The Hidden Beach

by Karen Swan

  ‘Great. We’ll set something up.’

  ‘Sure.’ She glanced over again, knowing she should get back to the kids, seeing how Hanna and Jakob were still locked in conversation. ‘Honestly. What are they talking about?’

  Per sighed, looking used to it. ‘Catching up on all the gossip. This is Jakob’s favourite time of year. He calls it ‘reconnecting’ with everyone but really, he’s just an old woman blathering at the garden gate. He does this to someone on every drop we make.’

  ‘Is there really that much gossip to be had here?’ she asked sceptically.

  ‘More than you’d believe. A beluga was spotted a mile from here last week; the local reclusive billionaire’s back on the scene; there’s already a scandal around the Gotland Cup –’ He stopped talking suddenly and flashed her a grin. ‘But I won’t tell you too much. That way you’ll be incentivized to have that lunch with me. Or drink.’

  She looked back at him. ‘It sounds like there’s a lot I need to hear.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, his gaze locking with hers flirtatiously. ‘The summer season has officially kicked off.’

  Chapter Six

  The water lay stretched and tight like a bolt of sapphire silk, not so much as a wrinkle on its surface as Nymphea chugged efficiently out of the marina and into the narrow sound. They passed within metres of the opposite islands of Lökholmen and Krokso, which stood as buffers between Sandhamn and the open sea, heading back towards the strait.

  Summer Isle, officially called Strommskar, lay a short distance behind them as part of a separate constellation of small, semi-linked holms, some so close to one another it was as though they were holding hands underwater. Max had described it for her as roughly forming the shape of a number six, with several breaches in the perimeter of the belly where occasionally curious sailors would glide silently through on their way back to the strait.

  The children (Linus, really) had named the islands individually – Dead Man’s Bones on account of the hop-skip-and-jump collection of rocks that looked like a floating skeleton; Rockpools because of the inland ponds where they fished for minnows; Little Summer, which was right next to them; 007 because it had a big house that couldn’t be seen from the water, and the entire island was privately owned by a secretive rich family; Swan’s Nest after they were chased away by an aggressive cob . . .

  Summer Isle was perhaps a square kilometre in total and was one of the more forested isles, with bare rock only on the perimeter; moss and pine needles carpeted the ground, and the light fell through the shimmying canopies in golden splinters. Last summer, Bell had spent hours exploring the island’s nooks and crannies with the children, fishing nets tightly gripped in their small fists as they pretended the smooth, pinkish rocks were sleeping hippos, the four of them spinning in circles, arms outstretched and their faces turned upwards like daisies, in the sunny pools of the scattered glades.

  The children sat beside her now on the bench seats, wearing their lifejackets and enjoying the breeze on their faces as Hanna expertly guided the boat in closer. She knew instinctively where to avoid and turn, and had no need of the warning sticks alerting her to submerged rocks just below the surface. Max had been coming here since he was a boy and he had taught Hanna well.

  The jetty was already visible, the Janssons’ sun-bleached flag flapping limply further up the shoreline. Bell joined the children as they instinctively twisted in their seats and looked down into the water as they drew ever closer, spotting the small stones on the sandy bottom, the delicate lacy fronds of spiracea and strife lilting with the tide; a crab scuttling nimbly across the seafloor, falling still as the shadow of the boat passed over.

  Hanna docked with precision and she and Bell helped the children safely off the boat, Bell passing up the luggage bags for the two of them to carry between them. The rest of the children’s toys and sports kit would have to come up on separate trips.

  They followed the grassy path through the trees, the girls stepping onto old stumps, picking up jumbo fir cones and stopping to nibble on wild blueberries. It had taken Bell several weeks on her first visit to successfully navigate her way through the forest to the Mogerts’ house without circumventing the entire island, doubling back on herself or inadvertently dropping in on the neighbours. But her eye had found the clues eventually – look for the broken branch, go past that fallen tree, turn left at the salty marsh where the frogs chirrup at night.

