The Gilded Cage Read online

  She gestured with her arm, almost spilling red wine on the white sofa.

  Faye couldn’t take her eyes off her.

  All of Jack’s stories about Henrik’s affairs, how had she ever thought they were funny? She had never imagined that Alice knew about them. Poor, beautiful Alice, who had given away her rights.

  ‘Alice, I …’ Her conscience was throbbing behind her temples.

  ‘Don’t. I know what’s been going on. And I’m sure you know too.’ Alice shrugged. ‘Men are men. But I’m the one he comes home to afterwards. The one he sleeps next to, the one he eats breakfast with. Our children are the ones he plays with. I know he loves me. In his own way. I’m the mother of his children. To be honest, it’s not a problem for me any more. I … I’ve got used to it.’

  She looked out through the glass at the dark water.

  ‘I could never manage that,’ Faye said.

  The warmth in her stomach. Jack wasn’t like Henrik. And she wasn’t like Alice.

  Alice turned towards her.

  ‘But, Faye, he …’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ Faye said, so loudly that Alice flinched. ‘I know that plenty of the men we know are unfaithful. The women too, come to that. If you’re OK with that, good for you. But Jack and I are soulmates! We’ve built up so much together. If you ever try to insinuate otherwise, I’ll destroy everything you have! Understand?’

  The frightened look in Alice’s eyes forced Faye to control her anger. She couldn’t let Alice know who she really was. Who she had been.

  She got to her feet, swaying badly.

  ‘Thanks for a lovely evening. We’re going home now.’

  When the front door closed behind her and Julienne, Faye turned round and looked through the window beside the door. Alice was still sitting on the sofa, staring out at the water.

  Stockholm, September 2001

  In the taxi from Arlanda I prepared myself for the possibility that Jack would disappear and life would go back to normal. Happiness only came to me in small doses. I tried to convince myself that I was satisfied with what I’d had as the taxi raced towards Stockholm.

  But Jack took my hand in his as the northern suburbs rushed past outside the windows.

  ‘What are you going to do today?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  We passed Järva krog and the taxi slowed down as we hit the city traffic. I didn’t care. Quite the reverse.

  ‘Me neither. Shall we go out and grab a beer?’

  So we did. And that night I slept in Jack’s one-room flat on Pontonjärsgatan on Kungsholmen.

  We spent the whole of the following morning in bed, until lunchtime. Talking, watching films, making love. But that afternoon my conscience got the better of me and I went out onto the balcony to study. The weekend in Barcelona had been wonderful, but I had a lot to catch up on.

  Suddenly I heard a cry from the sofa where Jack was watching the news.

  ‘What is it?’ I called, but he didn’t answer.

  I closed my book and went back inside.

  Jack was sitting motionless in front of the screen. His face was drained of colour.

  The images being broadcast on CNN were worse than anything I’d ever seen. The planes. The exploding skyscrapers. Bodies fallings hundreds of metres. People jumping. People wandering the streets of Manhattan, bloody and covered with dust.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I stared at the screen in disbelief.

  Jack looked up at me with tears in his eyes.

  ‘A plane flew into the World Trade Centre. At first everyone thought it was an accident, then suddenly another plane flew into the other tower. More planes have been hijacked. It looks like a terrorist attack.’

  ‘Terrorists?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The situation in the studio was confused. We sat in front of the TV as if we’d been hypnotized. Numbed by sensory overload, panic. The unknown. The utterly unpredictable.

  Jack got up and locked the front door. Fetched a bottle of whisky and two glasses. When the towers fell, one after the other, we wept. The desolation, all the death, was such a contrast to our own happiness.

  Suddenly I knew that I needed to be close to Jack, feel his strength, know that he would protect me. My scars were safe in his hands. He didn’t know they were there, but that didn’t matter. His presence soothed me anyway. It was as if his own scars fitted into mine.

