringing at a bit of a bad time. Can I call you later?’

‘Promise?’

‘Yes, let’s say that.’

Anna hung up and nodded at Sissela, who continued to gossip. Trude joined them.

‘Oof,’ Sissela eventually said, ‘here I am chatting away, and we still have to go through the wall.’

They went over to layout, where the proofs of the magazine’s editorial material had been pinned up in sequence to give an overview of the content. Every week, Sissela, Trude and Anna wandered over and, like generals in front of the troops, made a final inspection of the features and articles before putting the magazine to bed. There were a few small changes in the titles, boxes, introduction and picture captions that were important to give the reader the right mix and rhythm.

Three spreads in a row had quote boxes that started with the word ‘I’ and the editorial heads were discussing how best to change it in order to avoid the repetition when Anna’s phone rang at the other end of the open-plan office. The head of features, who sat nearest, started to get up and pointed at it questioningly. Anna nodded.

The head of features answered. Anna could see from her body language that the person on the other end didn’t say anything. Anna’s colleague said, ‘Hello?’ a few times before giving in and hanging up. She was on her way back to her desk when the phone rang again. This time there was someone at the other end, Anna realised. The head of features reached for a pen and a Post-it. She nodded as she wrote. Anna followed every movement. Her colleague finished the call, pulled the Post-it from the pad and stuck it to Anna’s screen.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, and went over to her desk.

She turned to the colleague who had answered the call for her.

‘A reader,’ she said. ‘Something about a recipe. I wrote down the number.’

Anna glanced quickly at the number. It wasn’t his. It was only the relief that made her realise how tense she was. She lifted the receiver and called Renée in reception.

‘Hi, it’s Anna. Can you hold all my phone calls, please? We’re going through the wall.’

She put the phone down and went back to Sissela and Trude.

As a rule, Kathrine believed the best about people. She didn’t like the fact that the majority of the population, at least mentally, seemed to live in the parallel world created by the tabloid press where all strangers were potential assailants unless proved otherwise.

Her daughter’s worries were obviously coloured by her bad conscience. She had been unfaithful to her husband and enjoyed it. Now she just wanted to forget her impropriety as quickly as possible, whereas the motherless boy had fallen in love with her.

It had the potential to end badly, she realised that. But Kathrine had never met anyone you couldn’t talk to. Fear was in practice the only thing you could really fear and she hadn’t thought of going down that road. She had friends who were so obsessed with all the terrible things going on in the world that they barely dared to leave their flats.

And there was no doubt, Kathrine pitied Erik Månsson. An absent father and a teenage mother who died far too young.

Erik had told Anna that his mother took her own life, only to say the next moment that he’d made it up. And if it was true after all, perhaps the young mother had had mental health issues. In which case, that would explain why Erik had stayed with his mother, even when he was well into his twenties.

Kathrine realised she was feeling a bit self-righteous. As if she had all the answers. What did she think would happen? Should she go to visit Erik Månsson and talk to him, get him back on the right track? In which case, what was she going to say?

‘I can understand that you’re in love with my daughter, she is a fantastic woman. But the fact is that she already has a husband and they have a daughter whom they both love very much. So I’m asking you to accept that, and to try to find happiness elsewhere.’

Kathrine shuddered. How ridiculous. The moral police, protector of the good, champion of law and order.

The Phantom and her.

And all the snooping around she’d done. No, she couldn’t say anything. Not to anyone.