Table of Contents 18 страница

“Good! The negotiator’s going to call the phone in there shortly and try to get him to come out voluntarily. Otherwise we’ll have to break the door in. ”

Jim nodded. Jack looked around, then crouched down by the elevator and picked up a piece of paper.

“What’s this? ”

“Looks like a drawing? ” Jim said.

Jack put it in his pocket. Looked at the time. The negotiator made the call.

It had been tucked inside one of the pizza boxes, the special telephone thingy. It was Ro who had found it. She was very hungry, so she just thought it was odd to find a phone in a pizza box, put it down, and decided to eat first before bothering to think about it. And by the time she’d finished eating she’d forgotten all about it. There was so much else going on, the fireworks and all the rest of it, and perhaps you had to know Ro to understand just how absentminded she could be. But perhaps it’s enough to know that once she’d finished her own pizza, she opened all the other boxes and ate the crusts the others had left. At that point Roger turned to her and said she needn’t worry, he was sure she was going to be a good parent now, because good parents eat other people’s crusts out of other people’s boxes just like that. Hearing that meant so much to Ro that she burst into tears.

So the phone was left on the little three-legged table beside the sofa, as unsteady as a spider on an ice cube. When all the hostages had gone, the bank robber put her pistol down next to the phone, after wiping it carefully first, of course, because Roger had seen a documentary about how the police find fingerprints at crime scenes. She also threw her ski mask on the fire, because Roger had said the cops might be able to get DNA and all sorts of other stuff off it otherwise.

Then the bank robber went out through the door. Jim was standing alone on the landing. They glanced at each other quickly, she gratefully, he full of stress. She showed him the key. He breathed out.

“Hurry up, ” he said.

“I just want to say… I haven’t told anyone you’re doing this for me. I didn’t want anyone to have to lie for me when they were questioned, ” she said.

“Good, ” he nodded.

She tried in vain to blink away the dampness in her eyes, because of course she knew she was actually asking someone to lie for her, more than he had ever lied for anyone. But Jim wouldn’t let her apologize, just pushed her past the elevator door and whispered: “Good luck! ”

She went inside the neighboring apartment and locked the door behind her. Jim was left standing on his own in the stairwell for a minute, which gave him time to think of his wife and hope she was proud of him. Or at least not really angry. With all the hostages safely on their way to the station, Jack came running up the stairs. Then the negotiator made the call. And the pistol hit the floor.

Back in the police station, Jim has told Jack the truth, the whole truth. His son wants to be angry, he wishes he had the time, but because he’s a good son he’s busy trying to come up with a plan instead. Once they’ve let the witnesses leave through the back door of the police station, he sets off toward the main entrance at the front.

“You don’t have to do this, son, I can go, ” Jim says disconsolately. He stops himself from saying: Sorry I lied to you, but deep down you know I did the right thing.

Jack shakes his head firmly.

“No, Dad. Stay here. ”

He stops himself from saying: You’ve caused enough problems. Then he walks out onto the steps at the front of the building and tells the waiting reporters everything they need to know. That Jack himself has been responsible for the whole of the police response, and that they have lost the perpetrator. That no one knows where he is now.

Some of the journalists start shouting accusing questions about “police incompetence, ” others merely smirk as they take notes, ready to slaughter Jack in articles and blog posts a few hours from now. The shame and failure are Jack’s alone, he carries them on his own, so that no one else gets blamed. Inside the station, his dad sits with his face in his hands.

The detectives from Stockholm arrive early the next morning, New Year’s Eve. They read through all the witness statements, talk to Jack and Jim, check all the evidence. And then the Stockholmers snort, in voices more self-important than adverts for dishwashing liquid, that they really don’t have the resources to do more than that. No one was hurt during the hostage drama, nothing was stolen in the robbery, so there aren’t really any victims here. The Stockholmers need to focus their resources where they’re really needed. Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve, and who wants to celebrate in a town as small as this?

