Lifetime by Liza Marklund Page A

what he’d said. It was the kind of thing you said when you were disappointed and upset. He would come around, and it wasn’t all that strange that he had overreacted. He’d had a rough time at work. The project he had been working on, one that had taken three and a half years, had to be wrapped up by the end of the month, only he wasn’t ready. And he had no idea if the end of this project signalled the end of his employment with the Swedish Association of Local Authorities. His supervisors had mentioned a few possible future projects, but they hadn’t said anything definite.
    Annika sighed, knowing how hard it was on Thomas to be unable to plan. He couldn’t accept her assurances that it would work out and he wouldn’t listen to her analysis of the situation. That there were other jobs out there, other employers. Whenever she showed him an ad in the paper for a position such as a senior accountant within the Social Services sector or a financial officer, he got testy and sullen.
    Actually, she knew what the problem was. Thomas wanted to have a fancy job. He wanted to have a position that topped being the chief financial officer of the city of Vaxholm. He wanted to show his parents and his old friends that his career had moved up a notch or two, even though the rest of his life might have gone downhill.
    Annika looked out over the park and noticed that it had stopped raining. She was aware that Thomas saw his life in this light. She was a step down. Nothing she was, had or did could compete with Eleonor, his wife, the banker, in that sumptuous house in Vaxholm. They had never discussed it, but a certain tenseness around his mouth told her that was how he felt. Her efforts weren’t good enough, and never would be.
    For the first two years they had lived together in her apartment, in an old building that the landlord was planning to tear down, where there wasn’t any elevator. In addition to this there was no toilet inside their flat and no hot water. As long as it had been just the two of them living there, it had worked out. But once Kalle was born things had become almost intolerable. Annika had worked like the dickens and had done a lot of crying, but she had never complained. She knew that the day she complained would be the day when Thomas walked out. She was the one who stayed home on maternity leave, never demanding anything from him. She did the dishes, heated the water, breastfed the baby, did the shopping and cleaning, changed the diapers, and made love – all with the same dogged determination. As long as she could take it, they would make it. To help ensure that they could stay on, she acted as an unpaid apartment-block superintendent. She changed light bulbs in the stairwells, made sure there was toilet paper and paper towels in the bathroom that the tenants shared in the part of the complex that faced the street, and called the landlord whenever her neighbours complained of leaks or cracks in the dilapidated building.
    When the building facing the street was eventually remodelled, she was the spokesperson for the tenants, negotiating solutions that were acceptable to all.
    She was six months pregnant with Ellen when the letter arrived. They were offered a contract for a four-bedroom apartment in the remodelled building. It was on the fourth floor, and there was an elevator, an old-fashioned tile stove and a balcony facing the courtyard. She had cried tears of joy when she read it, but Thomas’s comment still rang in her ears to this day:
    ‘The rent’s so steep that we could afford three houses.’
    He was probably right. It was expensive, but the apartment was fabulous. Panelling, old-fashioned doors, freshly refinished oiled wooden parquet floors in all the rooms, a range with a ceramic cooktop, two bathrooms with heated floors.
    The first time that Thomas’s parents came to see their new place they had said the same thing:
    ‘What did you say the rent was? You could pay for a house with that