THE GILDED CAGE
Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith
Camilla Lackberg

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Camilla Lackberg 2019

Published by agreement with Nordin Agency, Sweden

Translation copyright © Neil Smith 2019

Excerpt from Silver Tears © Camilla Lackberg 2020, English translation © Ian Giles 2020

Originally published in 2019 by Bokförlaget Forum, Sweden, as En bur av guld

Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photographs © Miguel Sobreira/PlainPicture

Camilla Lackberg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008283728

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008283742

Version: 2021-01-14

Dedication

For Christina

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Camilla Lackberg

About the Publisher

PART 1

‘Couldn’t she just be injured?’ Faye said.

She looked down at the table, unable to meet their gaze.

A brief moment of hesitation. Then a sympathetic voice.

‘There’s an awful lot of blood. From such a small body. But I don’t want to speculate until a medical officer has made an evaluation.’

Faye nodded. Someone gave her a transparent plastic mug of water, she was shaking so much as she raised it to her lips that a few drops ran down her chin and dripped onto her blouse. The blonde policewoman with the kind blue eyes leaned forward and gave her a tissue to dry herself with.

She wiped herself slowly. The water was going to leave nasty blotches on the silk blouse. Not that it mattered any more.

‘There’s no doubt, then? None at all?’

The female police officer glanced at her colleague, then shook her head. She chose her words carefully:

‘Like I said, a doctor needs to reach a verdict based on the evidence at the crime scene. But as things stand, everything points towards the same explanation: that your ex-husband Jack has killed your daughter.’

Faye closed her eyes and stifled a sob.

Julienne was asleep at last. Her hair was spread out across the pink pillow. Her breathing was calm. Faye stroked her cheek, gently, so she wouldn’t wake her.

Jack was coming home from his business trip to London that evening. Or was it Hamburg? Faye couldn’t remember. He’d be tired and stressed when he got home, but she’d make sure he managed to relax properly.

She carefully closed the bedroom door, crept into the hall and checked that the front door was locked. Back in the kitchen she ran her hand along the worktop. Three metres of marble. Carrera, naturally. Unfortunately it was ridiculously impractical, the porous marble absorbed everything like a sponge and already had some ugly stains. But Jack had never even considered choosing something more practical. The kitchen in the apartment on Narvavägen had cost just shy of a million kronor, and absolutely no expense had been spared.

Faye reached for a bottle of Amarone and put a wineglass on the counter. The glass touching the marble, the glug as the wine poured – these sounds were the essence of her evenings at home when Jack was away. She poured the wine carefully so there wouldn’t be another red-wine spatter on the white marble, and closed her eyes as she raised the glass to her lips.

She dimmed the lighting, then went out into the hall where the black-and-white portraits of her, Julienne and Jack hung. They had been taken by Kate Gabor, the Crown Princess’s unofficial court photographer, who every year took a fresh set of enchanting photographs of the royal children playing in the autumn leaves in crisp white outfits. She and Jack had chosen to have their pictures taken in summer. They were standing by the shore in a relaxed, playful pose. Julienne between them, her fair hair lifted by the breeze. White clothes, obviously. She was wearing a simple cotton Armani dress, Jack a shirt and rolled-up trousers from Hugo Boss, and Julienne a lace dress from Stella McCartney’s children’s collection. They had had a row minutes before the pictures were taken. She couldn’t remember what it had been about, only that it had been her fault. But none of that was evident in the pictures.

Faye went up the stairs. She hesitated outside the door to Jack’s study, then pushed it open. The room was situated in a tower, with views in every direction. A unique layout in a unique property, as the estate agent had put it when he showed them the apartment five years ago. She had been pregnant with Julienne at the time, her head full of bright hopes for the future.

She loved the tower room. The space and all the light from the windows made her feel like she was flying. And now that it was dark outside, the arched walls enveloped her like a warm cocoon.

She had chosen the décor herself, as she had with the rest of the apartment. She had picked the wallpaper, the bookcases, desk, the photographs and artworks on the walls. And Jack loved what she’d done. He never questioned her taste, and was always incredibly proud whenever guests asked for the number of their interior designer.

