Kris looked up from his favoured spot at the stove, his lobster-print apron looking anachronistic against the faded and torn Metallica t-shirt. The smell of chorizo, prawns and peppers filled the small flat. ‘Hey! You’re late!’
Bell, positioning the bike on its rack behind the front door, kicked off her trainers, pulled her beanie from her head and let her hand fall against her thigh. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, lethargically shrugging off her coat and limping in. ‘Oh – hi.’
Tove waved from her sprawled position on the sofa, blowing smoke from her roll-up towards the ceiling. ‘Hi, babe. I’m not here. You haven’t seen me.’
That was easier said than done. At five foot eleven, with legs up to Bell’s armpits, Tove wasn’t particularly easy to hide. But Bell nodded, knowing the drill; her lanky, irreverent friend, who worked in the Star Bar two floors below the flat, often escaped up here on her breaks. Invariably, they slid well past the official twenty minutes.
Kris frowned at Bell as she dragged herself into the room. ‘You look like shit,’ he said fondly. ‘Tough day?’ He finished slicing a Romano pepper and scraped it off the board into the pan. It instantly sizzled and hissed, and he shook the pan several times, biceps flexing under the harsh under-cupboard lights.
‘. . . You could say that,’ she said after a moment, collapsing onto the battered black leather sofa opposite Tove and stretching out, letting her feet dangle over the arm. She closed her eyes as if that would still her mind, but the thoughts continued rushing like a river in flood.
‘Here.’
She looked up to see Kris standing over her and holding out a chilled bottle of beer. She gave a happy sigh of contentment. ‘I love you,’ she smiled. His dirty blonde hair was pulled up into his signature man-bun and he looked unseasonably tanned, thanks to a recent gig for some surf brand in Sydney. His modelling jobs easily paid the rent, but cooking was his real passion, and he was saving to get enough to open his own place – a small bar specializing in craft beers and Hawaiian food.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position and crossed her legs, feeling none of Elise’s urge to untuck her black trousers from her purple socks.
‘I thought you were seeing Ivan tonight?’
‘Yeah, so did he. But Hanna had an emergency at work, so I had to stay late.’
‘Again?’ Tove lamented. She took a serious interest in the state of Bell’s love life, which she proclaimed as being ‘dire’. ‘That’s how many times you’ve blown him out now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘More times than you’ve seen him, for sure.’
‘Well, it couldn’t be avoided this time.’
‘And why couldn’t Max deal with it?’
‘Because he’s pitching for a big deal with a client, and he’s got some fancy dinner set up for tonight.’
‘So yet again, you have to pick up the pieces?’ Tove sighed, tutting. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how you think you can ever get your life back on track when you’re constantly putting yourself second.’
Bell met Kris’s eyes as she took a swig of her beer. They both knew Tove meant well; it was just that she had the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
‘So, what made your day so tough, then?’ Kris asked, rescuing her as he moved about their kitchenette. The apartment was largely open-plan, with an old eighties pine kitchen spread against the back wall and delineated from the sofas and table area by a marble-effect linoleum counter.
‘Well, if I tell you, do you promise to keep it to yourself?’
It was a rhetorical question to one of her friends, and Kris gave one of his easy shrugs in reply. He wasn’t big on rumour and innuendo; he’d been on the wrong end of it too many times. Tove dramatically drew a cross above her heart, and then kissed her fingers.
Bell rested her elbows on her knees, as though an approximation of the lotus position was going to give her any more peace. Her topknot flopped limply to one side of her head, but she ignored it. ‘So, I took a phone call today –’
Instantly Tove began clapping and kicking out her long legs. ‘Yes! Yes! I knew you could do it! Didn’t I say?’
Kris shook his head with a weary, wry grin as he shook the pan again.
Bell gave her the bird, and a sarcastic smile. ‘It was some doctor asking for Hanna. She said it was urgent, and gave me a message – but it made no sense, right? Like, none at all.’
Tove nodded impatiently, whirling her hands in a ‘get on with it’ motion, puffing more smoke towards the ceiling pendant.
‘Only, I couldn’t get hold of Hanna all day – like I said, she had a client emergency of her own going on. I wasn’t that worried about it, because I really figured they must have had the wrong number, or the wrong Hanna, at least, because her message made no sense.’ She took a swig of her beer. ‘But then, when Hanna got back this evening . . .’
Kris, tossing the peppers to let them char on the other side, watched her, waiting. Unlike Tove – ever impatient and restless – he understood that she had to run it through in her mind again exactly as it had happened, in case there had been a mistake . . . She looked straight up at him. ‘It turns out that before she was with Max, Hanna was married to some other guy.’