  It was never dark anywhere here in the summer months, but light only fell in narrow blades at the very centre of the island, cutting past the trees in whisper-thin arrows as they wound through the slim-legged trunks one after the other. Linus was managing to carry a couple of bags too, the guitar slung across his body, but Bell seemed to have the heaviest load and her muscles were burning as she held and braced them at awkward angles. The cut-through across to the other side was probably only an eight-minute walk from the jetty to the cabin, but every minute felt quadruple that. She felt a wave of relief when the sea gradually emerged as a backdrop to the trees, growing ever bluer and brighter, until eventually they stepped out of the shady woods and the blue sea met the bright sky again.

  ‘Thank God,’ she groaned, letting the bags drop to the ground with a soft thud as the girls immediately shrieked at the sight of their familiar playground and ran down to the gentle scoop of sand. Tilde found a driftwood stick, and proudly wrote her name. Linus sank onto the bottom step of the deck and watched them, left out and looking overdressed now in his jeans and grey sweatshirt.

  Bell looked back at her home for the next six weeks, bar weekends when she could escape back to the city for some much needed time out with her friends. Built on the site of the original cabin that had belonged to Max’s grandparents and parents – and which had eventually succumbed to a storm – the Mogerts’ place was a largish, modernist cabin with black pine cladding and walls of huge sliding plate-glass windows. It was surrounded on all sides by a large deck set on a bed of smooth rocks. Their shallow cove was on the lee shore on the south-westerly side of the island, away from the main nautical thoroughfare. Good for privacy, less so for prevailing winds.

  Hanna walked up the steps and over the deck, reaching into a battered, fraying fishing creel propped up against the back wall that looked distinctly at odds with the pristine minimalism of the rest of the house. It was an inherited piece too; much of the ‘kit’ here was – repaired fishing nets, sun-bleached buckets, hand-whittled rods – but inside the newly built house, everything was pale blonde and white, the furniture bent wood and minimal. It was so sparse that in winter the effect would have been cold and severe, but the family never came out before June, and for summer it was perfect.

  Hanna slid open the door, having ‘aired’ the place on a weekend in May with Max, checking for any over-winter repairs that needed seeing to and stocking up the larder with non-perishables. ‘Home sweet home,’ she sighed, stepping in with a curious gaze before beginning to slide back the rest of the walls.

  Bell picked up the bags for one last time and lumbered them into the house. With all the doors opened on three sides, the breeze blew happily through the cabin, carrying in the sharp briny tang of the sea, dragonflies darting in curiously, the hiss of the tide sinking into the sand, the girls’ chattering voices . . . Outside became inside here; it was all one.

  Linus went straight to his room, Hanna’s eyes following him as she let the taps run for a moment. She looked tired.

  Bell took the girls’ bags to their bedroom and immediately began unpacking their clothes. They were so tiny that even to the power of two, they took up no space at all. She opened the window in there and shook the duvets, plumping and turning over the pillows, checking for spiders or anything else that might cause a fit of hysteria.

  ‘Need any help unpacking?’ she asked, popping her head in through Linus’s door.

  He was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. His bed was made up with a red-and-blue-starred bed set, a dark-blue blanket draped ar
tfully across the bottom. There was a fake-fur beanbag by the sliding window that looked back into the trees, the neon print of a dinosaur on the wall – several years too young for him now – and a striped hooded towel poncho hung from a hook on the back of the door.

  ‘Linus?’

  He startled. ‘Huh?’

  She frowned. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Tired?’ The ferry journey – at two hours long – was surprisingly wearing in the wind and sun.

  He gave a shrug that was supposed to be nonchalant but wasn’t. ‘Maybe.’

  She watched him for another moment, seeing how he stared at the ceiling with a studied intensity. She walked over, sinking down with a ‘whoosh’ into the jumbo beanbag. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m just bored, I guess.’

  ‘We only just got here!’ she laughed.

  He was growing fast now – those jeans that had fit him at Christmas were already too short at the ankle – and his mood often seemed more sullen and reluctant.

  Bell dropped her head back on the bag and turned it slightly, looking out into the forest. Some of the larger islands had rabbits and foxes, even deer; the best they had had was a grouse scuttling through the undergrowth. They lay in easy silence, both staring at nothing, listening to everything: Hanna opening and closing cupboards in the kitchen, the sound of bottles and jars being set down on the counter, the suckering of the fridge door. Bell knew she ought to get up and help. This, lying on a beanbag, couldn’t technically be classified as ‘working’.

