‘Sanna, I don’t think we should let the kids hear…’ Christian began, but he realized at once that it was the wrong thing to say.

‘Right. You always have some excuse for not talking to me, and not taking me seriously! You’re too tired, or you don’t have time because you need to work on your book, or you don’t want to discuss things in front of the kids, or, or, or…’

The boys didn’t make a peep as they stared with frightened eyes at their parents. Christian felt his weariness giving way to anger. This was one thing he detested about Sanna, and they’d discussed it many times before. She never hesitated to draw the children into their arguments. He knew that she was trying to make the boys her allies in the battle that had become more and more vociferous between them. But what could he do? He knew that all their problems were caused by the fact that he didn’t love her, and never had. And the fact that she knew this, even though she refused to admit it to herself. He had actually chosen her for that very reason – that she was someone he could never love. Not in the same way as…

He slammed his fist down on the table. Both Sanna and the boys jumped in surprise. His hand stung from the blow, which was exactly what he’d intended. Pain forced out everything else that he couldn’t allow himself to think about, and he felt that he was starting to regain control.

‘We’re not having this conversation right now,’ he said brusquely. Though he avoided looking Sanna in the eye, he could feel her gaze on his back as he headed for the front hall, put on his jacket and shoes, and went out the door. The last thing he heard before the door slammed shut was Sanna telling the boys that their father was an idiot.

The dreariness of it all was the worst part. Trying to fill the hours while the girls were in school with something that at least seemed to have an iota of meaning. It wasn’t that Louise had nothing to do. Ensuring that Erik’s life ran smoothly left no room for laziness. His shirts had to be hung up properly, laundered and pressed; dinners for his business associates had to be planned and successfully hosted; and the whole house had to shine. Of course they had someone who came in to clean once a week – and who was paid under the table – but there were still things that she needed to tend to herself. Millions of minor matters that needed to be handled impeccably so that Erik wouldn’t notice that any kind of effort had gone into making everything work as it should. But the problem was that it was all so boring. She had loved being home when the girls were little. Loved taking care of her young daughters. She didn’t even mind changing nappies, although Erik had never devoted a single second to that chore. But she hadn’t minded, because she had felt needed. She had a purpose. She had been at the centre of her children’s world, the person who got up in the morning before they did to make the sun shine.

But those days were long gone. The girls were in school. They spent their free time with friends and doing extracurricular activities. Nowadays they regarded her mostly as someone who was at their beck and call. Erik thought of her that way too. And to her sorrow, she was beginning to realize that they were all becoming insufferable. Erik compensated for his lack of involvement in his daughters’ lives by buying them everything they wanted, and his contempt for his wife was beginning to rub off on the girls.

Louise ran her hand over the kitchen counter. Italian marble, specially imported. Erik had chosen it himself, during one of his business trips. She didn’t really like it. Too cold and too hard. If she’d been allowed to choose, she would have selected something made of wood, perhaps a dark oak. She opened one of the shiny, smooth cupboard doors, which also had a cold appearance. More fashion than feeling. To go with the dark oak countertop that she would have preferred, she would have chosen white cupboard doors in a rustic style, hand-painted so that the brush strokes were visible and gave a certain life to the surface.

She cupped her hand around one of the big wine glasses. A wedding gift from Erik’s parents. Hand-blown, of course. At their wedding dinner, she’d been subjected to a lengthy lecture by Erik’s mother about the small but exclusive glass-blowing workshop in Denmark where they had specially ordered the expensive glasses.

Something snapped inside her, and her hand opened as if of its own accord. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces on the black pebble-tile floor. The floor was also from Italy, of course. That was one of many things that Erik had in common with his parents: anything Swedish was never good enough. The farther away the origin of something, the better. Just as long as it didn’t come from Taiwan. Louise sniggered, reached for another glass, and stepped over the shards on the floor, her feet clad in house slippers. Then she made a beeline for the boxed wine on the counter. Erik always ridiculed her boxed wine. For him, the only acceptable wine came in a bottle and cost hundreds of kronor. He would never dream of sullying his taste buds with wine that cost two hundred kronor per box. Sometimes, out of sheer spite, she would fill his glass with her wine instead of the snooty French or South African variety that was always accompanied by long-winded discourses on their particular characteristics. Strangely enough, it seemed that her cheap wine possessed the exact same qualities, since Erik never noticed the difference.

It was those sorts of minor acts of revenge that made her life bearable – the only way she was able to ignore the fact that he kept trying to turn the girls against her, treated her like shit, and was fucking a bloody hairdresser.

Louise held the glass under the tap of the wine box and filled it to the brim. Then she raised her glass in a toast to her own reflection, visible in the stainless steel door of the fridge.

Erica couldn’t stop thinking about the letters. She wandered through the house for a while, until a dull pain started up in the small of her back, forcing her to sit down at the kitchen table. She reached for a notepad and a pen that were lying on the table and began hastily jotting down what she could remember from the letters she’d seen at Christian’s house. She had a good memory for text, so she was almost positive that she’d managed to recreate what the letters had said.

She read through what she’d written over and over again, and with each reading the short sentences seemed to sound more and more threatening. Who would have cause to feel such anger towards Christian? Erica shook her head as she sat there at the table. It was impossible to tell whether a woman or a man had written those letters. But there was something about the tone and the way in which the views were expressed that made her think she was reading a woman’s hatred. Not a man’s.

Hesitantly she reached for the cordless phone, then drew back her hand. Maybe she was just being silly. But after re-reading the words she’d jotted down on the notepad, she grabbed the phone and punched in the mobile number she knew by heart.

‘This is Gaby,’ said the publishing director, picking up the phone on the first ring.

‘Hi, it’s Erica.’

‘Erica!’ Gaby’s shrill voice went up another octave, prompting Erica to move the receiver away from her ear. ‘How’s it going, dearie? No babies yet? You do know that twins usually arrive early, don’t you?’ It sounded as if Gaby were running.

‘No, the babies aren’t here yet,’ said Erica, trying to restrain her annoyance. She didn’t understand why everybody was always telling her that twins were usually born early. If that was the case, she’d find out soon enough. ‘I’m actually calling you about Christian.’

‘Oh, how is he?’ asked Gaby. ‘I tried ringing him several times, but his little wife just told me he wasn’t home, which I don’t believe for a minute. It was so awful, the way he passed out like that. He has his first book-signings tomorrow, and we really ought to let them know if we need to cancel, which would be terribly unfortunate.’