Betrayal
Betrayal
Karin Alvtegen
In the trees at the edge of her garden, a figure lurks in the dark.
In the hospital, Jonas watches over his girlfriend, who is in a coma. But what, or who, has put her there?
Through a chance meeting, Eva and Jonas's lives will become disturbingly entwined. And Eva will discover that sometimes, in order to survive, you must betray the ones you love the most . . .
BETRAYAL
KARIN ALVTEGEN is one of Scandinavia’s most acclaimed and bestselling crime writers. She was born in Jönköping, Sweden, in 1965 and had a varied career, including work in set design for film and stage, before she started to write. She won Sweden’s most prestigious crime novel award, the Glass Key, for Missing. Her novel Shadow was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger 2009. She is the great-niece of Astrid Lindgren (author of the Pippi Longstocking series), and lives in Stockholm. Her books have been translated into 27 languages.
STEVEN T. MURRAY has been translating from Nordic languages for over thirty years. He is the prize-winning translator of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander books.
Also by Karin Alvtegen
Missing
Shame
Shadow
KARIN
ALVTEGEN
BETRAYAL
First published in Great Britain in 2005 by
Originally published in Sweden as Svek in 2003 by
English translation copyright © Steven T. Murray, 2005
‘I don’t know.’
Three words.
Each by itself or in some other context completely harmless. Utterly without intrinsic gravity. Merely a statement that he was not sure and therefore chose not to reply.
I don’t know.
Three words.
As an answer to the question she had just asked it was a threat to her entire existence. A sudden chasm that opened in the newly polished parquet living-room floor.
She hadn’t actually asked the question, she had only spoken the words to make him understand how worried she was. If she asked the question about the unthinkable, then things could only be better afterwards. A shared turning point. The past year had been an eternal struggle, and her question was a way of talking about the fact that she couldn’t cope with being strong any longer, couldn’t carry the whole burden by herself. She needed his help.
He had given the wrong answer.
Used three words that she had never perceived as an option.
‘Do you mean that you’re actually questioning our future together?’
I don’t know.
There was no follow-up question; his reply eradicated in one single instant all the words she had ever learned. Her brain was forced to do a 180 and reevaluate everything it had previously known to be beyond all doubt.
The idea that the two of them might not share the future together was not part of her belief system.
Axel, the house, becoming grandma and grandpa together someday.
What words could she possibly find to lead them beyond this moment?
He sat silently on the sofa with his eyes fixed on an American sitcom and his fingers flicking over the remote. Not for an instant had he looked at her since she came into the room, not even when he answered her question. The distance between them was so great that she might not even hear it if he said anything else.
But she did. Clearly and distinctly she heard:
‘Did you buy milk on the way home?’
He didn’t look at her this time either. Only wondered if she had bought milk on her way home.
A pressure across her chest. And then that prickling down her left arm that she sometimes got when there wasn’t enough time.
‘Can’t you turn off the TV?’
He looked down at the remote and changed the channel. The traffic report.
All of a sudden she realised that a stranger was sitting on her sofa.
He looked familiar, but she didn’t know him. He reminded her a great deal of the man who was the father of her son and with whom she had once, more than eleven years earlier, promised God to share both good times and bad until death did them part. The man with whom she had paid off that sofa this past year.
It was the future, theirs and Axel’s, that he was calling into question, and he couldn’t even show her the respect to turn off the traffic report and look at her.
She was feeling bad now, sick with dread at the question she would have to ask to be able to breathe again.
She swallowed. How would she dare know?
‘Have you met someone else?’
Finally he looked at her. His gaze was full of accusation but at least he was looking at her.
‘No.’
She closed her eyes. At least there wasn’t another woman. She tried desperately to keep herself afloat on his comforting reply. It was all so inconceivable. The room looked just the way it always did, but everything was suddenly different. She looked at the framed photograph she took last Christmas. Henrik in a Santa Claus cap and an excited Axel in the midst of a colourful pile of Christmas presents. The whole family gathered in her childhood home. Three months ago.
‘How long have you felt this way?’
He was watching TV again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, approximately? Is it two weeks or two years?’
It seemed an eternity before he answered.
‘About a year, I suppose.’
A year. For a year he had gone around questioning their shared future. Without saying a word.
During their vacation last summer when they drove to Italy. During all the dinners with their friends. When he accompanied her on a business trip to London and they made love. The whole time he had been wondering whether he wanted to keep on living with her or not.
She looked at the photograph again. His smiling eyes that met hers through the camera lens. I don’t know if I want you any more, if I still want to live with you.
Why hadn’t he said anything?
‘But why? And how did you think we could work this out?’
