The Crow Girl (29 page)

‘Does Åke know you feel this way?’

‘He probably suspects that I’m not one hundred per cent engaged in the relationship any more.’

‘But you’ve never talked about it?’

‘I … not really. It’s more of an atmosphere between us. I do my thing, he does his.’

‘Constantly present and constantly absent?’ Sofia said sarcastically.

‘And I think he’s having an affair with a gallery owner,’ Jeanette heard herself say.

Was it the fact that Sofia was a psychologist that made it so easy to talk to her?

‘To feel secure you also have to feel that someone understands you.’ Sofia took a sip of wine. ‘But that’s a fundamental failing in most human relationships. People forget to pay attention to each other, to appreciate what the other person does, because the only path that seems worth following is your own path. I blame individualism. It’s become a sort of religion. It’s actually damn weird that people despise security and loyalty in a world so full of war and suffering. It’s one hell of a paradox!’

Jeanette saw that something had changed in Sofia, and her voice had got darker and harder. She couldn’t quite keep up with the sudden mood swing. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Never mind, it’s just that I’ve had personal experience of being taken for granted.’ Sofia stood up. ‘Well, what do you say? Shall we have some food?’

Jeanette could hear even more clearly that Sofia’s voice had got deeper and significantly less melodious, and realised she’d touched a very raw nerve.

Sofia put out the dishes, filled their glasses and sat down. ‘Have you told him how you feel? Financial stress is one of the most common causes of tension in a marriage.’

‘Of course we’ve had the occasional fight, but it’s like … I don’t know, sometimes it feels like he can’t imagine what I go through when we can’t pay the bills and I have to call my parents to borrow money. As if that’s just my responsibility.’

Sofia was looking at her seriously.

‘It sounds to me as if he’s never needed to take responsibility. As if he’s always had someone to take care of everything for him.’

Jeanette nodded mutely. It felt like the pieces were falling into place.

‘Oh, enough of all that,’ she said, putting her hand on Sofia’s shoulder. ‘We were going to meet to talk about Samuel, weren’t we?’

‘I dare say we’ll have time for that, even if it doesn’t happen tonight.’

‘Do you know,’ Jeanette whispered, ‘I’m really pleased I’ve met you. I like you.’

Sofia moved closer and put her hand on Jeanette’s knee. Jeanette heard a rushing sound in her head when she looked into Sofia’s eyes.

In there I might be able to find everything I’ve ever looked for, she thought.

At the same moment she heard one of the neighbours putting up a picture.

Someone was hammering.

WHEN YOU LOOK
back sometimes you can identify the birth of a new age, even if at the time it merely seemed that one day was following on from another, just like normal.

For Sofia Zetterlund this starts after the trip to New York. By the time Christmas arrives, her private life is occupying more and more of her consciousness.

The first day after the holiday she decides to call the tax office to get detailed information about the person she had once thought she knew everything about.

The tax office needs just an ID number for everything they have on Lars Magnus Pettersson to be sent to her.

Why has she waited?

Has she not wanted to know?

Has she already realised?

At the pharmaceutical company they don’t know who she means when she asks for Lars Pettersson, but when she insists they put her through to the sales department.

The receptionist is helpful, and does all she can to assist Sofia. After a bit of searching she locates a Magnus Pettersson, but he left over eight years ago, and only worked for a very short time at the German office in Hamburg.

The most recent address they have for him is out in Saltsjöbaden. Pålnäsvägen.

She hangs up without saying goodbye, and pulls out the piece of paper where she wrote down the unknown number she found in Lasse’s phone. According to directory enquiries, the number belongs to a Mia Pettersson, listed at Pålnäsvägen in Saltsjöbaden. Below that address is another number, for a Pettersson’s Flowers in Fisksätra, and even though she is starting to realise that she is sharing Lasse with someone else, she still wants to believe that it is all just a huge mistake.

Not Lasse.

