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 Fisks?tra. 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 Saltsj?baden, 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 Saltsj?baden. It doesn’t take her long to find P?ln?sv?gen.
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.