In those moments, he let her shine.

While all the other rooms were furnished in a contemporary style, light and airy, Jack’s study was more masculine. Heavier. She had put more effort into this room than Julienne’s nursery and the rest of the apartment together. Jack was going to spend so much time in here, taking important decisions that would affect their family’s future. The least she could do was to give him a refuge of his own up here, almost in the clouds.

Faye ran her hand across Jack’s desk with satisfaction. It was a Russian desk, she had bought it at an auction at Bukowski’s, and it had once belonged to Ingmar Bergman. Jack wasn’t much of a Bergman aficionado – action films with Jackie Chan or comedies starring Ben Stiller were more to his taste – but like her he preferred it when furniture came with a bit of history.

When they showed guests round the apartment he always patted the top of the desk with the palm of his hand twice and said, as if in passing, that the fine piece of furniture had once stood in the world-famous director’s home. Faye smiled every time he did that, because their eyes usually met as he said it. It was one of the thousand things they shared in their lives. Those covert glances, all the meaningful and meaningless gestures that went to make up a relationship.

She sank onto the chair behind the desk and spun it until she was facing the window. Snow was falling outside, turning to slush as it hit the street far below. When she leaned forward and looked down she saw a car struggling through the dark February evening. The driver turned into Banérgatan, towards the city centre. For a moment she forgot what she was doing there, why she was sitting in Jack’s study. It was far too easy to drift away in the darkness and become hypnotized by the snowflakes pushing slowly through the blackness.

Faye blinked, sat up straight and rotated the chair so she was facing the large screen of the Mac, then nudged the mouse and the screen came to life. She wondered what Jack had done with the mouse-mat she had given him at Christmas, the one with a photograph of her and Julienne. Instead he was using an ugly blue one from Nordea Bank, a Christmas gift to their private banking clients.

She knew the password: Julienne2010. At least he didn’t have anything from Nordea as his background, and was still using the picture he had taken of her and Julienne in Marbella. They were lying at the water’s edge, Faye holding her daughter up towards the sky. They were both laughing, but Faye’s laughter was more sensed than seen as she lay on her back with her hair floating in the water. Julienne’s bright blue eyes were looking straight into the camera, right through the lens. Into Jack’s eyes, just as blue.

Faye leaned closer, her eyes looking along her own tanned body, shiny with salt and water. Though only a few months had passed since she had given birth, she had been in better shape then than she was now. Her stomach was flat. Her arms thin. Her thighs slim and taut. Now, almost three years later, she weighed at least ten kilos more than she had done in Spain. Fifteen, maybe. She hadn’t dared weigh herself for a long time.

She tore her eyes from her own image on the screen and opened the browser, clicked to bring up the history, and typed ‘porn’. Link after link appeared, sorted by date. She had no difficulty at all tracing Jack’s sexual fantasies in recent months. It was like a reference book covering his libido. Sexual Fantasies for Dummies.

On 26 October he had watched two clips. ‘Russian teen gets slammed by big cock’ and ‘Skinny teen brutally hammered’. You could say what you liked about the porn branch, but the titles of the films were at least direct and to the point. No attempts to prettify or embellish, to lie about what was coming and what the person in front of the screen wanted to see. A straightforward dialogue, open and honest communication.

Jack had looked at porn for as long as she had known him, and sometimes she looked herself, when she was on her own. She was scornful of friends who declared that their husbands would never dream of looking at porn. Talk about repression!

Jack never used to let his consumption of porn influence their sex life. It had never been a matter of either/or. But now he no longer sought comfort from her, despite seeking satisfaction from ‘Skinny teen brutally hammered’.

The knot in her stomach grew bigger with each clip she watched. The girls were young, skinny, submissive. Jack had always liked his women thin and young. It wasn’t him who had changed, it was her. And wasn’t that how most men wanted their women? In Östermalm there was no room for ageing and weight gain. At least not for women.

