Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [78]
‘One direct consequence of that meeting was that ordinary left-wing organizations were no longer allowed to sell The Spark and the Vietnam Bulletin in workplaces. Can you see your Göran?’
‘I’m going to stay and read for a while,’ Annika said, pulling over a rickety chair.
‘Well, you know where I am if you need me,’ Berit said, and left her among the paper and dust.
28
The telephone rang, making Anne start. She quickly pushed the bottle back in the drawer and locked it before she picked up the receiver.
‘What did you do to Sylvia yesterday?’ Mehmet’s voice was treacherously smooth, but Anne knew him, knew there was lava and sulphur bubbling beneath the calm surface.
‘Surely the real question is, what the hell was she doing at my daughter’s nursery?’ Anne said, as the world shattered into tiny pieces. Anger and despair turned the sky outside black.
‘Can’t we at least behave like adults?’ Mehmet said, the temperature of his voice rising.
‘And which particular adult plan had you worked out yesterday? That I’d get to the nursery and find that Miranda had disappeared? What was I supposed to think? That Miranda had left me because she’d rather be with Sylvia? That she’d been kidnapped?’
‘Now you’re just being ridiculous.’ He was no longer able to conceal his anger.
‘Ridiculous?’ Anne screamed down the phone, standing up. ‘Ridiculous? What the hell are you up to with your cosy fucking nuclear family? First you come round and say you and your new fuck want custody of my daughter, then she tries to steal her from nursery, what the hell are you up to? Are you trying to terrorize me?’
‘Calm down,’ Mehmet said, and the phone went ice-cold, the heated anger exchanged for hatred, the chill striking her ear, making her stiffen.
‘Go to hell,’ she said, and hung up.
She stood there, staring at the phone. He called her straight back.
‘So now Miranda’s yours alone? What happened to all your fine ideals about mutual responsibility? Your high-flown theories about shared parenting, that the child should belong to the collective and not the individual?’
Anne Snapphane sank onto her chair again. She had never imagined she could be sucked into such a stinking swamp of bitterness and ill-will and envy, the place where below-the-belt blows come from. And she couldn’t help it, she was there already, the quicksand had her, and if she struggled she would only sink to the bottom even faster.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘Who betrayed who? Who left who? Who’s trying to mess things up? It bloody well isn’t me.’
‘Sylvia spent the whole evening crying. She was inconsolable,’ Mehmet said, his voice sounding thick and tearful in a way that made Anne furious.
‘Good grief,’ she shouted. ‘It’s hardly my fault she’s got bad nerves!’
Mehmet paused for breath, gathering his larynx for a full-frontal assault.
‘Sylvia said that you had destroyed her, and there’s something you need to know, Anne: if you ruin things for my family, I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
Anne felt the air being squeezed out of her lungs, all the oxygen disappearing from her brain.
‘Are you threatening me?’ she said. ‘Are you mad? Have you really sunk that low?’
The distance on the line grew, rolling round and round the swamp, and when he came back on the line he was light-years away.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘if that’s how you want it.’
And then it was silent, gone, the dialogue broken, and all around her everything was bubbling and frothing, and Anne leaned over her desk and wept.
Annika was getting more and more restless as she climbed the stairs back to the newsroom. Her search through the old editions had given her nothing but dirty hands and dusty jeans. The political climate of the time had not been consciously