Shadow by Karin Alvtegen Read Free Book Online

confrontations were something he hated. They could easily overflow and suddenly involve something altogether different from what one had intended in the beginning. It was much too risky.
    The guilt he felt was hard to describe. He wouldn’t be able to stand his home at all if he couldn’t travel so often. And yet he had the same sense of relief each time he came back. On the verge of tears and with a heavy conscience, he wanted more than anything to be on good terms again. Like a boxer’s punchbag that silently takes blow after blow, he was willing to endure her sarcasm. So often he vowed to himself that everything was going to be different; he was going to be a better person, drink in moderation, keep his cock in his trousers. But despite all his good intentions, restlessness soon caught up with him, and the itchy sensation in his body was impossible to quell. Then he would go out and it would start all over again. It was his only means of relief.
    He took a swallow of water from the glass on the night-stand. A strip of light from a street-lamp came through the Venetian blinds and fell across the bed. He looked at Louise, who seemed to be sleeping, turned away from him.
    Thirteen years ago, he had been certain. After an endless series of brief affairs and one-night stands, he had finally found the woman he was looking for. The one who would take away the grinding feeling of emptiness and make him whole. He had tried before, but those women had never come up to expectations. This time everything would be different. He was tired of the life he was leading, and more and more often he would see that look in the eyes of younger women – he was starting to become pathetic. Thirty-seven years old. It was high time he ended this late teenage rebellion that had startedwhen he came home from the USA as a twenty-one-year-old. All the nights in bars, the drugs, the money that was frittered away as fast as it appeared. All the strangers lying next to him when he woke up in the morning, never as attract ive in the morning light as they’d been in the intoxication of the night before. Louise would be the armour he needed. The one who would make him want to create some sort of structure in his life and finally prove that he could do more than shelter in the shadow of his illustrious surname. She had fitted perfectly. Stylish, beautiful and a celebrated poet. His father would be impressed. His mother, of course, would never be satisfied.
    He cautiously pushed back the covers and with a wary look at her back got up with infinite slowness so that he wouldn’t rouse her. She didn’t move. He took his robe and quietly closed the door behind him. He had learned how to sneak across the squeaky floorboards. Ellen’s door was ajar and her red lava lamp was on. For a moment he stood looking at her, not really knowing why. It was just so much easier to release the love he felt for her when she was asleep. Her duvet had slipped down, and he tucked her in carefully before he moved on.
    He had a bottle of whisky hidden behind the books in his office. He left the door open so he could hear if anyone was coming and took a few gulps straight from the bottle. He looked through the business post but left it unopened. Two of the letters looked like fan mail. His father still got a couple every week. Jan-Erik usually answered them with a photograph and a rubber stamp of Axel’s signature.
    In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, carefully scrubbing away the smell of alcohol. Then he moistened a little toilet paper and wiped off the white spots on the bathroom mirror. A simple effort to avoid being reprimanded.
    Then he crept back into bed.
       
    Everything had started so well. He couldn’t get enough of her. For the first time he thought he’d found the womanwho could hold his glance like a magnet instead of letting his eyes stray to look at other women. Louise was his grand passion. Enveloped in mystery, she had at first rejected his advances, and