She's Never Coming Back (6 page)

Wherever Ylva was now. He could picture it. Her falling back on to a bed, quickly followed by an intent lover who kissed her passionately on the mouth and then on down her neck. The shirt being ripped off, wild, almost like a parody of a film, but to them, natural and real.

Ylva’s lover’s eager hands drawn to her cunt, her gasps and half-strangled cry as he penetrated.

Mike opened his eyes to clear the images in his head, replace them with what his eyes could see: the window, the clock-radio, his clothes on the chair, the wardrobe and the mirror. Everything was real and existed in the real world.

He turned on the bedside lamp, let his eyes adjust to the light. Time, 02.31. It wasn’t that late. Not really.

Ylva had gone out with her colleagues. They were drinking wine and talking loudly about work, male colleagues who for some reason were senior to them and smug with it, about promotions and being overlooked. Or they were telling stories about their husbands. What was good and bad about them. Those who had problems were
offered comfort and advice and, when they’d analysed it thoroughly, they raised their glasses and came out with over-confident claims.

I’m absolutely certain …

And whatever might follow a lead-in like that.

No, it was men who were absolutely certain. Men without voices. Men in old men’s bars, with a cheap pint in front of them. The female equivalent was probably:
Well, I still think that …

Ylva and her female colleagues would soon return to their lives with a lighter heart, having offloaded their problems through the course of the evening.

Mike wondered if he was ever discussed in his role as manager. And if so, what his staff actually said. That he was weak? Probably not, not at work. Vague? No. What negative opinions would they have? Mike reckoned cold, that he was like a robot. They might even call him a psychopath and say that he showed absolutely no empathy. Which was presumably wrong, Mike guessed, because a psychopath was in fact sensitive to signals around him or her and careful to exploit them. Even if he or she decided in the end to ignore them and do whatever was necessary to get their own way.

Mike pushed the thought from his mind, felt almost hot
and bothered by the interest he imagined his employees had in his life.

He fell asleep again, secure in the knowledge that he earned nearly four times as much as Ylva and the life they lived would not be possible without his income.

The Gang of Four, Calle Collin thought to himself, and sighed loudly.

Jörgen Petersson had too much money, that was obvious. Too much money, too much time and too little to do. Was Ylva the equivalent of Mao’s old widow, was that what he imagined?

Calle almost got annoyed. Why did all the nutters come to him? He was like a magnet for idiots. Did he have a neon sign saying ‘tolerant’ above his head? Was he too nice? Did they think that because he was a homosexual he understood the pain of being an outsider and so welcomed every man and his dog with open arms?

Probably the latter. Positive prejudice could be just as hard to deal with as negative. Jörgen had called him a good-natured poof. And Calle had asked what that made him, a fag hag?

The Gang of Four. How stupid was that?

What was Jörgen thinking, anyway?

Calle was still lying in bed. He had a headache and was too tired to masturbate. But he could feel the restlessness of the alcohol that was in the process of leaving his body. He had a wank all the same. To blanket his hangover and anxiety and change his frame of mind. He came on his stomach and got out of bed with his hand over the sperm, so it wouldn’t drip on the floor. He hurried out into the bathroom, wiped his belly clean, had a piss and went back to bed.

The Gang of Four. As if they were a group of nonconformists in monk cowls who spoke in tongues and were blood brothers.

They weren’t that bad. And, anyway, the group kind of disintegrated halfway through Class Nine and formed new alliances and constellations.

Typical of Jörgen to give them a name. The Gang of Four.

He had always overdramatised things as a child. But maybe that was the secret behind his success, that he was not blinded by detail, that he could still see the woods despite the trees.

That was the last thought that went through Calle’s head before he happily fell asleep.

‘Where’s Mummy?’

Mike opened his eyes and blinked furiously. Sanna was standing by the bed in her pyjamas. He turned over and saw that Ylva’s side of the bed was empty and untouched. No one had slept there.

‘I don’t know, sweetie. What time is it?’

He reached over for his watch.

‘Eight zero seven,’ Sanna read on the radio-clock and jumped up on to the bed. ‘Has Mummy not come home?’

‘I don’t know, doesn’t look like it. Maybe she stayed over
with one of her friends. Maybe it was late and she couldn’t get a taxi.’

