The Drowning by Camilla Läckberg Read Free Book Online

seemed to sap her of all remaining strength. She sank to the floor, with her back leaning against the refrigerator and sobs rising up from inside, demanding to be let out.

    ‘Don’t cry, Mamma.’ Cia felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Magnus’s hand. No, it was Ludvig’s. Cia shook her head. She felt reality slipping away from her. She wanted to let it go so she could escape into the darkness that she knew awaited her. A beautiful, warm darkness that would envelop her for ever, if she let it. But through her tears she saw those brown eyes and that blond hair, and she knew that she couldn’t give up.
    ‘The cake,’ she sobbed, trying to get up. Ludvig helped her to her feet and then took the tube of icing out of her hand.
    ‘I’ll fix it, Mamma. Why don’t you go and lie down while I take care of the cake?’
    He stroked her cheek. He was thirteen, but no longer a child. He was his father now. He was Magnus – her rock. She knew that she shouldn’t allow him to take on that role; he was still too young. But she didn’t have the energy to do anything else but trade roles with him.
    She dried her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt while Ludvig got out a knife and carefully scraped off the lumpy icing from his birthday cake. The last thing Cia saw before she left the kitchen was her son concentrating hard to shape the first letter of his own name. L, as in Ludvig.

3
    ‘You’re my handsome little boy, do you know that?’ said Mother as she carefully combed his hair.
    He merely nodded. Yes, he knew that. He was Mother’s handsome little boy. She’d said that over and over ever since he’d been allowed to come home with them, and he never grew tired of hearing it. Sometimes he thought about how things had been before. About the darkness, the loneliness. But all he had to do was take one look at the beautiful apparition who was now his mother, and everything else disappeared, slipped away, and dissolved. As if it had never existed.
    He had just climbed out of the bath, and his mother wrapped him in the green robe with the yellow flowers.
    ‘Would my little darling like some ice cream?’
    ‘You’re spoiling him.’ Father’s voice came from the doorway.
    He huddled inside the terry-cloth robe and pulled up the hood in order to hide from the harsh tone of the words that ricocheted off the bathroom tiles. Hiding from the blackness that rose up to the surface again.
    ‘All I’m saying is that you’re not doing him any favours by spoiling him like that.’
    ‘Are you implying that I don’t know how to raise our son?’ Mother’s eyes turned dark, bottomless. As if she wanted to ob literate Father by simply looking at him. And, as usual, her anger seemed to make Father’s own wrath melt away. He seemed to shrink and shrivel up. Becoming a little grey father.
    ‘You know best,’ he muttered and left, his eyes on the floor. Then they heard the sound of his footsteps fading and the front door quietly closing. Father was going out for a walk again.
    ‘We won’t pay him any mind,’ whispered Mother, pressing her lips close to his ear hidden under the green terry-cloth. ‘Because you and I love each other. It’s just you and me.’
    He pressed close to her like a little animal and allowed her to comfort him.
    ‘Just you and me,’ he whispered.

‘I won’t! I don’t wanna!’ cried Maja, using up most of her scant vocabulary when Patrik desperately tried to leave her with Ewa, the day-care teacher, on Friday morning. His daughter clung to his trouser legs, howling, until finally he managed to prise her fingers loose, one after the other. His heart ached when she was carried off, still holding her arms out to him. Her tearful ‘Pappa!’ echoed in his head as he walked back to the car. For a long moment he just sat there, staring out the windscreen, holding the car keys in his hand. This had been going on for two months now, and it was no doubt Maja’s way of reacting to Erika’s pregnancy.
    Patrik was