Last Will: A Novel by Liza Marklund

Author:Liza Marklund [Marklund, Liza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781451606942
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2012-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

FRIDAY, MAY 28

Annika was sitting on her bed looking out through the open window. It had stopped raining, but the sky was ash-gray through the leaves. The wind was pulling and tearing at the branches, and the pennant on Ebba’s flagpole was whipping in the air.

She had had nightmares again last night. It was a long time since she’d had so many of them so close together. For the first year after Sven died they had tormented her almost every night, but since she met Thomas they’d become much less regular. After that night in the tunnel under the Olympic Stadium they had got worse again, and then the angels had appeared. The angels from her dreams that sang to her even when she was awake. For now they were keeping their distance, but she sometimes got a sense of them in the shadows or hiding in corners.

Caroline von Behring had died all over again last night, her eyes crying out to Annika through time and space, but Annika couldn’t hear—the message got garbled—she didn’t understand what Caroline was trying to say.

She stood up and brushed her hair from her face, then made the bed. She tossed the bedspread over it and straightened its sides.

Thomas had hung his filthy suit on the door of her wardrobe, and she felt a little stab of anger in her chest. Presumably he was assuming that by some miracle it would be hanging in his own wardrobe in a few days’ time, neatly pressed and in a plastic bag from the dry cleaners.

She was never good enough, no matter how hard she tried.

Yesterday he had promised to come home in time for dinner. He had promised to play with the children and repair the puncture in Kalle’s bicycle.

Instead he had gone straight up to his damn office and sat in front of the computer. Then he had drifted down to the kitchen, expecting a plate of warm food on the table, an hour later than agreed.

He never listened to her; he didn’t care about her opinions and ambitions. The fact that they had bought a house in Djursholm didn’t help, it didn’t help, didn’t help …

She slapped the wall hard with her palm, so hard it made her eyes water with pain.

“Ouch,” she said, holding her wrist.

She went slowly down to the kitchen while her mood settled. She cleared away the breakfast things, wiped the granite countertop, got out the vacuum cleaner, and did a quick circuit of the ground floor. Made coffee. Drank it. Looked at the time, loads of time before she had to start getting dinner.

She pulled on her jacket and went on into the gale. The grass was begging for her attention, with its brown ruts full of water, but she turned her back on them and went out into the road.

Ebba’s red Volvo was standing outside her house, and Annika walked over and up the steps to the door.

Perhaps you didn’t just go over and ring on your neighbors’ doorbells out here?

She gulped, then rang the bell, hearing it echo inside the thick walls.

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