The Gilded Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘Would you like me to leave you alone so you can get some rest?’ Faye asked gently.

  Chris shook her head. ‘No, not at all. I’m actually too weak to drink, but what the hell, it’s my wedding day. In the bedside table you’ll find a bottle of Jack Daniels, let’s have one last toast, just the two of us.’

  Faye leaned over and opened the cupboard, took out the bottle, unscrewed it and passed the bottle to Chris.

  ‘To us,’ Chris said, holding the bottle up. ‘And to the fact that I’ve never even come close to feeling bitter about it ending this way. How could I, when I’ve been able to live such a wonderful life?’

  She drank a few sips.

  ‘To you, Chris,’ Faye said. ‘The best, most beautiful sister a girl could have.’

  Chris blinked away some tears.

  ‘I need to get myself sorted out, but first tell me how it’s going with Jack.’

  ‘We’ve got fifty-one per cent.’

  ‘So it’s done?’

  Faye nodded. ‘It’s done.’

  Chris took hold of Faye’s arms, her grip was surprisingly strong. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  Chris swallowed several times. ‘I haven’t got either of my parents here, and you mean the world to me, and even if it isn’t a typical Swedish tradition, I was wondering if you … if you’d do me the honour of giving me away to Johan.’

  Faye wrapped her arms around Chris and hugged her as hard as she dared.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  Faye looked out of the window, she could see people moving about on the street below. The city’s nightlife had started to get going.

  She turned back towards the screen again and went through the latest set of results. What was the best way to tell Jack he was being fired? And when? Jack was a liability to the company and needed to be got rid of. Part of her felt like letting Compare collapse, but there were a lot of employees to think about. She had already found a smart businessman who was prepared to buy all her shares at a knock-down price, on condition that the name was changed. That way Compare would still be history.

  Despite all the scandals, Jack persisted in believing, with the obstinacy of a lunatic, that he could cling on regardless. That he was Compare. If only he knew what was coming.

  It turned into a late night. On the way home Faye texted Kerstin and asked if she felt like coming round. They ended pretty much every evening with a glass of wine or two. They were probably borderline alcoholics, but told themselves they were only following the Mediterranean diet and that red wine every day was an integral part of that. Kerstin had said her grandmother used to have a large spoonful of whisky every day, for a bad toe. After that they always joked that they needed a glass of red wine in each leg for the sake of their health.

  ‘I can’t help wondering how Jack’s going to react when he finds out he’s been fired,’ Faye called from the kitchen, where she was getting cheese and biscuits. A decent selection of cheeses was one of the essentials in her fridge.

  Kerstin didn’t answer, but Faye could hear her moving about in the living room. Faye put the cheese on a plate, added some grapes and digestive biscuits and went out into the living room.

  Kerstin was sitting on the sofa staring into space.

  ‘What is it?’

  Faye put the plate down. She sat down beside Kerstin and put her arm round her. She could feel the slender woman shaking.

  ‘He … he …’

  Kerstin couldn’t get the words out, her teeth were chattering too much. Faye stroked her back as anxiety grabbed hold of her. Surely Kerstin wasn’t sick as well? She couldn’t bear to lose her too, not someone else, that would be unbearable. Sometimes she was so frightened of losing Chris that she could hardly breathe, even though the worst was yet to come.

  ‘Ra … Ragnar …’ Kerstin stammered.

  Faye stiffened.

  ‘Ragnar?’

  ‘He … Things have changed. They called from the care home. He … his condition’s improving. They think he might be able to come back home one day if things keep moving in the right direction.’ Kerstin laughed, a shrill, raw laugh. ‘The right direction! They actually said the “right” direction! They have no idea that it’s the wrong direction for me. How could they know that the useless lump they’ve been wiping shit and drool off is a hideous, sadistic bastard who’ll make my life a misery if he ever comes home again? I wish I’d been brave enough, I wish I’d put a pillow over his face and smothered him while I still had the chance …’

  Kerstin was rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped tightly round her. The scars on her back were visible through the thin fabric of her blouse.

  The fury started as a warm glow in Faye’s feet, then spread up through her body until it exploded in her head.

  Kerstin was family to her and Julienne, she was their rock, their lifeline, their warm embrace. No one could be allowed to threaten that. No one could be allowed to threaten her.

  Faye clutched Kerstin to her chest as she wept. The tears soaked up by her cashmere hoodie would soon dry. The darkness was moving inside Faye. There were no tears there.

  The sun was shining, the sky was bright blue, people were laughing, talking, drinking coffee. The buses and underground were running as usual. But in a bed on the top floor of the Karolinska Hospital lay Faye’s best friend, sustained by life-giving tubes and losing the fight she had been doomed to lose from the start.

  Faye got out of the car outside the hospital only a few hours after she had last left it. During her visit the day before Chris had barely been able to speak, her voice had been so fragile, her eyes so tired, her body so weak. The wedding ring she had worn with such pride was far too big for her thin fingers. It fell onto the floor twice while Faye sat there telling her how much she loved her.

  Faye had wept in the car on the way home, realizing that it would soon be over. And when Johan called an hour or so ago to say she should come straight away, she rushed out of the apartment.

