by Karen Swan
‘Oh. Thank you.’ A reluctant hero again?
A moment pulsed, silent and tense, the two of them ever at odds.
‘Lennart, please remember her for future reference,’ he said, not taking his eyes off her. ‘Her name is Bell Appleshaw.’
‘Certainly, sir. And I’ll make a note that she’s your son’s nanny?’
Emil began walking briskly away. ‘That’s correct. She’s just the nanny.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Linus?’ She sat up, the dim light playing tricks on her as she squinted into the gloom, her heart pounding deeply in her chest. ‘Is that you, sweetie?’
Her ears strained for a sound, but the silence was as enveloping as the darkness. It was a cloudy night and the moon was hiding behind tufted clouds, the resident owl silent in his tree. But someone had been in here, she could feel it – the trace of their presence like a heat, a scent left behind, her sixth sense twitching, lifting her from sleep.
Was her mind playing tricks, or had she simply been roused by something outside? A fox catching a mouse? She waited another moment, still listening hard, before she threw back the covers and walked to the windows, folding back one of the shutters. She looked out over the treetops. The dusky sky vaulted above her; the pine wood was an inky blot, the lawn silvered and . . . studded with footprints in the dew. She peered more closely into the black mass of trees, hearing now branches snapping, the flash of something pale suddenly catching the eye like quicksilver. She stared harder, her heart beating strongly again. It could have been a white hart.
But there were no deer on these islands. Everyone knew that.
She dashed across the floor and out into the long corridor, glancing down to Emil’s door at the far end; it was closed, no light shining through beneath the crack as it often did. She looked in to Linus’s room, willing herself to see what she always saw when she checked on him – Linus fast asleep and lying on his side, his body tucked up in a caterpillar curl, thumb in his mouth – a babyhood habit he had outgrown during the day but not, as yet, at night. But the scene that greeted her was unequivocal. His bed was empty, the alarm beeping on his clock again as it came off snooze . . .
‘Oh God,’ she gasped, knowing exactly what was happening. He was running away, taking the boat back to Summer Isle. But though there was no breeze, though the water would be flat, he didn’t know how to navigate the lagoon by night. He wouldn’t see the spar markers warning of the rocks that could tear the bottom of a boat . . .
She flew down the landing and stairs, neither knowing nor caring if she made any sound, stuffing her feet into a pair of wellingtons left by the back door. They were several sizes too big but she ran anyway, hearing them wallow and flap around her bare legs as she sprinted down the lawn in her t-shirt.
It felt eerie running through the trees in the dead of night. Although the sun and moon both hung in the sky like dimmed chandeliers, the fabric of the air felt different – thicker, dense, populated with tiny shining, watchful eyes and the myriad sounds of the nocturnal world. Still she ran, weaving a warp thread through the pines until the pewter sea glimmered in flashes, growing ever larger . . .
She heard something behind her, she was sure. Footsteps? Breathing, too?
No. She couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t. Her imagination was playing tricks, her childish fright rearing in scant breaths, and she could see now that Linus was on the jetty. His slight figure was a silhouette against the glimmering water as he carried an oar down the gangplanks towards the rowing boat, slack-tied to the ladder.
She went to call out, to stop him as she reached the beach, but the word caught in her throat like a sleeve on a nail. She watched in silence as he lifted the oar – which was not an oar at all.
‘Bell –’ The word was a whisper, a pant, the hand on her shoulder a pull-back, and she turned in fright to find Emil behind her. He too was in his bedclothes – pyjama trousers only, no shirt, nor even any shoes – a wild look in his eyes, like hers. ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’
But the questions didn’t need an answer, because his gaze fell on the boy behind her, waving a white flag. And across the water, a white flag was waving back. A silent communication in the dead of night. The forlorn attempts of a son to reach his mother.
Bell looked back at him with angry tears in her eyes, seeing how he shrank before her. ‘Now do you see what you’ve done?’
