The Hidden Beach

by Karen Swan

  Bell looked down, remembering her own anger with Hanna that day. She’d handled it badly, made every mistake, and now – now she was having to it face again, telling her son a truth that couldn’t be denied any longer. Would he forgive her the lies and deliberate duplicity? Was ‘panic’ a justifiable excuse to a little boy who had just been unwittingly reintroduced to his own father? Back then, telling that truth had seemed like an impossibility, but things were very different now. They were worse. Now it wasn’t revealing the identity of his true father that was the main problem, but the reality of Linus having to stay with the stranger who had terrified him.

  She stared out into the night, trying to calm her own panicky thoughts. Two swans were swimming past on the inky water, dazzling in their bright relief; but all she could see was the young boy sleeping down the hall, with no idea of the volte-face his life was about to take with the dawn. ‘Okay, look,’ she said slowly. ‘We don’t want to antagonize him. We can all totally understand how . . . desperate he must be to get his life back in some way. He knows he can’t have you, but Linus is still his son and as his father, he has rights. No one’s disputing that – this is just a timing issue. You need to get him to see that you’re not saying you’re denying him access, just that you want to delay the timing of it so that Linus can adapt to the news. It’s for Linus’s sake, not yours. He’s the child and his needs must come first. As a parent, he’ll understand that, surely?’

  Hanna shook her head despondently. ‘He’s adamant it’ll be harder for him to rebuild their relationship once we’re back in the city and school’s back. He wants the summer block to give them time to get to know each other, before we start discussing formal living arrangements within a shared custody agreement.’

  ‘You mean, moving between his place and yours?’

  Hanna nodded.

  ‘Is he in Stockholm?’

  Hanna gave a scornful laugh. ‘He’s got places everywhere. But yes, Stockholm is their base.’

  ‘So then, we’re all going back to the city tomorrow?’

  Hanna’s eyes fluttered up to her, and back down again. ‘No. He’s out here for the summer.’

  Of course he was. The entire city was out here. And last Thursday, when Hanna had gone to see him, taking the boat . . . That meant he had to be somewhere relatively nearby.

  ‘Well then, that’s something, I guess,’ she said finally, trying to find the bright side. ‘At least Linus will still get to have his summer on the islands. And with you beside him every step of the way, perhaps it won’t be so bad.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Hanna’s voice was flat and toneless. ‘I can’t be there. Not unless I leave the girls. And Max, clearly.’ She swallowed. ‘He wants me to choose – but the twins are three. They’d never understand.’

  ‘You mean Linus would be there alone?’ Bell’s mouth formed a perfect, aghast ‘o’. She reached forward – urgent, desperate. ‘Hanna, you can’t do that.’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘Yes, you do! Go to court, take your chances. You cannot let Linus go and live with a perfect stranger, even if he is biologically his father.’ She stopped to draw breath, seeing Hanna’s defeated expression. ‘Shit. What does Max say?’

  ‘Exactly that. He’s with you. He’s enraged, been shouting down the phone at me all day. He says let the bastard take us to court.’

  ‘So do that.’

  Hanna shook her head. ‘Believe me, I know my husband. I’ve gone over this from every angle and I have no choice – I have to let him see Linus. If I refuse, he’ll not just take me to court – there’s every chance he could go for full custody, not just joint, and I can’t risk that. He’s so angry with me right now that . . . I have to do what I can to keep him on side. Perhaps with time, and giving him something he wants, I can show him we can make this work and that he can still have a happy life alongside us. Playing along is my only hope. I know exactly what hell he could unleash if he gives his lawyers the green light. They’d destroy me.’

  Bell was confused. ‘But . . . how? I mean, with what ammo? You’re Linus’s mother, an excellent mother. You have a great career, you live in a beautiful house, with a loving partner and family. What could they possibly use against you to take him away?’

  ‘They’d find something.’ Hanna looked away, staring into space.

