The Golden Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  She rinsed the dishcloth under the tap, then scooped up the soggy cornflakes and crumbs from the drainer with her hand and threw them in the trash. She heard the rustle of Jack’s newspaper behind her back. She shut the lid quietly so as not to disturb him.

  STOCKHOLM, SUMMER 2001

  VIKTOR BLOM HAD A PALE-BROWN birthmark on the back of his neck, and his broad back was very suntanned. He was sleeping soundly, giving me all the time in the world to look at both him and the room we were lying in. The windows had no curtains, and apart from the double bed the only furniture was a chair covered with dirty clothes. The sun was forming prisms that danced across the white walls.

  My naked legs were wrapped in a damp, dirty sheet. I kicked it off, then wrapped it around me like a towel and carefully opened the bedroom door. The sparsely furnished apartment that Viktor and Axel were renting for the summer occupied the first two floors of a building on Brantingsgatan in Gärdet. There was a small garden outside, with a table, some wooden chairs, and a black domed barbecue. There was an empty Fanta can on the table, crammed with cigarette butts.

  The sound of loud snoring was coming from Axel’s room. The living room and kitchen were on the ground floor, so I went downstairs, made coffee, and unearthed my cigarettes from my bag, which lay discarded on the hall floor. Then I went outside with my coffee and cigarettes and sat on a chair in the garden.

  Tessin Park lay spread out before me. The sun was low in the sky, making me squint.

  I didn’t want to be clingy and annoying. That business of Viktor saying he’d like me to come to their party was probably just talk. To get me into bed. I’d heard far grander promises in bars in the past. Viktor seemed to have had fun with me. I’d certainly had fun with him. But it was best to leave it at that. I stubbed the cigarette out in the Fanta can and stood up to go and find my clothes. Then the door opened behind me.

  “There you are,” Viktor said sleepily. “Have you got a cigarette?”

  I passed him one. He sat down on the chair I had been sitting in and blinked in the sunlight. I sat down next to him.

  “I was about to go,” I said.

  I was expecting to see a look of relief on his face. Gratitude that I wasn’t going to be one of those clingy girls, the sort who didn’t understand when it was time to leave.

  But Viktor surprised me.

  “Go?” he exclaimed. “Why?”

  “I don’t live here, do I?”

  “So?”

  “You and Axel won’t want me hanging about here, will you? I get that it was a one-off and you’ve got your own stuff to do. I don’t want to be the annoying girl who doesn’t know when it’s time to leave.”

  Viktor looked away and gazed out across Tessin Park. I resisted the urge to stroke the stubble on his shaved head. There was a photograph in the bedroom that showed him with thick, curly fair hair. He sat there in silence and for a while I thought I had seen through him. That he was as easy to read as every other guy.

  Eventually he said, “I don’t know how guys usually treat you, what things are like where you come from, but I think you’re great. You’re different, genuine. Obviously you can leave if you want to, but I’d really like it if you stayed for a while. I thought I’d go and get us some juice and croissants from the 7-Eleven, then do a bit of sunbathing and order a pizza.”

  “Okay.” My answer came without me having time to think about it.

  A wasp flew past my face. I waved it away, although I’d never been frightened of wasps. There were far worse things to be frightened of.

  “ ‘Okay’? Seriously, what kind of guys do you normally hook up with?”

  “Back home the guys are…I don’t know. They usually want you to have sex and then leave, pretty much. They have their own stuff to be getting on with the next day.”

  I didn’t mention the way they looked at you. The things they said. The shame I had to carry, even though it belonged to someone else. Giving my body to someone who wanted it counted as nothing compared to all the rest of it.

  Viktor shaded his eyes with his hand.

  “How long have you lived in Stockholm?”

  “One month.”

  “Welcome.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Around seven o’clock people started to show up in the apartment. Most of them were a few years older than me, and I felt a bit out of place at first. Viktor disappeared in the crowd and I ended up by the table in the garden with Axel. I sipped a drink and smoked while he told stories that made me roar with laughter, about his Interrail trip with Viktor the previous summer. Two girls came out, and introduced themselves as Julia and Sara. Julia had long brown hair and green eyes, and was wearing a beautiful, dark-blue dress. Sara had a denim skirt and white vest, and her blond hair was pulled into a loose knot.

  “I’m so fucking stressed about the autumn,” Julia said, leaning forward. “I want to give up, or at least take a year’s sabbatical, but Dad won’t let me. He loses it whenever I try to raise the subject. God, I hate Lund.”

  “You poor thing,” Sara said, blowing smoke rings.

  “I wish I’d had the grades to get into the School of Economics instead. But what the hell—let’s forget all that and have some fun tonight.”

  Julia straightened up and looked at me as if she’d only just noticed I was there.

  “What do you do?”

  I cleared my throat. Blew out some smoke. I had no inclination to discuss my plans for the future with someone I’d known all of five minutes.

  “I’m not doing much at the moment.”

  “That sounds good. You want to be a student?”

  I had applied to various colleges in Stockholm, so I nodded. And thought about my bank account, which was starting to look alarmingly empty.

