Anxious People(72)

Julia closed her eyes so no one would see she was rolling them. Estelle smiled quizzically and asked: “Well, I didn’t mean to come in and interrupt you like this, like some silly old thing. What were you talking about?”

“Marriage,” Anna-Lena sniffed.

“Oh!” Estelle exclaimed, as if her favorite category had just popped up on a television quiz show.

Her enthusiasm softened Julia’s attitude slightly, so she asked her: “Did you say your husband’s name is Knut? How long have you been married?”

Estelle counted in her head until she ran out of numbers. “Knut and I have been married forever. It’s like that when you get old. In the end there simply wasn’t ever a time before him.”

Julia had to admit that she liked that answer.

“How do you manage to have such a long marriage?” she asked.

“You fight for it,” Estelle replied honestly.

Julia didn’t seem to like that quite as much.

“That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

Estelle grinned knowingly.

“You have to listen to each other all the time. But not all the time. If you listen to each other all the time, there’s a risk that you can’t forgive each other afterward.”

Julia ran her fingernails unhappily across her eyebrows.

“Ro and I used to get along fine. We got along so well that it didn’t matter that we were good at falling out, too. Sometimes I used to fall out with her on purpose, because we were so good at… the other bit. But now, oh, I don’t know. I’m just not quite so sure about us anymore.”

Estelle toyed with her wedding ring and moistened her lips thoughtfully.

“When we first fell in love, Knut and I reached an agreement about how we were allowed to argue, because Knut said that sooner or later the first flush of infatuation wears off and you end up arguing whether you like it or not. So we came to an agreement, like the Geneva Convention, where the rules of war were agreed. Knut and I promised that no matter how angry we got, we weren’t allowed to consciously say things just to hurt each other. We weren’t allowed to argue just for the sake of winning. Because, sooner or later, that would end up with one of us winning. And no marriage can survive that.”

“Did it work?” Julia asked.

“I don’t know,” Estelle admitted.

“No?”

“We never got past the first flush of infatuation.”

There was no point even trying not to like her just then. Estelle looked around the closet for a while, as if she were trying to remember something, then she stood up and lifted the lid of the chest.

“What are you doing?” Julia wondered.

“Just having a look,” Estelle said apologetically.

Anna-Lena found this upsetting, because Anna-Lena thought there were actually unwritten rules about how much snooping you were allowed to do at apartment viewings.

“You can’t do that! You’re only allowed to look in cupboards if they’re already open! Except for kitchen cupboards. You’re allowed to open kitchen cupboards, but only for a few seconds, to see how big they are, but you’re not allowed to touch the contents or make any judgments about their lifestyle. There are… there are rules! You’re allowed to open the dishwasher, but not the washing machine!”

“You might have been to a few toooo many apartment viewings…,” Julia said to her.

“I know,” Anna-Lena sighed.

“There’s wine in here!” Estelle exclaimed happily, pulling two bottles out of the chest. “And a corkscrew!”

“Wine?” Anna-Lena repeated, suddenly delighted, so it was evidently okay to snoop inside chests if you found wine.

“Would you like some?” Estelle offered.

“I’m pregnant,” Julia pointed out.

“Aren’t you allowed to drink wine, then?”

“You’re not allowed to drink any alcohol at all.”

“But… wine?”

Estelle’s eyes were wide with benevolent intent. Because wine is only grapes, after all. And children like grapes.

“Wine, too,” Julia said patiently, and thought of how Ro had said “All the time! I’m drinking for three now!” when the midwife at the antenatal clinic asked a routine question about how much they drank. The midwife didn’t realize Ro was joking, and the atmosphere became tense. Julia laughed as she thought about it now. That happens quite a lot when you’re married to an idiot.

“Have I done something wrong?” Estelle wondered anxiously, drinking straight from the bottle before passing it to Anna-Lena, who didn’t hesitate before taking two long swigs, which seemed highly out of character for Anna-Lena. It was a strange day for all of them.

“No, not at all, I was just thinking about something my wife did,” Julia smiled, and tried to stop laughing, with mixed results.

“Julia’s wife is an idiot! Just like Roger!” Anna-Lena explained helpfully to Estelle, and drank another swig, this time larger than the space in her mouth, which prompted a fit of coughing through her nose. Julia leaned forward and patted Anna-Lena on the back. Estelle helpfully took the bottle from her and made it a bit lighter in the meantime. Then she said quietly: “Knut isn’t an idiot. He really isn’t. But it’s taking him an awfully long time to park the car. I wish he was here, so I… well, I just wasn’t prepared to be held hostage on my own.”