Sara wanted to go for the cheap IKEA crockery, especially since Eric and Marie were coming. But she knew that Martin wanted to lay out the fine china: Versace’s Medusa Blue. Not to impress his parents, but so that he felt safe. He didn’t want to risk showing a weak spot. If it had been the guys from his band coming to visit, they would all have noticed the crockery being used. Versace was pretty vulgar to Sara’s eyes, but was there anything she wouldn’t do for her husband? The Riedel wine glasses were worse. Wine buff paraphernalia. Hand-made, costing a thousand kronor a pop, and different glasses for every grape under the sun: Pinot noir, Cabernet, Syrah, Riesling, Chardonnay. How the hell would Sara be able to remember which glasses went with which wines? And who on earth noticed the difference? Of the hundred or so glasses that Martin prided himself on, she selected a few at random – he’d just have to change them if he wasn’t happy.
Jane was the first to arrive. Purple blouse, white culottes and with her own pair of indoor shoes even though it was still the late summer and beautiful weather outside. Big gold earrings, and makeup that was slightly too bold to be considered discreet. A scented cloud of perfume enveloped her as she stepped into the apartment. She handed over a small parcel wrapped in gold paper with blue and yellow ribbons around it. She always arrived with a small gift whenever she was invited out. Sara removed the wrapping paper, expecting some framed photograph of herself and her mother, or Jane with Olle and Ebba, but that wasn’t what it contained at all.
It was a framed photograph of the king.
Carl XVI Gustaf.
‘Instead of those clumsy paintings,’ said Jane, frowning towards Sara and Martin’s paintings by Cecilia Edefalk and Karin Mamma Andersson.
‘Clumsy?’ said Sara.
‘Yes, exactly. This is better. Suits the flat. Show your pride. He does a lot of good for the country.’
Sara was at least grateful that it was the king in the picture, rather than old Pope John Paul II – the household god of every Pole. Jane had pictures of Pope Karol Wojtyła in every room of her flat in Vällingby. When she had been a little girl, Sara had thought it was her grandfather, given how tenderly her mother referred to ‘Jan Pawel’. ‘He gave us freedom!’ Jane said, by way of explanation for her great reverence. Since Sara had chucked the papal portraits in her bedroom in the bin as a teenager, Jane hadn’t tried to palm off any more Catholic idols onto her. Hence the Swedish king now gazing up at her. Neither a Catholic nor a saint, but in full ceremonial uniform. Almost as if Jane had a fetish for men in strange clothes.
‘Thanks. It’s going to be a hoot hanging the king.’
Jane slapped Sara’s arm with an outraged expression. It was always the best fun winding her mother up.
‘Hang up his photo, I meant to say.’
The small guest toilet would be the perfect home for the royal phiz.
‘Come in,’ Sara said to her mother, offering her a tray of canapés. As a protest against Martin’s Svenskt Tenn and the silver platters, she had bought a pink plastic tray at Lidl. On it she had lined up canapés made with horseradish cream and vegetarian ham. She really didn’t want to lend her support to the brutal abattoir industry, and the vegetarian alternative tasted just as good as dead animal, or so she thought. But she said nothing to Jane about her choice, because she knew her mother would refrain if she found out it wasn’t ‘proper’ ham.
It was Sara who had suggested that the family start eating Sunday lunch together now that the youngsters had started to go their own ways. Ebba had been against the idea and Olle hadn’t cared. But when Martin had added that the grandparents would be included, Ebba had cheerily accepted. And Olle had no choice, since he still lived at home.
After some small talk with Jane (when were Sara and the kids coming to visit her in Vällingby? When was she going to see her plastic surgeon to get rid of those awful scars?) Sara fetched a couple of bottles from the wine cellar, which was not in fact a wine cellar at all but a glazed room that had been Martin’s forty-fifth birthday present to himself. She returned with two crystal carafes into which she could pour the wine to ensure it was ‘decanted’. But Martin would have to deal with that nonsense. Sara wondered whether she should start decanting her diet soda too.
‘What does this stuff cost?’
Jane had picked up one of the bottles and was scrutinising it with a sceptical expression.
Sara pulled out her mobile, scanned the barcode on one of the bottles and searched for it in the Systembolaget app.
Nineteen hundred kronor.
Martin really had gone too far this time.
‘Two hundred,’ Sara said, setting down the bottle.
