Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

‘I made a sweet machine,’ Ellen said, struggling to get down. She took Annika by the finger and pulled her over to the craft corner.

‘We’ll show Daddy,’ the child said, about to pick up her cardboard creation, as the top swayed disconcertingly and Annika leaped forward.

‘We can’t really take it with us today,’ she said, taking hold of the cardboard, ‘because we have to go into town and buy new shoes for Kalle. We’d better not take the sweet machine with us in case it gets broken.’

She put the contraption back on the worktop. The girl’s mouth fell open, her eyes welled up with tears, her lip starting to quiver.

‘But,’ she said, ‘that means Daddy won’t get to see it.’

‘Yes he will.’ Annika crouched down beside her. ‘The machine’s safe here, and we can get it tomorrow instead. Maybe you could paint it?’

Ellen looked down at her feet, shaking her head and making her pigtails dance.

‘What lovely pigtails you’ve got,’ Annika said, taking hold of one of them and tickling her daughter’s ear. ‘Who did those for you?’

‘Lennart!’ Ellen said, giggling and shrugging to escape the tickling. ‘He helped me with the sweet machine.’

‘Come on, let’s go and get your brother,’ Annika said, and the battle was over, Ellen put on her overalls, hat and gloves, and even remembered to take Tiger home with her.

Kalle’s school was on Pipersgatan, two blocks away. Annika held Ellen’s warm little hand in hers as they carefully negotiated the puddles, singing nursery rhymes.

Kalle was sitting in the reading corner concentrating on a book about Peter No-Tail. He didn’t look up until Annika crouched down next to him and kissed the top of his head.

‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘where’s Uppsala?’

‘Just north of Stockholm,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Can we go and see Peter and the other cats one day?’

‘Definitely,’ Annika said, remembering that there were special cat walks where you could follow in the author Gösta Knutsson’s footsteps around the churches, castle and university.

‘I think she’s prettiest,’ Kalle said, pointing to a white cat and slowly spelling out ‘Ma-ry Cream-nose’.

Annika blinked. ‘Can you read?’ she said, astonished. ‘Who taught you to do that?’

He shrugged. ‘On the computer,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you can’t play.’

He stood up, closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Then looked sternly down at her sitting on the red cushion.

‘Boots,’ he said. ‘You promised. My old ones have got a hole in.’

She smiled, caught hold of one trouser leg and pulled him to her, he laughed and struggled, and she blew on his neck.

‘We’ll get the bus to the shops,’ she said. ‘Go and get your clothes on. Ellen’s waiting for us.’

The number one pulled up just as they reached the bus-stop, and the three of them found seats right at the back.

‘Army green,’ Kalle said. ‘I don’t want blue again, only babies have blue boots.’

‘I’m not a baby,’ Ellen said.

‘Of course you can have green,’ Annika said. ‘As long as they’ve got some.’

They got off at Kungsträdgården and hurried across the street between the showers of slush thrown up by the cars driving past. They tugged off their hats and gloves and scarves when they were inside the shopping centre, stuffing them into Annika’s roomy bag. In a shoe shop on the upper floor they found a pair of army-green, lined rubber boots in the right size, tall enough and with reflective patches. Kalle refused to take them off. Annika paid and they took the old ones home in a bag.

They got out in the nick of time, Ellen had got too hot and was starting to whine, but she fell silent again once they were out in the cold and darkness of Hamngatan, quietly walking along with her hand in Annika’s. Annika took Kalle’s hand as well as they went to cross the road by the department store, concentrating on fending off the cascades of dirty water from the cars, when the silhouette of a person on his way out of the shop across the street caught her eye.

That’s Thomas , she thought without realizing she was thinking it. What’s he doing here?

No , she thought, it isn’t him .

The man took a couple of steps forward, his breath lit up by a streetlamp, yes, it was him!

Her face broke into a broad smile, the warm joy that melted things came back. He was out buying Christmas presents! Already!

She laughed; he was such a Christmas freak. Last year he started buying presents in September – she remembered how angry he got when she found them at the bottom of his wardrobe and had wondered what those parcels were and what they were doing there.

A violent spray of slush hit them and Ellen screamed. Annika pulled the children back from the kerb and yelled angrily at the taxi. When she looked up again Thomas was gone, she searched the crowd for him, and saw him again, he was turning to face someone, a woman with blond hair and a long coat went up to him and he put his arm round her. Thomas pulled the other woman to him and kissed her. There was complete silence and everyone else vanished. Annika was staring down a long tunnel and at the other end her husband was kissing a blonde woman with a passion that made her insides freeze and shatter.

‘Mummy, it’s green!’

But she didn’t move. People jostled her, she saw their faces talking to her but their voices were mute. She saw Thomas go off, vanishing with his arm round the blonde woman’s shoulders, the woman’s hand round his waist, they walked slowly away with their backs to her, enclosed in their coupledom, swallowed up by the sea of people.

‘Why aren’t we going, Mummy? Now it’s red again.’

She looked down at her children, their faces looking up at her, eyes clear and questioning, and realized that her mouth was wide open. She swallowed a scream, snapped her mouth shut, looked at the traffic.

‘Soon,’ she said, in a voice that came from deep within her. ‘We’ll go next time.’

And the lights went green and the bus came and they had to stand all the way to Kungsholmstorg.

The children started singing as they climbed the stairs, the tune was familiar but she couldn’t place it, she couldn’t find the right door-key and had to try several times.

She went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, dialled his mobile number but got the message service. He had turned it off. He was walking with his arm round a blonde woman somewhere in Stockholm, not answering when she called.

So she called his office, and Arnold, his tennis partner, and no one anywhere answered.

‘What are we having for tea?’

Kalle was standing in the door in his shiny new boots.

‘Coconut chicken with rice.’

‘With broccoli?’

She shook her head, feeling a panic attack bubbling up. She clutched the sink, looking into her son’s eyes and decided not to drown.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and baby sweetcorn.’

His face relaxed, he smiled and came a step closer.

‘Do you know what, Mummy?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a wobbly tooth. Feel!’

And she reached out her hand, saw that it was trembling, she felt his left front tooth and, yes, it was definitely loose.

‘That’ll come out soon.’

‘Then I get a gold coin from the tooth fairy,’ Kalle said.

‘Then you get a gold coin from the tooth fairy,’ Annika said, turning away; she had to sit down.

Her insides had turned into razorblades and shards of ice, cutting her when she breathed. The kitchen table was swaying. There’s no point , it sang, there’s no point . And the angels tuned up in the background.