  Bell watched her, feeling her panic rise at Hanna’s acquiescence. She was defeated. She was going to let this happen. ‘Hanna, look, I can understand why you’re worried about a possible worst-case scenario of full custody, but there’s an actual disaster scenario looming if you let this happen. We both saw the state Linus was in when he came out of that room. This could damage him emotionally, being taken away from you like this, he’d be terrified,’ she said in a low, calm voice, the best she could manage. ‘Forget your husband’s threats – he’s just trying to intimidate you. As his mother, you can’t allow this. Linus cannot go and live alone with that man.’

  ‘I know.’ Hanna looked straight at her.

  Bell looked back, waiting for more. So then, what?

  ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Bell. Linus loves you. He adores you. He feels safe with you –’

  Oh God – she realized it suddenly – this was the ‘but’. ‘You want me to go with him?’

  ‘As a chaperone. As someone he loves and trusts deeply.’ Hanna nodded, desperation in her eyes, her mouth a narrow slash of bitter regret. ‘You are the only person I can ask, Bell. The only one we trust.’

  Bell swallowed, hating even the idea of this, hating the very idea of this man and what he wanted. He was a victim here too, she understood that, but he was risking his son’s wellbeing with this demand, and putting himself first. Couldn’t he see that?

  ‘It would mean . . .’ Hanna sounded hesitant again and Bell braced, wondering what else was coming. What could possibly make this situation worse? ‘I’m afraid it would also mean staying out here for the entire summer. No trips back to the city at the weekend. Linus would need you there at all times.’

  No time off at all? Bell was going to have to put her entire life on hold for the summer? She could already hear her friends’ reactions to that.

  Hanna gave a small cry as she saw her expression. ‘Bell, I’m so sorry to ask it! But I’ve already negotiated a new salary for you – triple what you’re on. Money means nothing to him. He’ll pay anything, just so long as he has Linus.’

  ‘It’s not about the money,’ Bell mumbled, looking away, feeling conflicted. She had plans booked in – the festival in Croatia, a mini-break to Copenhagen booked with Tove –

  ‘I know it’s not. And I know I have no right asking you to give up your entire summer for us. But he’s my son.’ Her voice cracked again, the words splintered and hoarse. ‘And I know you love him too. If you don’t help us, I don’t know what else I can do. Please, Bell.’

  Bell looked at her, experiencing up close the full force of a mother’s desperation. She’d never been good at saying ‘no’ at the best of times.

  Now was hardly the time to start.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He opened the shutters and looked down the wide tranche of lawn, able to just make out the sea twinkling through the narrow-legged alders. It was a midnight-blue this morning, the breeze a gentle south-westerly breath. The flowers swayed and nodded in their beds, a nuthatch singing from the aspen tree. Ingarso, his island refuge, had never looked more beautiful and he felt a quiver of anticipation, as though it was a sign that nature, the universe, was on his side today.

  He turned away, catching sight of his own shadow cast in the sunny rectangle on the wooden floor. It was elongated and thin, something of the hermit still in its harsh lines and angles. Was he changed enough? Did he still look like the wild man in that hospital bed? Was his son going to run from him again? He closed his eyes, remembering the boy’s golden hair – he had his mother’s colouring, but the curls were his. And those eyes – green, clear, so close to his ow
n –

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  He looked round. Måns was carrying his breakfast in on the tray. The grey hair was now snowy white, the upright deportment softened to a slumped stoop in the seven years he had been ‘away’ – as it was referred to by the family – a slight tremor in the hands these days; but he remained the man he had known all his life, quiet but indomitable. Dependable. Always in his corner. Seeing everything, but saying nothing. The living embodiment of discretion being the greater part of valour. Their first words to one another, after he’d come home, had been about whether he still wanted sugar in his coffee.

