The Hidden Beach

by Karen Swan

  With every dawn, the sun seemed to beat with growing intensity, each day hotter than the last so that bobbing, gliding and diving in the water was the only relief to be had. And when their skin was wrinkled, they took refuge in the speckled shade of the pines, idly pulling apart needles as Bell read to the girls after lunch and lulled them into drowsy naps on the blanket, giving her, Hanna and Linus – who seemed to be grouped with the adults this year – a few precious hours of peace.

  They couldn’t sleep hard enough, it seemed, their little bodies woken too early and nudged too late by the almost endless sunlight, and she kept forgetting to ask Hanna to ask Max to bring the blackout linings from home when he came out this weekend.

  The long days left her worn out too, and after the initial challenge of sudden digital detox, she was just about adjusting to not having wifi. She had to catch the news on her old radio and actual newspapers, and depend on WhatsApps– mobile coverage permitting, depending on the weather systems – from Kris and Tove to keep her in the loop with the Stockholm scene. Not to mention fixing up a social life.

  Tonight was her date with Per, the crewman from the ferry. He had invited her for a drink at the pub, having docked that afternoon and swapped a shift so that he could stay over on Sandhamn tonight. Bell stared at her reflection in the mirror, somewhat surprised by what she saw; there’d scarcely been a moment to stop all week, much less consider what she looked like. Most mornings she took it as a win if she had time to drag a brush through her hair and find a dry bikini. But she had caught the sun, too, even in just four days – her hazel eyes looked vivid against her tanned skin, and there were a few freckles smattered across the bridge of her nose.

  She brushed her hair to a shine, pulling it up into a high ponytail and finishing it with a thin black velvet ribbon. That and a pair of earrings were her only nod to accessorizing, as she buttoned up her denim shorts and tugged on the red-and-white striped tank. She gave herself one last appraising look in the mirror – sporty, fresh, natural, not too try-hard. It wasn’t like she particularly fancied Per, but she could probably be persuaded into it for a while. More than anything it would just be nice to talk to another adult about something other than sandwich fillings and suncream.

  Sliding on her Birkenstocks, she cast about for her phone. It was ten to eight and it would take roughly ten minutes to putter over to Sandhamn and dock in the marina, then a few minutes’ walk across the harbour to the pub on the far side.

  Where was it?

  She checked on the bed again, inside the kitchen cupboard, ran out to check in the loo, the Adirondack chair, the windowsill, the rock where she sometimes just about caught a phone signal, the bed again – before remembering she’d left it on the worktop in the main cabin kitchen.

  She had to go past the main house anyway to get the boat; Hanna had told her she had free use of it. Panic over, she shut the cabin door behind her and began walking through the trees back towards the little beach. The path was narrow, with moss springing up on both sides, patches of rock peeking through like bare skin beneath the worn grass and scattered pine needles.

  Hanna wasn’t on the deck as she stepped into the clearing, although a half-empty wine bottle and glass stood on the small table.

  ‘Hanna, it’s just me,’ she stage-whispered as she opened the door and walked into the open-plan space. There was no one on the sofas either, and the TV was off, but she could see her phone on the worktop, beside the fruit bowl. ‘I forgot my phone.’

  She picked it up and waited a moment, expecting the sound of her boss’s barefooted steps on the wooden floor. With everything on one level in the cabin, noise travelled easily.

  ‘Hanna?’

  Still nothing. Was she in the bathroom?

  With a shrug, she turned and left, closing the door softly behind her. She walked down to the beach, checking her phone for missed messages and calls. Just one from her hairdresser, putting back an appointment she had forgotten even booking. At the water’s edge, she slid off her shoes and held them in one hand, beginning to wade into the water, before stopping suddenly.

  What?

  She frowned, blinking once, twice, at the distant horizon. There was no boat blotting its perfect curve. She kept staring at it, trying to comprehend the situation. The boat wasn’t there. It clearly wasn’t there. But no one apart from her and Hanna had a set of keys.

