The Gilded Cage Read online

  His hand wandered upward and she couldn’t help letting out a groan. Instead of pulling her pants aside like in the film, he tore them apart. She groaned again, louder, bent over the table, swaying gently as he unbuttoned his trousers and tugged them down along with his underpants. He grabbed hold of her hair and forced her lower on the table. He leaned over her with all his weight, nipping the back of her neck with his teeth, and she caught the smell of orange juice mixed with whisky from the flight. He kicked her legs apart forcefully, stood behind her and pushed his way into her.

  Jack fucked her hard and aggressively, and with each thrust the tabletop pressed against her midriff. He was hurting her a bit, but the pain was a liberation, it made her forget everything else so that she could concentrate wholly on the pleasure.

  She was his. Her pleasure was his. Her body was his.

  ‘Tell me when you’re about to cum,’ she groaned with her cheek against the cold tabletop, now smeared with sticky lipstick.

  ‘Now,’ Jack gasped.

  She got down on her knees in front of him. He was breathing heavily as he pushed his cock into her open mouth. He grabbed the back of her head with both hands and forced it further in. She fought against her gag-reflex and tried not to twist her head away. Just take it. Always, just take it.

  The porn scene was playing in Faye’s mind, and when Jack ejaculated she took pleasure in seeing the same look on his face as the teacher when he took possession of the innocent young student.

  ‘Welcome home, darling,’ she said with a forced smile.

  That was one of the last times they had sex as a married couple.

  Stockholm, summer 2001

  The first weeks in Stockholm had been lonely. Two years after I graduated from high school I left Fjällbacka behind. Both mentally and physically. I couldn’t get away from that claustrophobic little place fast enough. It suffocated me with its picturesque cobbled streets and inquisitive people who never left me alone. All I took with me was fifteen thousand kronor and top grades in every subject.

  I would have liked to get away sooner. But it had taken longer than I expected to sort out all the practical details. Sell the house, clear it, get rid of all the ghosts that crowded around me. The memories were so painful. When I walked around my childhood home I kept seeing them everywhere. My older brother Sebastian. Mum. And, not least, Dad. There was nothing left for me in Fjällbacka. Just gossip. And death.

  No one had been there for me then. And they weren’t there now either. So I packed my bags and got on the train to Stockholm without looking back.

  And swore never to return.

  At the Central Station in Stockholm I stopped by a rubbish bin, opened the back of my mobile phone and threw the SIM card away. Now none of the shadows of the past would be able to reach me. There was no threat of anyone coming after me.

  I rented a room for the summer in a flat above the ugly Fältöversten shopping mall, the one the residents of Östermalm shake their heads at and tut about it being ‘the Socialists’ fault, they couldn’t resist ruining our lovely Östermalm’. But I didn’t know any of that at the time. I was used to Hedemyr’s ICA supermarket in Tanumshede and thought Fältöversten was so upmarket.

  I loved Stockholm right from the outset. From my window on the seventh floor I could look out across the ornate buildings around me, the leafy parks, the smart cars, and tell myself that one day I would live in one of those imposing nineteenth-century buildings with my husband, our three perfect children and a dog.

  My husband would be an artist. Or an author. Or a musician. As different to Dad as possible. Sophisticated, intellectual and worldly. He would smell nice and dress smartly. He would be a bit hard on other people, but never to me, because I would be the only person who understood him.

  I spent those first long, light nights wandering the streets of Stockholm. I saw fights in alleyways when the nightclubs closed. Heard the shouting, crying, laughter. The sirens of emergency vehicles, heading into danger to save lives. I stared in amazement at the prostitutes in the city centre, in their 1980s’ make-up and high heels, puffy white skin and needle-tracks on their arms that they tried to cover up with long-sleeved tops and blouses. I asked them for cigarettes and fantasized about their lives. The liberation of finding yourself at rock-bottom. No risk of falling any deeper into the shit. I toyed with the idea of standing there myself, just to understand what it would be like, who the men were who paid for five minutes of sordid intimacy in their Volvo with a child’s seat in the back and extra nappies and wet-wipes in the glove compartment.

  That was when my life really started. The past clung to my ankles like a dead weight. Weighing me down, spoiling things, holding me back. But every cell of my body was alive with curiosity. It was me against the world. Far from home, in a city I had dreamed about my whole life. I hadn’t merely wanted to get away. I had been desperate to come here. Slowly I made Stockholm my city. It gave me hope that I might be able to heal and forget.

  In early July my landlady, a retired teacher, went off to visit her grandchildren in Norrland.

  ‘No visitors,’ she said sternly before she left.

  ‘No visitors,’ I repeated obediently.

  That evening I put my make-up on and drank her gin and whisky. Cherry liqueur and Amarula. It tasted disgusting, but that didn’t matter, I wanted to feel that rush, the rush that promised the bliss of forgetting and spread through my body like a warm glow.

  When I had drunk enough to feel brave, I put on a cotton dress and walked to Stureplan. After a bit of hesitation, I sat down at a pavement bar that looked nice. Famous faces I had only ever seen on television walked past. Laughing, intoxicated by both alcohol and the summer.