  On arriving at the hospital, she hesitated in the entrance, wondering: How do you say goodbye to your best friend? How do you say goodbye to your sister? How the hell are you supposed to do that? She bought some cigarettes and a bar of chocolate and sat down on a bench. Some blue-clad nurses were eating lunch. Talking about their children. Two new parents were carefully carrying a baby towards the car park. They stopped every ten metres, leaning over the carrycot and smiling as they admired the little miracle.

  Faye threw the packet away after two cigarettes, stuck the chocolate in her bag and made her way to the lift.

  ‘Chris is going to die,’ she murmured to herself as the doors closed. ‘Chris is going to die.’

  The corridor was completely silent. Her footsteps echoed. She stopped outside room number eight and knocked before opening the door. Johan looked up as she walked in but didn’t speak. He turned back towards Chris and stroked her hair.

  Faye walked round the bed and stood next to him.

  ‘There’s not long left,’ he said. ‘She’s not responsive at all now, she’s in some sort of coma. It … she’s never going to wake up again. I don’t know what I’m going to do, how am I ever going …?’

  His face contorted. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

  ‘She’s so small, so alone,’ he whispered, wiping his eyes.

  Faye didn’t know what to say. She just put her hand on top of Johan and Chris’s interwoven hands.

  ‘At least she’s not in any pain,’ Johan went on. The words came out jerkily. ‘What will they do with her when she’s gone? I don’t want her to be taken off to the basement like some dead animal and left there all on her own.’

  He fell silent.

  Faye leaned back. Her chair creaked.

  ‘Can I have a few minutes with her on my own?’ she whispered.

  Johan flinched. Then nodded.

  He stood up, put his hand on her shoulder, then walked slowly out of the room. Carefully, as
if she were worried about waking Chris, Faye moved to the chair he had been sitting on. The seat felt warm.

  Faye leaned closer to Chris, her lips nudging her ear.

  ‘It hurts so much, Chris,’ she said, fighting back tears. ‘It hurts so much that I’m going to get old without you. That all those dreams we had, of moving to the Mediterranean, opening a restaurant, sitting outside playing backgammon, getting blue-rinsed hair … that none of that’s going to happen. Right now it feels like I’ll never be happy again. But I promise you that I’ll try. I know you’ll be angry with me if I don’t …’

  She cleared her throat, breathed air into her lungs.

  ‘What I want to say is that I’ll never forget you. Being your friend for the past sixteen years has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m sorry I’ve never told you the truth about who I am. About what I am. I was scared you wouldn’t understand. I should have trusted you. I should have told you everything. But I’m going to tell you now, in case you can hear me …’

  In a whisper she told Chris her secrets. About the accident, about Sebastian, about her mum and dad. About Matilda and the darkness. She didn’t hold anything back.

  When she had finished she stroked Chris’s hair and touched her lips to her cheek. That was her last goodbye.

  She fetched Johan. Then they sat in silence as life left Chris. Seven hours later she drew her last breath.

  When Faye left Chris’s room Johan was still sitting motionless with his forehead on his wife’s cold hand. She took one of the big bouquets of flowers that had filled the room with her. She got in the car, googled an address and started to drive. Her eyes were dry now. There were no tears left. She was empty, dried up. Her secrets were safe with Chris.

  She parked under the shade of a large oak tree in the car park and walked towards the entrance. The door wasn’t locked. She looked around warily. The lobby and corridor were empty. She could hear voices from a room further along the corridor, it sounded like the staff were on a coffee break.

  She silently counted the doors. The third door on the right, Kerstin had said. Without asking why Faye wanted to know. She walked quickly towards it, pushed the door open firmly but silently and stepped inside. She didn’t feel scared. Just empty. She felt the loss of Chris as bluntly as if she’d had one of her arms amputated.

  She had been hiding her face behind the bouquet of flowers in case anyone came into the corridor. She put it down on the chest of drawers to the side of the door. Yellow roses. Very apt. She knew yellow roses signified death, something their sender must not have been aware of.

  She heard deep breathing from the bed. She crept towards the top end. The blinds were closed but faint light was filtering into the room. Ragnar looked weak. Pathetic. But Kerstin had told Faye enough about him for her not to be fooled. He was a bastard. A bastard who didn’t deserve to live, now when Chris’s body was growing cold in another hospital bed.

  Faye reached carefully for a pillow lying a little way down the bed. The sound of loud laughter in the corridor made her start, but it soon faded away. The only sounds were Ragnar’s breathing and the ticking of an old clock.

  She looked around the room with the pillow in her hands. Impersonal. No photographs, no personal belongings. Sun-bleached walls and a tatty plastic rug on the floor. The old man’s smell hung in the air. That stale, slightly cloying smell that clung to old people when they fell ill.

  Slowly she raised the pillow and held it above Ragnar’s face. She felt no uncertainty. No anxiety. He had reached the end of his time on earth. He was nothing but a lump of flesh, dead weight, another evil man who had left women scarred and crying in his wake.

  She leaned forward. Used her whole weight to press the pillow over his face, blocking his mouth and nose. Ragnar jerked a bit when he found he couldn’t breathe. But there was no strength in his movements. Just some feeble twitching in his hands and feet. Faye barely had to exert herself in the end.