‘Aren’t you going to ring her?’

‘Not quite yet. If they were late last night, she’ll still be asleep.’

‘What if she’s not sleeping?’

Which was precisely what Mike was trying to avoid thinking, but his brain didn’t care about him, and images rolled in front of his eyes: Ylva dressed in yesterday’s party clothes walking from the bus stop, possibly barefoot, holding her heels in her hands. She stops in front of the door, looks down kind of ashamed for a second before plucking up the courage and saying:
Mike, we have to talk.

That’s how he envisaged it, even though she hadn’t been wearing high heels or a sexy dress.

Mike sat up.

‘She’ll be asleep. Are you hungry?’

Sanna nodded with big, exaggerated movements as she leapt out of bed.

‘Sugar puffs!’

‘Okay, sugar puffs. But you have to eat some bread too.’

Mike put on the coffee and went to get the paper, doing all the things that might be expected of a man who wasn’t
terrified by the thought that his wife might have left him. He phoned her repeatedly. Her mobile was switched off and went straight to voicemail. Mike left a message.

‘Where are you? I’m starting to get worried. Sanna too. Please call us.’

The second time: ‘Why the hell is your mobile turned off? That’s such a shitty thing to do. Not that I give a damn where you are.’

Breakfast, reading the paper, checking the evening papers online, nothing fast-forwarded the time to nine o’clock, when Mike could reasonably phone someone without appearing to be desperate. Nine o’clock on the dot was perhaps pushing his luck, so he decided to finish reading an article that he hadn’t managed to get through the first time around.

He had almost finished when Sanna asked him to help her look for a film she couldn’t find. By eleven minutes past nine, they had found the film and put it on, and Mike went out into the kitchen and phoned Nour.

Nour was Ylva’s closest friend at work. Mike had only met her once, but immediately liked her. She had bright eyes and a smile that wasn’t false.

‘Hasn’t she come home?’ Nour asked.

‘She said she was going out with you,’ Mike said.

Nour didn’t say anything for a beat, as if she was thinking about what she should say, and then realised that she couldn’t lie.

‘She told us that she was going home,’ she said, eventually. ‘Have you tried her mobile?’

‘It’s turned off.’

Nour could hear the suspicion in Mike’s voice.

‘Well, I’ve no idea then,’ she said, and changed tack. ‘I hope nothing’s happened. Have you tried the hospital?’

‘Wouldn’t they have called me?’

Nour conceded.

‘So, she said she was going home?’ Mike repeated.

He immediately regretted his words, which sounded formal and accusing.

‘Yes.’

‘Did she say how she was going to get home?’

‘By bus, I presume. We were out on the street and she walked off down the hill.’

‘On her own?’

‘Yes. We tried to persuade her to come with us, but she said she wanted to go home.’

‘Okay, well, thanks for that.’

‘Ask her to give me a call when she shows up,’ Nour said.

‘Of course,’ Mike replied. ‘We’ll be in touch. Bye now.’

Ylva watched Mike collect the newspaper on the TV screen. She saw her husband come out in his dressing gown and get the newspaper from the postbox, as if nothing had happened.

What was he thinking? That she’d screwed someone, or crashed on a friend’s sofa?

He must have phoned and tried to find out.

She caught a movement behind the sitting-room window. Mike had just gone in through the front door, so it must be Sanna. Ylva’s daughter was so close and yet she couldn’t go there.

Ylva twisted herself up off the bed. Her body ached and she smelled bad. She had pissed on the bed after he raped her, just lay there and let it run out. She hadn’t showered, refused to, didn’t want to think about using anything in this prison where she was being kept. That would mean accepting, giving in. And anyway, she would need to be examined by a doctor so the rape could be verified.

She went over to the door, balled her hands, shouted and hammered on it.

The noise she managed to create was muffled, as if the door was padded on the outside. But you should still be able to hear it on the other side, she thought.

A weapon. She needed to defend herself.

Ylva went through the drawers in the kitchenette. Plastic cutlery, a butter knife, cheese slicer, chopping boards, a roll of plastic bags. No knives, no metal cutlery, not even a tin opener. The cupboard over the sink was empty, except for a packet of crispbread and a stack of white plastic cups.