  “I’m thinking about it. But it’s a while before they let you know,” I said.

  “How do you know Axel?”

  This from the other girl, Sara, nodding in his direction.

  “I met Viktor, if you know him, at Buddha Bar yesterday.”

  “Did you sleep here?”

  I nodded.

  They finished their cigarettes in silence before getting to their feet.

  “Julia used to go out with Viktor,” Axel said once they had gone.

  “Used to?”

  “Until about three months ago, something like that. This is the first time they’ve met since she got home from Lund.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Julia and Sara came along to Buddha Bar. They stuck close to Viktor and kept glaring sullenly at me. The more alcohol I got inside me, the more irritated I became.

  Viktor took a break from his decks and came over to me and Axel. I put my arms around him as I met Julia’s narrowed eyes. He kissed me and I bit his bottom lip gently. When it was time for him to go back to the DJ’s booth he asked if I wanted to go with him. He led me through the crowd with his arm around my waist. It took a while because people kept stopping him to talk. We got there in the end. Viktor put his headphones on, adjusted some controls, and started to sway in time to the music.

  I did the same. Then I took one of his hands, slipped it under my dress, and put it between my legs. I wasn’t wearing any underpants.

  “Do you want to come back to mine tonight?” he asked.

  “Yes. If you’d like me to?”

  He gave me an intense look that made any spoken answer unnecessary.

  “What are we going to do?” I teased.

  Viktor laughed and changed track.

  It was a wonderful feeling. I was free. Free to do whatever I wanted. To be whoever I wanted. Without the past messing up everything around me, inside me. Without all the people who had been pulling me down. I was slowly turning myself into someone else, little by lit
tle.

  I looked out across the dancing throng, shut my eyes, and thought about what life was like in Fjällbacka. All the curious glances that followed me wherever I went, the mixture of fascination and sympathy, sticky, heavy, suffocating. No one knew here. No one stared here. My place was here. In Stockholm.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I yelled.

  “Okay. I finish in ten minutes. Shall we meet up by the door?”

  I nodded and made my way to the lavatory. I stood in the line, smiling to myself about the fact that Viktor belonged to me, no one else. The music from the dance floor thudded in the distance, making the mirror on the wall vibrate.

  I looked at my reflection. My hair was blonder than usual, and I felt tanned and fresh. I thought I looked older than I had only a few weeks ago. By the basins a girl aimed a pink can of hairspray at her head. The sweet scent caught in my nose, a refreshing contrast to the smell of sweat, alcohol, and smoky clothes.

  The door opened behind me and the music got briefly louder.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned. I caught sight of Julia before the drink came flying at me. An ice cube hit me on the forehead, fell to the floor, and bounced away. My eyes stung and I blinked hard with surprise and pain.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted, stepping back.

  “You little slut,” Julia said before turning on her heel and stalking out.

  Some other girls laughed. I wiped myself with a paper towel. I felt the humiliation like insects crawling inside me. I felt like my old self again. The one who shrank away and hid in the shadows. The one who cowered under the weight of far too many secrets.

  Then I straightened up and looked at myself in the mirror. Never again.

  * * *

  • • •

  One week later I got a letter. I had been accepted to do an MBA at the Stockholm School of Economics. I got a copy of the letter, found out what Julia’s address was, bought an envelope, and put the copy of the letter inside with a Polaroid photograph Viktor had taken, of me on all fours and Viktor behind me, his face contorted with pleasure. When I dropped the envelope in Julia’s family’s mailbox I had only one thought in my head. I was never going to let anyone humiliate me again.

  One month later I registered at the School of Economics under my middle name, Faye, after the author of my mom’s favorite book. Matilda no longer existed.

  A waiter hurried past behind Faye’s back, presumably heading toward one of the large-gutted men sitting a few tables away. They always rushed to serve men like that. Which was hardly surprising, given that they all looked like they were one steak away from a heart attack.

  She looked at Alice, who had just sat down opposite her. When Faye had first gotten to know her and the upper-class women in her circle, she had called them the geese, because their main purpose was to lay eggs for their men. They were supposed to focus on giving birth to heirs and then protect their pampered offspring under their Gucci-clad wings. Then, when the kids started at their carefully selected preschools, it was time to fill the days with appropriate interests. Yoga. Getting their nails done. Organizing dinner parties. Making sure the maid was doing her job properly. Keeping the flotilla of nannies and babysitters under control. Keeping an eye on their own weight. Or lack thereof. Be wet and horny. And, most crucial: learning to turn a blind eye whenever their husbands came home from a late “business dinner” with their shirts badly tucked in.

  At first she had mocked them. For their lack of general knowledge, their lack of interest in the genuinely important things in life, their ambitions, which didn’t stretch further than the latest design of Valentino’s Rockstud bag and the choice between Saint Moritz or the Maldives for the half-term holiday. But Jack had wanted her to “maintain good relations” with them. Particularly with Henrik’s wife, Alice. So now she met the geese on a regular basis.

  Neither Faye nor Alice felt any particular warmth toward the other. But whether they liked it or not they were bound together by their husbands’ business. By their husbands’ “remarkable friendship,” as one business magazine had once described it.

