Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [98]
That’s Thomas, she thought without realizing she was thinking it. What’s he doing here?
No, she thought, it isn’t him.
The man took a couple of steps forward, his breath lit up by a streetlamp, yes, it was him!
Her face broke into a broad smile, the warm joy that melted things came back. He was out buying Christmas presents! Already!
She laughed; he was such a Christmas freak. Last year he started buying presents in September – she remembered how angry he got when she found them at the bottom of his wardrobe and had wondered what those parcels were and what they were doing there.
A violent spray of slush hit them and Ellen screamed. Annika pulled the children back from the kerb and yelled angrily at the taxi. When she looked up again Thomas was gone, she searched the crowd for him, and saw him again, he was turning to face someone, a woman with blond hair and a long coat went up to him and he put his arm round her. Thomas pulled the other woman to him and kissed her. There was complete silence and everyone else vanished. Annika was staring down a long tunnel and at the other end her husband was kissing a blonde woman with a passion that made her insides freeze and shatter.
34
‘Mummy, it’s green!’
But she didn’t move. People jostled her, she saw their faces talking to her but their voices were mute. She saw Thomas go off, vanishing with his arm round the blonde woman’s shoulders, the woman’s hand round his waist, they walked slowly away with their backs to her, enclosed in their coupledom, swallowed up by the sea of people.
‘Why aren’t we going, Mummy? Now it’s red again.’
She looked down at her children, their faces looking up at her, eyes clear and questioning, and realized that her mouth was wide open. She swallowed a scream, snapped her mouth shut, looked at the traffic.
‘Soon,’ she said, in a voice that came from deep within her. ‘We’ll go next time.’
And the lights went green and the bus came and they had to stand all the way to Kungsholmstorg.
The children started singing as they climbed the stairs, the tune was familiar but she couldn’t place it, she couldn’t find the right door-key and had to try several times.
She went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, dialled his mobile number but got the message service. He had turned it off. He was walking with his arm round a blonde woman somewhere in Stockholm, not answering when she called.
So she called his office, and Arnold, his tennis partner, and no one anywhere answered.
‘What are we having for tea?’
Kalle was standing in the door in his shiny new boots.
‘Coconut chicken with rice.’
‘With broccoli?’
She shook her head, feeling a panic attack bubbling up. She clutched the sink, looking into her son’s eyes and decided not to drown.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and baby sweetcorn.’
His face relaxed, he smiled and came a step closer.
‘Do you know what, Mummy?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a wobbly tooth. Feel!’
And she reached out her hand, saw that it was trembling, she felt his left front tooth and, yes, it was definitely loose.
‘That’ll come out soon.’
‘Then I get a gold coin from the tooth fairy,’ Kalle said.
‘Then you get a gold coin from the tooth fairy,’ Annika said, turning away; she had to sit down.
Her insides had turned into razorblades and shards of ice, cutting her when she breathed. The kitchen table was swaying. There’s no point, it sang, there’s no point. And the angels tuned up in the background.
Suddenly she felt that she was about to be sick. She dashed into the toilet behind the kitchen and her stomach turned inside out, half-digested pasta from 7-Eleven tore at her throat, making her tears overflow.
Afterwards she hung across the toilet, the stench revolting her. The angels sang at full volume.
‘Shut up!’ she yelled, slamming the toilet lid.
She walked angrily into the kitchen, pulling out all the ingredients for dinner, burned herself on the flame when she put the rice on, cut herself when she sliced the onion and cut up the chicken,