Never before had an idea been so clear, so pure, so utterly free of hesitation and doubt. There was only a single driving force, and it was so powerful that it shoved everything else aside, justified every step she took, every thought.
One step at a time. It was the here and now that mattered. The future that she wanted no longer existed, he had taken it away from her.
Now she just had to see to it that he lost the future he wanted too.
And he wouldn’t even know what hit him.
She finished making up the guest bed and stopped outside the bedroom door. She tried to smile a few times to practice her expression, but she mustn’t overdo it. She had to try to behave like the Eva he thought he knew, the one who existed twenty hours ago, or else he would be suspicious.
She pressed down the handle with her arm and pushed open the door with her foot. He was awake and raised himself up on his elbow.
‘Good morning.’
He didn’t reply.
Didn’t you hear me say good morning, you fucking pig?
He lay silent, staring at her as if it were a sharp axe and not a tray she held in her hands.
‘What’s that?’
She took a step into the room.
‘It’s called breakfast in bed.’
She was at his side and resisted the temptation to dump the hot coffee in his face. He sat up and she carefully set the tray over his legs.
‘You don’t have to worry, I don’t intend to seduce you. I just want to talk a little.’
She smiled into the darkness, well aware that this was an even greater threat.
Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, as far from him as she could get without leaving the room.
He sat quite still, pinned down by the tray straddling his legs.
‘As you may have noticed, I wasn’t home last night.’
‘No. It would have been nice if you’d said something before you left.’
She swallowed. She couldn’t let herself be provoked. The new Eva was a good, fine person who understood that he must have been worried.
‘I know, that was stupid. I apologise, but I had to get out of here for a while.’
He didn’t give in, but made use of the occasion to share some of his guilty conscience.
‘Axel was sad and wondered where you were.’
She clenched her fist and concentrated on the pain her nails caused as they dug into her palm.
If you want to talk about guilt, then let’s do that. Who causes him the most harm.
‘I was out walking all night.’
She dropped her gaze and stroked her hand across the blue-checked sheet.
‘I was thinking about everything that’s happened here at home recently, how we’re not getting along, how we act towards each other. I realise that it’s just as much my fault that it’s turned out like this.’
She looked up at him but had a hard time reading his reaction. His face was blank. He had been ready for strife and conflict and clearly didn’t know how to act when she lay prostrate at his feet.
She smiled into the darkness again.
‘I’d like to apologise for getting so angry about that thing about Maria at Widman’s. Just to clear the air a bit, I realise that it’s great that you have her to talk to, that it might actually be a good thing for us. If she’s as smart as you say she is, she can probably help us get through all this.’
His expression made her lower her eyes again. She turned her head so that he wouldn’t notice her smile and then kept talking with her face turned away.
‘I know that you’ve been feeling bad for a while, and you said yourself that you don’t think it’s fun any more.’
She looked at him again.
‘Why don’t you go away for a little while? Think about how you want things to be, what it is you want. I’ll take care of everything at home in the meantime, it’s completely OK. The main thing is that you feel good again.’
He sat utterly still.
Well, Henrik, now it’s a little harder, isn’t it?
She stood up.
‘I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you need me, I always have been even if I might not have been good at showing it sometimes. I’ll do my best to try and improve. I’m here, and I always will be.’
Now he looked almost sick. His thighs were pressed against the underside of the tray and some of the coffee in the cup sloshed over the edge and ran under the plate of sandwiches.
She was amazed that she ever could have touched him. He sat there looking so pitiful and timid that she wanted to hit him.
Get up damn you, and stand up for yourself!
She backed towards the door. She had to get out of the room before she lost control.
The last thing she saw was how he lifted the tray aside. She left the bedroom, continued downstairs and went straight to the gun cabinet.
There was no parking ticket on his car when he came out. It didn’t surprise him much, he only noted it as something natural. For the last time the main doors had slid aside when they sensed his presence, but this time they hadn’t tossed him out into fear and loneliness, longing for the next time he would be allowed inside. This time they had slid aside deferentially and wished him well in his new life.
Now it would all begin. Everything he had gone through up till now had been a test of whether he deserved what now awaited him. He could forgive life for the injustice after injustice. Together with her everything would be repaid.
For the last time he turned on to Solnavägen and took a right towards Essingeleden. The rush-hour traffic was over and the trip home took him only the eighteen minutes it usually did.
Or rather, as it used to do.
When he got home to Storsjövägen he backed up to the front entrance and shut off the engine. He climbed out and opened the boot. He had a lot to do today, and it was best he began at once.
The packing boxes lay in the cellar. He picked up four of them and took the lift up to the studio. It smelled stuffy when he opened the door, but he didn’t feel like airing it. Instead he opened up two of the boxes and lined the bottoms with newspaper. The hibiscus had lost one of its two pink flowers, and the one that was left had withered into a shrivelled strip. He tossed the pot, dirt and all, into one of the cartons. For two years and five months he had seen to it that all her potted plants stayed alive, but now that was all over.
He was no longer responsible for their lives.
The boxes were heavier than he thought when they were full of dirt, and he had to drag them out to the lift. When he looked round one last time and made sure that all life in the flat had been emptied into boxes he closed the door behind him, locked both locks and threw the key through the mail slot.
Never again.
He continued to his own flat.
Some of the painting frames were too big to fit into the cartons, so he had to break them up.
When the walls were bare the flat looked completely naked. Just as naked and unblemished as he himself would be. He would cleanse every thought, every memory, clean every nook and cranny to make room for the love he had found.
Utterly pure and without guilt he would receive her, making himself worthy.
He opened the wardrobe and took out her clothes that he had brought down from the studio, shoving them down amongst the paintings. Her scent had long since left them, but they had still kept him company when the loneliness felt too oppressive.
Now he didn’t need them any more.
Never again.
He had to put the last box on the passenger seat. The clock on the dashboard read only eleven thirty, and that was much too early. He would have to wait for evening in order not to attract too much attention. On the other hand, he would have to carry the boxes the last stretch of the way; it was only a matter of driving up to the Boat Club, and that would take him a while. He would rather have done it on the wharf, but he knew that was impossible. Yet he could do it on the beach right next to it. No one would see him from the path, but the bonfire would be visible from the south side facing Söder. But surely he could light a fire if he wanted to, and it would have to take place near the wharf.