Jeanette

JUST AS SHE had feared, the days dragged while she awaited her reunion with Peter. During the daytime, she wandered around like a zombie, simply longing for the working day to be over despite the nights being even worse. She would lie there sleeplessly, tossing and turning, her guilty conscience taking a stranglehold on her and refusing to let go.

Six million kronor—was it really worth it? To slip along the walls like a shadow, the bags under her eyes growing darker and darker by the day, afraid of herself and what she was capable of, afraid of her potentially uncontrollable reactions if she were to bump into her forbidden love, her co-conspirator, at the shop or outside.

It wasn’t worth it. She knew now that it wasn’t worth six billion kronor either. If she were faced with the same choice again, if she were able to rewind the tape and experience that confounded afternoon again, she would act differently. She would be awkward, convince Peter that one of the consequences of deeply immoral acts was that you could no longer bear to live with yourself. She would summon the police and paramedics to the scene of the accident right away, and she wouldn’t even see the money.

The damage was already done—she had to adopt a constructive approach to what she had done. There was no shadow cast on Peter—he would have to take responsibility for his own decisions. She had to do something about her completely unsustainable situation.

But what?

She couldn’t very well go to the police. In that case, she would ruin not only her own but also Peter’s and their joint future. And it was for the sake of that future that she had made this sacrifice, as she now tended to regard the whole thing. Since the almost unbearable aftereffects had taken over her life.

She was basically unable to do anything. Her hands and feet were tied out of loyalty to Peter and the promises she had made to him. The relationship with Peter had given her new insights, new hope of a joyous life—even after Charlotte. She didn’t want to deprive herself of those future prospects, although she also wanted to vindicate her existence after the terrible thing she had done to another person. She had to compensate. She just couldn’t work out how.

The only thing that was currently bringing any light at all to her existence was the dreamy warmth of Peter’s embrace on the horizon. With his untroubled manner and his unshakable optimism, he would set her on a happier train of thought, suck the poison from her veins, and help her to forgive herself. All her hopes were invested in this, and that was something. But there still remained many days of suffering in solitude ahead.