They’re going to be in a hurry to get home, and Jack and Jim will watch them drive off. The journalists will already have disappeared by then, on their way to the next big story. There’s always another celebrity who might be on the point of getting divorced.

“You’re a good police officer, son, ” Jim will say, looking down at the ground. He’ll want to add but an even better person, but won’t be able to bring himself to say it.

“You’re not always such a damn good police officer, Dad, ” Jack will grin up at the clouds. He’ll want to add but I’ve learned everything else from you, but the words won’t quite come out.

They’ll go home. Watch television. Have a beer together.

That’s enough.

On the steps at the back of the police station Estelle hugs each of them in turn. (Except Zara, of course, who blocks her with her handbag and jumps out of the way when she tries. )

“I have to say, if you have to be held hostage, then there’s no better company to be in than all of you. ” Estelle smiles at them all. Even Zara.

“Would you like to come and have coffee with us? ” Julia asks.

“No, no, I need to get home, ” Estelle smiles, then she suddenly becomes serious and turns to the real estate agent: “I really am very sorry I changed my mind and didn’t let you sell the apartment after all. But it’s… home. ”

The real estate agent shrugs.

“I think that’s rather lovely, actually. People always think real estate agents just want to sell, sell, sell, but there’s something… I don’t quite know how to say it…”

Lennart fills in with the words she can’t find: “There’s something romantic about the thought of all the apartments that aren’t for sale. ”

The real estate agent nods. Estelle takes several deep, happy breaths. She’s going to be neighbors with Julia and Ro, in the apartment on the other side of the landing, and she and Julia will be able to swap books in the elevator. The first one Estelle is going to give her is by her favorite poet. She’ll fold down the corner of one page, underline some of the finest words she knows.

Nothing must happen to you

No, what am I saying

Everything must happen to you

And it must be wonderful

Julia will give Estelle a completely different type of literature in exchange. A guidebook about Stockholm.

Ro will lose her dad, she’ll visit him every week, he’s still on Earth but already belongs to Heaven. Ro’s mom will find the strength to cope with the loss because another man will show her that life goes on. Julia will give birth to him with her hand clasped so tightly around Ro’s fingers that the nurses have to give both mothers painkillers, one before the birth, the other after.

Ro will sleep beside him, perfectly still, on white sheets, without feeling afraid. Because she would have crossed mountains for his sake, would have done anything. Robbed banks, if necessary. They’re going to be good parents, Ro and Julia. Good enough, anyway.

Julia will still hide candies, and Ro will be allowed to keep her birds. The monkey and the frog will love them, visit them every day, and even when Julia offers them lots of money, they won’t leave the cage open. Julia and Ro will argue, then make up, and all you have to do is make sure you’re better at the latter than the former. So they will shout loudly and laugh even louder, and when they make up, the walls will shake and Estelle will feel embarrassed in her closet. Their love will continue to be a flower shop.

Outside the police station Zara skips quickly down the steps to the street, afraid that someone else might try to hug her. Lennart hurries after her.

“Would you like to share a taxi? ” he asks, as if that weren’t the very definition of anarchy.

Zara looks like she’s never shared a taxi in her life, or anything else for a very long time. But after a long pause she mutters, “If we do, you can sit in the front. And we’re not going in a car with lots of crap dangling from the rearview mirror. That’s an evolutionary dead end. ”

Anna-Lena is still sitting on the steps. Roger sits down beside her with an effort, just close enough that they’re almost touching. Anna-Lena stretches out her fingers toward his. She wants to say sorry. So does he. It’s a harder word than you might think, when you’ve been climbing trees for so long.

She looks up at the sky, dark now, December is merciless. But she knows that IKEA is still open. A light out there, somewhere.

“We could go and look at that countertop you were talking about, ” she whispers.

She crumbles when he shakes his head. Roger says nothing for a long time. He keeps changing his mind.

“I thought perhaps we could do something else, ” he eventually mumbles.

