Her father put down his coffee cup with a familiar clatter of home.
‘How’s Henrik taking it? He must be very upset.’
She looked at her mother, dumbfounded. And then at her father, still so proud of his daughter who took command of her own life, who wouldn’t settle for less than the best, who was worth so much more.
And an iron curtain dropped in front of the truth.
‘Well . . . he’s doing OK, I suppose.’
‘What have you decided to do about the house?’
Be careful what you say now.
Weak and powerless, the voice from inside the dark tried to make itself heard one last time.
If you make your bed you have to lie in it.
Then she turned her head and looked at her father and the voice from the Eva who once existed gave up and fell silent, unable to warn her again.
And inside herself she prayed to be allowed to meet, for once in her life, someone who would stand by her side and love her, someone she could lean on when she no longer had the strength to fight.
‘I’m going to buy Henrik out and keep the house. I’m going to need to borrow some money.’
Horrid was the word he thought could best describe the remainder of their crossing, even if it was an understatement. The Baltic Sea was smooth as a mirror, but the calm outside was amply compensated for by the tornado that struck him, that tore loose every feeling he thought was firmly anchored in a decision taken. Everything he had known, wanted, dreamed. It was all one big mess.
The longest half-hour of his life she had spent locked in the bathroom before she burst out, packed her things in a rage and without saying a word slammed the door of their luxury cabin behind her.
He had remained sitting where he was, looking out the porthole as the archipelago thinned out and Stockholm and home vanished farther and farther out of reach. After a few hours he made his way down to the lobby and changed his return trip reservation to that same night. She had done the same, he learned. He had no idea where she was during the rest of the crossing.
In Åbo he had changed ferries; as sheer punishment he was given a windowless cabin on a lower deck below the water level, and that’s where he had continued his isolation. Just after midnight there was an urgent knock on his door. She was drunk. Furiously she screamed at him, using all the obscene words he could remember ever hearing, and when he didn’t defend himself the air went out of her. In tears she collapsed on the floor inside the cabin door. But he was unable to console her. For the life of him he couldn’t come up with anything to say. And when she realised his total inability to handle all that had happened, her wrath was reawakened and with a new onslaught of vituperation she left the cabin, slamming the door, leaving him to the confined space with her words hanging in the air. And he realised that he deserved every one of them. He remained sitting among them and spent the next few hours in soul-searching until he could stand it no longer. Because he had been betrayed as well. A judge ought to come down on his side, weighing the punishment he deserved for what he had done to Linda against the sympathy to which he was entitled after Eva’s betrayal.
It would have been so much easier if everything were black or white. The tightrope he would have been forced to walk with a furious need to accuse her without any of his own guilt. Silence her with her guilty conscience and rob her of every possibility of defending herself. Force her to admit her wretchedness and thereby finally take the power from her. Gain superiority over her.
Instead he would obsequiously have to attempt to win back her love, persuade her in an ingratiating way, try to convince her to stay with him. Choose his words well and not give her the slightest opportunity of minimising her crime by dumping part of the guilt onto him, by saying that he had behaved no better himself.
It would have been so much easier if he had told her the truth from the beginning. If he had confessed his secret love or passion or whatever it was he felt or had felt. Then they could have continued from the point they were at now, with all their cards on the table. Now it was too late. Now his admission that he had lied cast him into the underworld and from there he could never become her equal. Even if she had done the same thing to him, her verbal prowess would quickly shift all right and truth to her side.
There was something about Eva that made him feel superfluous. She was so unbelievably strong. Adversity seemed to have the opposite effect on her that it did on other people. She didn’t react normally. For her adversity was a reason, and fuel to become even stronger. In some unfathomable way she always managed to convert a crisis into an opportunity. As he stood by and kept silent and realised that she didn’t need him, that she could solve everything on her own with no need for his help or support. Bit by bit she had stripped him of all responsibility until finally he hadn’t known whether he could handle anything at all. Good God, he wasn’t even allowed to open his own window envelopes!
With Linda everything had been different. She had openly admitted that she needed him; it was a fantastic feeling to be indispensable. She made him feel like a man. Straight off she admitted that there were things that she couldn’t do or hadn’t mastered, and unlike Eva there was nothing shameful in it for her. On the contrary, she used it to come closer to him, to make them dependent on each other, to help them create an essential togetherness. And he had enjoyed their solidarity. He had fantasised about their life together and how different everything would be. How different he would be. Now he realised how naïve he had been, how simple everything had seemed as long as it was merely a fantasy. He had imagined that he would be able to cut Eva out of his life and his future like an old wart he finally got around to doing something about. That everything would be clean and pure and full of possibilities. An unblemished new start, completely unaffected by everything that had gone before, all the choices he had once made. He realised now with devastating clarity that it could never be that way; he and Eva belonged together forever, whether they wanted it or not. The choices he had already made would follow him for the rest of his life. Axel was one of the consequences. He had only seen the advantages, forgotten to imagine Eva and Axel together with a new man, a man who would spend as much time with Axel as he did. Influence him and the grown man he would one day become. Now that he had got a look at that bastard, the thought was intolerable.
But the thought of losing Linda was intolerable as well.
Or of being rejected by Eva.
Or that she may never have loved him.
Bloody hell.
He needed time. Time to understand what it was he actually felt.
What it was he actually wanted.
He got up and found the key card. He had to try and get hold of Linda. Whether it was out of consideration or because the walls of the cabin were threatening to suffocate him, he didn’t know. He got her cabin number from the reception, but there was no answer when he knocked. No one was answering her phone either. Methodically he searched through the bars and restaurants on board. What was it he wanted from her? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he had to talk to her. Try to make her understand. She wasn’t on any of the flashing disco floors or in the loud karaoke bars. He stopped in front of a large panoramic window, having lost his orientation, and in all the pitch blackness outside the window it was impossible to discern the direction they were sailing, whether he was closer to the bow or the stern. He found a wall map and made his way back to her cabin. This time she opened the door, squinting at the sharp light in the corridor. She didn’t say a word, just left the cabin door open and backed into the darkness inside. He took a deep breath before he followed her, still not knowing what he wanted to say. Then he closed the door behind him and stood there in the dark.