The Ice Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

had food to eat.
    She often wished that she still had the energy. Guilt weighed heavy on her shoulders and chest. In the past when she knelt down to wipe up his vomit, she had sometimes felt for a moment that she was paying off some of that guilt. But now she bore it without hope.
    She looked at him as he lay slumped against the wall. A foul-smelling wreck, but with an incredible talent hidden behind that filthy exterior. Countless times she had wondered how things would have been if she had made a different choice that day. Every day for twenty-five years she had wondered how life would have turned out if she had acted differently. Twenty-five years is a long time to brood.
    Sometimes she just let him lie there on the floor when she left. The cold had seeped in from outside, and the floor felt ice cold to her feet through the thin tights. She pulled on his arm that hung limp and lifeless at his side. He didn’t respond. Wrapping both hands around his wrist, she dragged him towards the mattress. She tried to roll him onto it and shuddered a little when she pressed her hands against the slack flesh of his waist. After a bit of manoeuvring she got most of his body onto the mattress. Since there was no blanket she took his jacket from the entryway and spread it over him. The effort made her pant, and she sat down. Without the strength in her arms that many years of cleaning had given her, she would never have managed this at her age. She was worried about what would happen on the day she could no longer physically cope with the effort.
    A lock of greasy hair had fallen over his face, and she tenderly brushed it aside with her index finger. Life had not turned out the way she had imagined for either of them, but she would devote the rest of hers to preserving what little they had left.
    People averted their eyes when she met them in the street, but not quickly enough that she didn’t notice the look of pity. Anders was notorious in the whole town, and a permanent member of the local AA. Sometimes he would stagger through town when he was drunk, screaming abuse at everyone he met. He received the loathing and she received the pity. Actually, it should have been the other way round. She was the one who was loathsome, and Anders the one who deserved pity. It was her weakness that had shaped his life. But she would never again be weak.
    She sat there for several hours, stroking his forehead. Sometimes he would stir in his sleep, but he was soothed by her touch. Outside the window life went on as usual, but inside that room time stood still.
     
    Monday came with temperatures above freezing and clouds heavy with rain. Erica was always a careful driver, but now she drove a bit slower to give herself some leeway in case she happened to skid. Driving wasn’t her strong suit, but she preferred the solitude of a car to being crowded into the E6 express bus or the train.
    When she turned right onto the motorway the condition of the road improved and she allowed herself to increase her speed a bit. She was supposed to meet Henrik Wijkner at noon, but she had left Fjällbacka early and had plenty of time for the trip to Göteborg.
    For the first time since she saw Alex in that icy-cold bathroom she thought about the phone conversation with Anna. She still had a hard time imagining that Anna would really go through with selling the house. It was their childhood home, after all, and their parents would have been upset if they knew. But anything was possible when Lucas was involved. It was because she could see how lacking in scruples he was that she even considered the likelihood. He kept sinking to ever lower depths, but this was far beyond almost anything he’d done before.
    But before she seriously began worrying about the house, she ought to find out where she stood from a purely legal point of view. Until then, she refused to let Lucas’s latest ploy get her down. Right now, she had to concentrate on the upcoming talk with Alex’s