by Karen Swan
Emil didn’t rush his words. He was almost lingering on every statement, like it was a blade over flesh and he was waiting for the beads of blood to appear.
Bell felt sick. This was sick. Max looked wretched, every muscle in his body tensed and braced as his eyes slid between Emil and Hanna, settling on her.
‘Max, it’s not what you think!’ Hanna cried as Max stared at her with a broken look, his breathing coming heavily as he struggled to stay calm.
‘Of course it was,’ Emil cut in with cruel insouciance. ‘She was very concerned about me, Max; I was amazed, actually, at just how concerned she was. She kept checking on me, making sure I was okay.’ He picked up her hand and squeezed it again. ‘All through the night, and all over the weekend – she scarcely left my side.’ He smiled cruelly at Max. ‘Naturally, I assumed it was because she loved me.’
Bell felt her ears prick at the implied contradiction. Huh?
Hanna heard it too, growing even paler than she already was. If that was possible. ‘Emil, please, now’s not the time—’
But Emil was too quick for them both, always one step ahead. He regarded Hanna again with that look, the one Bell couldn’t place. ‘There is no other time, Hanna. We are all gathered here, together, for the first time in almost eight years. A lot has changed.’ He cast a sardonic wave around the table. ‘Clearly we need to talk.’
‘But the children –’
‘Are not here.’ He jerked his chin towards the girls still bouncing on the inflatable castle.
She fell back, staring sightlessly at the flower bowl, but he reached for her hand again. ‘This was what you wanted, surely? For me to say for you what you can’t. I know you feel torn, but we can’t avoid this. Someone has to get hurt. Someone already has been hurt. For seven years, that someone was me, lying in a hospital bed.’ He paused, waiting for her to meet his eyes. Eventually she did, nodding slowly. ‘I was critically hurt, Hanna. More dead than alive.’
A tear slid down Hanna’s cheek. ‘Please, stop . . .’ She looked away.
‘You hurt me, Hanna –’
Her face whipped back to him, her eyes black with panic.
‘– You and him. Before the car ever hit me.’
Bell swallowed, still not keeping up. What?
‘I didn’t remember it,’ he said quietly, as though he was talking to a child. ‘And the people who love me – I mean, really love me – they thought it was a kindness not to remind me, because they believe in second chances and loyalty. Because they’re discreet –’
Bell looked up at the word to find Nina already looking across at her.
‘– And perhaps I never would have thought to ask the question, but those who know me well have always been able to . . . guide me, even when I haven’t wanted it.’
Nina looked back at Emil and Bell saw how their eyes met in silent acknowledgement, how – for the first time since he had come out here – a flicker of warmth glowed in his eyes. He’d overheard their conversation at the bottom of the stairs. He’d overheard Nina telling her Måns knew something about his past. The question was – had Nina known he was listening?
She saw Nina wink at him and had her answer. She knew exactly how to get her brother to listen to her after all.
A few spots of rain landed, bleeding into the tablecloth, and Bell looked up at the darkening tumult in the sky.
‘– And of course, the headaches I’ve been getting – so much worse with the concussion . . . it turns out they weren’t random. My brain wasn’t breaking down, as I feared. It was reaching out. Searching for the memories that would explain the black hole that’s been in the very centre of me since I opened my eyes. It was why I can’t sleep, why I can’t . . . forgive. Something deep inside me knew it was what put me here in the first place.’ He stared at Hanna intently. ‘Do you remember?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she whispered, looking cowed.
‘Sure you do. There was a strong breeze that night – like today – and you didn’t quite push the door fully on the latch. It was banging a little; not much, but Måns has never been a heavy sleeper. And when he went to check, he found on the floor, just inside the door, a small piece of paper with a note on it.’
Bell felt her breath catch. What note? When? What was going on?
‘Well, you know how fastidious Måns is. He wouldn’t simply ignore something like that. For security reasons, we can’t have . . . unexpected guests on the island.’ Bell watched as he bit his lip, the emotion getting to him. ‘Imagine his disappointment when he saw what he saw.’
‘No –’ Hanna protested, shaking her head vociferously, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh no,’ he said quickly, patting her hand. ‘It wasn’t you who disappointed him, Hanna.’ Bell watched her expression change from fearful to suspended fear. But in Emil’s face . . . she saw now what it was that was missing. No . . .
‘No, no, no. He said he wasn’t somehow surprised about you.’
. . . No love.
Emil lifted his eyes off her. ‘But you, Max . . . when he saw your boat roped up.’
Clarity dawned like a thunderclap, and Bell gasped so loudly, Emil’s concentration was broken as he looked over at her. Had he forgotten she was there? Hanna broke into wretched sobs, hiding her face in her hands, as Max’s jaw clenched with dangerous intensity.
‘It could have started a lot earlier than it did!’ he exclaimed, his hands flat on the table, arms bent out and elbows pointed like a dragon’s wings. ‘She was miserable with you for years and you didn’t even notice because you were too busy playing empires, trying to impress your father!’ He furiously jabbed a finger towards him. ‘So don’t play the victim with me, Emil! I was a loyal friend to you. For far longer than you deserved!’