  ‘So what do you want to do most, now that we’re here?’ she asked, looking back at Linus, seeing how he stared and stared at the ceiling. ‘We could go on an afternoon paddle, round to Blind Man’s Bay?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We could put out the nets and see what we can catch for supper?’

  ‘I want pasta.’

  ‘Okay. Well, how about we just go on an exploring walk and see if anything’s changed?’

  ‘Like what? Nothing changes here.’

  ‘Linus, what a thing to say,’ she gasped in mock horror. ‘Everything changes here. Summer Isle is the very crucible of change.’

  ‘The very what?’

  She smiled, knowing the unfamiliar English word would pique his interest. ‘You never know, the Big Ash might have fallen in a storm. Or old Persson’s shack might have been blown away, and he’s now living under a palm leaf that blew in from the East Indies.’

  Linus cracked a tiny smile at that. ‘Or he might have died seven months ago and his body’s lying undiscovered on the floor.’

  Bell gave a grimace. ‘Eww, I hope not!’ She winked. ‘But we should probably check. Stealth mission?’

  ‘What’s our cover story?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Collecting kindling.’

  He gave a smile, but then it faded. ‘No. I don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh Linus! Why not?’

  He shot her a look. ‘Because I’m ten now, and that’s babyish.’

  She gave a frustrated sigh, giving up. ‘Right, fine – well, if you’re too old to play, you can help me do some chores. Come on; I need to get the rest of the stuff from the boat. Then we’ll kayak back to Sandhamn. We forgot milk. You can take your skateboard and have a run on the roads out there.’

  ‘But it’ll take twenty minutes each way to get over there.’

  ‘Yeah. What’s your point?’

  ‘That’ll take ages.’

  ‘Precisely,’ she said briskly, patting his knee and getting up. ‘What else are we gonna do? We’re on island time now, champ.’

  Her cabin was exactly as she had left it: narrow pine bed dressed with fluffy duvet and a jumbo-stitched knitted blanket; a trendy charcoal-grey knotted wool rug over the floorboards; a replica Egg chair in the near corner; on the wall a black-and-white print of pine trees silhouetted by a frozen lake; books in English and Swedish – mainly thrillers – laid along the window edges, sagging slightly from the condensation build-up; the kitchen units – sink, fridge – hidden from sight, set inside what looked like a wall of cupboards along the far gable end.

  Bell set down her bag and went straight to the fridge. With a moan of relief, she saw that the bottle of vodka she had left last summer was still in the shallow freezer compartment. A can of Coke was in the fridge door, and within seconds, she had poured herself a chilled reward for the day’s labours.

  She walked back out onto the deck and sank into the low timber Adirondack chair, tucking her feet in close to her bottom and letting her chin rest on her knees as she gazed out to sea. They were just at the end point of the island, where the rocks swooped back on themselves in an irregular ellipse, and she had a partial view east, back towards the lagoon and the island opposite, which was maybe two hundred metres away. It was the one Linus had called 007, in the hope that a rich villain lived there. Everyone knew the owners were rich. But villains, too? Linus hoped so. It was the largest island in their little constellation, and deeply wooded. Unlike many of the other skerries and isles here, it was privately owned, and even though Swedish law took a relaxed view of ownership and trespass law – stating that anyone could camp anywhere for a period of up to twenty-four hours – no one ever did seem to dock or land there. The jetty was always noticeably bare, pointing into the water like a threatening finger, a warning to stay back.

  Looking further left – or westwards – Bell could see the Baltic swing out on an expansive curve, the horizon pushed back and distant, the next islands of the archipelago merely fuzzy blots, before the view turned tightly back to the Mogerts’ crescent beach and contemporary cabin. They were only twenty or so metres behind her, but the swathe of trees at the end of the beach provided a natural privacy barrier for both parties. The rock bed on her little patch was largely level, although it undulated into shallow dips and rises, catching the rain in little rock pools before dropping in smooth slopes, two metres down to the water’s edge.