Emil watched in splintered pain as his child waved the giant flag. It was tattered with age, holes worn through where the sun had broken down the fibres, the former tent-pole heavy on his still-little arms. After several minutes, the movements slowed, becoming jerky, and his every instinct was to go over there and help him, be his father and take the weight for him. But Bell was right. It was because of him that his son even needed to do this. He could see from the strong rhythmic waves coming from Summer Isle just how much Hanna was missing him, trying to convey her love and longing through a consistent, unfailing stroke. None of them – not Hanna, Linus nor Bell – wanted him here, and to intrude, even to help, would bring their moment of connection to an abrupt stop.
He heard a sound coming from the jetty. Linus was groaning as the weight in his arms became too much. He couldn’t wave the flag now, only hold it, and after another few moments he was forced to lay it down.
‘Mamma!’ Linus called, waving his arms frantically and jumping so that the boards rattled. ‘I’m still here, Mamma!’
But across the water, the waving stopped, the flag becoming almost instantly invisible in stillness. It was impossible to see Hanna from here, not from this distance in the crepuscular light, a tendril of sea mist winding its way into the lagoon.
‘Mamma!’
His heart twitched at the anguish in his child’s voice. For the thousandth time, he questioned what he was doing – dragging Linus here and holding him, to all intents and purposes, against his will.
He saw Bell flinch too, her shoulders hitched high, as Linus jumped higher, his calls becoming more frantic, desperate, pleading – but Hanna had gone, and Linus began to weep at the prospect of facing another night and day here without her. Would he be back on the jetty tomorrow night? Had he been doing this every night since they’d arrived?
Emil felt the rejection like a blow to his chest. He loved that child with every fibre of his being, but his attempts to bond, to connect . . . What he was doing wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough, and he never would be. He’d missed out on everything – his son’s first day at school, learning to ride his bike, skiing together for the first time, Christmases, birthdays . . . and now nothing could make up for the time lost. His son was a stranger to him, and he called another man ‘Pappa’. Those were the facts. That was the hand Fate had dealt him. He was ‘lucky’ to be alive, everyone kept telling him, as though that should be enough. But what was the point of it all, if he’d lost the only thing worth living for?
When he lay in bed at night, he could remember certain memories so strongly, it was like he could step back into them – taking Linus to his baby swimming class when he turned eight months and the open, trusting way his baby son had gazed at him underwater as he swooped him down with strong hands, Linus’s dive reflex kicking in as the instructor had said it would, before scooping him up again onto his chest. Father and son, skin on skin, cheek to cheek . . . It felt like an unimaginable luxury now, when his son had still only touched him once since their visit began, and that had been to shake his hand, a politeness to a stranger.
Bell took a sudden breath, pushing him back into the trees, her hands cool on his bare skin, both of them hiding behind a fir as Linus finally turned and made his way back up the jetty, sobbing and lurching onto the stony path and back towards the house.
He could smell her shampoo as she stood just inches away, and he watched her watch his son. She loved him, he could see; it was more than a job for her. She’d lost sight of the boundaries – or perhaps she’d never had them in the first place? Perhaps she too, like h
im, wanted his family as her own.
He remembered again his first sighting of her – her indignation by the porter’s bike, overloaded and overwhelmed. At first glance, he’d only been able to see her legs, arms and topknot, her angry, pretty face angled around a box of beer. But then, by the maypole, when she’d been laughing and dancing with her friends, she’d seemed to him to be the very embodiment of what it was to be young and free and alive, so different to the girl who’d ended up sitting on her own by the water later that night . . .
The memories ran unbidden then, unspooling quickly like a dropped reel . . . her long hair down and spread beneath him, the midnight sun on her skin, the light in her eyes as . . .
He caught his breath as she turned, just inches away, looking up at him . . . with contempt. ‘Don’t mention a word of this to him. I’ll deal with it,’ she hissed, and without another word she stepped around him, following Linus at a distance, making sure he was safe and that he thought his secret – his lifeline – was still his.