Kris frowned. ‘Did we know that?’
‘Nope. He’s never been mentioned. There’s no photos of the dude anywhere.’
‘Oooh, a secret husband – how fabulous!’ Tove said, lifting one endless leg into the air. Bell always joked that her legs were like strings with knots in them, but they both knew she was just jealous. If Tove was lean and lanky – with a tendency towards elegance in her more mature moments – Bell was rounded and, in Tove’s words, ‘juicy’. Five foot four but with a figure like a cello, she had curves where Tove had straight lines.
‘Well, he was secret for a reason. Apparently the poor guy’s spent the past seven years in a coma.’
Kris stopped what he was doing. Tove’s leg swung down, and her arm dangled off the side of the sofa. ‘What?’ they asked in unison.
Bell nodded, feeling gratified by their shock. It roughly matched her own. ‘Yeah. And today he woke up.’
‘Holy shit!’ Kris returned the pan to the heat as though unable to keep holding it. He stared at her as though she had the answers. ‘How?’
‘What do you mean, how?’ Tove asked him, sitting up herself now, her short skirt riding all the way up her thighs to flash her knickers – no one in the room caring, least of all her. Bell was just grateful she was wearing some. ‘Her husband was asleep and now he’s awake! He opened his eyes and woke up!’
‘Well, if it was that simple, you’d have thought he’d have done it before now, surely?’ Kris exclaimed.
‘Hmm.’ Tove conceded the point.
‘I’m not really sure how they did it,’ Bell replied. ‘It was a lot of different things combined, I think. Hanna said something about stimulating the vagus nerve . . .? It’s some pioneering treatment. I don’t think they thought it would actually work.’
‘Fuck,’ Tove whispered under her breath. ‘The vagus nerve.’
It was clear none of them had ever heard of this before.
‘How did Hanna take the news?’
‘She was very shocked. She collapsed, actually.’ Bell bit her lip, remembering how Hanna had paled and then fallen, her legs giving way, both of them sitting on the floor until Max arrived home.
‘Shit,’ Tove murmured, as though this was proof of the seriousness of the situation. She had met Hanna only once, but had rhapsodized afterwards about her skin and flashing aquamarine ring and good shoes. ‘She’s such a grown-up!’ Tove had cooed, and Bell hadn’t liked to point out that there was only three years between Tove and Hanna – and six years between her and her boss.
‘What happened to the guy? How did he end up in a coma in the first place?’
‘Traffic accident, I think. To be honest, she didn’t say much that was coherent, and I didn’t feel I could ask too much. She was so shocked; I’ve never seen her like that. Hanna never loses control.’ Bell took a swig of her beer.
‘So has she gone to see him?’
‘She can’t. Not tonight, it’s too late now. He’s in some clinic in Uppsala and they’ve got strict visiting hours. She and Max are going up in the morning.’
Kris put down the knife again. ‘Christ, that’ll be a head-fuck for him, won’t it? His wife’s first husband suddenly back on the scene again?’
‘Well, technically, he’s her husband, end of. Hanna and Max aren’t married.’
He hesitated. ‘I take it he knew about him?’
‘Yeah, seemed to. He was at this client dinner but I couldn’t leave Hanna in that state, so as soon as I rang and told him what had happened, he came straight back.’
‘And the kids?’ Tove asked.
‘They don’t know. Yet.’
Kris shook his head with a weary sigh. ‘Hell, Bell.’ It was his signature catchphrase to her but there was no laughter in his eyes today. ‘That’s one mighty mess.’
‘I know.’ She sank back into the sofa again, as though depleted by the message she had conveyed, and stared at the wall. But she was gazing far beyond the neon ‘love’ sign that sufficed as lighting in that corner of the room; she was trying to imagine how it must have felt to have been Hanna when the doctors had given her the prognosis . . . her husband alive, but to all intents and purposes dead. Hanna had said the doctors had told her that there was very little hope he would ever emerge from the coma.
She went to take another swig of her beer and realized she had finished it.
‘I’ll get you another one,’ Tove sighed, getting up and walking over to the fridge. ‘I’ve got to shoot anyway.’ She glanced at the clock and gave a small spasm of surprise. ‘Oh fuck. Not again.’
Bell glanced over. She knew Tove’s schedules well enough to know she should have come off her break twenty three minutes ago. She gave a small tut and a grin as Tove jogged over and handed her the fresh beer. ‘Thanks, hon.’
‘Laters alligators,’ Tove called over her shoulder in English – one of the more sedate phrases she had insisted Bell teach her – as she headed towards the front door. The door slammed shut a moment later, making the furniture vibrate; Tove was incapable of doing anything quietly.
