Dark Angel (Anders Knutas 6)

Everything was going to be fine. She refused to give up. The birds were chirping, having a calming effect on her. The carrot cake she’d ordered was big and moist. As she raised the fork to her mouth, a man entered the restaurant. She thought he looked familiar.
    But she just couldn’t place him.

THE CAFÉ WAS on the outskirts of Visby, with a view of the Botanical Gardens. The sun was shining and it was a warm day. Emma wanted to go someplace where she could sit in peace and think. And it had to be outdoors so she could smoke. Over the past few years she had sometimes smoked a lot, sometimes not at all. She had stopped when she was pregnant with Sara and Filip and while she was breastfeeding. But afterwards she had started smoking again. The same thing had happened with Elin. As soon as she stopped breastfeeding, Emma had resumed smoking even though she had actually weaned herself of the habit. Lots of her friends and acquaintances thought it was odd for her to be so addicted to nicotine. She worked out several times a week, taught young children and loved to take walks in the woods. In fact, she was considered a real outdoors person. Emma couldn’t explain why she smoked. Right now she needed to think, and that meant being able to light up a cigarette.
    She walked through the gate in the ring wall to the garden café and looked around. A dozen or so tables had been placed outside among the blossoming apple trees and lilacs. Here anyone wanting both shade and solitude could find a place. Three tables were occupied. At one of them sat an elderly man working on the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, with a cup of coffee and a piece of marzipan cake in front of him. At another table sat two teenage girls drinking lattes from oversize cups. They had their heads together, deep in conversation. At the third table sat a young man with a salad and a book. Emma couldn’t see the title. He was the only one who looked up as she went over to the counter to place her order. She asked for a double macchiato and her favourite dessert: Italian almond biscotti dipped in chocolate. She chose a table at the far end of the garden where she could sit in peace without being disturbed. The sun was so warm that she took off her jacket and draped it over the back of the chair next to her. Then she sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette.
    She didn’t think it would do any harm, this early in the pregnancy. And besides, she wasn’t positive that she wanted to go through with it. She wasn’t going to tell Johan yet. Another child. What would that mean? When she saw the results on the pregnancy test she’d done at home this morning, she was seized with panic. To make things worse, her ex-husband Olle had rung the doorbell thirty seconds later. It was his turn to take care of the children. She had tossed the test in the waste-paper basket, covered it with some toilet paper, and then splashed some water on her face before going to the door. She had managed to pull herself together enough to send Sara and Filip off with the usual hugs and kisses, reminding them to phone her to say goodnight before they went to bed. But the test results had shocked her. She had to get out of the house and have time alone to think about the unexpected situation she now found herself in. Her friend Viveka was willing, as usual, to take care of Elin for a few hours. Emma hadn’t even dared tell Viveka about her condition. Not yet.
    As she drove to town, her head was a whirl of contradictory thoughts. The idea of yet another pregnancy, yet another child, made her feel sick. The next instant she was ashamed of herself. Shouldn’t this kind of news make her happy? She was thirty-eight years old, married, with a good job and a wonderful husband who loved her. They had all the prerequisites for welcoming another child into their lives, and she assumed that Johan would be overjoyed.
    Feeling dejected, she had parked the car near Stora Torget, bought a pack of cigarettes and the evening paper at ICA, and then walked over to the Botanical Gardens.
    Now she was sitting here in the shade under the apple trees with the newspaper open in front of her so it would look as if she was reading. Silently she cursed herself. How could she have been so careless? Birth-control pills made her feel sick, and using an IUD didn’t work for her, so they had used condoms, but a few times they’d forgotten and had unprotected sex. Which was irresponsible, of course, since she got