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.
‘I don’t know …’
‘There’s a lot going on at work …’
‘Now isn’t a good time, but soon …’
In one single, slow moment, he’s taken everything away from her.
Everything that just a few days ago was true and tangible has turned out to be an illusion, a conjuring trick.
Is she supposed to look on passively while her life is dismantled?
A lorry goes past, blowing its horn, with scarcely any room to spare. She switches on the car’s hazard lights. If she’s going to die, it’s going to happen in style, not in some shitty ditch on an industrial estate in V?stberga.
Victoria Bergman, her new patient, would never put up with being treated like something you can throw away when you get tired of it, she thinks.
Even though they haven’t seen each other particularly often yet, Sofia has realised that Victoria possesses a strength that she can only dream of. In spite of everything, Victoria has survived and transformed her experiences into awareness.
Acting on a sudden impulse, Sofia decides to call Victoria. Then she sees that she’s missed a text from Lasse. ‘Darling. I’m getting the plane home. We need to talk.’ She clicks the message away and dials Victoria’s number, then waits for the phone to ring. To her disappointment she gets the busy signal. Then she laughs when she realises what she was about to do. Victoria Bergman? Victoria’s the one coming to her for treatment, and not vice versa.
She thinks about Lasse’s message. Home? What’s that? And getting the plane? He’ll be driving in from Saltsj?baden, nothing more. But perhaps he’s starting to suspect that she knows. Something must have made him want to leave his real family all of a sudden like that. After all, it is New Year’s Eve.
Without warning she feels sick again, and only just manages to get the car door open in time to throw up on the grey slush.
She starts the car, turns up the heater and drives towards ?rsta, down into the tunnel and on towards Hammarby Sj?stad.
She stops at the Statoil garage to fill up, and when she’s done she goes into the shop. She wanders around the shelves, wondering where to go, and curses the fact that she’s allowed herself to become so isolated that she’s now so pathetically alone.
When she goes up to the counter she looks down in her basket and discovers that she’s picked up a pair of windscreen-wiper blades, an air freshener and six packets of Ballerina biscuits.
She pays and is walking towards the exit when she passes a display of cheap reading glasses. Mechanically she tries a few with the weakest lenses available. Finally she finds a pair with a black frame that makes her look thinner, stricter and a bit older. Sofia sees that the cashier has his back to her and quickly puts them in her pocket. What’s going on? She’s never stolen anything before.
When she’s back in the car she takes out her mobile phone, brings up Lasse’s last message and clicks reply.
‘OK. See you at home. Wait for me if I’m not there.’
Then she drives into the city centre and parks the car in the multi-storey on Olof Palmes gata. She uses her credit card to get a ticket covering the next twenty-four hours.
That will be more than enough.
However, she doesn’t leave the ticket on the dashboard, but puts it in her purse instead.
The time is now half past five on New Year’s morning. When she reaches Central Station she goes into the departure hall and stands in front of the large screen announcing the next trains. V?ster?s, Gothenburg, Sundsvall, Uppsala, and so on. She goes up to one of the automated ticket machines, takes out her credit card again, and buys a return ticket to Gothenburg, leaving at eight o’clock.
She buys two packs of cigarettes from the newsagent’s before settling down at a cafe to wait for the train.
Gothenburg? she thinks.
Suddenly, she realises what she is about to do.
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
SUNDAY MORNING WAS gloriously beautiful, and Jeanette woke up early. For the first time in a very long time, she felt properly rested.
The weekend had passed without any significant trials. ?ke’s parents had come to visit, and even that had gone surprisingly painlessly, even if his mum had thought the pork was a little dry and that you really weren’t supposed to buy potato salad from ICA.
Apart from that they had had a nice time. Watching television and playing games.
Her parents-in-law would be leaving on the morning train, giving her the rest of the day to herself. She lay in bed, planning what to do with the time.
Definitely no work.
Pottering about, a bit of reading, maybe a long walk.
She heard ?ke wake up. He took several deep breaths and squirmed in the bed.
‘Is everyone else up?’ He sounded tired as he pulled the covers over his head.
‘I don’t think so. It’s only half past seven, so we can lie here a bit longer. We’ll hear when your mum starts banging around in the kitchen.’
?ke got up and began to get dressed.
Oh, just go, there’s nothing left here anyway, she thought, and saw Sofia’s pale face in front of her.
‘When does their train leave?’
‘Just before midday. Do you want me to give them a lift?’ Jeanette said, trying to sound disinterested.
‘We can do it together, can’t we?’ he replied, in an obvious attempt to sound friendly.
Half an hour later she went down to the kitchen and had breakfast with the others. When they were finished and the table was cleared, she took a mug of coffee out into the garden.
In spite of everything, she was feeling pretty happy.
Her meeting with Sofia had developed into something utterly different to what she had been expecting, and she hoped that it was the same for Sofia. For the first time she had felt something for a woman that she had previously only felt with men.
Perhaps sexuality doesn’t actually have to be connected to gender? she wondered, feeling confused. Maybe the banal truth is that it’s the person who matters. Man or woman really doesn’t make any difference.
How simple everything could be. And simultaneously how complicated.