‘Don’t lie. When they buy an expensive wine, they want everyone to know it’s expensive wine.’
‘OK. Two thousand.’
‘What an idiot!’
Sara looked at her mother in amusement.
‘I do beg your pardon, Sara, but when it comes to money your husband really is an idiot.’
‘Tell him that.’
‘Are you an idiot when it comes to money too?’
‘No. Definitely not. You know that.’
‘Stellan had money. And the house is probably worth twenty-five million.’
‘What? I don’t care about that. You know I don’t want to talk about this,’ Sara said, frowning.
‘One third of it is yours.’
‘I don’t want any of his stuff! He wasn’t my father, he was someone who raped you.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Think about your children.’
‘Mum, we already have too much money. Martin and Eric are spoiling the kids. They’re going to turn into . . . well, you know. Brats.’
‘They don’t say brats any longer.’
‘What?’
‘It’s out of fashion,’ Jane informed her.
‘What would you know about that?’
‘I know things. I talk to people.’
‘Who? Katryna? She’s older than you are.’ Sara raised her eyebrows at her mother, who giggled.
‘I talk to everyone. Don’t you?’
Sara held out her hands. ‘OK. I’ll stop saying brats.’
‘Have you told the kids?’
‘About Stellan?’ The mere thought of it made Sara feel sick. ‘No. Stop nagging.’
She would never soil her children’s lives by telling them about the awful man they were descended from.
‘You were so angry at me for not telling you.’
‘This is different.’
‘It’s always different when it’s you doing it.’
‘No one knows about it except you and me, OK? And that’s how it’s going to stay. I couldn’t even inherit from him since he’s dead and no one knows the truth.’
‘DNA. Before they bury him.’ Jane looked at her daughter encouragingly.
‘A DNA test? Are you out of your mind? Come on, Mum. Do you really want people to know?’
‘Yes. I made a mistake not saying anything. He’s your father.’
Sara’s father. She now knew who he was, or rather what his name had been and how he had behaved. But who had he really been? At the same time as finding out who her father had been, she had also found out that he had been completely different to what people thought he was like. A monster. How would Ebba and Olle take it if they found out? Or Martin? What would Lotta and Malin say?
Sara’s instinctive feeling was that this part of her past had to be erased because it was the only way to move on. At the same time, she couldn’t avoid the growing realisation that she really wasn’t in control of her own life if she didn’t confront and own her own past. If she didn’t accept every part of Sara Nowak.
‘Hello.’
A worn-out looking Martin appeared in tracksuit bottoms and an old T-shirt with The Pop Group’s Margaret Thatcher picture on it under the caption ‘We are all prostitutes’. He still hadn’t recovered from the twentieth anniversary party the night before.
‘So good of you to lay the table. Has the catering arrived?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not cooking yourselves?’ said Jane, making Martin fidget awkwardly.
‘Hmm, well, they’re only bringing the main course. And only today. Since we had the big bash yesterday I thought we might allow ourselves to order in.’ A watery smile was followed by a slightly more serious expression. ‘But you wouldn’t believe how expensive it is. We’ll have to make some savings elsewhere this week . . .’
Martin apologising for his caddish habits in front of Jane somehow made it all worse. Him pretending not to have any money just because she didn’t have any. As if he really felt sorry for her. It was downright condescending, Sara thought to herself in irritation.
Then the doorbell rang and Eric and Marie arrived, tanned, well-dressed and smiling. With an almighty bouquet of late summer flowers and a contribution to the meal in the shape of a bottle of wine.
Martin showed his parents into the living room, excused himself and went to change, but his hair was still tousled when he returned. In the meantime, Sara had supplied the three parents with a glass of champagne each. Cristal. Only two thousand kronor a bottle. That was Martin’s choice too. And it wasn’t even the best tasting champagne on the market, in Sara’s view.
Before they raised their glasses, Martin rolled up his shirt sleeves to ensure that his big Rolex was fully visible. Sara wondered how rock ‘n’ roll it really was to have a Rolex, but she had resolved, once and for all, not to question her husband’s style.
‘Do you want to see the end of the gig?’ said Martin, switching on the TV before the parents had time to reply. ‘You had to leave before we finished.’
He searched for the clip on his tablet and cast it to the enormous screen. There they were, four executives of around fifty years of age, their rock dreams still intact. The audio from the concert the night before was dire, but that mattered less in this context. ‘Sings rather than sings well’ had probably never been a more apt description.