In the past month Jack had watched one particular video seven or eight times. ‘Young petite schoolgirl brutally fucked by her teacher.’ Faye clicked play. A young schoolgirl in a short, checked skirt, white shirt, tie, socks and Pippi Longstocking pigtails appeared; it seemed she was struggling with her lessons, particularly biology. Informing her that they have arranged for extra tuition, her conscientious parents go out for the evening, leaving their daughter at home alone. The doorbell rings. A man in his forties, wearing a jacket with patches on the elbows and clutching a briefcase, is at the door. They go into a brightly lit kitchen. The girl gets her homework and opens her books. They go through the muscles of the body.

‘When I say a muscle, I want you to show me where on your body it is. Can you do that?’ the teacher asks in a deep voice.

The girl opens her eyes wide, nods and pouts. She manages two muscles. When he says gluteus maximus, the buttock muscle, she pulls up her skirt, revealing the hem of her underpants, and points at the outside of her thigh. The teacher shakes his head with a smile.

‘Stand up and I’ll show you,’ he says.

She pushes her chair back and stands up. He places his large hand behind her knee and moves it up her leg, under her skirt. He lifts her skirt higher and pulls her underwear aside. Pushes a finger inside. The girl groans. A perfect porn-groan. But with a trace of astonished innocence and guilt. An acknowledgement to the viewer that she knows she shouldn’t be doing this. That this is naughty. But she can’t help it. The temptation is too great for her to resist.

He pushes his finger in and out a few times. Then bends her over the table and fucks her. She screams, groans, claws at the table. Begs for more. The whole thing reaches a climax when he tells her to put on her glasses – they have fallen off somewhere along the way – before he ejaculates in her face. Her face contorted with pleasure, her mouth half-open, the schoolgirl receives his semen.

Porn films had to be the clearest indication of just how highly men valued their semen. It was bestowed upon breathless, reverential women with their mouths half-open, always half-open, as if it were a precious gift.

Faye put the computer back in sleep-mode with a couple of clicks of the mouse on the ugly Nordea mat. If that was what Jack wanted, that was what he would get.

She pushed the chair back from the desk, and it creaked reluctantly as she stood up. It was pitch-black outside now. The light snow had stopped falling. She picked up her wineglass and left the room.

Faye had everything she needed in her walk-in closet. She looked at the time. Half past nine. Jack’s plane was about to land, soon he’d be sitting in a taxi. Naturally, he used Arlanda’s VIP service, so it wouldn’t take him long to get out of the airport.

She had a quick shower and shaved off the light stubble that had grown out above her genitals. She washed herself thoroughly, then put make-up on, not the way she usually did, but a bit carelessly, like someone with less experience. She rubbed in plenty of blusher, used far too much mascara, and, as the icing on the cake, applied some bubblegum-pink lipstick she found at the bottom of her make-up box – probably given to her in a goodie-bag at some event.

Jack wouldn’t be getting her – not Faye, his wife, the mother of his child – but someone younger and more innocent, someone untouched. That was what he needed.

She picked out one of Jack’s thin grey ties and knotted it carelessly round her neck. She put on a pair of the reading glasses he was ashamed to wear in public and always hid when they had visitors. Rectangular, black, Dolce & Gabbana. Faye looked at the result in the mirror. She looked ten years younger. Almost like the person she had been when she left Fjällbacka.

She was no one’s wife. No one’s mother. It was perfect.

Faye crept into Julienne’s room to get one of her exercise books and a pink pencil. She froze when Julienne murmured in her sleep. Was she going to wake up? No, she was soon breathing calmly again.

She went into the kitchen to pour herself some more wine but stopped and pulled out a box of Julienne’s plastic mugs instead. She filled a large Hello Kitty beaker with red wine, one with a lid and a straw. Perfect.

When the key turned in the front door she was sitting looking through The Economist, which Jack insisted on leaving out on the coffee table. She was the only person in the family who actually read it.

Jack put his case on the floor, took off his shoes and inserted the cedar-wood blocks that kept his soft, handmade Italian leather shoes in shape. Faye sat still. Unlike her usual discreet lip-gloss from Lancôme, the pink lipstick felt sticky and smelled faintly synthetic.

Jack opened the fridge carefully. He hadn’t spotted her yet. He was moving quietly, probably thought she and Julienne were both asleep.

