by Karen Swan
‘Okay.’
‘It is really very urgent. If you can please pass on to her –’
Linus stepped back over the threshold, eyes wide, tears threatening. ‘Bell, I can’t remember them. They’ve gone.’
‘– so the sooner she can get here the better.’
What? Bell blinked at Linus blindly as the two simultaneous pronouncements clashed and clattered in her brain, each one vying for her attention. She turned away from him, certain she had misheard the voice on the phone.
‘I’m sorry, that makes no sense. I think you must have the wrong number . . .’ But even as she said it, she frowned; the doctor had clearly asked for Hanna Mogert. ‘Hello? . . . Dr Sorensen? . . . Are you there?’
Chapter Two
The day ticked past with leaden boots. Somehow she had managed to get the kids to school and kindergarten only a few minutes past the bell; somehow she had managed to tidy the kitchen, buy lingonberry jam, make dinner and get the ironing done before collecting the girls again and giving them lunch. Somehow she had managed to sing songs and read stories to them, and even more surprisingly, somehow she had managed to get them to tidy their bedroom. But what she hadn’t managed was to get hold of Hanna.
Ninny, her secretary, had confided that Hanna was dealing with a patient in the midst of a psychotic break – but that if it was about the kids, she could get hold of her for Bell. Reluctantly, Bell had declined. It wasn’t about the kids, and she didn’t think her message – bewildering though it was – could compete with the needs of someone in such acute mental distress. Not to mention, it might all turn out to be a mistake anyway. Perhaps Dr Sorensen had in fact been trying to get hold of another Hanna Mogert, a Hanna to whom this scenario would make perfect sense.
Max had called in a short while ago to talk to the kids before going on to his client’s dinner; but although the message had sat poised at her throat, ready to be shared and diluted and expelled, explained and clarified and laughed upon, Bell had stayed silent. It might just be that he was the very last person she should tell.
Holding a coffee cup between cold hands, she glanced anxiously at the kitchen clock for the thousandth time. But it didn’t matter how often she checked it, she couldn’t seem to make those little hands move around more quickly. Five twenty-five. Linus was in the playroom downstairs, dejectedly watching TV, having lost the eights not to Nils but to quiet little Brigitte Carlsson.
His teacher talk was in just over half an hour, and with no word from Hanna at all, Bell was resigned to the fate of her evening plans. She had already texted Ivan asking for a rain check, but taking the girls out after dinner to sit quietly whilst she listened to Linus’s school report was not going to be fun. She would need to find something to occupy them – Elise was a terrible fidget, and Tilde was always prone to getting overtired after supper.
Her hand trailed over the sludgy grey-green handrail as she skipped downstairs, past the crowded gallery of black-and-white family photographs which had been carefully framed, but always seemed to have one or two askew. She stopped and straightened a small one of Hanna and Linus taken when he was a toddler: they were sitting on a sandy beach, their matching blonde hair streaming in the wind as their cheeks pressed together, eyes slitted against the bright sun. It was a snapshot of joy, and all of the other pictures told the same story – that this was a happy family.
Was it?
She frowned, continuing down into the basement. The washing machine in the utility to the left was drumming away quietly, tossing and turning and soaping and rinsing the children’s clothes from their muddy play in the park yesterday. The door left ajar into the small WC gave a glimpse of the patterned Moroccan clay tiles Hanna had fallen in love with on a trip to Marrakesh with Max.
She peered around the playroom door. It had high-level windows that allowed natural daylight to, if not flood the room, certainly trickle into it; all-white walls and a pale larch floor helped too. To her relief, it was still tidy. More days of her life than she wanted to count had been devoted to taming this one space, but for the moment at least, the paint brushes and pencils were still in their pots on the lime-green Ikea craft table; jigsaws and books were stacked in colourful neatness along the wall-to-wall bookcase; there were no tiny Sylvanian Family characters hiding in the bright swirls of the rug, waiting for a bare foot to tread on them.
Linus was lying on the red beanbag, a packet of sour peach sweets perched on his tummy and his curls splayed out. Only a heap of Lego bricks lay scattered to his far side, the progress on a half-made F1 car no doubt stalled by the absence of a single, vital piece.