  All at once I understood the baby-boom of the 1940s. That men and women in times of crisis seek out comfort, they are drawn to instinctive, primal, basic responses. The security of reproduction, the very basis for the survival of the species.

  I reached for the remote and muted the sound.

  Jack looked at me in surprise.

  ‘What …?’

  Something in my eyes silenced him. I pulled him to his feet. Undressed him, one item of clothing at a time, until he stood naked in front of me. Then he undressed me and we lay down on the sofa. When he pushed into me I was filled by a great feeling of security. The only thing that mattered was being able to lie here beneath him with his cock inside me. Inside me like life itself. I saw the images on the television in front of me, flickering on my retinas. Time after time they showed the footage of bodies falling from the burning towers. The smoke and flames as those immense, supposedly untouchable buildings fell.

  I cried.

  But I needed more. It wasn’t enough. Sometimes that worried me. That nothing would ever be enough.

  ‘Harder,’ I said.

  Jack stopped. His heavy breathing calmed down and fell silent. Through the thin wall we heard the neighbours listening to the same news programme.

  ‘Fuck me as hard as you can,’ I whispered. ‘Hurt me.’

  I felt his hesitation.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ I replied. ‘It’s what I need right now.’

  Jack looked into my eyes uncertainly, then did as I wanted. He took a firmer grip of my hips and thrust into me with increasing force. His breathing grew heavier and he tugged at my hair. Without holding back. Without trying to be gentle.

  It hurt, but I wanted it to hurt. The pain was familiar. It was like balm to my scars. Made me feel safe. The world was burning, and pain was my anchor.

  The eleventh of September.

  The date already had a place in my life. It was four years ago that day that Dad was arrested for Mum’s murder. A year after Mum had found Sebastian hanging from a rope in his wardrobe.

  I was fifteen when he died. Perhaps that was when I became the person I became. Perhaps that was the day I became Faye.

  Jack was thrusting with increasing frenzy and I could hear that he was crying too. We were united in sorrow and pain, and when he finally collapsed on top of me I knew that we had shared a moment that neither of us would ever forget.

  We sat on the sofa for a long time that afternoon and evening, holding each other’s hands as we watched the world burn.

  The year that followed turned out to be the best of my life. The year that lay the foundation for our life and the inseparable ties that bound Jack and me together.

  He told me all about his childhood. The insecurity, the rows, the constant lack of money. Christmases without Christmas presents, relatives by turns criticizing or taking pity on his father. How everything fell apart when his mother left the family. The home where everything gradually disappeared, sold or pawned, people turning up at odd hours to demand repayment of debts or to drink with his father. The relief when he had been able to leave that life behind.

  I didn’t tell him anything. And Jack never brought up the subject of my former life. He had accepted that I was alone in the world. That there was nothing left. In a way I think he liked that. That I was his, and his alone. We had only each other, and he could be my hero.

  Jack and I would meet up in the bars around Hantverkargatan or in Chinatown after college, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with Henrik and Chris, we would talk about life, economics, politics and
dreams. We were all equals, though Chris and I often felt like we were queens in Jack and Henrik’s world. Sometimes I noticed Jack staring at me jealously when he saw the way other men looked at me. And he didn’t like it when I did things on my own. He always wanted to know where I was, what I was doing. I thought his jealousy was enchanting. I wanted him to own me. And I stopped doing things without him. Chris occasionally protested, but we met so frequently as a foursome that it didn’t make much of a difference. I stopped dressing in short skirts and low-cut tops. Except when Jack and I were alone. Then he liked me to dress in clothes that were as tight, short and low-cut as possible.

  ‘You’re not like other women,’ he often said.

  I never asked what he meant. I just soaked it all up. Wanted to be different.

