The Golden Cage

by Camilla Lackberg

  “Julienne wants to play soccer,” Faye said.

  “Out of the question. Have you seen the legs of girls who play soccer? Like tree trunks. And do you want her playing with a load of kids from the suburbs, with dads yelling all sorts of foul language at the referee?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Julienne won’t play soccer.”

  Faye put her hand on his chest and pressed herself against him. She ran her hand down his stomach, toward his groin.

  Jack looked at her in surprise.

  “Stop it.”

  In the shiny glass of the oven door she saw the outline of her pale, pudgy arm. No wonder Jack didn’t want to touch her. She had let herself go for far too long.

  Faye went and locked herself in the bathroom. She took all her clothes off and inspected her body from different angles. Her breasts looked depressing. Like tulips that had drooped in a vase. Should she talk to Jack about breast enlargement? She knew Alice had had it done. It was all a matter of doing it tastefully. Not tacky. No beach balls.

  It had been a long time since her stomach had been flat, and her legs were wobbly and pale. When she tensed her buttocks, little pits appeared on her skin. Like the surface of the moon.

  She raised her eyes. Her face looked hollow-eyed and greasy. There was no glow to her skin or hair, and she couldn’t be said to have an actual hairstyle anymore. When she looked closer at the mirror she noticed a few coarse gray hairs. She quickly plucked them out and flushed them away.

  As long as he hadn’t already started to feel ashamed of her. Did he complain to his friends? Had they been teasing him? From now on she was going to eat healthily and exercise once—no, twice a day. No more wine, no fancy dinners, no snacks in the evening while she waited for Jack to come home.

  He knocked on the door.

  “Are you coming out anytime soon?”

  She started.

  “In a moment, darling,” she croaked in a thick voice.

  He didn’t move, and she began to feel nervous.

  “I know I’ve been busy lately,” he said. “What do you say to going out for dinner on Wednesday? Just you and me?”

  Faye’s eyes filled with tears as she stood there naked in the bathroom. She quickly put her clothes back on. Her Jack. Her beloved, darling Jack.

  She unlocked the door.

  “I’d love to, darling.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Two hours later Faye was standing in front of the meat counter in the ICA supermarket at Karlaplan, looking for something nice for lunch. Everything was the same as usual. The inflated prices. The yelling children and endless rumbling of the chiller units’ fans. The smell of expensive jackets and real fur coats, no politically correct synthetics. The only synthetic things anyone around here might consent to wear would be something by Stella McCartney. If it was expensive enough.

  Faye picked up a pack of duck breasts and headed toward the registers. She picked the one where Max was working. He usually worked Sundays.

  She looked at Max’s muscular arms as he scanned the shopping of the people ahead of her in the line. He must have felt her staring at him, because he suddenly turned and smiled at her.

  When it was Faye’s turn his smile grew broader. His eyes sparkled.

  “And how’s the most beautiful woman in Stockholm today?”

  Faye’s cheeks flushed. She understood that he said the same thing to most of his female customers, but still. He saw her.

  She walked out of the shop with a lighter step.

  When she got home she quickly put the food away. It was never a good idea to leave it out for long.

  “Did you go out like that?”

  Faye turned. Jack was standing in the doorway. He was frowning.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jack gestured toward her clothes.

  “You can’t go out shopping in the clothes you wear at home. What if you ran into someone we know?”

  Faye shut the fridge door.

  “Max at the checkout seemed to like it. He said I was the most beautiful woman in Stockholm.”

  Jack’s jaw tensed. Faye realized she’d made a mistake. She ought to know she shouldn’t joke with Jack about that sort of thing.

  “You flirt with people working at cash registers?”

  “No, I don’t flirt. I love you, Jack, you know that, but I can hardly help it if someone gives me a compliment.”

  Jack snorted.

  Faye watched as he walked stiffly in the direction of his study. Despite the knot in her stomach, she felt oddly pleased at his outburst. He cares, she thought. He really does care.

  * * *

  • • •

  Julienne was asleep. Faye and Jack were lying in bed. He had his laptop on his stomach and she was watching a repeat on Channel 5.

  “Do you want me to turn it down?”

  Jack adjusted his glasses and tilted the screen so he could see the television.

  “No, don’t bother,” he said distractedly.

  The female presenter was introducing one of her guests, her hands full of prompt cards.

  “Is that Lisa Jakobsson?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “She used to be pretty. She’s gotten old. And fat.”

  Jack raised the screen of his laptop again.

  After he had fallen asleep Faye cupped her hand around the screen of her iPhone and went onto Wikipedia. Lisa Jakobsson was two years younger than her.

  STOCKHOLM, AUGUST 2001

  THE INITIATION RITUAL at the School of Economics was a secret, no one was allowed to tell any of the staff how the first-years were humiliated and loaded with drink. Participation was voluntary, but there wasn’t any choice for me. I had made up my mind to do whatever it took to be accepted as one of the gang, to belong. And now that I was a blank slate, I finally had the chance to do that.