  At midnight I got in the queue outside a nightclub on the other side of the street. The atmosphere was impatient and I wasn’t sure if they’d let me in. I tried to imitate the others, act like them. It was only later that I realized they must have been tourists too. As lost as I was, but with courage painted on.

  I heard laughter behind me. Two guys the same age as me walked past the queue and went up to the bouncers. A nod and a handshake. Everyone was staring at them with jealousy and fascination. Hours of preparation and giggling over glasses of rosé, only to end up shivering behind a rope. When it could all be so simple. If only we had been someone.

  Unlike me, these two guys were people who got noticed, they were respected, they belonged. They were Someone. There and then I decided the same thing was going to apply to me.

  At that moment one of the guys turned and looked curiously at the crowd. Our eyes met.

  I turned away and felt in my bag for a cigarette. I didn’t want to look stupid, didn’t want to look like what I was – a girl from the country on her first trip to a nightclub in the big city, giddy with stolen gin and Amarula. The next thing I knew, he was standing in front of me. His hair was shaved, his eyes blue, kind. His ears stuck out slightly. He was wearing a beige shirt and dark jeans.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Matilda,’ I replied.

  The name I hated. The name that belonged to another life, another person. Someone who was no longer me. Someone I had left behind when I got on the train to Stockholm.

  ‘I’m Viktor. Are you here on your own?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Go up and stand next to the bouncer,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not on the list,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Nor am I.’

  A sparkling smile. I pushed my way out of the queue, the object of envious, longing stares from girls in too few clothes and boys with too much hair gel.

  ‘She’s with me.’

  The meat-mountain by the door removed the rope and said: ‘Welcome.’

  In the crowd Viktor took my hand, leading me deeper into the darkness. Other people’s shadows, flickering lights, all different colours, throbbing bass, entwined bodies dancing. We stopped at the end of a long bar and Viktor said hello to the bartender.

  ‘
What would you like to drink?’ he asked.

  With the cloying taste of sickly liqueur still in my mouth, I said: ‘Beer.’

  ‘Good, I like girls who drink beer. Class.’

  ‘Class?’

  ‘Yeah. Good. Solid.’

  He handed me a Heineken. Raised the bottle in a toast. I smiled at him and drank some.

  ‘So, what dreams have you got for your life, Matilda?’

  ‘To be someone,’ I replied. Without pausing to think.

  ‘You’re already someone, aren’t you?’

  ‘Someone else.’

  ‘I can’t see that there’s much wrong with you.’

  Viktor took a few sideways dance-steps, swaying in time to the music.

  ‘So what are your dreams?’ I asked.

  ‘Me? I just want to make music.’

  ‘Are you a musician?’ I had to lean closer and raise my voice for him to hear me.

  ‘DJ. But I’m not working tonight. I’m playing tomorrow, I’ll be up there then.’

  I followed his finger. On a small stage over by the wall, behind a record-player, stood the guy Viktor had arrived with, grooving to the music. A little while later he came over to us, and introduced himself as Axel. He seemed nice, unthreatening.

  ‘Good to meet you, Matilda,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  I couldn’t help thinking how different they were from the guys back home. Polished. Well-spoken. Axel got a drink, then disappeared. Viktor and I drank another toast. My beer was almost finished.

  ‘We’re warming up beforehand with a few friends tomorrow, if you fancy coming along?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Why did you want me to come in with you?’

  I drank the last of my beer demonstratively, hoping he’d order more. He did. One for me, one for him. Then he answered my question. His blue eyes glinted in the dim light.

  ‘Because you’re pretty. And you looked lonely. Are you regretting it?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  He fished a packet of Marlboros from his back pocket and offered me one. I had nothing against taking it, mine would last longer that way. There wasn’t much left from the fifteen thousand I’d got from the sale of the house once the mortgage and everything else had been paid off.

  Our hands touched as he lit my cigarette. His hand was warm and tanned. I missed his touch the moment it was gone.

  ‘You’ve got sad eyes. Did you know that?’ he said, sucking hard on his cigarette.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There seems to be some sort of sadness in you. I find that attractive. I’m suspicious of people who go round thinking life’s a barrel of laughs the whole time. Life is fun. But not all the time. People who are always happy bore me. We’re not supposed to be happy all the time, because then the world would stop.’

  One of the bouncers was staring pointedly at Viktor, and he shrugged and stubbed his cigarette out after a few quick puffs. I did the same. But I didn’t answer. I had a feeling he was making fun of me.

  Suddenly my head started to spin from all the drink. I decided to get a souvenir, leaned forward, put my hand on the back of his head and pulled his face towards mine. A gesture that must have made me seem far more confident than I was. Our lips met. He tasted of beer and Marlboro, and he was a good kisser. Gentle but intense.

  ‘Shall we go back to mine?’ he asked.