  ‘Another beautiful day, sir.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he replied, walking out of the sunny patch and back into the cool of the room. Unlike everything else in this house, he and Måns were the only things changing in it. The walls were panelled and still painted the same soft pearl grey of his boyhood, the reed-legged brick-red linen settle still pushed against the end of the bed, the moody August Strindberg oils – which his teenage self had wanted to replace with Green Day posters – still hanging between simple crystal wall chandeliers. He stared at Måns’s polished shoes on the rug as he set down the tray; there was a tiny red mark in the linen fibres; it looked like a bloodstain, but he knew it wasn’t that. He knew precisely what it was and how it had come to be there – a lingonberry unwittingly transported in on the knee of his jeans after playing in the garden when he was seven. His eyes roamed the pale, striped rug, finding other marks of long-forgotten moments – the splash of coffee after his father trod on a Lego brick and stumbled, the small ash burn from his mother’s cigarette as she kissed him goodnight before a party, Nina’s make-up from where she would sit cross-legged on the floor and doll herself up as he watched from his bed, planning her midnight escape from his window (because unlike her, he had the veranda below), her own bed expertly stuffed with pillows; she had had a leather jacket that year: grey, with buckles. It was a curious thing, he marvelled, staring at the innocuous stains beneath their manservant’s feet, how great swathes of his memories remained defiantly blank, and yet others were as fresh and sparkling as this morning’s dew.

  He watched Måns set down the tray in what had always been the usual place, when this had been his room – on the desk, now cleared of childish scribbles and notes. He stared at the platter: ham, honey, bread, apricot compote. As a boy, he had only ever been allowed to eat in his room if he was sick, and it still felt vaguely itinerant to be eating in here now, just because. But he had wanted to soak up the energy of this space once more before his child got here. He had missed out on so much of his son’s childhood – how could he connect except by remembering the boy he had been, living in this room?

  His mouth was dry, and he crossed the room to gulp down the hand-squeezed orange juice. He felt sick with nerves and had scarcely slept. Was this the right thing?

  ‘I think he will love it here, sir,’ Måns said, reading his mind as he pushed one of the shutters back fully so that it sat flat to the wall.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I’m worried there aren’t enough . . . gadgets.’ His gaze swung over the bookcases, the shelves stacked with puzzles, board games, craft projects . . . An old balsa wood aeroplane, hand-painted with red bullseyes, rested on one wing on top of the bookcase; a leather backgammon board was set out with the counters in play, as though a game had been momentarily interrupted. Wifi appeared to have become the world’s greatest commodity during his absence. Not oil, nor water. But bandwidth, 4G, download speeds . . . None of these things were easy to install on a glorified rock in the yawn of the Baltic. When he had made enquiries, mention had been made of laying cables along the sea bed, which sounded . . . excessive.

  ‘Perhaps not, but even ten-year-old boys don’t summer in the archipelago expecting gadgets.’

  He picked up the red Nintendo that had been his own most treasured possession. ‘God, I loved this at his age. I think if I’d had to choose between this and the dog –’ His fingers ran over the buttons, muscle memory making the digits move quickly. ‘Does it still work?’

  Måns came over with his hand out and took it from him. He pressed the buttons once, twice, but the screen stayed dark. ‘I’ll make sure it does.’

  He stiffened, feeling the anxiety rise again. ‘He’s arriving in two hours. Ten o’clock, she said. I need everything to be perfect.’

  ‘Absolutely, sir. I’ll see to this right away.’

  Måns’s feet were quiet even on the wide, aged boards, and he sank into the hard desk chair, wishing the wait was over. He felt perpetually on hold, always waiting for someone else to respond obligingly to a decision or to appear before him. He was at the universe’s mercy, a slave to its whims. For seven years, he hadn’t even been able to control his body, his own eyelids. How was he going to control his stranger son? What would they do? Say?

  He was the parent; it would be up to him to lead. He ran over the itinerary for the day in his mind again, rehearsing his role, the things they would do, the words he would say: nothing had been left to chance. Måns had been thorough even by his high standards. He gazed around his old bedroom again, trying to glimpse the ghost of his own boyish self, trying to feel what he had once felt, to see once more, through the curious and open-hearted gaze that came with a child’s blank, unfounded optimism, that good things happened to good people.