Emil watched her go, feeling the despair seep through him like an ink stain. When he had heard her on the stairs and seen her flying down the lawn, his own feet had instinctively moved too. Not because he feared his son was leaving in the dead of the night – but because he feared she was.
Bell slipped on her bikini and lathered on the suncream, as she did every morning. The days had begun to acquire a rhythm now that the hoarfrost had thawed between father and son. Linus’s excitement at discovering the hotel conference room transformed into a private cinema – with leather sofas brought in, balloons, buckets of popcorn and, of course, his idols on screen five weeks before the ‘entire rest of the world’ got to see them – had changed the prism through which he saw the man who claimed to be his father. Linus no longer saw the wounded beast hauling himself back from a seven-year-long brain injury. He had forgiven him the abrupt entrance into his world, and then the no-show when they stood at his door. He had brought the Avengers to a tiny island in the Baltic, leapfrogging premieres and celebrities and studio heads. Now he knew two things: his father was rich. His father was powerful.
Bell knew it too, watching with silent apprehension as she saw Linus’s excitement begin to grow each day for their next ‘adventure’. It had used to mean ‘snorkelling safaris’ in new coves, or gathering the mackerel nets at sunset, but now they were going on jetbikes, swimming with Seabobs, having McDonald’s flown over from the city as a treat. They had only been here a week, but so much had changed already.
Partly it was down to her and Emil keeping a wary distance from one another. Their showdown in the dining room and then the middle-of-the-night confrontation by the beach had burned them both. Midsommar’s night now belonged to another lifetime, other people even, and they had settled into an uneasy truce as co-workers on a project. He didn’t try to elbow her out of plans or winkle his son away without her permission; and she was stepping back to allow father and son to interact more naturally, without running interference or acting as a referee.
Emil was spoiling Linus, she could see, but her job was only to make sure the boy was happy and protected and felt safe – it wasn’t her job to teach Emil how to parent. He was entitled to be the father he wanted to be, and Linus certainly wasn’t complaining. They were becoming relaxed in each other’s company, and although Linus’s twilight visits to the jetty continued unbroken – Bell always setting her alarm and following at a safe distance now – he had been happy to do an early breakfast run over to Sandhamn for the papers with Emil yesterday, without her.
By all accounts, today was going to be a big day. Emil had promised Linus an ‘extra special surprise’, but Bell didn’t feel excited; she had woken with a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t explain. There was something in the air, something was off – a nervous energy, a delicate tension that felt at breaking point. Things were happening so quickly with all these perpetual adventures, Emil’s desperate need for every moment to be perfect . . . It made her feel as though something had to fall apart.
She and Linus took breakfast on their own, texting Hanna in between courses. Måns informed them in his mellifluous voice that Emil had already left to make the final preparations, and would they please meet him by the jetty? They tried to guess what extraordinary plans Emil might have for them today. Cave diving? Swimming with dolphins? Hover jetpacks?
‘I hope it’s kiteboarding,’ Linus said as they strode down the lawn together, ducking into the trees and meandering along the pebbly path, their hands trailing along the slender tree trunks. ‘Think about it – I’m an expert skateboarder, and it’s going to be windy today. It’s got to be kiteboarding.’
‘God, I hope not,’ she muttered. Though it would explain her jitters.
They reached the island’s edge and saw Emil sitting at the edge of the jetty, silhouetted like a Huckleberry Finn figure, his back propped against an upright as he waited for them. He was perfectly positioned to see Linus’s mouth drop fully open as they stepped from the trees and onto the pine-dropped beach. Bell stopped in her tracks too as she caught her first sight of the black-sailed trimaran, motionless on the mid-morning water.
She knew enough about boats to know it was state-of-the-art, world-class, America’s Cup-worthy: 220ft wing sail, shrink-wrapped Clysar skin, carbon-fibre hull . . . ‘Holy shit,’ she whispered, forgetting her prime rule of never swearing in front of the children.