She watched him from the gloom of the living room. Like a stranger looking through a window, she was able to observe her husband without his knowledge. Jack was always on the alert otherwise. Now, when he thought no one could see him, he moved differently. He was relaxed, almost careless. His usually upright frame was slouching, only slightly, but enough for someone who knew him as well as she did to appreciate the difference. His face was smoother, without the permanent worry line that was always there these days, even on the social occasions that were closely intertwined with his career, with their life, where the laughter and chink of glasses could be transformed into a multimillion-kronor deal the following day.

She remembered what Jack was like as a young man, when they first met. That cheeky look in his eyes, his happy laugh, hands that couldn’t stop touching her, that couldn’t get enough of her.

The light in the fridge lit up his face and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She loved him. Loved his broad back. Loved his big hands, which were raising a carton of juice to his lips. Soon they would be on her, in her. Dear God, how she longed for that.

Maybe that longing made her body move, because he suddenly turned his face towards the polished oven door and saw her reflection. He started and spun round, his hand clutching the carton of juice, halfway to his mouth.

He put it down on the island unit.

‘Are you still up?’ he said, surprised. The line between his neatly shaped eyebrows was back.

Faye didn’t answer, she just got to her feet and took a few steps towards him. His eyes roamed across her body. It had been a long time since he had looked at her that way.

‘Come here,’ she said softly, in a high voice.

Jack closed the fridge door and the kitchen receded into darkness again. But the lights of the city outside were bright enough for them to see each other. He walked round the island unit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned forward to kiss her. But she turned her face aside and pushed him down onto a chair. She was in charge now. When he reached out one hand towards her skirt she batted it away, only to place it behind her knee a moment later. She pulled her skirt up so that he could see her lace underwear, hoping he would recognize it, hoping he would see how similar it was. To hers. The young girl. The innocent student.

His hand wandered upward and she couldn’t help letting out a groan. Instead of pulling her pants aside like in the film, he tore them apart. She groaned again, louder, bent over the table, swaying gently as he unbuttoned his trousers and tugged them down along with his underpants. He grabbed hold of her hair and forced her lower on the table. He leaned over her with all his weight, nipping the back of her neck with his teeth, and she caught the smell of orange juice mixed with whisky from the flight. He kicked her legs apart forcefully, stood behind her and pushed his way into her.

Jack fucked her hard and aggressively, and with each thrust the tabletop pressed against her midriff. He was hurting her a bit, but the pain was a liberation, it made her forget everything else so that she could concentrate wholly on the pleasure.

She was his. Her pleasure was his. Her body was his.

‘Tell me when you’re about to cum,’ she groaned with her cheek against the cold tabletop, now smeared with sticky lipstick.

‘Now,’ Jack gasped.

She got down on her knees in front of him. He was breathing heavily as he pushed his cock into her open mouth. He grabbed the back of her head with both hands and forced it further in. She fought against her gag-reflex and tried not to twist her head away. Just take it. Always, just take it.

The porn scene was playing in Faye’s mind, and when Jack ejaculated she took pleasure in seeing the same look on his face as the teacher when he took possession of the innocent young student.

‘Welcome home, darling,’ she said with a forced smile.

That was one of the last times they had sex as a married couple.

Stockholm, summer 2001

The first weeks in Stockholm had been lonely. Two years after I graduated from high school I left Fjällbacka behind. Both mentally and physically. I couldn’t get away from that claustrophobic little place fast enough. It suffocated me with its picturesque cobbled streets and inquisitive people who never left me alone. All I took with me was fifteen thousand kronor and top grades in every subject.

I would have liked to get away sooner. But it had taken longer than I expected to sort out all the practical details. Sell the house, clear it, get rid of all the ghosts that crowded around me. The memories were so painful. When I walked around my childhood home I kept seeing them everywhere. My older brother Sebastian. Mum. And, not least, Dad. There was nothing left for me in Fjällbacka. Just gossip. And death.

No one had been there for me then. And they weren’t there now either. So I packed my bags and got on the train to Stockholm without looking back.

And swore never to return.