He was watching Doctor Who in English; all the children were fully bilingual with barely a trace of an accent, and Bell’s own Englishness had been one of the reasons they’d been so keen to employ her, even though she’d never nannied before. Hanna and Max had asked her to always converse with the children in English, even though she was fluent in Swedish herself; her grandmother had hailed from Gothenburg on the west coast and until the day she’d died, when Bell was twelve, had always insisted on addressing her in her native language.
‘Hey.’
He twisted to look back at her, his eyes seeming wider than ever in his upside-down position.
‘You ready? We should head off in a few minutes.’
‘Oh . . . I guess.’ He turned away again, and she saw the disappointment in the stiffness of his little body. He was a perfectionist and a worrier, always seeming to expect so much of himself.
She walked over to him and tried to perch as lightly as she could on the side of the beanbag, but it still rose up beneath him like a souffle. ‘It’s going to be okay, you know,’ she said, gently winding her index finger into one of his curls. ‘Forget about today; you’re one of the smartest boys in your class and Miss Olsson loves you. Going to your teacher’s evening is like . . . playing with puppies. A total feel-good session.’ Linus shot her a sceptical sideways look. ‘Your naughty little sister, on the other hand . . .’
That got his attention. ‘What did she do now?’ he asked, alert, not even having to ask which one.
‘Promise you won’t tell?’ With a five-year age gap between him and the girls, and the twins sharing such a tight bond, Bell often sensed he felt like a third wheel: too big and strong for some of their games, bored by others, and a boy to boot. She occasionally shared these little snippets to make a virtue of his age and bond them as the ‘grown-ups’.
‘I promise,’ he said eagerly.
She lowered her voice for conspiratorial effect. ‘Well, you know the chicks have hatched?’
He nodded. How could he forget? It was all anyone in his family had discussed at breakfast or tea for the past few weeks.
‘When I picked the girls up at lunchtime, I was taken to one side and informed that Elise had sneaked off with one in her pocket –’
His mouth opened in surprise, hovering between horror and hilarity until he knew the full extent of the chick’s fate.
‘– painted it green –’
It opened wider still.
‘– and sprinkled its feathers with glitter.’
There was a moment of abeyance as he concluded the chick was – in the life or death sense – technically unharmed, and his eyes suddenly sparkled with delight. ‘She did not!’ he laughed.
‘Oh yes. Apparently she thought it might prefer to be a mermaid chick.’
He laughed harder and Bell smiled, loving his delight. ‘So, that will be an interesting parents’ meeting. Yours, on the other hand?’ She shrugged. ‘Really not so much.’
‘She’s crazy!’
‘She’s certainly not dull.’ She tickled his tummy, making him laugh and wriggle again. ‘Come on, champ. Let’s go hear how great you are.’ With a puff of effort, she got up from the beanbag. ‘I’ll round up the girls while you put that Lego away.’
She jogged back upstairs, straightening another picture as she passed – this time, one of Linus and the twins in the bath, thei
r chubby, pinked faces peering over the enamel rim.
‘Elise, Tilde!’ she called, stepping into the hall and staring up through the narrow gap of the winding staircase. The girls’ rooms were on the third floor, and she’d rather not have to run all the way up there to get them. ‘Come on, it’s time to—’ Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Hanna! You’re back.’
Hanna peered down from the first-floor landing, her hair hanging like a sheet of spun flax. ‘Only just.’
‘I – I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I think you were in the basement. I hoped there might be time for a five-minute rest, but –’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’ll take it from here. You get off. Your day has been long enough already.’
So had hers, apparently. Bell stared up at her, seeing the exhaustion on her boss’s face, and she wondered what it was like dealing with someone in the midst of a psychotic break. It suggested delusion, violence, wildness, blades, blood . . . This teacher meeting was poorly timed.
‘Thanks again, Bell. See you tomorrow.’ Hanna turned and disappeared back into her bedroom.