  She knew she ought to unpack and organize herself the way she’d organized the family – after getting the milk with Linus, whilst Hanna wrote up some patient reports, she had spent the afternoon unpacking everyone’s bags, setting up toys and cooking a chilli (her freezer and store cupboard fall-back), keeping a close eye on the girls’ frolics on the sand, although they were so excitable, they could be heard at all times. But she didn’t move; this was the first moment of the day she’d had to herself. It was well after nine, the children having been finally coerced and settled into bed, but the night sky still glowed brightly, with only a deepening blush of colour to indicate the day’s end. She hoped she’d remembered to pack her sleep mask.

  She took another sip of her drink, feeling the vodka begin to take effect, relaxing her. Over her right shoulder, the forest stood shadowy and silent, not so much as a mouse picking its way across the grass. Her eyes grazed idly over the tufts of yellow sedum peeking through the crevices of the rocks, and she watched as a tern swooped from the sky and tore a neat slit through the water’s glassy surface. It was pale and still now the breeze had dropped. The fierce heat of the day had lifted, but it was still humid, and her skin felt tacky with dried sweat, her hair tangled around her face from where she had repeatedly pushed it back.

  ‘You would have loved this, Jack,’ she whispered to the sky, her index finger tapping against the chilled glass. ‘. . . You should have stayed.’

  A sob gathered in her throat, tears pricking her eyes and she squeezed them shut, her mouth drawn in a flat, angry line. No . . . She felt a contradictory kick of exhaustion and agitation and she stretched her legs out, trying to adapt to the feeling of nothingness – nothing to do, nowhere to be. It always took a while to adjust to the change of pace on the islands; Linus wasn’t alone in his restlessness. The usual distractions didn’t apply – there was no TV in her tiny hut, of course, only electricity generators and gas. A small solar panel on the roof was enough to power the fridge, but a kettle was a luxury too far for her tiny annexe
, and a cup of tea meant a trek back to the main house. If she wanted to charge her phone, she had to use a solar-powered battery (which had naturally been packed away in her bag all day), and right now she was too tired to read. She supposed she could have an outdoor shower . . .

  She glanced over towards the rudimentary vestibule Max had cobbled together long before she had come to work for the family – old copper pipes snaking up to a shower head that sprayed in all directions but down, the weathered timber privacy boards beginning to split and warp.

  Or . . .

  She looked back at the sea again. It would be the same temperature anyway, and being brackish, the water here always left her feeling clean afterwards. Could there be a more perfect wind-down from her day: a cooling, cleansing swim in silky water before she fell headlong into bed?

  She got up and stripped off where she stood, her clothes falling in a heap at her feet. She took another, large gulp of her vodka and tiptoed, naked as a baby, over the rocks towards the small cleft dug into the outermost knuckle of the isle. It stepped down in narrow, banded ledges to the water, looking clear and inviting, but she still gave a little gasp as it closed coldly over her feet. She sucked in her breath, tensing her muscles as she tried to adjust to the shock. The short channel here was narrow but the water was deep and she swung her arms above her head and dived in, feeling the icy grip and then release of the water’s embrace. She glided for several moments, surfacing with her face upturned so that her hair streamed back, before launching into a ferocious front crawl for several minutes to warm herself up.

  She felt the city slough off her, the familiar rumble of traffic on Stockholm’s Centralbron, always in the background, replaced by an echoing silence. She felt her soul begin to shift, Summer Isle’s tranquillity sliding like a glove over exposed nerve endings.

  She felt like she was home.

  Chapter Seven

  They settled quickly into the new routine, the first few days a blur of sandwich-making, sandcastle-building, rock-pool-exploring activity. They went out on the little boat with picnics wrapped and knotted up in a blue-and-white checked tablecloth, the children awkward in their bulky yellow buoyancy vests, their faces already turning berry-brown, their hair salty and increasingly tangled. They explored the nearby bays and coves of the neighbouring islands on the lagoon side, where the water was warmest and most protected. But although their world here was remote and small, it was not without incident – already there had been one allergy-inducing spider bite (Elise), a bleeding toe from standing on a piece of glass (also Elise) and a bright strip of sunburned back (Tilde) which had been missed in the regular suncream-slathering sessions.