Blomkvist left Vanger when he started to doze off. He packed his belongings into
two suitcases. As he closed the door to the cottage for the last time, he paused and
then went over to Cecilia’s house and knocked. She was not home. He took out his
pocket calendar, tore out a page, and wrote: I wish you all the best. Try to forgive me.
Mikael. He put the note in her letter box. An electric Christmas candle shone in the
kitchen window of Martin Vanger’s empty house.
He took the last train back to Stockholm.
During the holidays Salander tuned out the rest of the world. She did not answer
her telephone and she did not turn on her computer. She spent two days washing
laundry, scrubbing, and cleaning up her apartment. Year-old pizza boxes and
newspapers were bundled up and carried downstairs. She dragged out a total of six
black rubbish bags and twenty paper bags full of newspapers. She felt as if she had
decided to start a new life. She thought about buying a new apartment—when she
found something suitable—but for now her old place would be more dazzlingly
clean than she could ever remember.
Then she sat as if paralysed, thinking. She had never in her life felt such a longing.
She wanted Mikael Blomkvist to ring the doorbell and...what then? Lift her off the
ground, hold her in his arms? Passionately take her into the bedroom and tear off
her clothes? No, she really just wanted his company. She wanted to hear him say
that he liked her for who she was. That she was someone special in his world and in
his life. She wanted him to give her some gesture of love, not just of friendship and
companionship. I’m flipping out, she thought.
She had no faith in herself. Blomkvist lived in a world populated by people with
respectable jobs, people with orderly lives and lots of grown-up points. His friends
did things, went on TV, and shaped the headlines. What do you need me
for? Salander’s greatest fear, which was so huge and so black that it was of phobic
proportions, was that people would laugh at her feelings. And all of a sudden all
her carefully constructed self-confidence seemed to crumble.
That’s when she made up her mind. It took her several hours to mobilise the
necessary courage, but she had to see him and tell him how she felt.
Anything else would be unbearable.