Emil stared back with an inscrutable expression, but Bell could see some of the bombast had been taken out of him by the honest ferocity of Max’s words. No denials. No excuses. Had Emil expected guilt-ridden capitulation?
‘She wanted a divorce and you did too. You did too, until you found out about us! And that tore you up! You couldn’t bear that she loved me and not you. That she always had.’
‘Always had?’ Emil mocked with a shrug, but the gesture lacked the flippancy of even a few minutes ago. ‘Then why did she marry me?’
‘Take a fucking guess! You had decided you were going to marry her and that was that. Nothing was going to stop you and nothing could! Look familiar?’
Bell flinched at his ferocious anger – she’d never heard Max swear before – scarcely able to keep up with the chicanes of their past. She’d had no idea about their interlocked pasts, none . . . She heard something rustle behind her and turned to see a camellia bush, its leaves splaying in the wind, a bird, hopping about.
‘– But let me tell you something! She’s been happier with me these past seven years than she ever was with you! We’re a family now. You can’t destroy us. You won’t. I won’t let you! Hanna has tried to deal with you kindly. Compassionately. But this stops here, right now.’
Emil sat quietly across the table, allowing Max his bite-back, giving him his voice. But as his calmness extended ever further, Bell sensed something unsettling in the unexpected generosity of that. Max’s words should have been body-blows to him, everything he never wanted to hear. He should have been retaliating with more insults, more anger, blows even. Max, his best friend, had been having an affair with his wife. He was entitled to be angry about that. But to give Max his moment so calmly . . .
‘Did you never wonder why she was so anxious that I shouldn’t remember your affair?’ he asked after a moment, in a collected voice.
‘Because she knew you’d be a fucking psychopath about it!’
Emil shook his head slowly. ‘No. It wasn’t that. It was worse than that.’
‘Don’t give me that! You’re obsessed with her. You’ve pinned your whole life’s worth on getting her back because you can’t bear that she fell in love with me and
she’s still in love with me!’
He held his hands up in docile surrender. ‘You’re right, Max. I was obsessed with her. She was all I could ever see. I didn’t know why, she just filled my head – awake, asleep, all the time. She was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’
‘Yeah-yeah-yeah, here you go again!’ Max snarled, out of patience and at the end of his tether now. ‘The last thing you saw. The first thing you saw.’
‘She was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’
Max stared at him, picking up on the pointed echo. He gave a frustrated shrug, as if to say, ‘So?’
‘That was why she didn’t want me to remember your affair. It was why she came over here in a storm when she heard I’d had another blow to the head; it was why she didn’t leave my side. She was terrified I might start to remember things. She was terrified I might remember why she was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’ Emil’s eyes narrowed as he slowed his words right down. ‘Ask me why she was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’
‘Emil –’ Hanna cried, jumping up from the seat. Her voice was thin and high, as though reeded.
Oh God! Bell gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as Max stayed rebelliously silent.
Emil’s voice was quiet, when it came. ‘It was because she was driving the car, Max.’
‘No!’ The word was a scream, Hanna crumpling against the table, a denial and an admission all at once.
Bell heard a sound behind her again, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t react. This couldn’t be true. But she knew it was as she saw the contempt in Emil’s face as he looked at the woman he loved . . . She had hit him? Because she wanted to be with Max?
Max stared at Hanna in disbelief, his face visibly draining of blood. ‘. . . Hanna?’
No one could speak. Not even Nina, her mouth hanging open slackly. None of them could process it all. It was too much – Hanna and Max’s affair; Hanna, desperate to leave her marriage . . . responsible for putting Emil in the coma?
‘Hanna, you’ve got to talk!’ Max said urgently, running around the table and pulling her up by her arm, but she was limp, her head shaking, legs buckling as she wept and sobbed. ‘Is this true? You were in the car?’
‘Yes!’
The wind gusted again, whipping her hair upwards like a flickering flame.
‘You hit him?’ Max whispered, looking ashen.
‘No!’ She looked back up at him with wild eyes.
He frowned, looking bewildered. Overwhelmed. ‘But you just said –’
‘I know! And I was in the car! I was driving! Because I was chasing after him!’
Bell frowned. It was all nuance. Semantics. She was in the car. The car was the last thing he saw –
Hanna gathered strength suddenly, or rage, her body stiffening and straightening her up as the truth aired for the first time, stretching out, taking up space. She glowered at Emil with a look of pure hatred Bell had never seen before. ‘. . . If you’ve remembered what happened that day, then you’ll also recall what you said to me before you got on your bike and left the house. Won’t you?’ she demanded, as Emil stared back at her.
He didn’t stir.
‘You had threatened to take away my child! You said you were going to drag me through the courts and destroy me! That you’d make sure he grew up hating me!’
Bell swivelled her eyes from Hanna to Emil. He was looking shaken by her words. It was clear he hadn’t remembered; that yet again, he only had half the memories, half the facts . . .
‘What kind of a man does that? What kind of father?’
Yes, what kind did? Bell wondered, feeling herself recoil. Wasn’t this an echo of her own accusations that he was failing? He was a bad father now – but he’d also been a bad father then? She swallowed, seeing him with fresh eyes. So much had been clouded by his accident – his vulnerability, the unfairness of it all, the attraction that existed between them like iron filings to magnetic north. But he was a bad father and now, it seemed, a bad husband too.