Martin watched his father expectantly while C.E.O. Speedwagon continued to play on the screen. Eric smiled his small, polite smile, but hardly seemed amused.
Rich as Croesus, the founder of a successful company, friends with every musician in Sweden and father of two beautiful children, but that wasn’t enough. Martin needed his father’s approval still – at almost fifty years old. It wasn’t enough that he had built up something of his own. He still needed approval as an entertainer too. And, it suddenly struck Sara, it was precisely that need for attention that she had fallen for, once upon a time. Or rather, it had been the result of it – the Martin of high school years had always been the centre of attention, and the one all the girls pined for. He was the one everyone wanted, and that Sara got.
Then she looked at her mother, who was actually following Martin’s performance with what resembled a degree of interest. But she hadn’t wanted to go to the party. Martin had been a little hurt, until Sara had explained to him that Jane was still reluctant to go to big parties after her years at the Bromans’, when she’d had to work so hard during their events. She would probably never be able to regard herself as one guest among the many. From Jane, Sara moved her gaze to Eric and Marie, and she contemplated the differences between her own parents and Martin’s. Jane had grown up in communist Poland and fled to Sweden at the age of sixteen, alone and without money or contacts. She had ended up with the Broman family, where she had become a servant, taken advantage of by the master of the house, and she had given birth to Sara, who had then played with Malin and Lotta Broman while patronising her mother the cleaner, eagerly egged on by the girls. Jane had never said a word about it, and she hadn’t explained why she had given her notice to the Bromans and moved to Vällingby with her daughter just before Sara was due to start sixth form. Sara had always been angry at her mother for dragging her away from something that Sara preferred to remember as paradise to a depressing, concrete-clad suburb with a rowdy school. Not until a couple of months ago had Sara found out the truth – that Stellan had tried to lure her into the garden shed where he had his way with young girls. Sara would probably always be ashamed of her former rage, and definitely grateful for the rest of her life for what her mother had done.
Eric and Marie were different. Born and raised in Bromma, they had never left. They had been married for almost fifty years, having wed at twenty-three and twenty-one respectively. A happy, stable marriage. They were content and confident in their image. Tanned, wearing exclusive clothes, they had seen the world and eaten at tonnes of Michelin-starred restaurants. They had shedloads of money and therefore had no need to prove anything to anyone. They could even be politely friendly to traffic wardens.
Sara had also met Martin’s paternal grandfather before he died, in the early days after she and Martin had got together. Around ninety, a managing director and with noble blood on his mother’s side; straight-backed with a firm gaze and handshake to match. He had been born in 1899 – in a different century and a completely different world. In the drawing room of his grand Bromma house, there had been oil paintings of his prominent forefathers hanging on the walls, while the walls of his study had been lined with diplomas, pennants and emblems from various secret gentlemanly orders that Sara hadn’t even known existed. Martin had explained to Sara in a low voice which ones they were – at least the ones he knew the names of. The Freemasons, WF, the Order of Svea, the Order of Amarante, the Carpenter’s Order, the Odd Fellows. What on earth they actually did, he had no idea about.
His parents and grandparents and the generations before them had given Martin stable foundations, a legacy that must have shaped him and given him the security that Sara had never had. But also a lot to live up to. A certain degree of pressure. All Sara had was Jane. No history, no roots. But on the other hand, she had always been free to be who she wanted to be. She didn’t have to show off her performance on a big screen TV.
Once again, Martin’s performance was interrupted. This time it wasn’t the departure of his parents but the arrival of his daughter. A hungover Ebba stumbled in, gave her grandparents hasty hugs and then collapsed on the sofa.
‘Have we got fizzy drinks in?’ said Ebba in a tone that suggested she expected to be waited upon.
‘Wouldn’t you prefer a glass of wine?’ said Sara, holding her own glass right under Ebba’s nose. She couldn’t help grinning when her daughter’s face turned a faint shade of green, as if she were about to throw up.
‘Rough night?’ Eric said, looking nothing but tickled.
‘Are you joking?’
‘Hope you’re feeling livelier tomorrow. You can’t welcome people in that state.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Ebba, and it was unclear whether she hoped to recover or whether she thought she might as well work on reception hungover.
‘Are you starting tomorrow?’ Marie asked.
‘Yes. At half seven.’ The time was followed by a deep sigh, as if it was an inhumane task she had been burdened with.