He shrugged his shoulders slightly and sighed.
‘We don’t have fun any more.’
She turned and walked towards the bedroom, couldn’t bear to hear any more.
She stood with her back against the closed bedroom door. Axel’s calm, secure breathing. Always in the middle, like a link between them, night after night. An assurance and a commitment that they belonged together forever.
Mother, father, child.
There was no alternative.
We don’t have fun any more.
He was sitting out there on the sofa with her whole life in his hands. What channel would he choose? He had just taken away control over her life; what she wanted didn’t matter, everything was up to him.
Without getting undressed she crawled under the covers, lay down next to the little body and felt the panic grow.
How was she going to resolve this?
And then the numbing weariness. Utterly exhausted from always being the one who took responsibility, who was efficient, who got everything moving and saw to it that what had to be done got done. At the very beginning of their relationship they had assumed their roles. Back then they had laughed at it sometimes, joking about their differences. Over the years the wheel ruts had worn so deep that it was impossible to turn; it was barely possible to get up and look over the edge any longer. She did what had to be done first, and then what she really wanted to do if there was any time left over. He did just the opposite. And by the time he had done what he wanted to do, whatever had to be done was already done. She envied him. She would love to be able to act like that. But then everything would collapse. All she knew was that she felt an indescribable longing for him to take over the helm onc
e in a while. Allow her to sit down for a while so she could rest. Be allowed to lean on him for a while.
Instead he sat out there on their recently paid-off sofa and watched the traffic report and put their shared future into question because he wasn’t having fun anymore. As if she were going around cheering with joy about their life. But at least she tried, they did have a child together, God damn it!
How had it come to this? When did the moment occur? Why hadn’t he told her how he felt? Once they had had a good time together. She had to make him see that things could be like that again, if only they didn’t give up.
But how was she going to cope?
The sound from the TV was turned off. Expectantly she listened to his footsteps approaching the bedroom door. And then the disappointment when without slowing down they continued on towards his office.
There was only one thing she wanted.
Only one thing.
That he would come into the room and hold her and tell her that everything would be back to normal. That they would get through this together, that everything they had succeeded in building up over all these years was worth fighting for. That she didn’t have to worry.
He never came.
He knew it the moment she came into the room. She had been following him through the house in recent months, trying to get a conversation started, but somehow he always managed to evade it. It would be so easy just to keep quiet, keep hiding in the everyday atrophy and avoid taking the step into the abyss.
Now it was too late. Now she was standing there blocking the way into his asylum in the office, and this time he didn’t stand a chance.
How could he ever tell her the truth? What words would he dare use to speak of it? And then that paralysing fear. Fear of what he knew, fear of what it would mean, and fear of her reaction. He wondered if she could hear his heart pounding, how it was trying to fight its way out and flee to avoid being forced to reveal what was hidden inside.
And then her question that started the ball rolling.
‘Do you mean that you’re actually questioning our future together?’
Yes! Yes! Yes!
‘I don’t know.’
He hated the fear, and he hated the fact that she was the one who provoked it. He couldn’t even look at her. He was suddenly struck by the realisation that she disgusted him. Disgusted him because she had stood like a rock by his side the past few years as he slowly sank deeper and deeper into despair. She made everything keep on rolling as usual, as if it made no difference that he scarcely participated any more. Yet all she succeeded in doing was to make him feel like a helpless little boy.
Always so fast. Everything finished and ready before he even managed to see that it needed to be done. Always ready to solve every problem, even those that were none of her concern, before he even had a chance to think about it. Like an impatient steam locomotive she charged ahead, trying to make everything right. But it was not possible to fix everything. The more he tried to demonstrate how distant he felt, the more zealously she made sure it wouldn’t be noticed. And with each day that passed he had grown more conscious that it really didn’t matter what he did. She didn’t need him any more.
Maybe she never had.
He was merely something that had been hooked onto the locomotive for the journey.
Not for one second had she understood how he really felt. That the boredom and predictability were slowly but surely suffocating him. Half his life was gone, and this was how the rest of it was going to look. There would never be anything more than this. The hour had arrived when it was impossible to postpone any longer everything he wanted to do. Everything he had always planned on doing someday. Well, someday was here now. All the dreams and expectations that he had obediently pushed aside were beginning to cry out, asking him more and more urgently what they should do. Should they leave him or did he want them to stay, and, if so, why? Why should they stick around when he didn’t intend to fulfil a single one of them?
