The Gilded Cage. Камилла Лэкберг

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Eventually he said:

      ‘I don’t know how guys usually treat you, what things are like where you come from, but I think you’re great. You’re different, genuine. Obviously you can leave if you want to, but I’d really like it if you stayed for a while. I thought I’d go and get us some juice and croissants from the 7-Eleven, then do a bit of sunbathing and order a pizza.’

      ‘OK.’ My answer came without me having time to think about it.

      A wasp flew past my face. I waved it away, although I’d never been frightened of wasps. There were far worse things to be frightened of.

      ‘“OK”? Seriously, what kind of guys do you normally hook up with?’

      ‘Back home the guys are … I don’t know. They usually want you to have sex and then leave, pretty much. They have their own stuff to be getting on with the next day.’

      I didn’t mention the way they looked at you. The things they said. The shame I had to carry, even though it belonged to someone else. Giving my body to someone who wanted it counted as nothing compared to all the rest of it.

      Viktor shaded his eyes with his hand.

      ‘How long have you lived in Stockholm?’

      ‘One month.’

      ‘Welcome.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      Around seven o’clock people started to show up in the flat. Most of them were a few years older than me, and I felt a bit out of place at first. Viktor disappeared in the crowd and I ended up by the table in the garden with Axel. I sipped a drink and smoked while he told stories that made me roar with laughter, about his Interrail trip with Viktor the previous summer. Two girls came out, and introduced themselves as Julia and Sara. Julia had long brown hair, green eyes, and was wearing a beautiful, dark-blue dress. Sara had a denim skirt, white vest and her blonde hair was pulled into a loose knot.

      ‘I’m so fucking stressed about the autumn,’ Julia said, leaning forward. ‘I want to give up, or at least take a year’s sabbatical, but Dad won’t let me. He loses it whenever I try to raise the subject. God, I hate Lund.’

      ‘You poor thing,’ Sara said, blowing smoke-rings.

      ‘I wish I’d had the grades to get into the School of Economics instead. But what the hell – let’s forget all that and have some fun tonight.’

      Julia straightened up and looked at me as if she’d only just noticed I was there.

      ‘What do you do?’

      I cleared my throat. Blew out some smoke. I had no inclination to discuss my plans for the future with someone I’d known all of five minutes.

      ‘I’m not doing much at the moment.’

      ‘That СКАЧАТЬ