At the Central Station in Stockholm I stopped by a rubbish bin, opened the back of my mobile phone and threw the SIM card away. Now none of the shadows of the past would be able to reach me. There was no threat of anyone coming after me.

I rented a room for the summer in a flat above the ugly Fältöversten shopping mall, the one the residents of Östermalm shake their heads at and tut about it being ‘the Socialists’ fault, they couldn’t resist ruining our lovely Östermalm’. But I didn’t know any of that at the time. I was used to Hedemyr’s ICA supermarket in Tanumshede and thought Fältöversten was so upmarket.

I loved Stockholm right from the outset. From my window on the seventh floor I could look out across the ornate buildings around me, the leafy parks, the smart cars, and tell myself that one day I would live in one of those imposing nineteenth-century buildings with my husband, our three perfect children and a dog.

My husband would be an artist. Or an author. Or a musician. As different to Dad as possible. Sophisticated, intellectual and worldly. He would smell nice and dress smartly. He would be a bit hard on other people, but never to me, because I would be the only person who understood him.

I spent those first long, light nights wandering the streets of Stockholm. I saw fights in alleyways when the nightclubs closed. Heard the shouting, crying, laughter. The sirens of emergency vehicles, heading into danger to save lives. I stared in amazement at the prostitutes in the city centre, in their 1980s’ make-up and high heels, puffy white skin and needle-tracks on their arms that they tried to cover up with long-sleeved tops and blouses. I asked them for cigarettes and fantasized about their lives. The liberation of finding yourself at rock-bottom. No risk of falling any deeper into the shit. I toyed with the idea of standing there myself, just to understand what it would be like, who the men were who paid for five minutes of sordid intimacy in their Volvo with a child’s seat in the back and extra nappies and wet-wipes in the glove compartment.

That was when my life really started. The past clung to my ankles like a dead weight. Weighing me down, spoiling things, holding me back. But every cell of my body was alive with curiosity. It was me against the world. Far from home, in a city I had dreamed about my whole life. I hadn’t merely wanted to get away. I had been desperate to come here. Slowly I made Stockholm my city. It gave me hope that I might be able to heal and forget.

In early July my landlady, a retired teacher, went off to visit her grandchildren in Norrland.

‘No visitors,’ she said sternly before she left.

‘No visitors,’ I repeated obediently.

That evening I put my make-up on and drank her gin and whisky. Cherry liqueur and Amarula. It tasted disgusting, but that didn’t matter, I wanted to feel that rush, the rush that promised the bliss of forgetting and spread through my body like a warm glow.

When I had drunk enough to feel brave, I put on a cotton dress and walked to Stureplan. After a bit of hesitation, I sat down at a pavement bar that looked nice. Famous faces I had only ever seen on television walked past. Laughing, intoxicated by both alcohol and the summer.

At midnight I got in the queue outside a nightclub on the other side of the street. The atmosphere was impatient and I wasn’t sure if they’d let me in. I tried to imitate the others, act like them. It was only later that I realized they must have been tourists too. As lost as I was, but with courage painted on.

I heard laughter behind me. Two guys the same age as me walked past the queue and went up to the bouncers. A nod and a handshake. Everyone was staring at them with jealousy and fascination. Hours of preparation and giggling over glasses of rosé, only to end up shivering behind a rope. When it could all be so simple. If only we had been someone.

Unlike me, these two guys were people who got noticed, they were respected, they belonged. They were Someone. There and then I decided the same thing was going to apply to me.

At that moment one of the guys turned and looked curiously at the crowd. Our eyes met.

I turned away and felt in my bag for a cigarette. I didn’t want to look stupid, didn’t want to look like what I was – a girl from the country on her first trip to a nightclub in the big city, giddy with stolen gin and Amarula. The next thing I knew, he was standing in front of me. His hair was shaved, his eyes blue, kind. His ears stuck out slightly. He was wearing a beige shirt and dark jeans.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Matilda,’ I replied.

The name I hated. The name that belonged to another life, another person. Someone who was no longer me. Someone I had left behind when I got on the train to Stockholm.

‘I’m Viktor. Are you here on your own?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Go up and stand next to the bouncer,’ he said.

