Page 37 of The Happiness Blueprint
“Hej.”A voice is behind me, then surrounds me until it’s wrapped up my whole being in memories. Because it’s a voice I know. I haven’t laid eyes on him yet, but I know that the man behind me is Tom. I can hear it and feel it. Part of me is scared to look, wondering what kind of man he will have turned into, so I do it quickly. I turn around, and my stomach flips.
“Klara.” He doesn’t sound surprised. Rather he looks as if he was expecting nothing less than me reversing into his car on a Thursday afternoon in Veberöd village. Why, why, why? It’s not women that are mysteries, it’s bloody men that are impossible to interpret. My heartbeat is fast, and my palms sweaty. I’m like an onion: give me one poke and I break a sweat. He is as cool as a cucumber (excuse horrendous vegetable puns, brain busy processing Tom stuff). He is older now,obviously, but he still looks the same. It’s as if eighteen-year-old Tom has simply applied an Instagram filter and stepped into today. His dark blond hair is swept to the side with, I assume, minimal amounts of hair product. He is dressed in a crisp blue shirt and chinos despite the cold. When I knew him, he did his best to keep up a preppy image and would never be seen without his Tod’s loafers, snow or no snow. But today he wears blue sneakers, his pants perfectly rolled up to end half an inch above them.
“God, I’m so sorry about the car. I’m still getting to know this beast here.” I gesture toward the van, which is looking sad with its back dented. He ignores my apology completely as if it is of no interest to him. Instead, he looks at me intrigued.
“I heard that you were home.”
“I guess that means I’m already infamous. Crashing the van won’t help my reputation.”
“You’re wrong. You have no reputation because you’ve been away the past few years. You’re a mystery, Klara. I’d love to find out what’s been going on with you.” And then he smiles. I feel myself swallowing, and my cheeks heat up. Tom putloveandmein the same sentence, never mind the meaning of his actual words.
A familiar face comes out of the shop and walks up to us before I can read more into what Tom has just said. Seeing Lennart is comforting.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Klara girl. I know a guy that will get it fixed for a cheap price. Let me send you his details.”
“Thanks,” I say, then turn to Tom again. “I guess I should take your number, then. For insurance purposes?” I add.Oh, stop it, Klara. What other reason could there be? No need to clarify.
“Right. Brilliant,” Tom says now, finally acknowledging the accident.
He digs into his trouser pocket and pulls out a Louis Vuitton wallet. He hands me a business card, and when I take it my hand touches his. It’s like a static shock, except there is no static so it’s just a shock, really. It’s all my muscle memory,not my fault, my hand recognizes his skin, somehow. Has he felt it too? I look up at him but his eyes don’t give anything away. Getting nothing from his face, I turn to the card in my hand instead.
“Right, then.” I glance at the card. “You joined your dad’s firm. Congratulations.” That had always been Tom’s plan, which makes sense if your dad is the area’s best criminal defense lawyer: there is no alternative route once you finish law school.
“It’s great to see you, Klara.” His confidence is even more obvious when standing next to my nervous self. We’re a game of opposites.
“Yes, you too, it’s so great, really wonderful.” Itwouldhave been wonderful to see him, say, eight years ago. To have him turn up at the coffee-shop table where he dumped me and tell meHa-ha! Did you believe that thing I wrote on the cup?Or even him turning up a week later would have been wonderful.I’m so sorry, Klara, what a silly boy I’ve been! I’m back, bigger and better, all in. Here are some flowers, and can I rub your feet, please?
Instead, there was silence, and he turns up in a parking lot years later, and I tell him with a shaky voice that it’s wonderful.
Later that night Dad has gone to bed after having eaten half his dinner, and I’m curled up on the sofa with a knitted throw over my legs, and Benny the cat asleep on one of them. “Would you move, please? My leg is falling asleep.” I try, but he ignores me, as cats usually do. “Fine,” I say wiggling my toes, too polite to move and wake him up.
I call Saga, because it’s 8:00 p.m. and Thursday night which means Wine and Whine time.
“Hey,” she says.
“Why are you whispering? Is your throat okay?”
“Harry’s sleeping.” My nephew can sleep through a street carnival in his buggy (I took him to Notting Hill Carnival last year in an attempt to establish myself as the cool aunt) but not the soft sound of his parents’ voices.
“Is Heinrich out?”
“In the kitchen, working. We basically have separate lives now. Marital bliss. But I don’t know how else to do it, when I come home after working all day, talking to students and my colleagues, finish dinner and put Harry to bed, all I want is a shower and for no one to touch my body for ten hours. I should really be going to bed now, but the silence and not having anyone yellMummy!is too good to give up.” She turns her head away from me and does what is a scream in a whispering octave in the direction of her husband in the other room.
“Heinrich says hi,” she says turning back to me.
“I fear we have turned into those attractive flatmates everyone advertises for: professional, work long hours, rarely have friends over. We just pass one another around the house but stay respectfully clear of each other so as not to get on each other’s nerves.”
“Family life sounds dreamy.”
“Well, yeah. And I only have one child.”
“Are you not drinking?” I notice her cup and unless she has started a worrying habit of taking her adult beverage in a floral tea mug, that is definitely peppermint tea in front of her laptop.
“I’m trying to stay off it Monday to Friday,” she replies.
“So Iwineand youwhine. No surprise there,” I say quietly, balancing a fine line that is the difference between obvious discontent and polite disapproval. Saga appears not to have heard me.
“How’s Dad?”