“What do you mean? ”

“The cinema. Maybe. If you’d like that. ”

It’s a good thing Anna-Lena is already sitting down, because otherwise she would have had to.

They go and see something made up. Because people need stories, too, sometimes. In the darkness of the auditorium they hold hands. For Anna-Lena it feels like coming home, and for Roger, like being good enough.

Estelle hurries back to her apartment. On the way she calls her daughter and tells her not to worry, either about the hostage drama or the fact that her mom lives alone in that large apartment. Because she doesn’t anymore. Estelle will have to give up smoking, because the young woman who’s going to be renting a room in the apartment won’t even let her smoke in the closet.

If we’re being pedantic, the young woman actually rents the whole apartment from Estelle’s daughter, and then Estelle rents a room from her for the same amount: six thousand five hundred. On the door of the fridge hangs a crumpled drawing of a monkey and a frog and an elk. Estelle stole it from the interview room when Jim was getting coffee. Each morning, every other week, the monkey and the frog will eat breakfast with their mom in Estelle’s kitchen. For many years, on the last night of the year, they will watch fireworks together from the window. Then, eventually, a night will come which will be Estelle’s last night without Knut, and everyone else’s last night with Estelle.

At her funeral Ro will suggest an inscription for her headstone: “Here lies Estelle. She certainly liked her wine! ” Julia will kick Ro on the shin, but not hard. Their son will hold each of them by the hand as they walk away. Julia keeps the old woman’s books for the rest of her life, the wine bottles, too. When the monkey and the frog grow into teenagers, they smoke in secret in the closet.

Somewhere, in some sort of Heaven, Estelle will be listening to music with one man and talking about literature with another. She’s earned that.

Oh, yes. In the basement storage area of an apartment block not far from there, where a mother of two little girls who became a bank robber once slept, alone and frightened, there’s still a box of blankets there the day after the hostage drama. Somewhere else entirely a bank doesn’t get robbed the day after New Year, because the person who hid their pistol down there under the blankets turns the whole storage area upside down, shouting and swearing because it’s gone. Because what sort of callous bastard would steal a person’s pistol?

Idiots.

The windowsill outside the office is weighed down by snow. The psychologist is talking to her dad on the phone. “Darling Nadia, my little bird, ” he says in the language of his homeland, because “bird” is a more beautiful word there. “I love you, too, Dad, ” Nadia says patiently. He never used to talk to her like that, but late in life even computer programmers become poets. Nadia assures him over and over that she’ll drive carefully when she sets off to visit him the following day, but he’d still prefer to come and fetch her. Dads are dads and daughters are daughters, and not even psychologists can quite come to terms with that.

Nadia hangs up. There’s a knock on the door, like when someone who doesn’t want to touch the door taps on it with the end of an umbrella. Zara is standing outside. She’s holding a letter in her hand.

“Hello? Sorry, I thought… have we got an appointment booked for now? ” Nadia wonders, fumbling first for her diary, then for her mobile to see what time it is.

“No, I just…, ” Zara replies quietly. A gentle tremble of the metal spokes of the umbrella gives her away. Nadia spots it.

“Come in, come in, ” she says anxiously.

The skin under Zara’s eyes is full of tiny cracks, worn down by everything it’s had to hold back, finally on the brink of bursting. She looks at the picture of the woman on the bridge for several minutes before she asks Nadia: “Do you like your job? ”

“Yes, ” Nadia nods, unsettled.

“Are you happy? ”

Nadia wants to reach out and touch her, but refrains.

“Yes, I’m happy, Zara. Not all the time, but I’ve learned that you don’t have to be happy all the time. But I’m happy… enough. Is that what you came here to ask? ”

Zara looks past her.

“You asked me once why I like my job, and I said it was because I was good at it. But I unexpectedly found myself with some time to think recently, and I think I liked my job because I believed in it. ”

“How do you mean? ” the psychologist asks, in her professional voice, despite the fact that she feels like saying, unprofessionally, that she’s really pleased to see Zara. That she’s been thinking about her a lot. And has been worrying about what she might do.