‘Well, Martin didn’t want to join Eric’s company,’ Marie said, in a slightly accusatory tone.
‘I wanted to build something of my own,’ Martin objected.
‘You wanted to be on stage,’ said Eric.
‘First you wanted to be an author,’ Marie added. ‘You used to spend all day and all night writing.’
‘Is that true?’ Sara said in surprise.
‘Yes,’ Martin replied. ‘Haven’t I ever said?’
‘No. Do you still have what you wrote?’
Martin shook his head.
‘Because after that, it was showing off that was the order of the day,’ said Marie.
‘Still is, I think.’ Sara nodded towards the TV with the now-frozen image of the previous night’s performance.
‘We were good,’ said Martin, looking at his father. ‘Pity you missed it. We were good, weren’t we, darling?’
Now he turned to Sara. For support, she thought to herself, rolling her eyes.
‘Of course. Just like always. Perhaps you should audition for Pop Idol?’
‘You think?’
Martin looked genuinely flattered.
‘I was kidding. You’re fifty.’
‘Mick Jagger is eighty.’
‘Mick Jagger is Mick Jagger. You’re Martin Titus.’
At which point they were saved by the bell. The doorbell to be specific –announcing the arrival of the caterers. Martin led them into the kitchen to transfer the food from the disposable containers onto the gold and blue painted Versace plates.
Sara went to fetch Olle. A family dinner was a family dinner. But he didn’t reply when Sara knocked, and when she nudged his door ajar she saw her son standing in front of the mirror with headphones on and his mobile phone camera pointed at himself. He was peering towards his computer and clearly practising his ‘smooth moves’.
‘I’m gospel, I’m blues, I’m Maverick and Goose, I’m Krishna, I’m Buddha, I’m Zeus.’
His timing was about as good as that of Midsummer’s Eve revellers at Rättvik at three o’clock in the morning. And when Sara turned towards the computer, she was instantly pissed off. A bunch of stick-thin women grinding almost completely naked. And a bunch of dudes with guns and cash. What a load of shit! Sara stepped in and turned off the video. Olle turned around towards Sara lighting fast, waving his hands at her to leave, while she typed a different word into the search bar: ‘Teletubbies’.
‘Why don’t you watch this instead? And it’s time for dinner.’
‘Get lost!’ roared the embarrassed teenager. And Sara left. Today wasn’t the day she was going to overcome the generational gulf.
Instead, Sara returned to the others and told them about her son’s show, regaling them with the lyrics as best as she could. ‘Homies and whores, show no remorse.’
‘Well I’ll be,’ said Marie in amusement, helping herself to kale salad.
‘It’s Uncle Scam,’ said Martin. ‘He loves Scam. I’ve promised to take him along both nights at the Friends Arena.’
‘That was Uncle Scam?’ said Sara. ‘With half-nude gyrating women and morons with guns? He’s not going to a concert like that.’
‘I’ve promised. He’d never forgive me otherwise.’
‘You even had your own stage in the basement,’ Marie said. ‘Wait, I’ll show you.’
Elated by the memories, Marie rooted through her Hermès bag until she found her purse of the same brand and was able to fish out an old, fading photo of Martin as a boy. He couldn’t have been more than six or seven and was standing on a small, raised stage with a black hanging behind him. He had his foot on a rather hideous yellow stool with green flowers and in his hand he had a toy microphone that he was singing into, full-throated.
‘Wasn’t he just the cutest?’ said an enchanted Marie to the others before turning to her son. ‘Do you remember that? Maybe you should build one like it for Olle?’
‘Definitely,’ Martin nodded. ‘Nowadays, you can do it all for real at home. Record, mix, release on Spotify, film the whole video and share it on YouTube. Anyone can become a star – they just have to want it.’
‘And have talent,’ said Eric.
‘Dad,’ said Martin, ‘Uncle Scam is the best-selling artist in the world right now. You don’t have any colleagues whose grandkids would like to see him live, do you?’
‘Grandkids?’ Eric said, affronted.
‘Well, I thought—’
‘You know that out of Eric’s old friends, around half have had new families after the age of fifty?’ Marie interrupted.
‘Well, I-I didn’t mean . . .’
‘Martin,’ said Eric, examining his gold-edged plate, ‘in future, why don’t you let Sara pick the crockery?’
Sara kissed her father-in-law on the cheek.