in a starched apron and cap, but instead she was received by a man she realized at once had to be Henrik Wijkner. He was unabashedly good-looking, and Erica was glad she had devoted a little extra effort to her appearance before she left home.
She stepped into a huge entrance hall and saw immediately that it was bigger than her entire flat back in Stockholm.
‘Erica Falck.’
‘Henrik Wijkner. We met last summer as I recall. At that restaurant down by Ingrid Bergman Square.’
‘Yes, that’s right. At Café Bryggan. It seems like an eternity ago that we had summer. Especially considering this weather we’re having.’
Henrik muttered something polite in reply. He helped her off with her coat and showed her the way to a parlour off the hall. She sat down gingerly on a sofa. Even with her limited knowledge of antiques she could tell the sofa was old and probably very valuable. She said yes to Henrik’s offer of coffee. As he pottered about with the coffee and they exchanged comments about the wretched weather, she watched him surreptitiously, concluding that he didn’t look particularly bereaved. But Erica also knew that it might not mean anything. Different people had different ways of grieving.
He was casually dressed in perfectly pressed chinos and a sky-blue Ralph Lauren shirt. His hair was dark, almost black, and cut in a style that was elegant but not excessively fastidious. His eyes were dark brown and gave him a slightly Southern European look. She happened to prefer men who looked considerably more rough-and-tumble, but she couldn’t help being affected by the attractive power of this man who looked as if he’d stepped right out of a fashion magazine. Henrik and Alex must have made a strikingly good-looking couple.
‘What an incredibly lovely house.’
‘Thank you. I’m the fourth generation of Wijkners to live here. My paternal great-grandfather had the house built early in the last century and it’s been in the family ever since. If these walls could talk …’ He made a sweeping gesture and smiled at Erica.
‘Well, it must feel strange to have so much of your family’s history around you.’
‘Yes and no. But it is a great responsibility. In the footsteps of my ancestors and all that.’
He chuckled softly and Erica didn’t think he looked particularly weighed down by responsibility. She, however, felt helplessly out of place in this elegant room and struggled in vain to find a comfortable way to sit on the lovely but spartan sofa. Finally she perched on the very edge and carefully sipped her coffee, which was served in small mocha cups. Her little finger twitched a bit but she resisted the impulse. The cups were perfect for crooking one’s little finger, but she suspected that it would probably seem more of a parody than a sign of sophistication. She also struggled briefly when confronted with the plate of cakes on the table, but lost the battle in a duel with a thick slice of sponge cake. She estimated it at ten Weight Watchers points.
‘Alex loved this house.’
Erica had been wondering how to broach the real reason why she was sitting here. She was grateful when Henrik himself brought up the topic of Alex.
‘How long did you live here together?’
‘Ever since we were married, fifteen years. We met when we were both studying in Paris. She was reading art history, and I was trying to acquire enough knowledge about the business world to run the family empire. And I did, but just barely.’
Erica strongly suspected that Henrik Wijkner had never done anything ‘just barely’.
‘Directly after the wedding we moved back to Sweden, to this house. My parents were both dead, and the house had stood empty for a couple of years while I was abroad, but Alex immediately began to renovate it. She wanted everything to be perfect. All the details in the house, all the wallpaper, rugs and furniture, have either been here since the house was built and restored to its former appearance, or else they were purchased by Alex. She went round to, well, I don’t know how many antique dealers to find exactly the same items that were in the house when my great-grandfather lived here. She had stacks of old photographs to help her, and the result is fantastic. At the same time she was busy setting up her own gallery. I still don’t understand how she found time to do everything.’
‘What was Alex like as a person?’
Henrik took his time before answering the question.
‘Beautiful, calm, a perfectionist to her fingertips. She might have seemed vain to people who didn’t know her, but that was because she didn’t easily let anyone into her life. Alex was the sort of person one had to fight to get to know.’
Erica was acutely aware of what he meant. Alex’s air of remoteness was both intriguing and marked her as stuck-up, even as a child. Yet the same girls who called her that often fought the hardest to sit next to her.
‘How do you mean?’
Henrik looked out of the window and for the first time since she entered the Wijkner home, Erica thought she saw some feeling behind that charming exterior.
‘She always went her own way. She didn’t take anyone else into account. Not out of malice, there was nothing malicious about Alex, but out of necessity. The most important thing for my wife was to avoid getting hurt. Everything else, all other feelings, had to take a back seat to that priority. But the problem is, if you don’t let anyone through the wall out of fear that they might be an enemy, then you end up locking out all your friends as well.’
He fell silent. Then he looked at Erica. ‘She talked a lot about you.’
Erica couldn’t conceal her surprise. In view of the way their friendship had ended, Erica assumed that Alex had turned her back on her and had never given her another thought.
‘I vividly remember one thing she told me. She said that you were the last real friend she ever had. “The last pure friendship.” That’s exactly what she said. I thought it was a rather odd thing to say, but she never mentioned it again, and by that time I’d learned not to question her. That’s why I’m telling you things about Alex that I’ve never told anyone else. Something tells me that despite all the years that have passed, you still had a place in my wife’s heart.’
‘You loved her?’
‘More than anything else in the world. Alexandra was my whole life. Everything I did, everything I said, revolved around her. The ironic thing is that she never even noticed. If only she had let me in, she wouldn’t be dead today. The answer was always right in front of her nose, but she refused to see it. My wife had a strange mixture of cowardice and courage.’
‘Birgit and Karl-Erik don’t think she took her own life.’
‘Yes, I know. They assume that I wouldn’t believe she did it either, but to be honest, I don’t quite know what I think. I lived with her for over fifteen years, but I never really knew her.’
His voice was still dry and matter-of-fact. Judging by his tone of voice he could have been talking about the weather, but Erica realized that her first impression of Henrik couldn’t have been more off the mark. The depth of his sorrow was enormous. He just didn’t put it on public display the way Birgit and Karl-Erik Carlgren did. Perhaps because of her own experiences, Erica understood instinctively that he was not suffering merely from grief over his wife’s death but also from forever losing the chance to get her to love him the way he loved her. It was a feeling with which she