Zara reaches out her hand, as close to the picture as possible without actually touching the woman.

“I believe in the place of banks in society. I believe in order. I’ve never had any objection to the fact that our customers and the media and politicians all hate us, that’s our purpose. Banks need to be the ballast in the system. They make it slow, bureaucratic, difficult to maneuver. To stop the world lurching about too much. People need bureaucracy, to give them time to think before they do something stupid. ”

She falls silent. The psychologist sits down quietly on her chair.

“Forgive me for speculating, Zara, but… it sounds like something’s changed. In you. ”

Zara looks her straight in the eye then, for the first time.

“The housing market is going to crash again. Maybe not tomorrow, but it’s going to crash again. We know that. Yet we still lend money. When people lose everything, we tell them it was their responsibility, that those are the rules of the game, that it was their own fault they were so greedy. But of course that isn’t true. Most people aren’t greedy, most people are just… like you said when we were talking about the picture: they’re just looking for something to cling on to. Something to fight for. They want somewhere to live, somewhere to raise their children, live their lives. ”

“Has anything happened to you since we last met? ” the psychologist asks.

Zara gives her a troubled smile. Because how do you answer that? So instead she answers a question that’s never been asked: “Everything’s become lighter, easier, Nadia. The banks aren’t ballast anymore. One hundred years ago practically everyone who worked in a bank understood how the bank made money. Now there are at most three people in each bank who really understand where it all comes from. ”

“And you’re questioning your place there now, because you no longer think you understand? ” the psychologist guesses.

Zara’s chin moves sadly from side to side.

“No. I’ve handed in my notice. Because I realized that I was one of the three. ”

“What are you going to do from now on? ”

“I don’t know. ”

The psychologist finally has something important to say. Something she didn’t learn at college but knows that everyone needs to hear, every so often.

“Not knowing is a good place to start. ”

Zara doesn’t say anything more. She massages her hands, counts windows. The desk is narrow, the two women probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable sitting so close to each other if it hadn’t been there between them. Sometimes we don’t need distance, just barriers. Zara’s movements are wary, Nadia’s cautious. Only after a long time has passed does the psychologist venture to speak again.

“Do you remember asking me, one of the first times we met, if I could explain what panic attacks were? I don’t think I ever gave you a good answer. ”

“Have you got a better one now? ” Zara asks.

The psychologist shakes her head. Zara can’t help smiling. Then Nadia says, as herself, in her own words rather than those of her psychology training or anyone else: “But you know what, Zara? I’ve learned that it helps to talk about it. Unfortunately I think most people would still get more sympathy from their colleagues and bosses at work if they show up looking rough one morning and say ‘I’m hungover’ than if they say ‘I’m suffering from anxiety. ’ But I think we pass people in the street every day who feel the same as you and I, many of them just don’t know what it is. Men and women going around for months having trouble breathing and seeing doctor after doctor because they think there’s something wrong with their lungs. All because it’s so damn difficult to admit that something else is… broken. That it’s an ache in our soul, invisible lead weights in our blood, an indescribable pressure in our chest. Our brains are lying to us, telling us we’re going to die. But there’s nothing wrong with our lungs, Zara. We’re not going to die, you and I. ”

The words drift around between them, dancing invisibly on their retinas before the silence takes them. We’re not going to die. We’re not going to die. We’re not going to die, you and I.

“Yet! ” Zara eventually points out, and the psychologist bursts out laughing.

“Do you know what, Zara? Maybe you could get a new job writing mottos for fortune cookies? ” She smiles.

“The only note a cake eater needs to find is ‘this is why you’re fat’…, ” Zara replies. Then she laughs, too, but the quivering tip of her nose gives her away. Her gaze darts first through the window, then it sneaks back to glance at Nadia’s hands, then her neck, then her chin, never quite up to her eyes, but almost. The silence that follows is the longest they’ve shared. Zara closes her eyes, presses her lips together, and the skin beneath her eyes finally gives way. Her terror forms itself into fragile drops and sets off toward the edge of the desk.

