He swallowed.
‘Shall I put them in water?’
His words got her moving, and she went to the cupboard over the refrigerator where she kept the vases, hesitated briefly when she couldn’t reach them, and went back to the kitchen table to get a chair. She didn’t say thank you when he handed her the bouquet. Didn’t look at him either. Just took the flowers from his hands, turned and went to the sink. He stood looking at her back as she slowly and carefully clipped the ends off the roses and arranged them one by one in the vase.
Perhaps she had already made her decision and stood there preparing herself. Perhaps she would turn around soon and tell him the truth, that she had made up her mind while he was gone. Admit that she had met another man and wanted to live with him instead. He had to forestall her, make her understand that he was ready to fight for what they had, that he would change if she just gave him a chance. He had to make her understand that her decision was based on false assumptions.
He suddenly felt like crying, going over and throwing his arms around her. Stand close behind her and tell her the truth. Once and for all get rid of all the lies and, with them out of the way, be able to feel close to her again. When had they stopped talking to each other? Had they ever been able to talk the way he and Linda had done? Why had it been so easy with her and not with Eva? They had known each other for fifteen years, after all. She knew more about him than anyone else. He couldn’t stand not having her friendship any more. They shared far too many memories. And they shared Axel.
Dear Eva. I’m sorry. Forgive me.
It didn’t happen. It was a superhuman task to give voice to the words, to admit his infidelity and his lies even though she was no better herself. He refused to expose himself that way, or at least he didn’t intend to do it before he had some idea how she would react, whether she intended to reject him or not. But he had to try to approach her, he was in a hurry now, he had to try to reach her before it was too late. Before she turned around and announced her decision.
‘I’ve missed you.’
She didn’t turn around but her hand stopped halfway between the sink and the vase.
He could hear how strange the words sounded. As if even the room were reacting. It was so long since anything like that had been said within these walls, and he wondered whether what he said was true. Was it longing for her he had felt? In the strict sense of the word. Yes, it was. The longing for her loyalty.
‘I’ve been thinking while I was away, as you told me to do, and I would like to beg your forgiveness for being so disagreeable lately. And then I got to thinking of that trip you booked to Iceland. I would very much like it if we went on it together.’
Her hand was once again moving between the sink and the vase.
‘I cancelled it.’
‘We can book another one. I can do it.’
Eager, bordering on desperation. A wild attempt to break through, get a first response that would point out what way they were heading. And he hated the fact that he was once again subject to her will, her decision. In a second he was re-acclimatised and robbed of the ability to take action, which he had discovered was something he could do over the past six months.
The phone rang. She reached it first even though he was closer. He had hesitated because he thought they should let it ring.
‘Eva.’
She gave him a quick look when she heard who it was. As if she was close to being exposed.
‘I haven’t got to it yet, can I call you a little later?’
Hadn’t got to what?
‘Good, I’ll do that. See you later.’
She hung up and put down the phone.
‘Who was that?’
‘Pappa.’
She was lying without looking at him again. It was him – the other man.
Somehow he had to rise up from his position at the bottom. He was the one who had been unpleasant lately. She could continue in peace and quiet to hide behind what was right – wounded and unapproachable, forcing him to make up with her. Somehow he had to get her to confess. But not by accusing her. Then she would only be on her guard and also have a legitimate reason to strike back. No, he had to get her to reveal herself.
She had returned to the roses, although they were all standing as if to attention in the vase.
He decided to try a long shot. It should produce some kind of reaction.
‘Janne says to say hello, by the way.’
‘Mm-hmm. How are they doing these days?’
‘They’re fine. He said he saw you at some lunch place a while back.’
‘Oh, he did?’
‘You didn’t seem to see him. He joked and wondered what sort of lamb meat you were out to lunch with.’
With the vase all arranged in her hands, she turned round.
‘Lamb meat?’
‘Yes, there was some young man you were eating with.’
‘I don’t remember that, when did he say it was?’
She walked towards the living room with the vase. He followed her.
‘A week or so ago, maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘It couldn’t have been me. He must be mistaken.’
Cool as a cucumber. He didn’t know her at all. Had she always been able to lie this easily? Maybe it wasn’t the first time she had an affair behind his back; she had had plenty of opportunity over the years. All these business trips and all the overtime she worked. Even if she hadn’t eaten lunch with him, the words ‘lamb meat’ should have bothered her, since her lover was a decade younger than she was.
He felt the anger taking over, and soon he would no longer be able to stop himself before he let it loose. She had set down the vase on the coffee table and now stood straightening up the roses as if they were going to be entered in a symmetry competition.
He turned and headed for the bathroom, feeling a great need to take a shower and wash off everything that had clung to him in the past day.
He checked the bathroom cabinet. No forgotten toothpaste. The wastebasket had been recently emptied and lined with a new plastic bag. There was washing in the machine, and he opened the lid to hang it up. Axel’s dark-blue sweatsuit, Eva’s black pullover. And then a pair of black lace panties that he had never seen before. He held them up between thumb and forefinger, disgusted at the thought of . . . God. So that’s the way she dressed when she was out with her lover. She had certainly never dressed like that for him.
He took two clothes-pegs and hung the panties up in the drying cabinet so that they would be the first thing she saw when she came into the bathroom, would know that he had discovered them. And start to worry why he didn’t comment on them.
He went back upstairs and into the bedroom. The bed was made and the bedspread in place. How could he ever sleep in that bed again?
He pulled out the top drawer in the chest of drawers where she kept her underwear, searched among the sensible panties that he usually saw her wearing. Then to the left, among her bras, another unknown piece of paraphernalia. A black lace bra with padding that he had never seen before. He heard her clattering in the kitchen, held up the bra, and was assaulted by the image of her and the other man together in the double bed behind him, how his feverish hands managed to undo the little clasp he saw before him and expose her breasts. He resisted the impulse to rush out to the kitchen and throw it right in her self-pitying face, forced himself to take a few deep breaths. He was just about to push the drawer back in when he caught sight of something else. A corner of something red. A diary with a lock but with the key hanging on a silver thread from the little heart-shaped lock. A diary? Since when had she spent time on something like that? The sounds from the kitchen assured him that she was still out there. He quickly opened the lock with the little key and started to page through the diary. Blank and not written in. Not a word on the white pages. He was just about to lock it again when something fell into his hand and he discovered hand-written words on the inside of the cover.