Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [112]
Blomkvist and Cecilia Vanger woke up when the front door opened and someone was walking through the kitchen. They heard the thud of something heavy being put down near the woodstove. Then Berger was standing in the bedroom doorway with a smile that rapidly changed to shock.
“Oh, good Lord.” She took a step back.
“Hi, Erika,” Blomkvist said.
“Hi. I’m so sorry. I apologise a thousand times for barging in like this. I should have knocked.”
“We should have locked the front door. Erika—this is Cecilia Vanger. Cecilia—Erika Berger is the editor in chief of Millennium.”
“Hi,” Cecilia said.
“Hi,” Berger said. She looked as though she could not decide whether to step forward and politely shake hands or just leave. “Uh, I…I can go for a walk…”
“What do you say to putting on some coffee instead?” Blomkvist looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Just past noon.
Berger nodded and pulled the bedroom door shut. Blomkvist and Cecilia looked at each other. Cecilia appeared embarrassed. They had made love and talked until 4:00 in the morning. Then Cecilia said she thought she’d sleep over and that in the future she wouldn’t give a tinker’s cuss who knew she was sleeping with Mikael Blomkvist. She had slept with her back to him and with his arm tucked around her breasts.
“Listen, it’s OK,” he said. “Erika’s married and she isn’t my girlfriend. We see each other now and then, but she doesn’t care at all if you and I have something…She’s probably pretty embarrassed herself right now.”
When they went into the kitchen a while later, Erika had set out coffee, juice, lemon marmalade, cheese, and toast. It smelled good. Cecilia went straight up to her and held out her hand.
“I was a little abrupt in there. Hi.”
“Dear Cecilia, I’m so sorry for stomping in like an elephant,” said a very embarrassed Erika Berger.
“Forget it, for God’s sake. And let’s have breakfast.”
After breakfast Berger excused herself and left them alone, saying that she had to go and say hello to Vanger. Cecilia cleared the table with her back to Mikael. He went up and put his arms around her.
“What’s going to happen now?” Cecilia said.
“Nothing. This is the way it is—Erika is my best friend. She and I have been together off and on for twenty years and will probably be, on and off, together for another twenty. I hope so. But we’ve never been a couple and we never get in the way of each other’s romances.”
“Is that what we have? A romance?”
“I don’t know what we have, but apparently we get along.”
“Where’s she going to sleep tonight?”
“We’ll find her a room somewhere. One of Henrik’s spare rooms. She won’t be sleeping in my bed, anyway.”
Cecilia thought about this for a moment.
“I don’t know if I can handle this. You and she might function that way, but I don’t know…I’ve never…” She shook her head. “I’m going back to my place. I have to think about this for a while.”
“Cecilia, you asked me earlier and I told you about my relationship with Erika. Her existence can’t be any great surprise to you.”
“That’s true. But as long as she was at a comfortable distance down in Stockholm I could ignore her.”
Cecilia put on her jacket.
“This situation is ludicrous,” she said with a smile. “Come over for dinner tonight. Bring Erika. I think I’m going to like her.”
Erika had already solved the problem of where to sleep. On previous occasions when she had been up to Hedeby to visit Vanger she had stayed in one of his spare rooms, and she asked him straight out if she could borrow the room again. Henrik could scarcely conceal his delight, and he assured her that she was welcome at any time.
With these formalities out of the way, Blomkvist and Berger went for a walk across the bridge and sat on the terrace of Susanne’s Bridge Café just before closing time.
“I’m really pissed off,” Berger said. “I drive all the way up here to welcome you back to freedom and find you in bed with the town femme fatale.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“How long have you and Miss Big