Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [95]
‘Maybe another time,’ Annika said, picking up the sheaf of printouts, ten years of incoming post to the Minister of Culture.
She headed for the lifts with relief.
33
Mehmet filled Anne Snapphane’s office doorway, anger radiating from his head. Anne’s reflex reaction at the sight of him was pure, uncomplicated joy, a blinding white jubilation that shot up from her stomach all the way to her scalp.
‘We’ve got to sort this out,’ he said. ‘Now, before it gets so infected that we can never get to grips with it.’
Her happiness didn’t want to go; it clung on as a fading hymn of praise: He came! He came here to me! I’m important to him.
And Anne saw him lean against the doorframe with all the elegant nonchalance that she loved so much, her handsome man, the man she longed for so much at night that it woke her. She pushed her swivel chair back from the desk and slowly stood up.
‘I want that too,’ she said, holding out her hand to him.
He pretended not to see it, staring down at the floor.
‘Sylvia’s been off sick all week,’ he said, quietly and angrily.
Her jubilation shattered, she could hear the splinters hitting the plastic mat.
‘I haven’t betrayed anyone,’ she said, the sharp edges cutting her voice.
He raised both hands in a calming gesture.
‘We’ve got to get past that bit,’ he said. ‘It’s no one’s fault. It wasn’t working between us; surely we can at least agree on that?’
Defiance was forcing tears into Anne’s eyes. She gasped for breath far too audibly before replying. ‘I thought it was working.’
‘But I didn’t,’ he said. ‘So it couldn’t go on. If two people are going to live their lives together they have to agree about that, don’t they?’
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then raised her head and tried to smile. ‘Serfdom has been abolished, you mean?’
He took a couple of steps into the room.
‘Anne,’ he said in a pleading tone that made her smile fade, ‘if we can’t sort out normal communication, now, then we’ll be sitting with a payment plan that’ll last for ever. And Miranda will be the one it costs most. We can’t mess up like this.’
She pressed her fingertips against the desk, looking down at her shoes.
A flash of insight worked its way up from her feet, through her gut, rushing up to her head. She suddenly saw the world from his point of view, realized what was important for him: Miranda, his daughter; his new woman and new child. She was no longer in his consciousness in that way, all tenderness was exhausted and gone. Now she was a necessary evil, someone he once shared a child and a bed with, a by-product from a past life that he would always have to deal with.
Self-pity threatened to suffocate her; a feeble embarrassing sound escaped her throat. She took several silent breaths.
‘But I love you,’ she said, without looking at him.
He went over to her and hugged her, she wrapped her arms hard round his waist and leaned her head against his neck and wept.
‘I love you so bloody much,’ she whispered.
He rocked her gently, stroking her hair, and kissed her on the forehead.
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I understand that it hurts, and I’m sorry. Forgive me.’
Anne Snapphane opened her eyes to his polo sweater, feeling a tear run down her nose and hang there.
‘There’s no point in clinging on to pride any more,’ he said quietly. ‘Will you be okay?’
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.
There were five sheets in the fax machine when Annika got home. She dropped her outdoor clothes in a heap on the hall floor; she was going to have to go out to pick up the children later anyway.
She settled onto the wooden chair by the hall table, surrounded by piles of bills, and looked quickly through the documents the woman at the Norrland News archive had faxed through, in the order they had been published in.
The first cutting indicated that Karina Björnlund had been a promising athlete as a teenager. The article was a report from the NC, which Annika presumed meant either Norrland Championship or Norrbotten