It’s as if she’s standing in a corridor where one door after the other is opening up ahead of her. In a fraction of a second all the doors have been thrown open and she can see that the corridor stretches into infinity, and there, right in the distance, she can see the truth.

At one and the same moment she sees everything, understands everything, and everything becomes crystal clear.

Lasse has had his hands full with two families. One in Saltsjöbaden, and one with her in the apartment on Södermalm.

Obviously she should have realised much sooner.

His gnarled hands that suggested physical labour, even though he claimed to work in an office.

Insecurity and jealousy are gnawing away at her, and she realises that she has stopped thinking logically. Is she the only person who doesn’t understand how everything fits together?

He needs help, she thinks. But not from her.

She can’t save someone like him, if there is any salvation to be had.

She gets up and goes into the study, and starts looking through his drawers. Not that she knows what she’s hoping to find, but there ought to be something there that could cast some light on who the man she has been living with really is.

Beneath some brochures with the logo of the pharmaceutical company she finds an envelope from Södermalm Hospital. She pulls out the contents and reads.

It’s an appointment notification, dated nine years earlier, saying that Lars Magnus Pettersson had been given an appointment in the urology clinic for a vasectomy.

At first she understands nothing, then she realises that Lasse had himself sterilised. Nine years ago.

So for all these years he hasn’t been capable of giving her the child she has longed for. What he had said in New York about having a baby wasn’t just a lie, it was also an impossibility.

It’s as if someone has tied a rope around her chest and is slowly pulling it tighter, and she thinks she’s going to faint. Her experience of patients suffering panic attacks means that she knows she’s going through the same thing.

But no matter how rationally she looks at herself, she can’t help feeling scared.

Am I going to die now? she thinks just before everything goes black.

On Friday the 28th she travels out to Fisksätra. There’s sleet in the air and the thermometer on the side of the Hammarby works says it’s just above freezing.

She parks down by the marina and walks up towards the city centre.

What is it she wants to know that she doesn’t already know?

She presumes it’s something as simple as just wanting to put a face to the unknown woman.

But now that she’s standing alone in the square she no longer feels so sure. She hesitates, but if she were to go home with her mission unaccomplished, it would only go on gnawing away at her.

She walks decisively into the shop, but finds to her disappointment that the person behind the counter is a young girl between twenty and twenty-five.

‘Hello, happy Christmas!’ The girl walks round the counter and comes over to Sofia. ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’

Sofia hesitates and turns round to leave, but at that moment the door to the back of the premises opens and a beautiful brunette in her fifties comes into the shop. On her left breast is a badge with the name Mia on it.

The woman is almost the same height as Sofia, and she has big, dark eyes. Sofia can’t stop staring at the two women, who are strikingly similar.

Mother and daughter.

In the young woman she can also see clear traces of Lasse. His slightly crooked nose.

The oval face.

‘Sorry, were you looking for anything in particular?’ The younger woman breaks the awkward silence, and Sofia turns towards her.

‘A bouquet for my …’ Sofia gulps. ‘For my parents. Yes, today’s their wedding anniversary.’

The woman goes over to the glass cabinet containing cut flowers.

‘Then I think these might be appropriate?’

Five minutes later Sofia goes into the newsagent’s next to Pettersson’s Flowers and buys a large mug of coffee and a cinnamon bun. She sits down on a bench with a view of the square and sips the coffee.

Nothing is as she expected.

The young woman had put together a bouquet while Mia went back into the storeroom. Then nothing. Sofia assumes she must have paid, but isn’t entirely sure. She must have. No one has come after her. She remembers the sound of the little bell above the door, then the crunch of the snow. She thinks about Lasse, and the more she thinks about him, the more unreal he becomes for her.

She crumples up the bouquet and presses it into a bin outside the bank. The coffee follows; it tastes of nothing. It didn’t even manage to warm her up.

Stupid tears are on their way, and she does her best to hold them back. She hides her face in her hands and tries to think about something other than Lasse and Mia.