‘Hanna, wait,’ Bell said, bounding up the stairs two at a time and rushing to the door. She peered into the room. It was large, with what Bell always considered to be a very masculine energy. It had aubergine walls, finished with some kind of lacquer effect, and the exposed floorboards that ran throughout the house were covered with a vast charcoal-grey sheepskin rug. Hanna was standing by the end of the bed – a fine black four-poster with heavy ivory linen hangings – pulling off her shoe with the other foot and untucking her blouse from her trousers. The right way up, she looked even more drained than she had from downstairs.
‘I’ve been trying to reach you all day.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Exhaustion suffused her voice, making it thick and slow. ‘I had to switch my cell off.’ She looked up suddenly, concern on her face. ‘Something—?’
‘No, no, the kids are fine,’ Bell said quickly, coming into the room. It was probably best that the children didn’t overhear this. ‘But I took an urgent phone call this morning, only minutes after you left.’
Hanna relaxed again. ‘Oh?’ She unbuttoned her trousers and stepped out of them, walking across the room as she arranged them on a hanger and replaced them in the wardrobe. She put on her jeans instead.
Bell didn’t blink an eye; she had grown accustomed to the Swedes’ lack of inhibitions. Hanna and Max routinely moved around – certainly upstairs – in their underwear, and they all swam nude in the sea at the summer house (although Bell usually excused herself on the pretext of urgently needing to buy milk. Or bread. Or hazelnuts).
‘Yes, a – uh – Dr Sorensen called for you,’ Bell said quietly, seeing how Hanna fell still at the mention of the name.
‘Oh?’ But her voice was hesitant now. ‘What did she want?’
She? She knew Dr Sorensen was a woman? So Hanna did know her, then. It wasn’t a coincidence or a mistake. This might be . . . this might be true?
Bell opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. How could she repeat the message, say those words, when they made no sense?
Hanna turned back to face her, but the depleted energy she had radiated only a few seconds ago had suddenly switched to a quivering intensity. Her mouth was stretched thin, the sinews in her neck pronounced, but her eyes were fiercely focused. ‘Bell? What did Dr Sorensen want?’
‘She wanted you to know . . .’ But still the words failed her. She couldn’t give them a shape. It was preposterous. Nonsensical.
Suddenly Hanna was before her. She was tall, at least four inches taller than Bell, and her hands were on Bell’s arms, as though she was the one in need of consolation. ‘Tell me. What did she want me to know?’
Bell looked up at her, sensing change, some sort of seismic shift. ‘Your husband has woken up.’
Chapter Three
Kris looked up from his favoured spot at the stove, his lobster-print apron looking anachronistic against the faded and torn Metallica t-shirt. The smell of chorizo, prawns and peppers filled the small flat. ‘Hey! You’re late!’
Bell, positioning the bike on its rack behind the front door, kicked off her trainers, pulled her beanie from her head and let her hand fall against her thigh. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, lethargically shrugging off her coat and limping in. ‘Oh – hi.’
Tove waved from her sprawled position on the sofa, blowing smoke from her roll-up towards the ceiling. ‘Hi, babe. I’m not here. You haven’t seen me.’
That was easier said than done. At five foot eleven, with legs up to Bell’s armpits, Tove wasn’t particularly easy to hide. But Bell nodded, knowing the drill; her lanky, irreverent friend, who worked in the Star Bar two floors below the flat, often escaped up here on her breaks. Invariably, they slid well past the official twenty minutes.
Kris frowned at Bell as she dragged herself into the room. ‘You look like shit,’ he said fondly. ‘Tough day?’ He finished slicing a Romano pepper and scraped it off the board into the pan. It instantly sizzled and hissed, and he shook the pan several times, biceps flexing under the harsh under-cupboard lights.
‘. . . You could say that,’ she said after a moment, collapsing onto the battered black leather sofa opposite Tove and stretching out, letting her feet dangle over the arm. She closed her eyes as if that would still her mind, but the thoughts continued rushing like a river in flood.
‘Here.’