‘Holy shit,’ Linus echoed, taking full advantage of the moment.
They walked slowly down the rattling gangplanks, unable to tear their eyes off the boat. It was transfixing: sleek, powerful, a billionaire’s plaything.
‘Is that really yours?’ Linus whispered as they reached Emil, both of them able to see from here the black-clad crew running through final checks on board, scrambling up and down the masts, racing over the webbing like it was a bouncy castle.
‘Well, look closer. Do you see what I called her?’ He pointed to the grand red lettering along the hull: Linea.
Linus gasped.
‘I had to use the feminized version of your name, obviously. I hope that’s okay? Boats don’t have boy names.’
Linus stared at Emil, then at the boat, then at Emil again – throwing his arms around Emil’s neck so suddenly that his father almost lost his balance and they both would have gone flying off the jetty.
Bell’s own hands flew to her mouth as she saw Linus bury his face into his father’s neck, tears flowing down his father’s face. It was their first touch beyond a handshake and she knew it was more than a hug – it was a wall coming down, a breakthrough, the first step in their new relationship.
‘I’m so pleased you like it,’ Emil said, his voice choked, his face partially obscured as ever by his cap.
‘I love it!’
‘I love you, Linus.’ A gasp of shock followed as the words escaped before he could stop them, blood rushing behind a dislodged clot. Was it too soon?
Bell saw Linus looked shocked too for a moment, his little body instinctively stiffening as he pulled away. But then he forced a bright smile again. ‘I can’t believe you bought me a boat!’
What? No –
Bell automatically stepped forward, catching sight of Emil’s expression too. He was taken off guard, his tears suddenly staunched, his mouth shaping soundless words.
‘Well,’ he faltered, seeing her horror, then recovering himself. ‘I wanted to show you just how much you mean to me – so that meant it had to be something big.’
‘I love sailing!’ Linus cried, jumping up and down at the sight of the machine.
Emil laughed. ‘You get that from me. As soon as I was able to, once I got out of the hospital, I came out here just so I could be on the water every day. And then I waited and waited and waited for you. It’s the thing that made me better – the thought of sharing this with you.’
‘Are we going to go out on it?’
‘Of course we are. The crew’s got everything ready for you. Th
e conditions are perfect. How fast do you want to go?’
‘Really fast!’ Linus shouted, almost overcome with excitement, and Bell instinctively stepped forward again and placed a hand on his shoulder, a silent command to settle down.
Emil looked down at her hand accusingly. She removed it again. She was interfering. In the way.
‘Well, you’d better hop in the dinghy then, and we’ll go out to her. She can’t get in here, the water’s too shallow.’
‘Me first!’ And Linus clambered down the small ladder at the side and hopped easily into the boat.
Emil turned back to face her, blocking her path. ‘You look unhappy.’ He stared at her levelly, confrontational. ‘Is there a problem?’
She glanced down at Linus to check he wasn’t listening. ‘You can’t just give him a boat,’ she said in a low voice.
‘I haven’t. It’s entirely notional. If he wants to believe it’s his, that’s fine. Where’s the harm?’
She stared back at him, unable to find the words – few enough to make her point, low enough to remain out of earshot. ‘Fine,’ she sighed, conceding defeat on this. Linus couldn’t see them at odds with one another. He was putting his trust in them both; it was only fair for him to believe they were doing the same. ‘Whatever you say. He’s your son.’
Emil smiled at the comment, looking down lovingly at the excitable boy in the boat. ‘Yes. Yes, he is.’
Chapter Twenty
Not here, she told herself. Not here.
But as she sat clipped to the railings with her head tipped back, her hair streaming, screaming with exhilaration, the tears flowed uncontrollably. It was all too beautiful, too perfect, too pure. She had made herself forget this feeling, spent four years suppressing the residual sensation of skating over the surface of the world, but now with the briny spray against her face and the wind tangling her hair into little whipsnakes once more, she was straight back there – in time. With him. In another life . . .