  There were fifteen of us, all girls, gathered on a small meadow beside the water in Haga Park. Roughly the same number of second-years had made their way there. All of them boys. They had several large IKEA bags with them, full of props. They lined us up and inspected each of us thoroughly. Told us to take off everything except our underwear and gave us black garbage bags with arm and neck holes to pull over our heads. Then we had to drink two shots of vodka. Beside me stood a tall, curvy girl with freckles and unbrushed red hair.

  “Down on your knees!” called the unofficial leader of the second-years, Mikael, son of a famous property magnate.

  He had a blond bob and piggy eyes, and seemed accustomed to being obeyed. We hurried to do as he said.

  “Good,” he said. He held up a brown egg. “The egg yolk is to be passed from mouth to mouth, along the line, then back again. And when it gets back to the first person, she has to swallow it. That’s you. What’s your name?”

  Everyone in the line turned to see who had drawn the short straw.

  “Chris,” the girl next to me said.

  Mikael cracked the egg on his knee, tipped the white onto the grass, and held the shell containing the yolk out to Chris. She took it, tipped the yolk into her mouth without hesitation, and leaned toward me. Our lips met and the boys cheered. The yolk was transferred and I tried to stop myself gagging. I turned to my left and repeated the procedure with the next girl.

  “Are you really going to swallow it?” I asked Chris.

  She shrugged.

  “I’m from Sollentuna. I’ve swallowed worse.”

  I giggled. Her face remained impassive.

  “Are you going to the party?”

  “Yes. Despite the fact I can’t stand these power-crazed, spoiled little boys. They’re just making the most of their opportunity to exploit nervous, impressionable girls. These geniuses are the dregs of the school. That�
��s why this initiation’s taking place so early in the term, before we have time to see what losers they are. Two weeks from now none of these girls will even look at them.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I want to sort the wheat from the chaff, so I know who they are and can avoid them,” she said bluntly. “You’ve got nice lips, by the way. If I get drunk later and can’t find anyone to make out with, I’ll come and find you.”

  I found myself hoping she would.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a variety of alcohol-fueled activities that all seemed designed to get the guys horny. They tipped fermented herring juice on our hair so we had to go into the water in our underwear. They drew big zeroes on the foreheads of girls who lost games, and the drunkest girls were given the honor of having the boys autograph their breasts, lower back, and buttocks. More and more of us stumbled off to throw up, but they kept plying us with drinks.

  We only stopped when it got dark. We took one last dip, and our clothes were given back. They’d gotten hold of an old bus to drive us to the actual party, it was already half full of first-years who’d refused to take part in the initiation.

  When we got on they held their noses. We stank of vomit, seawater, and fermented herring. And alcohol. Two of the girls had to be carried on board and were laid out on the floor in the aisle. One girl’s bra had slipped down, revealing a chalk-white breast and dark nipple. The boys laughed and pointed. One of them leaped out of his seat, clutching a digital camera. Chris reacted like lightning. She shot her arm out, blocking his path, then stood up to stop him.

  “And where do you think you’re going, little fellow?”

  “She won’t care,” he slurred. “She’s asleep. Get out of the way.”

  Chris folded her arms and snorted. I noticed that she had seaweed in her hair, but she had an air of obvious authority. She stood there as solid as a tree even though the bus was lurching and bouncing. As if her feet had grown into the floor of the bus. The guy, who was a head taller than her, started to look uncertain.

  “Don’t be such a bore, it’s only a fucking joke. What are you, some sort of feminist?” he said, spitting the word feminist like it was an obscenity and grinning at her.

  Chris didn’t move. Everyone was staring at them now.

  “Fine, I won’t bother.”

  He laughed and tried to pretend he hadn’t just gone one round against a girl and lost.

  “Where are you going?” Chris called after him as he started to lumber back down the bus.

  I held my breath. Wasn’t she finished with him yet?

  “To sit down,” he said uncertainly.

  “Forget it. Come back here.”

  He turned and took a few unwilling steps toward her.

  “Take your top off,” Chris said.

  “What?” The guy’s eyes opened wide. “I’m not going to do that.”

  He looked around for support, but everyone was too busy enjoying the confrontation.

  “Take your ugly little top off—polo shirts are so 1990—and give it to me. Hurry up, can’t you see she’s freezing?”

  He gave up and did as she asked, then shook his head and went back to his seat. His pink polo shirt had been hiding a pale, pudgy torso and a pair of man boobs, and he didn’t look at all comfortable.

  Chris woke the girl, pulled her arms up, and carefully put the top on her.

  “Give me that,” she said when she sat back down next to me. She drank several gulps of beer.

  “Good work,” I whispered, tucking the bottle between my legs.

  “Thanks. But it was practically an assault to make the poor thing wear such a hideous top,” she muttered.

  After she dropped Julienne off at preschool, Faye wandered aimlessly around Östermalm. No more spending the day sitting at home. She would make sure she kept moving. Burning fat and getting thin. The decay had to be stopped at all costs.

  Her stomach was rumbling unhappily. All she’d had for breakfast was a cup of unsweetened black coffee, so she’d burn more calories during the walk. Images of food flashed through her head like a gastronomic kaleidoscope. If she went home, she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to raid the pantry and stuff herself. She speeded up. She was heading along Karlavägen toward Humlegården. She grimaced when her back started to feel horrible and sweaty. She couldn’t stand perspiration. But, as Alice often said, “Sweat’s just fat crying.” Not that she’d ever seen the tiniest bead of sweat on Alice.

