Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [67]
Sylvia Pregnant Fiancée ran her tongue over her lips and Anne noticed they were sensual, she was beautiful. Sylvia was much more beautiful than she was. Jealousy and spite pricked her eyes like knives, warping her sight. She was beside herself with spite and humiliation and realized at that very moment that she had lost, and if she allowed herself to look destroyed then she would be. She would have to construct some self-respect for herself.
‘I must have got it wrong,’ Sylvia said. ‘I thought I was supposed to be collecting her today. I thought it was my day.’
‘Do you start all your sentences with “I”?’ Anne said, suddenly able to move again, her legs manoeuvring past Sylvia Beautiful Pregnant Fiancée and into the kitchen to a yell of ‘Mummy!’
Miranda flew into her arms, holding an apple-core in one hand, and buried her sticky mouth in her hair.
‘Darling,’ Anne Snapphane whispered. ‘I bet you almost blew away today!’
The girl leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
‘They had to tie me down,’ she said. ‘Then I flew like a kite all the way to Lidingö.’
Anne laughed, the girl wriggled loose and ran past Sylvia Beautiful without taking any notice of her stepmother. She called over her shoulder, ‘Can we have pancakes for tea? Can I break the eggs?’
Anne walked up to Sylvia, who was in her way by the door.
‘Sorry now?’ she said dully.
‘I feel so sick,’ Sylvia said, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘I don’t understand how I could get it so wrong. Sorry. It’s just . . . I feel so ill the whole time. I spend all my time being sick.’
‘Get an abortion, then,’ Anne said.
Beautiful Sylvia flinched as though she’d been slapped, her face turning bright red. ‘What?’ she said.
Anne took a step closer, breathing right into the other woman’s face. ‘The worst thing I know,’ Anne said, ‘is spoiled bitches whining. You really expect my sympathy?’
Pregnant Lovely Sylvia took a step back and hit her head on the doorframe, mouth and eyes wide open.
Anne Snapphane walked past her, feeling her face blazing. She went over to her daughter who was putting her clothes on and chattering about different sorts of pancake batter. She took her hand and left the nursery, Sylvia’s offended muteness at her back.
25
Annika was frying fish-fingers and making mashed potato from powder, something she never did when Thomas was home. Thomas was used to well-made, proper food; his mother had always placed great importance on having good ingredients, but then it could hardly have been that hard. The family had owned a grocery shop, after all. It wasn’t as if her beloved mother-in-law suffered from the strain of working in the shop itself. She just went down and picked out what she wanted without paying, and looked after the accounts, so of course she had time to cook.
Thomas had never peeled a potato for himself. Ready-made food had been a complete mystery to him when Annika turned up with her tins of ravioli. His children, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy to eat reshaped fish and powdered mash.
‘Do we have to eat the red stuff?’ Kalle asked.
She had dutifully placed cubes of red pepper on their plates, which they were now both picking out.
She was itching to get going. She knew she had at least four hours’ work ahead of her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You can watch a film if you want. Which one would you like?’
‘Yay!’ Ellen said, throwing her arms out and knocking her plate to the floor.
Annika got up and picked up the plate, which had survived, and the food, which hadn’t.
‘Beauty and the Beast!’ Kalle said, jumping down from his chair.
‘No!’ Annika said, noticing that she was shouting. ‘Not that one!’
The children stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘But we got it from Grandma,’ Kalle said. ‘Don’t you like Beauty?’
She swallowed her stress and knelt down by the children.
‘Beauty and the Beast is a really bad film,’ she said. ‘It lies to us. The Beast takes Beauty and her father prisoner; he torments both of them, kidnaps them and locks them up. That isn’t nice, is it?