The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) by David Lagercrantz Page A

only the same old people, and they were all tired of her. Against her better judgement she called Mia. Mia was her agent and once upon a time they had been best friends and dreamed of conquering the world together. These days Hanna was Mia’s guilty conscience and she had lost count of all her excuses. “It’s not easy for an actress to grow older, blah, blah.” Why not just say it straight out?: “You look worn out, Hanna. The public doesn’t love you any more.”
    But Mia did not answer and that was probably just as well. The conversation would not have done either of them any good. Hanna could not help looking into August’s room just to feel that stinging sense of loss which made her realize that she had failed in her life’s most important mission – motherhood. In some perverse way she took comfort in her self-pity, and she was standing there wondering whether she shouldn’t go out and get some beer after all when the telephone rang.
    It was Frans. She made a face. All day she had been tempted – but did not dare – to call him to say that she wanted August back, not just because she missed the boy, still less because she thought her son would be better off with her. It was simply in order to avoid a disaster.
    Lasse wanted to get the child support again.
God knows what would happen
, she thought,
if he were to turn up in Saltsjöbaden to claim his rights
. He might even drag August out of the house, scare him out of his wits and beat Frans to a pulp. She would have to warn him. But when she picked up and tried to say that to Frans, it was impossible to get a word in edgeways. He just went on and on about some strange story which was apparently “totally fantastic and completely amazing” and all that sort of thing.
    “I’m sorry, Frans, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” she said.
    “August is a savant. He’s a genius.”
    “Have you gone mad?”
    “Quite the opposite, my love, I’ve come to my senses at last. You have to get over here, yes, really, right now! I think it’s the only way. You won’t be able to understand otherwise. I’ll pay for the taxi. I promise, you’ll flip out. He must have a photographic memory, you see? And in some incomprehensible way he must have picked up the secrets of perspective drawing all by himself. It’s so beautiful, Hanna, so precise. It shines with a light from another world.”
    “What shines?”
    “His traffic light. Weren’t you listening? The one we passed the other evening – he’s been drawing a whole series of perfect pictures of it, actually more than perfect …”
    “More than …”
    “Well, how can I put it? He hasn’t just copied it, Hanna, not just captured it exactly, he’s also added something, an artistic dimension. There’s such a strange fervour in what he’s done, and paradoxically enough also something mathematical, as if he even has some understanding of axonometry.”
    “Axo …?”
    “Never mind! You have to come here and see,” he said, and gradually she began to understand.
    Out of the blue August had started to draw like a virtuoso, or so Frans claimed, and that would of course be fantastic if it were true. But the sad thing was that Hanna was still not happy, and at first she could not understand why. Then it dawned on her. It was because it had happened at Frans’ house. The fact was, the boy had been living with her and Lasse for years and absolutely nothing like this had happened. He had sat there with his puzzles and building blocks and not uttered a word, just having those unpleasant fits when he screamed with that piercing voice and thrashed backwards and forwards. Now, hey presto, a few weeks with Pappa and he was a genius.
    It was too much. Not that she was not happy for August. But still, it hurt, and the worst thing was: she was not as surprised as she should have been. On the contrary, it felt as if she had almost seen it coming; not that the boy would draw accurate reproductions of