‘I’m not on the list,’ I mumbled.

‘Nor am I.’

A sparkling smile. I pushed my way out of the queue, the object of envious, longing stares from girls in too few clothes and boys with too much hair gel.

‘She’s with me.’

The meat-mountain by the door removed the rope and said: ‘Welcome.’

In the crowd Viktor took my hand, leading me deeper into the darkness. Other people’s shadows, flickering lights, all different colours, throbbing bass, entwined bodies dancing. We stopped at the end of a long bar and Viktor said hello to the bartender.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.

With the cloying taste of sickly liqueur still in my mouth, I said: ‘Beer.’

‘Good, I like girls who drink beer. Class.’

‘Class?’

‘Yeah. Good. Solid.’

He handed me a Heineken. Raised the bottle in a toast. I smiled at him and drank some.

‘So, what dreams have you got for your life, Matilda?’

‘To be someone,’ I replied. Without pausing to think.

‘You’re already someone, aren’t you?’

‘Someone else.’

‘I can’t see that there’s much wrong with you.’

Viktor took a few sideways dance-steps, swaying in time to the music.

‘So what are your dreams?’ I asked.

‘Me? I just want to make music.’

‘Are you a musician?’ I had to lean closer and raise my voice for him to hear me.

‘DJ. But I’m not working tonight. I’m playing tomorrow, I’ll be up there then.’

I followed his finger. On a small stage over by the wall, behind a record-player, stood the guy Viktor had arrived with, grooving to the music. A little while later he came over to us, and introduced himself as Axel. He seemed nice, unthreatening.

‘Good to meet you, Matilda,’ he said, holding out his hand.

I couldn’t help thinking how different they were from the guys back home. Polished. Well-spoken. Axel got a drink, then disappeared. Viktor and I drank another toast. My beer was almost finished.

‘We’re warming up beforehand with a few friends tomorrow, if you fancy coming along?’

‘Maybe,’ I said, looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Why did you want me to come in with you?’

I drank the last of my beer demonstratively, hoping he’d order more. He did. One for me, one for him. Then he answered my question. His blue eyes glinted in the dim light.

‘Because you’re pretty. And you looked lonely. Are you regretting it?’

‘No, not at all.’

He fished a packet of Marlboros from his back pocket and offered me one. I had nothing against taking it, mine would last longer that way. There wasn’t much left from the fifteen thousand I’d got from the sale of the house once the mortgage and everything else had been paid off.

Our hands touched as he lit my cigarette. His hand was warm and tanned. I missed his touch the moment it was gone.

‘You’ve got sad eyes. Did you know that?’ he said, sucking hard on his cigarette.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There seems to be some sort of sadness in you. I find that attractive. I’m suspicious of people who go round thinking life’s a barrel of laughs the whole time. Life is fun. But not all the time. People who are always happy bore me. We’re not supposed to be happy all the time, because then the world would stop.’

One of the bouncers was staring pointedly at Viktor, and he shrugged and stubbed his cigarette out after a few quick puffs. I did the same. But I didn’t answer. I had a feeling he was making fun of me.

Suddenly my head started to spin from all the drink. I decided to get a souvenir, leaned forward, put my hand on the back of his head and pulled his face towards mine. A gesture that must have made me seem far more confident than I was. Our lips met. He tasted of beer and Marlboro, and he was a good kisser. Gentle but intense.

‘Shall we go back to mine?’ he asked.

Jack was sitting at the kitchen table in his dark-blue dressing-gown reading Dagens Industri. He didn’t even look up when Faye came into the kitchen, but she was used to that when he was feeling stressed. And considering all the responsibilities of his work and all the hours he spent in the office, he deserved to be left in peace in the morning at the weekend.

The four-hundred square-metre apartment, the result of knocking four smaller flats into one, felt claustrophobic when Jack needed to be left alone. Faye still didn’t know how to behave on days like that.

In the car on the way home from Lidingö, where Julienne had gone to play with a friend from preschool, she had been looking forward to spending the morning with Jack. Just the two of them. Curl up in bed, watch a television programme that they would both declare stupid and vulgar. Jack would tell her about his week. They’d go for a walk on Djurgården, hand in hand.

