Claire S. Duffy - The Stranger - Season 1

As Fergus carried Alfie into their flat a little while later, he could still hear the baby crying somewhere nearby.

***

The following day, Fergus locked the front door as they left the apartment and swung Alfie onto his shoulders. Sometime in this morning’s fog, he had made up his mind that he could handle Alfie screeching or the neighbour’s baby screeching, but not both. He was going to knock on their door today. Offer solidarity, if nothing else.

Alfie immediately whacked him on the head.

‘Oww.’

Alfie giggled.

‘Don’t hit Daddy on the head please, it’s not nice.’

Alfie hit him again.

‘Alfie, if you’re going to hit Daddy then you can’t ride on my shoulders, you’ll have to walk yourself.’

Whack.

Fergus felt a flash of temper jolt through him. Seven tantrums so far. Seven. And it wasn’t yet lunchtime. Fergus had planned to go shopping this morning, to take Alfie to the local nursery to register him, and possibly — though he had known deep down it was over-optimistic — sign himself up for Swedish for Immigrants classes. Instead, it had taken him nearly two hours to persuade Alfie to put some clothes on, and he’d given up on breakfast after the third spoonful of porridge hit him square in the face.

‘Right then.’

He plonked Alfie unceremoniously on the ground, and Alfie instantly began to howl.

‘Your shoulders!’

Fergus squatted so that he could look Alfie in the eye.

‘I told you that I would put you down if you kept hitting me, and you did so I did. That’s consequences for you, my wee short grumpy friend.’

Immediately, inevitably, Alfie’s face crumpled and he threw himself on the ground and screamed. Fergus sat down on the steps next to the elevator, and put his head in his hands. He was exhausted. Every nerve was jangling; he felt like crying himself.

Alfie had been up most of the night. Even when he momentarily dozed, Fergus had stayed awake, staring into darkness, afraid to drop off in case Alfie’s next wails woke Tess.

Through the small window opposite the old fashioned, concertina-doored lift, Fergus could just spy the street four floors below, could see cars coming and going, a taxi pulling up across the road. Pedestrians scuttled by, braced against the gusts of snow being whipped into their faces. A sudden wave of melancholy swept over Fergus and he felt very alone.

‘Right. Come on mate. Enough.’

He swooped Alfie into his arms, and held him close while his choking sobs died down. ‘There you are,” he murmured into Alfie’s hair. ‘You’re okay. There’s no need for this nonsense, okay? You and me are on the same side.’

‘Your shoulders.’

Fergus nearly laughed. You had to give the boy points for tenacity.

‘Okay, but no hitting Daddy, okay?’

Alfie nodded shakily, and Fergus swung him up onto his shoulders.

Holding carefully onto Alfie’s ankles, Fergus walked up the steps to the next floor. He was almost positive that the crying was coming from above. Fergus hesitated on the half landing. He suddenly felt cold. He turned to glance down at the front door of their flat, convinced for a moment that there would be someone standing there, watching him. He pulled Alfie down to hold him in his arms. Mercifully Alfie didn’t object.

I should wait to do this when I’ve had at least two hours solid sleep, he thought, then he remembered how it had taken them the best part of the morning to get this far — approximately four metres from their front door — and decided that there would be no giving up now.

A door slammed above them and Fergus jumped. Alfie flinched and clutched at Fergus’s hair.

‘Sorry pal,’ Fergus muttered, ‘Daddy’s being daft today.’

Footsteps clattered down towards them.

The young woman coming down the stairs was wrapped in a floor length sheepskin coat, the sheepskin was battered and shiny and the voluminous fur collar was ratty. She looked like she was in her twenties and was wearing a dark green crocheted pageboy cap pulled low over her forehead and a few strands of dirty blond hair escaped the brim to frame her face.

‘ Ursäkta --’ she said impatiently.

‘Sorry. I don’t speak Swedish,’ Fergus blurted, feeling embarrassed.

‘No problem,’ the woman’s American drawl was evident now. ‘Who the fuck speaks Swedish?’

‘I’m Fergus, and this is Alfie.’

‘Paisley.’

Paisley accepted Fergus’s proffered hand with an amused smile, as though shaking hands was an adorably provincial, archaic tradition. Fergus resisted the urge to apologise, for what he wasn’t sure.

‘We just moved in to —’

‘I know.’

‘My — wife’s job was transferred to Stockholm. For two years,’ Fergus added pointlessly, to fill the silence.

‘Cool.’

Alfie had been silently sizing her up, the way he tended to with new people, and now announced: ‘Him is pretty.’ Fergus grinned, ready to accept the inevitable compliment on Alfie’s utter adorableness, but Paisley didn’t react. Didn’t even look at him.

‘So, it was good to meet you.’ She smiled briefly, insincerely at Fergus.

‘Yes, of course — pop down, sometime, if you like. For a drink or something. I’m sure my wife would love to meet you.’

‘Awesome. Will do.’

With another curt smile, Paisley turned to leave.

‘Hey — sorry, you’re maybe in a hurry, but — do you know which apartment the baby’s in?’

‘Baby?’

‘We’ve heard it crying, quite a bit. I was just going to introduce myself, fellow parent and all that.”’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘You’ve not heard it at — ?’

‘No.’

And with that she took off down the stairs.

When he was sure she was out of earshot, Fergus muttered: ‘Not exactly sweetness and light, was she pal?’

‘Him is pretty,’ Alfie repeated.

***

He didn’t call. Fredrik, the guy from the gym she finally agreed to have a drink with last week. Whatever. They never do.

At this stage, Paisley is far from sure she even wants them to, it’s not like she calls them either. These Swedish guys with their skinny jeans and their man buns and, she has to admit, pretty superior bedroom skills, are basically human vibrators. She knows it, they know it, and that’s why they never call. Which is completely fine with her.

The fact that she felt, just a tiny bit, like, why not? was simply conditioning. She had been raised to believe that her worth was valued by how desirable she was to men, and though she absolutely, unquestionably rejected that notion and considered it bullshit of the highest order, she figured she had internalised it somewhere along the way and that’s why she always felt just very slightly shit when they didn’t call. That and the fact that he had made her laugh.

But mostly the patriarchy. Fucking patriarchy.

Whatever.

It was snowing heavily by the time Paisley locked her bike to some railings outside Maja’s office. She had been particularly road-ragey on the way that day, weaving her way in and out of traffic along Skeppsbron, roaring at dopey pedestrians who wandered haplessly onto the bike path and once, removing her mitten so as to convey her displeasure with digital clarity at the behaviour of a particularly obnoxious truck. Her breathing was only just returning to normal, the exhilaration of the aggressive cycle still coursing through her as she keyed in the code of the grand sandstone Karlavägen building.

Maja crossed one elegant ankle behind the other, and Paisley noted that even her pantyhose looked expensive. Maja was always immaculately, almost ostentatiously turned out. Today she was in a navy suit that Paisley was fairly confident was Chanel, set off by a spectacular, gold and emerald necklace that looked like something Cleopatra would wear.