Page 130 of The Sleepwalker

‘I’m just going to nip to the loo,’ she says.

She goes through to the main bathroom, locks the door behind her, lifts the toilet lid and looks down at her phone as shepees.

Ida met her husband, Sven Erik Fisher, through work. He was the managing director of a large payment services company that hired the ad agency where she was a graphic designer, and once the campaign was over, he invited her out to dinner. She felt flattered by the attention, ended up drinking far too much, went home with him and wound up pregnant.

Their son Oliver turned five this summer.

Ida is twenty-six, and Sven Erik is sixty-eight and retired.

It often feels as though she is just pretending to be an adult – playing families in this strange house – when what she really wants is to catch the train back to her parents’ place in Katrineholm, put on some comfy clothes and let them fuss over her while she watches TV.

Sven Erik has been married three times, and has four adult children. He has lived in South Africa and California, and once drove across Australia on a motorcycle.

Ida was only twenty when they met, and he was the third man she had ever slept with.

She doesn’t want to hurt him, but nor is she prepared to be old before she even turns thirty.

She has spent a lot of time thinking about this, and is convinced he would rather she cheat on him than lose her entirely – though of course she can’t know for sure.

Ida has tried to ask for advice from various places, but she hasn’t managed to get any answers.

She fills the toothbrush mug with lukewarm water, rinses between her legs and dries herself off with a hand towel. She then wipes the toilet seat with paper, flushes and washes her hands.

She first started flirting with Linus towards the end of August, and so far they have held hands in secret, gone out for a drink after choir practice three times, and kissed twice.

But tonight is the night it finally happens. Sven Erik is away, and Oliver is sleeping over at his best friend’s house. The thought gives her butterflies.

46

Ida quickly brushes her teeth and dabs a few drops of perfume onto her throat before leaving the bathroom. She finds Linus right where she left him in the kitchen, still nursing his glass of wine.

‘Would you like to see the bedroom?’ she asks.

‘OK.’

‘You all right?’ She smiles, but her brow is knotted.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Come on.’

He finishes the last of his wine and puts the glass down.

‘You know .?.?. I’ve joined the Civil Rights Defenders,’ he tells her. ‘Or their network, anyway. To try to protect democracy.’

‘That’s great. I’d like to do something like that too,’ she says, glancing towards the bedroom.

‘It’s free, so it wasn’t a big deal in that sense .?.?. But I think we could really make a difference if we—’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Right now, I’m thinking that I .?.?. that maybe I should try to focus on Swedish democracy.’

‘I feel safer already,’ she says with a grin.

Ida looks down at her phone again. Her son Oliver has type one diabetes, and she can’t help but feel anxious. She tells herself that she should relax, that his friend’s mum is a nurseand that she knows what she is doing, that she will check his blood sugar levels and that he has a spare insulin pen with him, just in case.

‘Could I use your bathroom?’ asks Linus.