  After a while he lay still. No more twitching. No movement. Faye held the pillow in place until she was quite certain Kerstin’s husband was dead. Then she put the pillow down on the bed, picked up the bouquet of yellow roses and crept cautiously out.

  Only when she was in her car driving back to the city did her tears for Chris start to flow.

  Fjällbacka – then

  I looked at the furrows on the policeman’s face. His expression was one of sympathy, but he wasn’t seeing me, not the real me. He saw a gangly teenager who had lost her brother and now probably her mother as well. I could tell he wanted to put his hand on top of mine as we sat there at the kitchen table, and was grateful that he didn’t. I’ve never liked being touched by strangers.

  I had called the police at five o’clock in the morning and they took Dad away an hour or so later. I was so tired I felt like laying my head on the tabletop and shutting my eyes.

  ‘When did the noise stop?’

  I forced myself to stay awake, to listen to his questions. To provide whatever answers I needed to.

  ‘I don’t know, sometime around three, maybe? I’m not sure, though.’

  ‘Why did you get up so early?’

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘I always get up early. And I … I realized that something had happened … Mum would never leave the house as early as that.’

  He nodded seriously. Again with that look that told me he wanted to comfort me. I hoped he would continue to resist the urge.

  I didn’t need comforting. They had taken Dad away.

  ‘We’re still looking, but I’m afraid we’re very concerned that something may have happened to your mum. There’s some evidence to suggest that. And from what I understand, your dad has a history of … violence.’

  I had to make an effort not to laugh. Not because there was anything remotely funny about the situation, but because it was so absurd. A history of violence. Such a bloodless phrase, such a concise summary of the years of terror within these walls. A history of violence. Yes, that was one way of putting it.

  I knew what they wanted, though, so I just nodded.

  ‘There’s still a chance that we might find her,’ the policeman said. ‘Unharmed.’

  And now it came. The hand on my hand. Sympathetic. Warm. How little he knew. How little he understood. I had to make a real effort not to snatch my hand away.

  The weeks passed. The newspapers were told that Jack had been fired. The news that the company had a new owner who was promising to get to grips with things and conduct a thorough ethical review of the business meant that Compare’s shares had risen to more normal levels again, while Jack sank ever deeper and seemed completely lost. It was as if time had suddenly decided to intervene in Jack’s life: he aged, his hair turned grey quicker than he could dye it, and his movements became slower, wearier.

  He tried to put a brave face on things. After all, he was still a multi-millionaire. He assured the business press that he would soon be back. But he would call Faye at night, clearly drunk, babbling about the old days. About the people he had let down, about Chris, about all the sacrifices he’d made.

  Faye managed to show sympathy but thought he was pathetic. She detested weakness, and he was the one who had taught her that. Jack’s meltdown merely made it easier to crush him.

  He broke off his friendship with Henrik because he believed his friend had betrayed him by remaining on the board of Compare. Neither Henrik, Jack or anyone else on the board had any idea that she was the new majority shareholder in Compare because she only communicated with them via her British solicitors.

  It was time to take the final step. It was Ylva’s turn now.

  Her tears for Chris were gone. It was strange how quickly things came to seem normal. She thought about her, missed her every day, every hour, but she had accepted the fact that she was gone. Accepted that nothing was going to bring Chris back.

  Maybe Chris would have tried to stop her if she’d known what Faye was planning. Now she’d never know. />
  Jack was standing outside the door when Faye and Julienne came home with the groceries. When she texted that afternoon to ask if he’d like to come over he had accepted almost instantly.

  ‘Hello, my darlings,’ Jack said, clumsily wrapping one arm around Julienne. ‘I thought you were two angels walking towards me.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ Faye said as he pecked her cheek.

  Close up she could smell the drink on him.

  He smiled dumbly at her.

  ‘What have you got there, then?’

  He pointed at the bags.

  ‘I thought I’d make my bolognese,’ she said.

  ‘Great!’ he exclaimed, taking the bags from her.

  He slung Julienne’s rucksack over his shoulder and held the door open.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Faye asked as she unlocked the door to the apartment.

  Jack was swaying slightly.

  ‘Oh, fine.’

  ‘And Ylva? She must be due any day now? Are you looking forward to it?’

  Faye knew he hated talking about Ylva.

  ‘She’s fine, I guess. She’s gone to stay with her parents, so I’m footloose and fancy free. Your text came at just the right time.’

  She started to unpack the bags on the island unit.

  ‘You didn’t say if you’re looking forward to the baby’s arrival.’

  ‘I think you know my feelings about that. I’ll love the child, obviously, but I … I know who my family are. My real family.’

  She felt like hitting him, but instead took a deep breath and smiled coquettishly.

  ‘So the grass wasn’t greener on the other side?’

  ‘No, that’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ she said as she started to brown the mince. ‘Now that you haven’t got Compare?’

  Jack opened the fridge, found a carrot, rinsed it and stuck it in his mouth.

  ‘No need to worry, people know what I’m capable of. By the way, that campaign you’re running …’

  ‘Oh?’