Kris gave a sympathetic tut and frown as he picked up several nests of noodles and threw them into a pan of boiling water. Bell sat quietly on the sofa for a few minutes, enjoying her beer and the little moment of peace. She peered over the back of the sofa, towards the kitchen. ‘Hey, Kris, how long do you think it is to Uppsala from here – an hour-ish?’
He nodded in agreement.
‘Right,’ she sighed. That would be an extra early start for her, then. Hanna had asked her to get in early tomorrow so that she and Max could head straight off to the clinic, before the commuter traffic built up.
She’d made light of it to her friends, but she felt rattled by the day’s events. It frightened her when life slipped off its rails like that, the straight tramlines of expectation suddenly hijacked by a too-sharp curve that sent everything flying. Lives could turn on a sixpence, she knew that only too well – the entire reason she was here and living in Sweden was down to one such curve ball – but it was just as unsettling to watch it happening from a close remove. She was near enough to care, but just outside of the involved circle.
‘Come. Eat,’ Kris said, draining the pan so that great plumes of steam billowed in his face. He tonged the food into colourful and artful heaps in the bowls, and slid one towards her on the island.
‘Oh, I’m not sure I ca—’ It was almost ten. Eating late was hardly conducive to whittling out that bikini body she was determined to find.
‘You can and you will,’ he said firmly. ‘You cannot spend all day looking after other people and neglecting yourself.’
‘I really didn’t neglect myself when I was serving the kids their dinner earlier,’ she said, getting up anyway as her stomach growled appreciatively. She took her bowl with a grateful smile and they sat down together at the small circular table that was only big enough for two, or a pot plant. Every third Friday, for Kris’s renowned and sought-after supper clubs, it was moved to the bathroom and set in the bath out of the way, as six trestle tables and benches were carried in, the rest of the furniture hidden in the bedrooms or pushed to the walls.
‘I thought Marc was coming over?’ she said, her mouth full, as they tucked in in appreciative silence, elbows out, heads dipped low, beers fizzing in their bottles.
‘He is.’ Kris’s gaze flickered over to the reclaimed train clock on the opposite wall. ‘After his shift, in twenty minutes hopefully.’
‘Ah.’ Marc was a junior doctor at St Görans Hospital. He was almost the same height and build as Kris, but where Kris was blonde and stubbled and rocking a chiselled indy traveller vibe, Marc was clean-shaven and preppy. Tove had said it was like choosing between Redford and Newman the first time she’d seen them together, and Bell had had to break it to her that she sadly wouldn’t ever get to choose either one of them. ‘Did his consultant apologize for screaming at him?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Outrageous,’ she tutted. Marc had been late to a meeting on account of sitting with a terminal patient, literally holding their hand as they died. She forked another heaped bite and gave an immediate groan of appreciation. ‘Ohmigod, so good.’
His eyes gleamed appreciatively. ‘So how about you? Was Tove right just now? Are you deliberately sabotaging your own dates?’
‘Kris, no one could have foreseen what was coming our way today. Not even Hanna. Long-forgotten husbands waking up from comas is not all in a day’s work for me.’
‘No, I guess not,’ he conceded, looking up at her from beneath his ridiculously long eyelashes as he twirled his noodles. ‘All the same, you really need to start insisting on extra pay if you’re gonna be doing extra hours. You help her out a lot. A lot a lot.’
‘I know.’
‘You know – but you won’t,’ he said, watching her, knowing her too well. ‘You’re too soft.’
‘It’s not a matter of being soft. I just . . . don’t mind if things over-run. It feels sort of wrong monetizing looking after children.’
Kris burst out laughing. ‘But that is the very definition of your job!’
She couldn’t help but crack a smile. She had walked into that one. ‘You know what I mean. Those kids are so cute.’
‘Elise is not cute! She is a diva-in-training. Mariah Carey in miniature and fucking terrifying.’
‘Okay, fine, but Linus then – you haven’t seen his puppy-dog eyes. He didn’t win the times table test today and he was heartbroken. Big, fat tears rolling down his cheeks . . .’ She trailed a finger down her own cheek, her mouth downturned sadly to make her point.
Kris sighed and shook his head, looking entirely unconvinced, before suddenly stabbing the air decisively with his fork. ‘Give him a booty call.’
She frowned in disbelief. ‘Linus?’
He banged the ends of his cutlery on the table. ‘Ivan!’
‘Ha, yeah right.’ Quickly she stuffed another overloaded forkful into her mouth, trying to distract herself from his words with a taste-bud explosion.
He dipped his head and looked closely at her. ‘Listen, I know you love that family, but you need to start imposing some boundaries. Puppy-dog eyes or not, Tove’s right – you’ve got a life to live too. You need to start saying no. Except when it’s to a guy – then you need to start saying yes.’ He reached over and put a hand on hers. ‘You know what I’m saying.’