  Jack was sitting at the kitchen table in his dark-blue dressing-gown reading Dagens Industri. He didn’t even look up when Faye came into the kitchen, but she was used to that when he was feeling stressed. And considering all the responsibilities of his work and all the hours he spent in the office, he deserved to be left in peace in the morning at the weekend.

  The four-hundred square-metre apartment, the result of knocking four smaller flats into one, felt claustrophobic when Jack needed to be left alone. Faye still didn’t know how to behave on days like that.

  In the car on the way home from Lidingö, where Julienne had gone to play with a friend from preschool, she had been looking forward to spending the morning with Jack. Just the two of them. Curl up in bed, watch a television programme that they would both declare stupid and vulgar. Jack would tell her about his week. They’d go for a walk on Djurgården, hand in hand.

  Talk, the way they used to.

  She cleared away the remains of her and Julienne’s breakfast. The cornflakes had gone soggy in the soured milk. She hated the texture of wet cereal and the sour smell, and swallowed the instinct to gag as she wiped them off with a cloth.

  There were breadcrumbs on the island unit, and a half-eaten sandwich was balancing on the edge, defying the laws of gravity. The only thing holding it up was the fact that it was lying face-down.

  ‘Can’t you at least try to clear up before you go out?’ Jack said without looking up from his newspaper. ‘Surely we shouldn’t need help with the housework at weekends as well?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Faye swallowed the lump in her throat as she wiped the counter with a cloth. ‘Julienne wanted to get going. She was making such a fuss.’

  Jack murmured and went on reading. He was freshly showered after his run. He smelled good, Armani Code, the cologne he had used since before they met. Julienne had been disappointed not to see her dad, but he had gone out running before she woke up, and didn’t come back until Faye had left with her. It had been a difficult morning. None of the four breakfast options Faye had given Julienne had been acceptable, and getting her dressed had been a painful, sweaty marathon.

  But at least the kitchen worktop was clean now. The aftermath of the war had been cleared away.

  Faye put the dishcloth in the drainer and looked at Jack, sitting there at the kitchen table. Even though he was tall, fit, responsible, prosperous – all the classic attributes of a successful man – he remained a boy in many ways. She was the only person who saw him for what he was.

  Faye would always love him, no matter what.

  ‘It’ll soon be time for a haircut, darling.’

  She reached out one hand and managed to touch a few locks of his damp hair before he jerked his head away.

  ‘I haven’t got time. This expansion is complicated, I need to stay focused. I can’t keep running to have my hair cut every five minutes like you.’

  Faye sat down on the chair next to him. Put her hands on her lap. Tried to remember when she had last had her hair cut.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Compare.’

  Very slowly, he looked up at Faye from the newspaper. He shook his head and sighed. She regretted saying anything. Regretted she hadn’t carried on wiping crumbs from the worktop. Nonetheless, she took a deep breath.

  ‘Before, you used to like—’

  Jack flinched and lowered the newspaper. His fringe, a few millimetres too long, fell across his face and he jerked his head irritably. Why couldn’t she let him be? Just carry on with the cleaning. Be thin and beautiful and supportive. He had been at work all week. If she knew him right, he’d soon shut himself away in the tower room and carry on working. For her and Julienne’s sake. So that they could have a good life. Because that was their goal. Not his. Theirs.

  ‘What good would talking about it do? You don’t know anything about business any more, do you? It’s a perishable product. You can’t rely on what you used to know.’

  Faye fingered her wedding ring. Twisted it round, round.

  If she hadn’t said anything, they could have had the morning she had been dreaming of. But she had thrown all that away with one stupid question. When she already knew better.

  ‘Do you even know the name of the current Swedish Business Minister?’ he said.

  ‘Mikael Damberg,’ she replied without thinking. Immediately and correctly.

  She regretted it when she saw the look on Jack’s face. Why couldn’t she just keep quiet?

  ‘OK. A new law is about to come into force. Do you know what it is?’


  She knew. But she shook her head slowly.

  ‘No, of course you don’t,’ Jack said. ‘It stipulates that we as a company have to remind our customers one month before their subscriptions expire. Before, things would renew automatically. Do you understand what that means?’

  She knew all right. She could have given him a systematic breakdown of what it meant for Compare. But she loved him. She sat there in her million-kronor kitchen, with her husband who was a boy in a man’s body, a man only she knew, and who she loved above all else. And she shook her head. Instead of saying that Leasando Limited, a small electricity supplier owned by Compare, would lose approximately 20 per cent of those customers whose contracts would have been renewed automatically in the past. In round figures, that meant turnover would shrink by five hundred million a year. And profits by two hundred million.

  She shook her head.

  Fingered her wedding ring.

  ‘You don’t know,’ Jack said after a long pause. ‘Can you let me read now?’

  He raised the newspaper. Went back to the world of numbers, stock valuations, share issues and company takeovers that she had spent three years studying at the Stockholm School of Economics before she had quit. For Jack’s sake. For the business’s sake. For their family’s sake.

  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 bin. She heard the rustle of Jack’s newspaper behind her back. She shut the bin-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 maisonette that Viktor and Axel were renting for the summer occupied the first two floors of a block 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.