Very slowly she lets the envelope slip out of her hand. The psychologist picks it up hesitantly. Zara wants to whisper that it was because of the letter that she came here, that very first time, when exactly ten years had passed since the man jumped. That she needs someone to read out loud what he wrote to her, and then, when her chest has caught fire, stop her from jumping herself.

She wants to whisper the whole thing, about the bridge and about Nadia, and how Zara watched as the boy came running over and saved her. And how she has spent every single day since then thinking about the difference between people. But all she manages to say is: “Nadia… you… I…”

Nadia feels like embracing the older woman on the other side of the desk, hugging her, but she doesn’t dare. So instead, while Zara keeps her eyes closed, the psychologist gently slips her little finger beneath the back of the envelope and opens it. She pulls out a ten-year-old handwritten note. Four words.

The bridge is covered with ice, sparkling beneath the last few valiant stars as dawn heaves its way over the horizon. The town is breathing deeply around it, still asleep, swaddled in eiderdowns and dreams and tiny feet belonging to hearts our own can’t beat without.

Zara is standing by the railing. She leans forward, looks over the edge. It almost looks, just for a single, solitary moment, as if she’s going to jump. But if anyone had seen her, had known the whole of her story and everything that had happened in the past few days… well, then of course it would have been obvious that she wasn’t going to do that. No one goes through all this just to end a story that way. She isn’t the sort who jumps.

And then?

Then she lets go.

The drop is further than you realize, even if you’ve just been standing up there. It takes longer than you think to hit the surface. A gentle scraping sound, wind seizing hold of paper, the fluttering and crumpling as the letter drifts out across the water. The fingertips that have held that envelope ten thousand times since they first picked it up from the doormat give up their struggle and let the letter sail off toward its own eternity.

The man who sent it to her ten years ago wrote down everything he thought she needed to know. It was the last thing he ever told anyone. Only four words in length, no more than that. The four biggest little words one person, anyone at all, can say to another:

It wasn’t your fault.

By the time the letter hits the water Zara is already walking away, toward the far side of the bridge. There’s a car parked there, waiting for her. Lennart is sitting inside it. Their eyes meet when she opens the door. He lets her put the music on as loud as she wants. She’s planning to do her absolute utmost to get tired of him.

They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.

The girl always thought that the weirdest thing was that she could never be angry with her mom. The glass surrounding that feeling was impossible to break. After the funeral she did the cleaning, pulling empty gin bottles from all the hiding places she never had the heart to tell her mom she already knew about. Perhaps that’s the last lifeline an addicted parent clings to, the idea that their child probably doesn’t know. As if the chaos could possibly be hidden. It can’t even be buried, the daughter thought, it just gets handed down.

Once her mom slurred in her ear: “Personality is just the sum of our experiences. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. So don’t you worry, my little princess, you won’t get your heart broken because you come from a broken home. You won’t grow up to be a romantic, because children from broken homes don’t believe in everlasting love. ” She fell asleep on her daughter’s shoulder on the sofa, and her daughter covered her with a blanket and wiped the spilled gin from the floor. “You’re wrong, Mom, ” she whispered in the darkness, and she was right. No one robs a bank for their children’s sake unless they’re a romantic.

Because the girl grew up and had girls of her own. One monkey, one frog. She tried to be a good mom, even though she didn’t have an instruction manual. A good wife, a good employee, a good person. She was terrified of failing every second of every day, but she did genuinely believe that everything was going well for a while. Fairly well, anyway. She relaxed, she wasn’t prepared, so infidelity and divorce hit her hard in the back of the head. Life knocked her flat. That happens to most of us at some point. Maybe you, too.