He thought about his parents. They sat there in Katrineholm in their house that was all paid off. Everything finished and settled. One evening after another, side by side in their two well-used TV recliners. All conversation had long since stopped. All consideration, all expectation, all respect, everything had slowly but surely died a natural death years ago from lack of nourishment. The only thing remaining was a mutual reproach for all they had missed, all that had been lost to them. The fact that they hadn’t been able to give each other more and that many years ago it was already too late. Twenty metres from their easy chairs were the train tracks, and every hour, year after year, the trains had passed that could have taken them away from there. By now they had come to terms with the fact that their own trains had left long ago, although other trains would continue thundering past, rattling the always sparkling glass in their living-room window. They had never purchased a summer cabin, although the income from the sale of Father’s car dealership would easily have permitted it. They never took a trip. As if a purely physical displacement might pose some kind of threat to their lives. It was a long time since they had managed to get up and drive the hundred kilometres to Stockholm. They hadn’t even come on Axel’s sixth birthday; they just sent a belated birthday card with their signatures and a folded hundred-krona bill. Instead of participating in family gatherings they would stay at home and wallow in their feelings of inferiority, prompted by Eva’s well-to-do parents with their academic degrees and intellectual friends. Imprisoned in their own lives they stayed where they were, bitter and careworn.
As if they had each been permanently taken hostage by the other, terrified of being alone.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her standing motionless in the living room. The sound of the TV came intermittently, like a pulse in synch with his heartbeat.
He felt a desperate need to buy some time, cling to something that was still anchored in his old routines.
‘Did you buy milk on the way home?’
She didn’t answer. Fear throbbed in his stomach. Why hadn’t he just kept his mouth shut?
‘Can’t you turn off the TV?’
His index finger reacted automatically but pressed the wrong button. A second of hesitation and his reptilian brain decided not to try again. The feeling of suddenly not obeying pushed the fear aside. He was the one holding the control.
‘Have you met someone else?’
‘No.’
His lips formed his reply by themselves. Like a projecting rock ledge in the plunge towards the abyss. What was he going to do there? On a ledge halfway between being in one place or the other.
‘How long have you felt this way?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, approximately? Is it two weeks or two years?’
As long as I can remember, it seems like.
‘About a year, I suppose.’
How would he ever dare explain? How would he ever have the courage to take the words in his mouth? What would happen when he told her that for seven months he was somewhere else every second of the day?
With her.
She who had utterly unexpectedly come storming into his heart and given him a reason to want to get up in the morning. Who gave him back his desire and his will. She who opened up all the doors inside him that he had barred shut long ago and who managed to find keys to rooms he didn’t even know existed. Who saw him as he really was, made him want to laugh again, want to live. Who made him feel desirable, intelligent, energetic.
Worth loving.
‘But why? And how did you think we could work this out?’
He didn’t know, didn’t even need to lie. In the bedroom lay his six-year-old son. How could he ever do what he really wanted to do and still be able to look him in the eye again?
And how would he ever be able to look himself in the eye again if he stayed and said no to the enormous love he had found?
Hatred passed through him for a moment. If it weren’t for her standing there a few metres away fro
m him in the living room, then he could . . .
Full of accusations she would succeed in turning all the joy he felt into shame and guilt. Defile it. Make it seem base and ugly.
All he wanted was to be able to feel what it was like to live again.
‘We don’t have fun any more.’
He could hear how stupid that sounded. Fucking shit. She always made him feel inferior.
Her gaze felt like a physical accusation. He couldn’t move.
An eternity passed before she finally gave up and went towards the bedroom.
He leaned back and closed his eyes.
One single thing he wanted.
Only one.
That she would be here with him, hold him tight and say that everything was going to be all right.
For the moment he was saved, but only temporarily.
Starting now, their home was a minefield.
‘Is there anything else you need tonight?’
It was the night nurse standing in the doorway. One hand held a tray of pill cups and her other had a firm grip on the door handle. She looked stressed.
‘No thanks, we’ll be fine now. Isn’t that right, Anna?’
The last dregs of gruel ran through the probe into her stomach, and he stroked her brow lightly. The night nurse hesitated for a moment and gave him a quick smile.
‘Good night, then. And don’t forget that Dr Sahlstedt wants to talk to you before you leave in the morning.’
How could he forget that? It was clear that she didn’t know him.
‘No, I won’t forget.’
She smiled again and closed the door behind her. She was new on the ward and he didn’t know her name. There was a lot of turnover of personnel, and he had given up trying to remember their names. Secretly he was grateful that the hospital was chronically short-staffed. At first his constant presence had aroused irritation among the staff, but for the past year they had shown greater appreciation. Sometimes they even took it for granted, and once when he got stuck in traffic and was delayed, they forgot to change the bulging catheter bag. That made him even more aware that without him she would never get the rehabilitation she needed. If they couldn’t even remember to change the bag.