Talk, the way they used to.

She cleared away the remains of her and Julienne’s breakfast. The cornflakes had gone soggy in the soured milk. She hated the texture of wet cereal and the sour smell, and swallowed the instinct to gag as she wiped them off with a cloth.

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.

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 sounds good. You want to be a student?’

I had applied to various colleges in Stockholm, so I nodded. And thought about my bank account, which was starting to look alarmingly empty.

‘I’m thinking about it. But it’s a while before they let you know,’ I said.

‘How do you know Axel?’

This from the other girl, Sara, nodding in his direction.

‘I met Viktor, if you know him, at Buddha Bar yesterday.’

‘Did you sleep here?’

I nodded.

They finished their cigarettes in silence before getting to their feet.

‘Julia used to go out with Viktor,’ Axel said once they had gone.

‘Used to?’

‘Until about three months ago, something like that. This is the first time they’ve met since she got home from Lund.’

Julia and Sara came along to Buddha Bar. They stuck close to Viktor and kept glaring sullenly at me. The more alcohol I got inside me, the more irritated I became.

Viktor took a break from his decks and came over to me and Axel. I put my arms round him as I met Julia’s narrowed eyes. He kissed me and I bit his bottom lip gently. When it was time for him to go back to the DJ’s booth he asked if I wanted to go with him. He led me through the crowd with his arm round my waist. It took a while because people kept stopping him to talk. We got there in the end. Viktor put his headphones on, adjusted some controls and started to sway in time to the music.

I did the same. Then I took one of his hands, slipped it under my dress and put it between my legs. I wasn’t wearing any underpants.

‘Do you want to come back to mine tonight?’ he asked.

‘Yes. If you’d like me to?’

He gave me an intense look that made any spoken answer unnecessary.

‘What are we going to do?’ I teased.

Viktor laughed and changed track.

It was a wonderful feeling. I was free. Free to do whatever I wanted. To be whoever I wanted. Without the past messing up everything around me, inside me. Without all the people who had been pulling me down. I was slowly turning myself into someone else, little by little.

I looked out across the dancing throng, shut my eyes and thought about what life was like in Fjällbacka. All the curious glances that followed me wherever I went, the mixture of fascination and sympathy, sticky, heavy, suffocating. No one knew here. No one stared here. My place was here. In Stockholm.

‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ I yelled.

‘OK. I finish in ten minutes. Shall we meet up by the door?’

I nodded and made my way to the lavatory. I stood in the queue, smiling to myself about the fact that Viktor belonged to me, no one else. The music from the dance-floor thudded in the distance, making the mirror on the wall vibrate.

I looked at my reflection. My hair was blonder than usual, and I felt tanned and fresh. I thought I looked older than I had only a few weeks ago. By the basins a girl aimed a pink can of hairspray at her head. The sweet scent caught in my nose, a refreshing contrast to the smell of sweat, drink and smoky clothes.

The door opened behind me and the music got briefly louder.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned round. I caught sight of Julia before the drink came flying at me. An ice-cube hit me on the forehead, fell to the floor and bounced away. My eyes stung and I blinked hard with surprise and pain.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted, stepping back.

‘You little slut,’ Julia said before turning on her heel and stalking out.

Some other girls laughed. I wiped myself with a paper towel. I felt the humiliation like insects crawling inside me. I felt like my old self again. The one who shrank away and hid in the shadows. The one who cowered under the weight of far too many secrets.

Then I straightened up and looked at myself in the mirror. Never again.

One week later I got a letter. I had been accepted to do an MBA at the Stockholm School of Economics. I got a copy of the letter, found out what Julia’s address was, bought an envelope, and put the copy of the letter inside with a Polaroid photograph Viktor had taken, of me on all fours and Viktor behind me, his face contorted with pleasure. When I dropped the envelope in Julia’s family’s letterbox I had only one thought in my head. I was never going to let anyone humiliate me again.

One month later I registered at the School of Economics under my middle name, Faye, after the author of my mum’s favourite book. Matilda no longer existed.

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