  With a gasp, she turned back to the cabin. The never-quite-setting sun reflected dazzlingly on the sliding glass doors, like the pink-tinted lenses of Ray-Ban aviators, mirroring the world back to itself.

  Running, feeling the sand clump between her wet toes, she dashed up the beach and up the steps onto the deck. She was supposed to dunk her feet in the yellow water bucket by the door before she went in – it was a cardinal rule in the Mogerts’ summer house – but she ran straight through, oblivious to the sandy footprints marking a path behind her. She looked into the bathroom as she went past. Empty.

  Hanna and Max’s bedroom.

  Empty.

  Heart clattering, she peered in to the children’s bedrooms too – but they were all sleeping soundly, skinny limbs thrown atop the covers in the heat.

  Bell stood breathless in the hall, trying to make sense of what was going on, trying to find another explanation for what the facts were showing her. But there was only one truth. The boat was gone. Hanna was gone. And her children had been left alone in this cabin on an island.

  Had there been an emergency? There must have been. And yet, if so, why hadn’t she told Bell and asked her to come back down here? To just . . . leave them here? Alone and vulnerable whilst they slept?

  Bell felt an uneasy sensation swirling in the pit of her stomach, a small monster settling into a restless sleep. She walked back out onto the deck, scanning the dusky millpond water for signs of a small boat puttering back into view; but there was only that big, blushing, empty sky and the vast, unbroken stretch of sea.

  She couldn’t leave, clearly. She couldn’t get there, for one thing, but to leave the children alone . . . With a sigh of disbelief, she sank into the chair and texted the bad news to Per, staring at the half-drunk wine bottle and the glass with a smear of lipstick on the rim. She could already imagine her friends’ responses when they heard she’d cancelled on another date.

  She waited in the growing dusk, with just one question going over and over in her mind.

  What the hell was going on?

  It was gone two when she heard the sound of the motor, raising her head from the sofa and looking out through the giant window. There was still light out there, but darkness hovered like a gauze veil, a suggestion rather than fact, and Hanna was an inky silhouette as she jumped into the thigh-deep silvery water and began to wade to shore. There was something exaggerated in her movements, her arms held that bit too extravagantly above her head, her legs kicking with an excitable flourish through the water.

  Bell sat up, pushing her hair back as she tried to bite back her anger. There would be a good reason for this. Hanna wouldn’t have left her children – her babies – unattended here without a damned good reason.

  The door slid open, almost silent on its tracks.

  ‘Bell!’

  Bell saw how Hanna’s legs buckled at the knee in sudden fright at the sight of her sitting on the sofa, a blanket over her legs. But there was no relief in her voice. No ‘thank God you came’.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Bell took a moment to respond. How could she reply without betraying the accusation in her voice? ‘I left my phone on the counter,’ she said steadily, quietly, not wanting to waken the children. Hanna’s voice, by contrast, was slightly too loud. Too . . . appeasing. She was drunk. ‘I came back to get it before I went out, and saw that . . . no one was here.’

  She gave Hanna a moment to reply, but her boss merely nodded, open-mouthed, looking around the cabin as though somewhat surprised to find herself there. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So I thought I should stay her
e. With the children.’ She waited again, giving Hanna another chance to explain, to make this all okay. ‘. . . I assumed something must have happened.’

  Hanna looked back at her in apparent confusion, her eyes catching on Bell’s stained lipgloss, her hoop earrings (a complete no-no during the day, with the girls around). Suddenly, she slapped her forehead with a hand. ‘Oh my God, you were supposed to use the boat tonight!’ she cried.

  Bell glanced in alarm towards the children’s bedrooms. Instinctively, she pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Sssh. The children are asleep.’

  Hanna copied her, the movement clownish. ‘Ooops. Sorry.’ As though it was Bell’s kids she was disturbing, not her own. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot that. It completely slipped my mind.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about the boat, Hanna,’ she said. Exactly how much had she had to drink? ‘But I was worried about the kids.’