She looked up to see Kris standing over her and holding out a chilled bottle of beer. She gave a happy sigh of contentment. ‘I love you,’ she smiled. His dirty blonde hair was pulled up into his signature man-bun and he looked unseasonably tanned, thanks to a recent gig for some surf brand in Sydney. His modelling jobs easily paid the rent, but cooking was his real passion, and he was saving to get enough to open his own place – a small bar specializing in craft beers and Hawaiian food.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position and crossed her legs, feeling none of Elise’s urge to untuck her black trousers from her purple socks.
‘I thought you were seeing Ivan tonight?’
‘Yeah, so did he. But Hanna had an emergency at work, so I had to stay late.’
‘Again?’ Tove lamented. She took a serious interest in the state of Bell’s love life, which she proclaimed as being ‘dire’. ‘That’s how many times you’ve blown him out now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘More times than you’ve seen him, for sure.’
‘Well, it couldn’t be avoided this time.’
‘And why couldn’t Max deal with it?’
‘Because he’s pitching for a big deal with a client, and he’s got some fancy dinner set up for tonight.’
‘So yet again, you have to pick up the pieces?’ Tove sighed, tutting. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how you think you can ever get your life back on track when you’re constantly putting yourself second.’
Bell met Kris’s eyes as she took a swig of her beer. They both knew Tove meant well; it was just that she had the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
‘So, what made your day so tough, then?’ Kris asked, rescuing her as he moved about their kitchenette. The apartment was largely open-plan, with an old eighties pine kitchen spread against the back wall and delineated from the sofas and table area by a marble-effect linoleum counter.
‘Well, if I tell you, do you promise to keep it to yourself?’
It was a rhetorical question to one of her friends, and Kris gave one of his easy shrugs in reply. He wasn’t big on rumour and innuendo; he’d been on the wrong end of it too many times. Tove dramatically drew a cross above her heart, and then kissed her fingers.
Bell rested her elbows on her knees, as though an approximation of the lotus position was going to give her any more peace. Her topknot flopped limply to one side of her head, but she ignored it. ‘So, I took a phone call today –’
Instantly Tove began clapping and kicking out her long legs. ‘Yes! Yes! I knew you could do it! Didn’t I sa
y?’
Kris shook his head with a weary, wry grin as he shook the pan again.
Bell gave her the bird, and a sarcastic smile. ‘It was some doctor asking for Hanna. She said it was urgent, and gave me a message – but it made no sense, right? Like, none at all.’
Tove nodded impatiently, whirling her hands in a ‘get on with it’ motion, puffing more smoke towards the ceiling pendant.
‘Only, I couldn’t get hold of Hanna all day – like I said, she had a client emergency of her own going on. I wasn’t that worried about it, because I really figured they must have had the wrong number, or the wrong Hanna, at least, because her message made no sense.’ She took a swig of her beer. ‘But then, when Hanna got back this evening . . .’
Kris, tossing the peppers to let them char on the other side, watched her, waiting. Unlike Tove – ever impatient and restless – he understood that she had to run it through in her mind again exactly as it had happened, in case there had been a mistake . . . She looked straight up at him. ‘It turns out that before she was with Max, Hanna was married to some other guy.’
Kris frowned. ‘Did we know that?’
‘Nope. He’s never been mentioned. There’s no photos of the dude anywhere.’
‘Oooh, a secret husband – how fabulous!’ Tove said, lifting one endless leg into the air. Bell always joked that her legs were like strings with knots in them, but they both knew she was just jealous. If Tove was lean and lanky – with a tendency towards elegance in her more mature moments – Bell was rounded and, in Tove’s words, ‘juicy’. Five foot four but with a figure like a cello, she had curves where Tove had straight lines.
‘Well, he was secret for a reason. Apparently the poor guy’s spent the past seven years in a coma.’
Kris stopped what he was doing. Tove’s leg swung down, and her arm dangled off the side of the sofa. ‘What?’ they asked in unison.
Bell nodded, feeling gratified by their shock. It roughly matched her own. ‘Yeah. And today he woke up.’
‘Holy shit!’ Kris returned the pan to the heat as though unable to keep holding it. He stared at her as though she had the answers. ‘How?’