She searched the bathroom and found hand towels, soap and shampoo, laundry detergent, a hairbrush, lubricant and an emery board. Nothing that could be used. She went back out into the room and looked around.

The chair.

One of the legs could be used as a weapon, if she managed to break up the chair. She could swing it at them when they came in.

She got a firm hold of the back of the chair and smashed it against the wall. She repeated the procedure until one of the legs snapped, then she kicked it loose from the rest of the chair.

She sat down on the bed with the chair leg and looked at it. The broken end was sharp and jagged.

A weapon.

Mike wanted to ring his mum. He wanted to ring his mum and get her to explain, so he could understand. He had tried to be a good husband, made an effort every day, barely thought of anything else. Was that the problem maybe? The excessive desire to please?

Mike thought he’d managed to tone it down.

Was he annoying? Maybe he was; in fact, he was sure he was. And yet they’d had fun together, found things to do.

Why was she doing this? Why was she treating him like this? But what if something had happened? He could phone the hospital, maybe, just to ask. To be sure. To have something to do.

He went out into the sitting room, looked at his daughter. She was engrossed in what was going on on the screen. Animated, exaggerated and fast, with breathless voices.

He went back to the kitchen, closed the door quietly behind him. He phoned the operator, asked to be put through to the hospital. The woman on the switchboard then put him through to A&E where he rather sheepishly
explained why he was calling, and was told that no one called Ylva Zetterberg had been admitted, no women of her age, in fact.

The woman he spoke to could hear how distressed he was.

‘I’m sure she’ll be back soon,’ she said to encourage him. ‘There’ll be a perfectly reasonable explanation. My guess is that she’s sleeping it off at a friend’s.’

‘Probably.’

‘Well, she certainly hasn’t had an accident,’ the nurse repeated, ‘because then we’d know about it.’

‘Thank you. Thank you so much for your time.’

‘Not at all. Have a good day.’

He dialled Nour’s number again. She obviously hadn’t had any problems going back to sleep after Mike’s first call.

‘It’s me again. Sorry to disturb you.’

‘No problem,’ Nour said, still half asleep. ‘Has she come back?’

‘I called the hospital. She wasn’t there.’

‘Good.’

‘Yes, but I’m getting quite worried now. You don’t know if she might’ve gone out with some other people?’

The silence was a tenth of a second too long.

‘She said she was going home.’

‘Nour, sorry if I’m being too direct, but you must know that we had some problems a year or so ago.’

‘She said she was going home,’ Nour repeated.

‘But she hasn’t come home, so she obviously didn’t.’

‘No.’

‘No what?’

‘No, she can’t have gone home,’ Nour said.

‘Do you know where she is?’ Mike asked. ‘You don’t need to say anything to me, all I’m asking you to do is to ring her and get her to contact me. She just needs to let me know she’s okay.’

‘Look, she said she was going home.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘I promise, I don’t know anything,’ Nour exclaimed. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly ten.’

‘It’s early yet. She’ll come home. Maybe she met some friends on the way back and stayed out late with them, then crashed on someone’s sofa, you know how it is. I’m sure there’s a good reason.’

‘Yes,’ Mike muttered.

‘Well, obviously nothing’s happened.’

‘No.’

‘Because then she’d be in hospital,’ Nour assured him.

‘Right.’

‘She’ll be home in an hour, I promise.’

Mike said nothing. Nour wondered if he was crying.

‘Um, Mike …’ she said, as gently as she could.

‘I can’t bear this,’ he burst out. ‘Can’t bear it.’

‘Mike, listen to me. Don’t imagine the worst, there’s no reason to. I’m sure it was just a late night, so she didn’t want to call and wake you, and then she crashed and she’s still asleep … She hasn’t texted you?’

‘No.’

His voice was so thin that Nour could barely hear it.

‘Her phone’s switched off,’ he added with a sob.

‘Maybe the battery’s low,’ Nour tried. ‘I’m sure there’s a thousand explanations. Do you want me to ring round and see what I can find out?’

‘Please.’

‘Okay, I’ll do that. No matter what the explanation is, she should have let you know. And you don’t need to feel stupid. D’you hear me? She’s the one who’s mucked up, not you. Okay?’