Camilla Lackberg - The Gilded Cage

There were breadcrumbs on the island unit, and a half-eaten sandwich was balancing on the edge, defying the laws of gravity. The only thing holding it up was the fact that it was lying face-down.

‘Can’t you at least try to clear up before you go out?’ Jack said without looking up from his newspaper. ‘Surely we shouldn’t need help with the housework at weekends as well?’

‘Sorry.’ Faye swallowed the lump in her throat as she wiped the counter with a cloth. ‘Julienne wanted to get going. She was making such a fuss.’

Jack murmured and went on reading. He was freshly showered after his run. He smelled good, Armani Code, the cologne he had used since before they met. Julienne had been disappointed not to see her dad, but he had gone out running before she woke up, and didn’t come back until Faye had left with her. It had been a difficult morning. None of the four breakfast options Faye had given Julienne had been acceptable, and getting her dressed had been a painful, sweaty marathon.

But at least the kitchen worktop was clean now. The aftermath of the war had been cleared away.

Faye put the dishcloth in the drainer and looked at Jack, sitting there at the kitchen table. Even though he was tall, fit, responsible, prosperous – all the classic attributes of a successful man – he remained a boy in many ways. She was the only person who saw him for what he was.

Faye would always love him, no matter what.

‘It’ll soon be time for a haircut, darling.’

She reached out one hand and managed to touch a few locks of his damp hair before he jerked his head away.

‘I haven’t got time. This expansion is complicated, I need to stay focused. I can’t keep running to have my hair cut every five minutes like you.’

Faye sat down on the chair next to him. Put her hands on her lap. Tried to remember when she had last had her hair cut.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘About what?’

‘Compare.’

Very slowly, he looked up at Faye from the newspaper. He shook his head and sighed. She regretted saying anything. Regretted she hadn’t carried on wiping crumbs from the worktop. Nonetheless, she took a deep breath.

‘Before, you used to like—’

Jack flinched and lowered the newspaper. His fringe, a few millimetres too long, fell across his face and he jerked his head irritably. Why couldn’t she let him be? Just carry on with the cleaning. Be thin and beautiful and supportive. He had been at work all week. If she knew him right, he’d soon shut himself away in the tower room and carry on working. For her and Julienne’s sake. So that they could have a good life. Because that was their goal. Not his. Theirs.

‘What good would talking about it do? You don’t know anything about business any more, do you? It’s a perishable product. You can’t rely on what you used to know.’

Faye fingered her wedding ring. Twisted it round, round.

If she hadn’t said anything, they could have had the morning she had been dreaming of. But she had thrown all that away with one stupid question. When she already knew better.

‘Do you even know the name of the current Swedish Business Minister?’ he said.

‘Mikael Damberg,’ she replied without thinking. Immediately and correctly.

She regretted it when she saw the look on Jack’s face. Why couldn’t she just keep quiet?

‘OK. A new law is about to come into force. Do you know what it is?’

She knew. But she shook her head slowly.

‘No, of course you don’t,’ Jack said. ‘It stipulates that we as a company have to remind our customers one month before their subscriptions expire. Before, things would renew automatically. Do you understand what that means?’

She knew all right. She could have given him a systematic breakdown of what it meant for Compare. But she loved him. She sat there in her million-kronor kitchen, with her husband who was a boy in a man’s body, a man only she knew, and who she loved above all else. And she shook her head. Instead of saying that Leasando Limited, a small electricity supplier owned by Compare, would lose approximately 20 per cent of those customers whose contracts would have been renewed automatically in the past. In round figures, that meant turnover would shrink by five hundred million a year. And profits by two hundred million.

She shook her head.

Fingered her wedding ring.

‘You don’t know,’ Jack said after a long pause. ‘Can you let me read now?’

He raised the newspaper. Went back to the world of numbers, stock valuations, share issues and company takeovers that she had spent three years studying at the Stockholm School of Economics before she had quit. For Jack’s sake. For the business’s sake. For their family’s sake.

She rinsed the dishcloth under the tap, then scooped up the soggy cornflakes and crumbs from the drainer with her hand and threw them in the bin. She heard the rustle of Jack’s newspaper behind her back. She shut the bin-lid quietly so as not to disturb him.

Stockholm, summer 2001

Viktor Blom had a pale-brown birthmark on the back of his neck, and his broad back was very suntanned. He was sleeping soundly, giving me all the time in the world to look at both him and the room we were lying in. The windows had no curtains, and apart from the double bed the only furniture was a chair covered with dirty clothes. The sun was forming prisms that danced across the white walls.

My naked legs were wrapped in a damp, dirty sheet. I kicked it off, then wrapped it around me like a towel and carefully opened the bedroom door. The sparsely furnished maisonette that Viktor and Axel were renting for the summer occupied the first two floors of a block on Brantingsgatan in Gärdet. There was a small garden outside, with a table, some wooden chairs and a black domed barbecue. There was an empty Fanta can on the table, crammed with cigarette butts.

The sound of loud snoring was coming from Axel’s room. The living room and kitchen were on the ground floor, so I went downstairs, made coffee and unearthed my cigarettes from my bag, which lay discarded on the hall floor. Then I went outside with my coffee and cigarettes and sat on a chair in the garden.

Tessin Park lay spread out before me. The sun was low in the sky, making me squint.

I didn’t want to be clingy and annoying. That business of Viktor saying he’d like me to come to their party was probably just talk. To get me into bed. I’d heard far grander promises in bars in the past. Viktor seemed to have had fun with me. I’d certainly had fun with him. But it was best to leave it at that. I stubbed the cigarette out in the Fanta can and stood up to go and find my clothes. Then the door opened behind me.

‘There you are,’ Viktor said sleepily. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

I passed him one. He sat down on the chair I had been sitting in and blinked in the sunlight. I sat down next to him.

‘I was about to go,’ I said.

I was expecting to see a look of relief on his face. Gratitude that I wasn’t going to be one of those clingy girls, the sort who didn’t understand when it was time to leave.

But Viktor surprised me.

‘Go?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t live here, do I?’

‘So?’

‘You and Axel won’t want me hanging about here, will you? I get that it was a one-off and you’ve got your own stuff to do. I don’t want to be the annoying girl who doesn’t know when it’s time to leave.’

Viktor looked away and gazed out across Tessin Park. I resisted the urge to stroke the stubble on his shaved head. There was a photograph in the bedroom that showed him with thick, curly fair hair. He sat there in silence and for a while I thought I had seen through him. That he was as easy to read as every other guy.