  Hanna tipped her head to the side, and the movement seemed to be enough to unbalance her, as she lurched several paces to the side, having to grab at the wall. ‘Aww, you are so sweet. Always worrying about us. Looking after us so well.’ She sighed dramatically and hiccuped. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you. I really don’t. I’m always saying it to Max. You are our angel. Heaven sent.’

  ‘Hanna—’

  ‘You must let me make it up to you.’

  ‘Hanna, I don’t care about the boat. I was worried that the children had been le—’

  ‘I insist. Tomorrow you are to have the day off. The whole day!’

  Bell glanced down the corridor again, certain Linus would wake up. His mother was paralytically drunk, holding on to the wall and waving her arms about.

  ‘Sleep late. Go to Sandhamn. Go back to Stockholm, if you like. Have a three-day weekend, on me.’

  Bell stared at her. ‘Hanna, it’s Midsommar this weekend. I was going to help you with the girls’ floral crowns tomorrow and get things ready before I went.’

  ‘I can do that!’ Hanna exclaimed, batting a hand dramatically.

  ‘Ssh!’ Bell pressed a finger to her lips again, beseeching her for a little consideration for the children.

  Hanna followed suit again. ‘Oh yes, I keep forgetting,’ she giggled, whispering again. ‘Well, now, you get off to bed and don’t worry about a thing here. We’re fine. Off you go now, and we’ll see you on Monday. You work too hard. Go have some fun. Go,’ she shooed, flapping her hands.

  Reluctantly, and only because she didn’t want the children to be disturbed, Bell turned and walked slowly towards the door. She glanced back to see Hanna lurching down the corridor, arms outstretched as she bounced off the walls, leaving grubby handprints on the pristine white paint. She stumbled into the bedroom, closing the door with a slam. Bell winced and waited for a small tousle-haired head to appear at one of the other doors; but after a few minutes, when no one stirred, she let herself relax. They must be in the dead of sleep.

  Lucky for them.

  Lucky for Hanna.

  Chapter Eight

  Sunlight freckled the air as it percolated through the upper canopies of the pine and silver birch trees, squirrels running through the bright spots, tails aloft, birds trilling from the high branches. Bell pulled her knees up under her chin and cradled the coffee mug in her hand, looking out over the neighbourhood. It was quiet, most people still asleep in the red-roofed, low-slung cabins. They were clustered close together on the shallow hill, accessed by bleached-silver gangplanks that wound through the trees, their small private yards filled with the accoutrements of summer island life – barbecues and tables and chairs, kayaks, SUP boards, water-skis, buckets and spades, inflatables, bikes propped against walls . . .

  It wasn’t a glamorous scene. In fact, through a critical eye, it was a mess. This wasn’t the Hamptons. Nothing was groomed or manicured or clipped here – the very smartest properties were identified by a whimsical patterning of the whittled birch used for fencing – but that was the point. To know its scruffiness was to love it. The place had a rustic, low-key vibe that was the antithesis of slick city living, and the people coming out here, right on the farthest edge of the country’s landmass, weren’t just getting back to nature, they were getting back to themselves.

  The first time she had come here had been like stepping back in time fifty years. No one locked their doors, children played without adults hovering over them, everyone cycled everywhere, fished for their dinner and cooked it . . . She loved that the ground was permanently carpeted with pine cones and needles, that the tree roots protruded like veins, the grass sprinkled with sand and vice versa on the beach. Everything felt like it was on the brink of going feral. Rewilded.

  Even Kris and Marc – urban creatures who cared about ‘the right black’ and genuinely fretted over dado profilings – couldn’t resist its pull. When they had bought this place, with its bright-yellow clapboard and blue windows, they had sworn to paint it a matt blackish-green and open up the back with an all-glass wall. But two years later, the primary colours were still there, and even the previous owners’ geranium pots were still balancing on the deck’s handrail – because when they came out here, all they wanted was to stop and relax.

