Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [99]
Was she wrong? It wasn’t impossible. Thomas looked like a lot of other Swedish men – tall and fair and broad-shouldered, with the beginnings of a stomach, and it had been dark and they were quite a long way away; maybe it wasn’t him standing there with the blonde woman at all.
She gripped the stove, closed her eyes and took four deep breaths.
Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe she’d seen wrong.
She straightened up, relaxed her shoulders, opened her eyes and heard the door open.
‘Daddy!’
The children’s cries of joy and sturdy welcoming hugs, his deep voice expressing a mixture of happiness and cautious fending-off; she fixed her gaze on the extractor fan and wondered if it showed, if there was something in his face that would give her the answer.
‘Hello,’ he said behind her back, kissing her on the back of her head. ‘How are you feeling? Better?’
She breathed in and out before turning round and setting her eyes on him.
He looked the same as usual. He looked exactly like he usually did. Dark-grey jacket, dark-blue jeans, light-grey shirt, shimmering silk tie. His eyes were the same, they were a bit tired and slightly disillusioned, his hair thick and brush-like above his bushy eyebrows.
She noticed she was holding her breath and took a deep, greedy breath.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘a bit better.’
‘Are you going to work tomorrow?’
She turned round to stir the chicken, hesitating.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been sick.’
‘As long as you don’t give us all this winter vomiting bug,’ Thomas said, sitting down at the kitchen table.
It couldn’t have been him. It must have been someone else.
‘How was work today?’ she said, putting the saucepan on a trivet from Designtorget.
He sighed, holding the morning paper out in front of him, preventing her from seeing his eyes.
‘Cramne at Justice is difficult to deal with. A load of talk and not much action. The girl from the Federation of County Councils and I are having to do most of the work, and he gets the credit.’
Annika stood still, the pan of rice in her hand, and stared at the headline on the front page of the paper, something to do with a leak about the culture proposal that was due next week.
‘The Federation of County Councils,’ she said. ‘What was her name again?’
Thomas inadvertently let one corner of the paper fold back, she met his eyes for an instant before he shook the paper to make it stand up again.
‘Sophia,’ he said. ‘Sophia Grenborg.’
Annika stared at the picture of the Minister of Culture illustrating the article.
‘What’s she like?’
Thomas carried on reading, hesitating a few moments before replying. ‘Ambitious,’ he said, ‘pretty good. Often tries to lobby for the Federation at our expense. She can be bloody annoying.’
He folded the paper, got up and tossed it onto the window sill.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the kids. I don’t want to miss tennis this week.’
And he came back into the kitchen with a squealing child under each arm, put them on their chairs, felt the loose tooth and admired the new boots, flicked the pigtails and listened to tales of sweet machines and promises to visit Peter No-Tail in Uppsala.
I’m imagining things, she thought. I must have seen wrong.
She tried to laugh, but couldn’t thaw out the sharp stone in her chest.
It wasn’t him. It was someone else. We’re his family and he loves us. He’d never let the children down.
They ate quickly, didn’t want to miss the cartoons.
‘That was great, thanks,’ Thomas said, giving her a peck on the cheek.
They cleared up together, their hands occasionally touching, their eyes meeting for brief moments.
He would never leave me.
She poured detergent into the dishwasher and switched it on. He took her face in his hands, studying her face with a frown.
‘It’s good you’re going to have another day at home,’ he said. ‘You look really pale.’
She looked down, pushed his hands away.
‘I feel a bit washed out,’ she said, and walked out of the kitchen.
‘Don’t wait up,’ he said to the back of her head. ‘I promised Arnold