BETRAYAL
KARIN ALVTEGEN is one of Scandinavia’s most acclaimed and bestselling crime writers. She was born in Jönköping, Sweden, in 1965 and had a varied career, including work in set design for film and stage, before she started to write. She won Sweden’s most prestigious crime novel award, the Glass Key, for Missing. Her novel Shadow was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger 2009. She is the great-niece of Astrid Lindgren (author of the Pippi Longstocking series), and lives in Stockholm. Her books have been translated into 27 languages.
STEVEN T. MURRAY has been translating from Nordic languages for over thirty years. He is the prize-winning translator of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander books.
Also by Karin Alvtegen
Missing
Shame
Shadow
KARIN
ALVTEGEN
BETRAYAL
First published in Great Britain in 2005 by
Originally published in Sweden as Svek in 2003 by
English translation copyright © Steven T. Murray, 2005
‘I don’t know.’
Three words.
Each by itself or in some other context completely harmless. Utterly without intrinsic gravity. Merely a statement that he was not sure and therefore chose not to reply.
I don’t know.
Three words.
As an answer to the question she had just asked it was a threat to her entire existence. A sudden chasm that opened in the newly polished parquet living-room floor.
She hadn’t actually asked the question, she had only spoken the words to make him understand how worried she was. If she asked the question about the unthinkable, then things could only be better afterwards. A shared turning point. The past year had been an eternal struggle, and her question was a way of talking about the fact that she couldn’t cope with being strong any longer, couldn’t carry the whole burden by herself. She needed his help.
He had given the wrong answer.
Used three words that she had never perceived as an option.
‘Do you mean that you’re actually questioning our future together?’
I don’t know.
There was no follow-up question; his reply eradicated in one single instant all the words she had ever learned. Her brain was forced to do a 180 and reevaluate everything it had previously known to be beyond all doubt.
The idea that the two of them might not share the future together was not part of her belief system.
Axel, the house, becoming grandma and grandpa together someday.
What words could she possibly find to lead them beyond this moment?
He sat silently on the sofa with his eyes fixed on an American sitcom and his fingers flicking over the remote. Not for an instant had he looked at her since she came into the room, not even when he answered her question. The distance between them was so great that she might not even hear it if he said anything else.
But she did. Clearly and distinctly she heard:
‘Did you buy milk on the way home?’
He didn’t look at her this time either. Only wondered if she had bought milk on her way home.
A pressure across her chest. And then that prickling down her left arm that she sometimes got when there wasn’t enough time.
‘Can’t you turn off the TV?’
He looked down at the remote and changed the channel. The traffic report.
All of a sudden she realised that a stranger was sitting on her sofa.
He looked familiar, but she didn’t know him. He reminded her a great deal of the man who was the father of her son and with whom she had once, more than eleven years earlier, promised God to share both good times and bad until death did them part. The man with whom she had paid off that sofa this past year.
It was the future, theirs and Axel’s, that he was calling into question, and he couldn’t even show her the respect to turn off the traffic report and look at her.
She was feeling bad now, sick with dread at the question she would have to ask to be able to breathe again.
She swallowed. How would she dare know?
‘Have you met someone else?’
Finally he looked at her. His gaze was full of accusation but at least he was looking at her.
‘No.’
She closed her eyes. At least there wasn’t another woman. She tried desperately to keep herself afloat on his comforting reply. It was all so inconceivable. The room looked just the way it always did, but everything was suddenly different. She looked at the framed photograph she took last Christmas. Henrik in a Santa Claus cap and an excited Axel in the midst of a colourful pile of Christmas presents. The whole family gathered in her childhood home. Three months ago.
‘How long have you felt this way?’
He was watching TV again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, approximately? Is it two weeks or two years?’
It seemed an eternity before he answered.
‘About a year, I suppose.’
A year. For a year he had gone around questioning their shared future. Without saying a word.
During their vacation last summer when they drove to Italy. During all the dinners with their friends. When he accompanied her on a business trip to London and they made love. The whole time he had been wondering whether he wanted to keep on living with her or not.
She looked at the photograph again. His smiling eyes that met hers through the camera lens. I don’t know if I want you any more, if I still want to live with you.
Why hadn’t he said anything?
‘But why? And how did you think we could work this out?’
He shrugged his shoulders slightly and sighed.
‘We don’t have fun any more.’
She turned and walked towards the bedroom, couldn’t bear to hear any more.
She stood with her back against the closed bedroom door. Axel’s calm, secure breathing. Always in the middle, like a link between them, night after night. An assurance and a commitment that they belonged together forever.
Mother, father, child.
There was no alternative.
We don’t have fun any more.
He was sitting out there on the sofa with her whole life in his hands. What channel would he choose? He had just taken away control over her life; what she wanted didn’t matter, everything was up to him.
Without getting undressed she crawled under the covers, lay down next to the little body and felt the panic grow.
How was she going to resolve this?
And then the numbing weariness. Utterly exhausted from always being the one who took responsibility, who was efficient, who got everything moving and saw to it that what had to be done got done. At the very beginning of their relationship they had assumed their roles. Back then they had laughed at it sometimes, joking about their differences. Over the years the wheel ruts had worn so deep that it was impossible to turn; it was barely possible to get up and look over the edge any longer. She did what had to be done first, and then what she really wanted to do if there was any time left over. He did just the opposite. And by the time he had done what he wanted to do, whatever had to be done was already done. She envied him. She would love to be able to act like that. But then everything would collapse. All she knew was that she felt an indescribable longing for him to take over the helm once in a while. Allow her to sit down for a while so she could rest. Be allowed to lean on him for a while.
Instead he sat out there on their recently paid-off sofa and watched the traffic report and put their shared future into question because he wasn’t having fun anymore. As if she were going around cheering with joy about their life. But at least she tried, they did have a child together, God damn it!