  Alice Bergendahl was thirty-one, slightly younger than Faye. She had very prominent cheekbones, the waist of a ten-year-old, and legs like Heidi fucking Klum on stilts. And had also given birth to two beautiful, perfectly formed children. Probably with a smile on her face throughout the births. And between the contractions she had probably kept herself busy knitting a pretty bonnet for the miracle that was splitting her perfumed muff into two perfect parts. Because Alice Bergendahl wasn’t just beautiful, girlish, thin, and perfumed. She was creative and artistic as well, she had lovely little exhibitions that all the geese were expected to attend with their husbands, or else they would find themselves on Alice’s blacklist. Which was upper-class Stockholm’s equivalent of Guantánamo.

  Alice had arrived at Riche in the company of another long-legged woman called Iris, who was married to a financier, Jesper, who traded in shares. A pauper in comparison, but a possible up-and-comer, and Iris had some sort of provisional status in Alice’s entourage until Jesper’s success was assured. Her fate would probably be decided within the next couple of months.

  They ordered salad—naturally only a small portion each—and three glasses of cava. They ate in dainty mouthfuls and smiled at one another as they worked their way through their children. Which was the only thing they talked about. Apart from their husbands.

  “Jesper’s taking the Easter holiday off,” Iris said. “Can you imagine? We’ve been married four years and he’s never taken more than a week’s holiday per year. But he came home the other day and surprised me by saying he’d booked a trip to the Seychelles.”

  Faye felt a pang of envy. She swallowed it with a sip of cava.

  “That’s wonderful,” she said.

  She wondered quietly to herself what Jesper had done to need to salve his conscience that way.

  The restaurant was full. Tourists at the window tables, delighted to have gotten in. Shopping bags stuffed under the tables. They did their best to look nonchalant, but between mouthfuls they stared around them, wide-eyed. If they caught sight of someone noteworthy they leaned over their plates and whispered to one another, impressed by whichever television presenters, artists, and politicians were in the room. They didn’t recognize the people with real power. The ones who pulled the strings behind the scenes. But Faye knew exactly who they were.

  “The Seychelles are lovely,” Alice said. “So exotic, somehow. What’s the security situation like now? There’s been a bit of…trouble there.”

  “Are the Seychelles in the Middle East?” Iris asked uncertainly as she pushed a piece of avocado around her plate.

  Faye drank some cava to stop herself from laughing.

  “Somewhere near there, surely? It’s probably ISIS and all that.”

  Alice’s nose wrinkled at the bubbling noise coming from Faye’s throat.

  “It’s bound to be fine,” Iris said, now pushing half an egg with her fork. “Jesper would never expose me and little Orvar to any danger.”

  Little Orvar? Why did people give their children names that were more suited to syphilitic pirates in the eighteenth century? Okay, Faye had to admit that Julienne was pretty pretentious. But the name had been Jack’s suggestion. It sounded nice and would work internationally. It was vital to establish your child’s global currency even when it was in the womb. They seemed to have forgotten that bit with Orvar, but it could always be remedied later. The other month a Sixten at Julienne’s preschool had suddenly turned into an Henri. The three-year-old must have been utterly baffled, but you couldn’t let yourself be distracted by something like that if you wanted the boy to hold his own in an international context.

  Faye drank the last of her wine and discreetly gestured to the waiter for a refill.

  “No, obviously he wouldn’t put you in
any danger,” Alice said, chewing seductively on a lettuce leaf.

  But because she had read in a health magazine that you should chew each mouthful at least thirty times, the seductive look soon gave way to that of a ruminating cow. Faye looked down at her own plate gloomily. She had devoured her minute portion and was still ravenous. She looked longingly at the food that was being delivered to the next table. Steak. Meatballs. Pasta. The dishes were placed before the portly, besuited gentlemen. The sort who could afford a bit of surplus weight. Poor men were fat, but rich men had substance. She tore her eyes from the meatballs. When you were in Alice’s company, you didn’t eat meatballs with mashed potatoes and cream sauce.

  “Wouldn’t it do you good to be kidnapped for a few weeks, Iris?” Faye said. “The diet would be full of super-foods. If you asked them nicely, they could probably get hold of a yoga mat for you too.”

  She looked at Iris’s untouched salad.

  “You can’t make jokes about a thing like that. That’s awful!”

  Alice shook her head and Faye sighed.

  “The Seychelles are a group of islands in the Indian Ocean. We’re closer to the Middle East here than they are.”

  A silence followed. Iris and Alice concentrated on their salads, Faye on the cava that was in danger of running out again.

  “Do you see who that is?” Iris whispered, leaning forward with her eyes on the door.

  Faye tried to work out who she meant.

  “There. The one who just came in. Talking to the bartender.”

  Now Faye saw him. The singer, John Descentis. Jack’s favorite. He’d been on the ropes for a few years, and nowadays mostly featured in the gossip columns in connection with failed relationships, bankruptcy, and embarrassing B-list parties. He and his partner, a pretty girl in her mid-twenties with a leather jacket and dyed black hair, were shown to a table opposite theirs.