  But the room remained empty and still. Vacated. Long ago abandoned. To reach for otherwise was a futile exercise in hope over experience, because if Life had taught him anything, it was that anything could happen. That fate was capricious and cruel. And no one could be trusted.

  They were ominously silent on the boat over, Hanna at the tiller, Bell and Linus on the bench seats, packed bags at their feet, the twins bundled in life jackets. Usually Linus sat by the edge, chin on one hand as the other trailed down in the silky water, but this morning he was holding his small body closed and still, as though he was a robin’s egg in a giant’s fist.

  He had heard the truth only two hours ago, broken over the ‘special breakfast’ his mother had prepared for him. Bell had been in the laundry room, discreetly out of the way, folding the bed sheets as Hanna had haltingly explained that it wasn’t Max who was his father, but the man in the hospital bed. Yes, the crazy one. But he was better now, and that not-crazy-any-more man wanted Linus to live with him for a few weeks over the summer. And that those few weeks over the summer were starting now. In two hours.

  A tear had slid down her cheek as she’d heard his stunned responses: ‘What?’; ‘Why?’; ‘Do I have to?’; ‘I don’t want to.’ But worse had been his silences, each of them distinct, as though painted in different colours: shocked. Aghast. Frightened. Angry. Bitter. Defeated.

  Bell felt much the same herself, but she at least was an adult; she had a choice whether to do this or not. It was only the fact that Linus so patently didn’t that persuaded her to be there too. How could she let him go through this alone?

  Their three erect bodies looked as stiff as chess pieces as they glided in silence. The water in the lagoon was millpond-calm, ribbon scraps of a tentative mist hovering just above the surface. The islands in the constellation curled around them in a ragged frill, the pine forests a sharp emerald-green in the midsummer light, the splash of kayakers’ oars splintering the silence, bodies already lying on the rocks.

  Bell saw a few ringed seals basking on the bleached rocks of Dead Man’s Bones off to their right-hand side, 007 up ahead. She peered, as she always did, through the narrow gaps of the wooded shore, hoping for a glimpse of the palatial property supposedly set at its heart, hidden from prying eyes. But all she could see was a stony path winding through the mossy hummocks, and besides, she had no appetite for gossip or intrigue today anyway. Instead, she fastened her listless gaze on a heron standing motionless in the shallows, wings tucked in, its pointed bill like a golden dagger, waiting to deliver the death blow. She saw how the
rocks on the beach were covered with yellow sedum flowers, like thousands of fallen stars. She didn’t notice they were in the lee of the island until Hanna cut the engine on the approach to the jetty.

  Here? He lived here? The island directly opposite theirs? Was that some kind of joke? She looked back at Hanna for confirmation – surely this couldn’t be right? – but her boss was looking far beyond her as she prepared to dock. She looked at Linus instead and thought his expression must match hers – open-mouthed and incredulous. His father lived here, on 007? He was Dr No?

  She gave what she hoped was her best, most encouraging smile, even though what Hanna had told her about his threats to take Linus from her had already confirmed he was every inch the villain Bell and the children had role-played all last summer.

  She felt her doubts rear up again. This was wrong. Forcing a child to live with a complete stranger, just to satisfy the whims of a wronged rich man? Whatever sympathies she might have had for him were now gone.

  Hanna docked the boat, throwing the rope over the bollards and winding it around several times, her body moving with a rigid, grim efficiency. She could scarcely look at her son, avoiding the silent plea in his eyes as he willed her to look back at him and change her mind.

  They stepped up onto the jetty, just as legs appeared through the shadows of the glade, fast-moving and purposeful. Was this him? She watched Hanna straighten up, Linus’s suitcase in her hand, waiting patiently for him to reach them as though she was merely in line for a taxi.

  ‘Mrs Mogert?’ The man stopped in front of her. He appeared to be in his late thirties to mid-forties, and was wearing dark-green heavy-duty waterproof trousers and a matching polo shirt. He looked more like a gardener than a . . . whatever he was. Security guard? ‘Allow me to take that for you. Would you follow me, please?’