Mia, who has been making love to him the whole time. And the girl, Lasse’s daughter? His child. What he didn’t want to have with her. She thinks about the Lou Reed album, which he had played for her in the hotel bar in New York. It dawns on her that it must be in his record collection in Saltsjöbaden, and that it was with Mia that he had listened to it.

Sofia leans her head back to stop her tears running down her cheeks. She realises that she has to end things with Lasse. Then nothing more. No thoughts, no worrying, nothing. Let him look after himself as best he can, but he will be dead to her.

Some things you just have to cut out of your life in order to survive. She’s done it before.

But there’s one thing she needs to do first. However much it’s going to hurt.

She has to see them together, Lasse, Mia and their daughter.

She knows she has to see that, otherwise she will never be able to stop thinking about them. The image of the happy family all together. It will haunt her, she understands that. She needs to confront it.

During the remaining days leading up to New Year’s Eve, Sofia Zetterlund doesn’t do much. She only talks to Lasse once, and the conversation lasts no more than thirty seconds.

At eleven o’clock on New Year’s Eve Sofia drives the car out to Saltsjöbaden. It doesn’t take her long to find Pålnäsvägen.

She parks the car a hundred metres away from the large house and walks back to the drive. It’s a yellow two-storey villa with white bargeboards and a large, well-kept garden. Lasse’s car is parked in front of the carport.

She walks round the carport to the rear of the house. Under cover of some trees she has a perfect view in through the large picture window. The yellow light is cosy and welcoming.

She sees Lasse come into the living room with a bottle of champagne, calling back into the house behind him.

The beautiful brunette from the florist’s comes in with a tray of champagne glasses. From an adjacent room the daughter comes in, together with a young man who looks like Lasse.

He has a son as well? Two children? Even if they are grown up now.

They sit down on the large sofa and Lasse pours champagne for them all and they smile and they drink a toast.

For thirty minutes Sofia stands as if paralysed, and watches the laughable performance.

It’s real and at the same time so false.

She remembers once being shown round the Chinese Theatre. It had been a disconcerting experience, seeing the stage scenery from behind. From the front there had been a bar or restaurant, and outside the windows a sea and a sunset. It had all looked so genuine.

But when she was allowed behind the scenery everything seemed so tawdry. It was built of sheets of chipboard and held together with duct tape and clamps. The contrast with the cosy room onstage had been so great that she felt practically deceived.

What she is watching now is similar. Inviting on the surface, but false inside.

Immediately before midnight, as she sees the happy family stand up for another toast, she takes out her mobile and calls his number. She sees him flinch and realises he’s got his phone on vibrate.

He says something and goes upstairs. She sees a light go on in one of the windows, and a few seconds later her mobile rings.

‘Hello, darling. Happy New Year! What are you doing?’ She can hear how hard he’s trying to sound stressed. Because of course he’s still in the office in Germany, and is having to work even though it’s New Year’s Eve.

Before she can say anything she has to hold the phone aside so she can throw up in one of the bushes.

‘Hello, what are you doing? I can hardly hear you. Can I call you a bit later? It’s a little chaotic here right now.’

She hears him running water in the sink so his lovely family downstairs can’t hear the conversation.

A dam breaks, and out floods a torrent of ugly betrayal. There’s no way she’s going to accept being the second woman.

She ends the call and walks back to the car.

She cries all the way home, and a snowy sleet whips the windscreen and merges with her tears. She can taste her mascara, acrid and bitter. In the end she’s crying so much she has to pull over.

She has spent ten years playing ball by herself, and all the time she thought he was throwing the ball back to her, he had just been standing there with his arms by his sides.

‘What do you think, Lasse, shall we treat ourselves to four weeks off in the summer and rent a house in Italy?’

‘Lasse, what do you think about me stopping taking the pill?’

‘I was thinking …’

‘I’d like …’

Ten years of suggestions and ideas, revealing herself and her dreams. Just as many years of hesitation and excuses.