  The nineteenth-century buildings loomed above her, steadfast and immovable. The sky was bright blue and the sun glinted off the freshly fallen snow that hadn’t yet had time to turn gray. In spite of the sweat, she felt more positive than she had for months. Jack’s sudden invitation to go on a date was a turning point. And she was going to make sure it really was a turning point.

  She bore so much of the responsibility for the stagnation of their relationship. It was time to get back to being the person he wanted her to be. This was the dawn of a new era in their marriage.

  She made up her mind once and for all to turn down Chris’s suggestion of a trip together. She was needed at home, and it would be selfish to go off for a pointless weekend away. She was avoiding Chris’s calls, aware of how Chris would react and what she’d say.

  Faye quickened her pace. She thought she could feel the pounds falling off her, step by step, ounce by ounce. The horrible sweat was soaked up by her clothes.

  A group of pupils from Östra Real School were smoking furtively by the wine-red wall. Two girls and two boys. Gray smoke trailed from their mouths and noses when they laughed. They didn’t seem to have a single worry in the world. A few years ago, in a different time, a different life, that could easily have been her, Jack, Henrik, and Chris.

  Jack, the easygoing joker. The carefree golden boy who always had some party invitation burning a hole in his pocket. A black belt in social activities and making people laugh. Henrik was the strategist and thinker. He came from straitened circumstances in one of Stockholm’s suburbs and had his head for learning to thank for the fact that he had gotten out of there. He had studied industrial economics at the Royal Institute of Technology while simultaneously studying at the School of Economics.

  Faye walked past Tösse’s. Pastries, tarts, cinnamon buns, piles of them in the windows. Her mouth started to water and she forced herself to look away. She speeded up. Fled. She took a brief pause at Nybrogatan. Opened the door to Café Mocco and ordered green tea. No sugar. It tasted disgusting and bitter without anything to sweeten it, but she drank it nevertheless because she had read somewhere that green tea helped burn calories. She looked through a pile of magazines and found last week’s Dagens Industri weekend supplement, with Henrik and Jack on the cover. It was a fancy photo shoot. They were sitting on an old-fashioned motorbike and sidecar. Sunglasses and leather jackets. Jack on the bike, Henrik in the sidecar with a vintage leather pilot’s cap on his head. Broad smiles, happy expressions.

  THE BILLION-KRONOR EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was the headline. Faye opened the paper and leafed through to the interview. The reporter, Ivan Uggla, had spent a whole day following them around. It was odd that Jack hadn’t mentioned anything about it to her. He gave a lot of interviews, but rarely on this scale.

  The article opened with Jack in their office on Blasieholmen. He told a story about all the hard work he’d put in to get the company off the ground. He said he had been living in Bergshamra, studying during the day and working on his business plan at night. At first the idea was for Compare to be a voracious telemarketing operation.

  “If we were going to succeed, I knew I would have to sacrifice everything for the business and Henrik. There was no time, no money for anything but work, work, and more work, both with Compare, and to earn a living. If you want to win big, you have to play for high stakes.”

  The truth was that J
ack hadn’t had to work at all except on Compare, because she had abandoned her studies to support him, and spent her days wiping tables at the Café Madeleine. But they had come up with this PR strategy together. For the good of the business.

  The interview went on in much the same vein. In 2005 Compare switched from being the country’s most successful telemarketing business to an investment company. They bought smaller businesses, made them more efficient, and sold them for huge profits. Often they broke them up and sold the parts for more than the whole was worth. That meant they had trodden on a fair few toes over the years, but their profits spoke for themselves, and in a world where results were the only thing that mattered, Jack Adelheim and Henrik Bergendahl were declared geniuses by a unanimous business community.

  Some time later they sold off almost everything in order to invest in electricity suppliers and businesses in the service sector: private homes for the elderly, sheltered housing, and schools. With the same result. Everything Jack and Henrik touched seemed to turn to gold, and everyone wanted to be associated with the young Midases. They kept the name from the early years, the one Faye had come up with. You didn’t change the basics when the dice kept landing on six.

  Those early years, when Faye had supported Jack while simultaneously helping lay the foundations for Compare, had been erased. Sometimes she wondered if Jack and Henrik even remembered that, or if they had come to believe in their revised version of the past. Her part in the story didn’t fit the media image of the two young, daring, indomitable entrepreneurs, Jack and Henrik. The backstory dynamic was also so perfect that she had actually pointed it out at the time. Jack with his aristocratic pedigree, his good looks, and his dandyish style, Henrik from a working-class family in the suburbs, handsome in a rougher way, the personification of a man who had worked his way to the top. The perfect combination. It made sense for Faye to stay in the background. So as not to complicate the simple media message.

  The reporter had gone for a morning run on Djurgården with Jack. Ivan Uggla gave an enthusiastic account of how many miles they had run. And as they ran Jack had laughed off speculation that Compare was about to have an initial public offering.