  Bell had found the key in its usual place: in the faded red Croc beside the ash bucket, which the previous owners had also left. She knew her friends were coming out tonight. It was Midsommar tomorrow, which meant no one was going to be sleeping this weekend; the longest day of the year – or shortest night, depending on your proclivities – always heralded party time. But they wouldn’t be out till tonight at the earliest, possibly even tomorrow morning depending on Marc’s hospital shifts, giving her at least a day on her own, and she was grateful for that. She had come over early on the kayak, unable to sleep in spite of her exhaustion, the evening’s events nagging in her mind all night.

  She still couldn’t believe what had gone down – Hanna leaving her children alone in their beds, unattended. It was so reckless, so completely unlike her. Had she thought it was okay because Linus was ten and therefore ‘old enough’? Or had she thought it was okay because Bell was just through the trees – even though Hanna knew she had plans?

  It made no sense. She was a good mother. Yes, she’d been strained lately – she’d lost weight, her face was often pinched and several times, Bell had overheard her and Max exchanging sharp words behind closed doors. She thought she could probably guess as to the source of their stresses; though the ex-husband hadn’t materialized, as poor Max had feared, into their lives, he must still be a background figure. The guy was Linus’s biological father, after all, and there would likely be paternal rights issues to co-ordinate. But not yet, clearly. Hanna hadn’t mentioned him once since their return from Uppsala, and she (and Linus) had all but put the day out of their minds. But to do something so wilfully dangerous as to leave the children alone on an island . . . whatever issues Hanna and Max might be facing right now, it was no excuse. What if Tilde had woken up needing the loo, or Elise had wanted water, or Linus had had a nightmare? There were so many ways this could have been a disaster.

  She checked her phone. Eight ten. She wondered whether Hanna was awake, or still sleeping it off. Part of her wanted to go back there and confront her, for the children’s sake. But how? She couldn’t just accuse Hanna of neglect or abandonment or endangerment – even though she was guilty of all those things – without serious risk of losing her job. On the other hand, what if Hanna did it again tonight? Just the thought of it made Bell feel sick; and how, in all good conscience, could she expose those children to that risk? But then again, if she reported Hanna to the authorities, it could spark a chain reaction equally as devastating to the kids. She was caught in a bind; to act and not to act seemed equally dangerous.

  An idea came to her, and she fired off a text: ‘Hi Max, are you coming out today?’

  His reply was almost immediate, and she knew his working day would have started an hour ago at least. ‘Yes. Catching the 18h00. Need anything
? M’

  She tried to think of a reason why she would normally have asked the question. ‘Can you bring the blackout blinds? Rolled up in the airing cupboard, top shelf.’

  ‘OK, will bring.’

  Bell gave a sigh of relief. Max would be there tonight; there’d be no repeat of last night’s horror show. That was something, at least. But it was no solution, just a stay of execution. Bell had a strong feeling that whatever was going on with Hanna, it wasn’t done yet.

  She walked along the back lanes, through the tangle of birdsong, snipping clutches of wildflowers she saw along the way – forget-me-nots, ox-eye daisies, buttercups, wild rosemary, white willow, bird-cherry blossoms . . .

  ‘Good morning,’ she smiled as she passed a pair of older gentlemen playing boules on the sandy path. A black-and-white terrier was lying on the grass verge, watching them from between his paws.

  The island had woken up now, residents buzzing around their summer homes – watering plants, fixing punctures, hanging up laundry. She could hear the rhythmic thwack of tennis balls coming from the club just through the trees, joggers running in pairs along the dirt road that circumnavigated the island. She herself had had a busy morning airing and doing a light clean of the cabin. Rest was still impossible, and Marc’s stash of industrial-strength coffee – to help him with the night shifts – had done what sleep couldn’t and kept her going. She had texted Kris, Marc and Tove, telling them she’d arrived a day early and was on the case with bagging the strawberries (Westerbergs had run out last year) and beer. Marc had come back asking her to buy some gardening twine. Tove had asked whether she’d brought her ‘sex underwear’, and if not, should she collect it? Kris had asked if she’d been fired. Her replies had been ‘Sure’, ‘Of course’ (total lie) and ‘Might be’.