Hanna grew stronger. ‘I was sobbing on the floor, begging you not to do it. I told you I didn’t want your money. I didn’t want anything from you. It wasn’t like you even wanted me any more. You just didn’t want me to be with Max! You couldn’t bear that he and I loved each other, and you knew that in taking Linus, you were hurting me in the worst possible way. And there wasn’t any doubt you would do it. You left that house with the absolute certainty that your family, with all their money and all their connections, would be able to rob me of my child! Just like you’ve tried to do again! You’ve always used money to try to control me, just like I’ve always used sex to control you.’
It was Emil’s turn to pale now as her mouth twisted suddenly into a sneer, fear transformed into white-hot rage. ‘But it meant nothing. Don’t delude yourself it was anything more than manipulation, because you’re absolutely right – I was frightened you were going to remember the fight that day and my affair with Max, but only because it would fire you up again into taking Linus away. So I kept you close and I gave you what you wanted only because I was buying time, figuring out how to make you see we could never go back – because I won’t lose my child. I won’t. Not for either one of you.’ She looked back at Max evenly, laying down her terms to him too. He had to accept what she’d done for her son . . . This was not an apology.
Max was quiet, emotions running over his face like colours – anger and resentment marbled with a grudging look of possible understanding. ‘What happened in the car?’ he asked eventually. ‘I need to know everything.’
Hanna looked back at Emil, tucking her hair behind her ears as the wind toyed with her like sprites. Her voice was calm again, all the fury that had bleached it white now spent, colour coming back as the tear tracks dried on her cheeks. ‘I never touched you. I got in the car and chased after you because I was going to make you talk and listen, that was all.’ She flinched, remembering fully, falling back into that moment. ‘I drew up alongside you at the lights and you looked over at me and saw me through the window, calling to you to pull over, begging you. I was desperate just to talk. But instead, you jumped the light and turned the corner. You hit a pothole, just as the tram was coming . . .’A single sob escaped her, the horror still too vivid to suppress. ‘It looked like a puddle, and threw you straight into the path . . . You couldn’t have known, no one could.’
Max put his arms around her and she slumped against his chest, crying quietly into his neck.
Bell looked on, scarcely able to believe what she’d learned as the two men stared back at each other, both stunned, both spent, and there was the sense of an ending in the silence. She’d thought there were no villains in this story, but the truth was, they all were. They’d each behaved badly, treacherously, in their own ways.
Emil sat watching as Max comforted his – their – wife. He looked utterly alone, Nina sitting on the opposite side of the table with shining eyes, her hand pinched over her mouth, knowing she couldn’t interfere or save her little brother this time. This was his mess. He’d made it, he had to tidy it up.
No one spoke for a very long time. Then slowly, Emil scraped back the chair and walked over to them both. He put his hands on each of their shoulders. Max’s. Hanna’s. Hanna’s head lifted as she looked back at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘For everything.’ The words chimed with heavy sincerity.
‘Really?’ she asked. Disbelief crackled her voice, like a child being told Christmas could be repeated.
‘We’ll work this out,’ he nodded, meeting Max’s gaze. ‘We will. Everything’s as it’s meant to be. I can see that now.’
Bell saw the tension break in Max, many more than seven years’ worth of guilt washing through him in waves, and she knew he’d suffered long before Emil ever had. But it was over. At long last, the truth was out, and –
She saw Emil’s head turn in her direction, his remarkable stare coming to rest upon her and looking for – what? An
option? A back-up? A future?
But she didn’t register it. Something else was pushing to the forefront of her mind, her attention snagging on a detail that had meant nothing in all the noise. Slowly she twisted back, glancing behind, because her eye had caught sight of something before – a tiny wink of red in the long grass, by the camellia bush.
She peered closer, and saw it was a toy Corvette.
‘Bell?’ She heard the concern in Emil’s voice as she lifted her gaze and stiffly scanned the garden, looking over the helter-skelter, the carousel, the bouncy castle . . . She felt her blood run cold as she looked back at them all watching her, frozen like statues.
‘Where are the children?’
Chapter Thirty
They split up, one in each direction, Hanna sprinting towards the jetty, certain they’d be taking the boat back to Summer Isle. Bell could hear their shouts shake through the trees, the children’s names being called out with bald-faced terror.
Bell knew Linus had heard everything. He’d been hiding in the bush, listening to every word – hearing how his mother had fallen in love with another man, how his father had threatened his mother with losing him, how his mother had chased his father in the car, both of them angry, reckless, dangerous . . . He had been frightened of having to choose but now he had chosen – and he hadn’t chosen any of them. He had taken his sisters and he was taking them to safety, away from all the so-called grown-ups who professed to love them.
She knew all this because she knew him. She loved him, actually, that was the truth of it. She loved him like he was her own, though he wasn’t. She was the nanny. Just the nanny. And yet she’d always been more than that. They’d demanded more from her and she’d given it because she’d needed a family, a home, when she had been alone and stranded in the world.