  We had sex everywhere. Sometimes we arranged to meet between lectures, giggling as we hurried into the toilet and tore each other’s clothes off. We fucked all over Stockholm. At the Central Library, in McDonald’s on Sveavägen, in Kronoberg Park, in an empty lecture theatre, at Sturecompagniet, East and Riche, in an empty underground carriage heading for Ropsten in the middle of the night, at private parties, in Henrik’s parents’ house and on the balcony. Two or three times a day. Jack couldn’t get enough of me. I wouldn’t have minded skipping a few, but the sex was good and he made me feel like the most desirable woman who had ever walked the Earth. I got excited just from the way he looked at me and knowing how much he wanted me. He didn’t like it when I said no, he got grouchy and irritable, so I simply never said no. It was no more complicated than that, to my mind. If he was happy, I was happy.

  The Karolinska Hospital. A fan was whirring monotonously. The saggy velour sofas groaned whenever anyone changed position. A cough echoed off the almost bare walls.

  Faye was fiddling with her mobile, looking at pictures of her and Jack’s wedding. Their tanned, hopeful faces. The stylish, radiant guests. Expressen had sent a photographer, he had taken a picture from one of the hotel balconies. She would have preferred a smaller wedding, in Sweden. She would even have considered a registry office. But Jack had insisted on a big wedding in Italy. In a house overlooking Lake Como. Four hundred guests, only a handful of whom she knew. Strangers congratulating and air-kissing her behind her veil.

  Jack had chosen her dress. A meringue fantasy in silk and toile, specially made for her by Lars Wallin. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t her. If the choice had been left to her, she would have picked something much simpler. But when she saw the look on Jack’s face as she walked towards him she was happy she hadn’t gone against his wishes.

  She put her mobile down. Jack was going to be there any minute. He would run a hand through his hair, sit down, put his arm round her and apologize for being late. For letting her sit here alone, waiting.

  ‘We will bear happiness and unhappiness together,’ as he had said in his beautiful speech at the wedding, a speech that made the female guests cry and look enviously at Faye.

  She was the oldest of the women waiting, and the only one without a man by her side. Apart from a young girl who looked no older than sixteen at most, who had her mother with her. Boyfriends held their girlfriends, lovingly stroking the backs of their hands. Talking in low voices with sombre, attentive expressions. Everyone felt that something extremely private was being exposed to public scrutiny. Wanted to be alone. Without anyone looking on. Without anyone wondering. Every so often a nurse would come out and call someone’s name. The rest of them would watch as she walked off.

  Faye’s name was called and she glanced quickly at her phone again. No text from Jack. No missed call. She did a double-check that she actually had coverage.

  She stood up and followed the nurse into a room. As she answered the introductory questions, she wondered if the nurse recognized her. Not that it made any difference. Faye assumed she was under an oath of confidentiality.

  ‘Is anyone coming to pick you up later?’ the nurse said.

  Faye looked down at the table. She felt embarrassed, without knowing why.

  ‘Yes. My husband.’

  The fluorescent lights in the ceiling cast a cold light on the paper-covered bed.

  ‘OK. Some people like to walk around the corridors a bit to speed the process up and keep the pain under control. Just let me know if you need anything and I’ll keep an extra eye on you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Faye said.

  She still couldn’t look the nurse in the eye. But how could she explain why she was there on her own? She didn’t even understand why herself.

  ‘You took the tablet yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, here’s the second one.’

  A pill in a plastic cup and a warm hand on her shoulder. She fought against the urge to lay her head in the nurse’s lap and cry. Instead she popped the pill into her mouth without looking at it.

  ‘Take these as well,’ the nurse said, putting some painkillers in front of her.

  Faye swallowed them. She was used to swallowing.

  Faye was lying down on a large yellow piece of furniture that resembled an armchair, looking up at the ceiling. At least she hadn’t had to lie on the green table and was grateful for the chance to lie undisturbed behind a screen. They had put a pair of nappy-like padded pants on her to catch the blood, and she could already feel herself bleeding. At the ultrasound the nurse had told her how old the embryo was, but she hadn’t paid attention to how many weeks, she didn’t want to know.

  Where are you? she texted Jack.