A few weeks ago, on the way home from school, the elk and the monkey and the frog all got off the bus as usual and started to walk across the bridge. Halfway across the girls stopped, their mom didn’t notice at first, and when she looked back they were ten yards behind her. The monkey and the frog had bought a padlock, they’d seen people attaching them to the railings of bridges in other towns on the Internet. “If you do that, you lock the love in forever and then you never stop loving each other! ”

Their mom felt crushed, because she thought the girls were worried she was going to stop loving them after the divorce. That everything was going to be different now, that she’d stop being theirs. It took ten minutes of sobbing and confused explanations before the monkey and the frog patiently cupped their mom’s cheeks in their hands and whispered: “We’re not worried about losing you, Mom. We just want you to know that you’re never going to lose us. ”

The lock clicked as they fixed it in place. The monkey threw the key over the railing and it spun down toward the water, and all three of them cried. “Forever, ” the mom whispered. “Forever, ” the girls repeated. As they were walking away the youngest daughter admitted that when she first saw that thing about the padlocks online, she thought they were doing it because they were worried someone might steal the bridge. Then she wondered if they might be worried that someone was going to steal the padlock. Her big sister had to explain it to her, but managed to do so without making her little sister feel stupid. Their mom couldn’t help thinking that she and their dad had at least gotten something right, because the girls were capable of admitting when they were wrong, and of forgiving others when they got things wrong.

They had pizza that evening, the girls’ favorite. When they’d fallen asleep on their mattresses on the floor of the little apartment that cost six thousand five hundred a month, and which she at that particular moment had no idea how she was going to pay the next month’s rent on, the mom sat up on her own in the darkness. It wasn’t long to Christmas, then it would be New Year, she knew how much the girls were looking forward to the fireworks. It was tearing her apart that they still trusted her, unaware of how many things she’d failed at. When dawn came she packed their backpacks, and a notebook fell out of her eldest daughter’s. She was about to put it back, but it fell open at a page that began with the words: “The Princess with Two Kingdoms. ” At first the mom felt annoyed, because she had spent their whole lives trying to persuade her daughters not to want to be princesses—she hoped they’d want to be warriors. And because the girls loved their mom, of course they did as she wanted, or at least pretended to, then did the exact opposite, because it’s the duty of children not to pay the slightest bit of attention to their parents. The eldest daughter had been told to write a fairy tale of her own for school, so she wrote “The Princess with Two Kingdoms. ” It was about a princess who lived in a big, beautiful castle, and one night the princess found a hole in the floor under her bed, and down inside the hole was a secret, magical world full of strange, fantastical creatures, dragons and trolls and other things her daughter must have thought up herself. Things so fantastical that the imagination and flight from reality that lay behind them crushed the mother, because all she kept thinking was: How terrible must your real life feel to require this much… escape? All the creatures were happy, they lived in peace, and there was no pain in their little world. But the princess in the story soon uncovered a terrible truth: that the magical realm she had found, where all her new friends lived, was actually located between two castles in two different kingdoms. One of them was ruled by a king, the other by a queen, and they were fighting a horrible war against each other. They sent their armies to fight and fire terrible weapons, but the walls of both kingdoms were too tall and strong to give way, and in the end the girl realized that the war wasn’t going to destroy either of them. It would just ruin and kill everything that lay between them. And that was when she learned the truth: that the king and queen were her parents. She was their princess, and the entire war was about her, they were each trying to beat the other with the sole aim of winning her back. When the mom read the last words of the story, her daughters were just starting to wake up on their mattresses, and everything that was worth anything inside her shattered. The story ended with the princess saying good-bye to all her new friends and setting off, alone. She disappeared into the darkness one night and never came back again. Because she knew that if she disappeared, there would be nothing left to fight over. That way she would be able to save both kingdoms and the realm in between.

When her daughters had gotten up, the mom had breakfast with them, trying to act as if nothing were wrong. She dropped them off at school, then walked all the way back, out onto the bridge, and stood there in the middle of it, holding on to the padlock as tightly as she could.

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