  No answer.

  Something must have happened. Had he had an accident? She called the child-minder and asked how Julienne was.

  ‘She’s fine, we’re watching a film.’

  ‘And Jack?’ Faye tried to sound unconcerned. Blood was seeping out between her legs as she talked. Soaked up by the nappy. ‘Has he been in touch?’

  ‘No. I thought he was with you?’

  She tried calling Henrik. He didn’t answer either. Thoughts were bouncing about in her head. She imagined two stony-faced police officers knocking on the door and apologetically informing her that Jack was dead. What would she do then? A feeling of déjà vu. The same anxiety as when Julienne was born.

  Julienne had been expected to arrive in early June. Jack had been very loving throughout the pregnancy, even if he didn’t always have enough time for all the check-ups and practical matters involved in a pregnancy. Compare had reached a crucial stage of development and Faye understood that the company had to come first now that they were expecting a child and he was determined to build something up for his family.

  Jack had been at the office when the first contractions came. At first Faye hadn’t realized that was what they were, she assumed they were more of the vague preliminary aches that had come and gone during the previous month or so. But then they became so strong that she had to hold onto the kitchen worktop to stop herself collapsing.

  Bent almost double, she had called Jack. The phone rang and rang until eventually she got his voicemail. She sent a text telling him to come at once, guessing that he was in a meeting. When she called Danderyd Hospital they told her she had to come in, but she didn’t want to go without Jack. She had imagined him helping her into their car, then nervously swearing at the traffic as they rushed to the maternity unit. Towards their first encounter with their longed-for child.

  The contractions got worse with each passing minute but her phone remained silent. Neither Jack nor Henrik were answering her calls or texts. In the end she called Chris and asked if she could go with her and stay until Jack arrived.

  Quarter of an hour later Chris rushed into the flat, out of breath, in high heels and wearing a leopard-print coat. She half-dragged, half-carried Faye down the stairs. When they were sitting in the taxi on the way to Danderyd Faye realized that she had forgotten the carefully packed bag that had been standing ready for the past two months. She ordered the driver to turn back, but Chris snapped at him to ignore Faye and just drive as fast as he coul
d. You can always buy replacements for whatever was in that bag, she said, pointing out that children were born all the time without great long lists of equipment.

  Chris had taken over the job of chasing Jack, and she called and texted him frantically. As the taxi pulled up outside the hospital she put the phone back in her bag.

  ‘He knows where we are,’ she said. ‘He knows what’s happening. Now we need to focus on getting you into the maternity ward before you give birth here in this taxi, OK?’

  Faye nodded numbly. Pain was washing over her like an immense wave, and she couldn’t concentrate on anything beyond breathing.

  She felt oddly detached as she got out of the car, clutching Chris’s arm tightly. In the distance she could hear Chris shouting and ordering the staff about as they entered a corridor. She’d probably have to apologize afterwards, but right now Chris’s shrill falsetto was the only source of comfort she had.

  Julienne arrived five hours later. Five hours of pain that left Faye alternately fearing and longing for death. Chris stayed by her side the whole time. Wiping the sweat from her brow, asking for pain relief, yelling at the midwife, massaging her back, helping her with the gown and keeping track of the contractions. And when Julienne appeared Chris cut the umbilical cord, carefully passed her to Faye and made sure she was in the right position to suckle. It was the only time Faye had ever seen Chris cry.

  Two hours later a shamefaced Jack arrived at the hospital. He was carrying the biggest bouquet of roses Faye had ever seen. One hundred perfect red roses, so many that the staff couldn’t find a vase large enough. He stared at his shoes, his fringe fell across his face and Faye felt all her anger and disappointment drain away.

  Jack mumbled something about meetings, his phone running out of battery, a whole series of unfortunate circumstances. He seemed crushed, and Faye couldn’t help thinking that he was the one who had lost out, when it came down to it. He had missed the birth of the most beautiful baby the world had ever seen.