She nodded. She knew exactly what he was saying.
He winked at her kindly, heart-stoppingly. ‘Remember – it’s just a job, and you’re just the nanny, Bell.’
It was exactly 5.28 a.m. as she closed the door behind her with a shiver, holding the bike steady with one hand as she tucked her trousers into her socks with the other. She glanced up and down the arm’s-width narrow street but no one else was around: a few bottle crates were stacked in a tower, ready for pickup, and the hand-painted A-frame advertising the craft beers in the Star Bar was propped against the wall. Quickly, she stepped on the pedal and swung her leg over the bike, gliding silently past the tiny, narrow antique shop selling ceramics and glassware, past the ancient wooden door of the rare comic emporium sited thirty feet below the street in an old wine cellar.
The cobbles glistened from the overnight rain. Her tyres sluiced through shallow puddles as she darted from alley to alley, cutting across the pedestrian thoroughfares that would soon be heaving with tourists looking for wooden Dala horses and bakeries to have fika in. In these long, thin alleys she was protected from the wind that came straight off the Baltic, but she knew that as soon as she took the left onto Stora Nygatan and over the bridge it would push at her back all the way to Ostermalm, until she closed the Mogerts’ garden gate behind her.
Traffic was light, with few commuters out yet. Small clusters of electric scooters stood poised by the bridge, outside the main station, at street corners and by bike racks. There weren’t even any drivers in the embassy cars as Bell powered up the colourful street, and she had a sense of suspension, as though the city was holding its breath – just about to exhale, just about to start up again. What would today hold?
She had slept well, awaking in the starfish position on her double bed, although she’d still wished she could stay there for another four hours. But one glance at her employers’ faces as she walked in, and it was clear they had had a very different night. Both of them were pale and tense, sitting stiffly and in silence at the whitewashed kitchen table as she shut the back door quietly behind her.
‘Hey,’ she said in a low voice, partly so as not to wake the children, but also in deference to the sombre mood in the house. She pulled off her beanie and automatically twisted her hair into the topknot, seeing that they had managed only coffee; the island was spotlessly clean and tidy.
Hanna was dressed but Max was still in his pyjamas, and his eyes followed his partner as she got up to rinse her cup.
‘Bell, thank you for coming so early. I really appreciate it.’ Hanna’s poise was in stark contrast to the sucker-punched disbelief of last night, but Bell could see the effort it was taking her just to present this veneer. Her mouth was pulled down at the corners, the sinews strained in her neck.
‘It’s the very least I could do. How are you both?’
She made a point of including Max in the question, seeing that Hanna was using manners as a mask, and he answered her with a weary nod that told her more in its fragile silence than words would.
‘Did you manage to sleep at all?’
A silence followed; they seemed to be deferring to each other to answer.
‘Not really,’ Max said finally. His voice, usually spry and infused with an untold joke, was flat and heavy.
‘No.’ She bit her lip, watching as Hanna cleaned the coffee cup vigorously before immediately drying it and returning it to the cupboard. Bell wasn’t sure any implement in this kitchen had ever been returned to its home without first spending at least four days on the draining board. She watched as Hanna stood, unseeing, at the cabinet for a moment, her shoulders pitched a good two inches above their usual setting, before turning around with possibly the most implausible smile Bell had ever seen – but one of the bravest.
‘Right. Well, we should head off then. Traffic will get sticky if we hit rush hour.’
‘Sure,’ Bell agreed, offering her most reassuring smile in return, although she felt a guilty wave of relief at the prospect of stepping clear of their suffocating gloom. ‘And I’ll take care of everything here. Don’t worry about a single thing –’
Hanna straightened her back. ‘Actually, Max and I have discussed it, and we think it would be best if you came with me.’
Bell blinked at her, confused. ‘. . . Me?’
‘To Uppsala, yes.’
She looked across at Max, who was staring into his coffee cup.
Hanna stood stiffly. ‘It could be too . . . confusing.’ Her voice was as brittle as toffee.
‘Oh, yes,’ Bell murmured. ‘I can see how that . . . But what about –?’
‘Max is going to work from home today. He’ll take the girls to nursery.’
‘. . . And Linus?’
‘He’s coming with us.’ Hanna flinched, as though hating the indecision in her voice. ‘But we don’t know yet if . . . well, whether he should actually come in. That’s why I need you there.’ Her eyes flickered towards Max and away again without resting on him, and Bell understood they were at odds on this.
Bell went still as suddenly the maths presented itself. Linus was nine. The ex had been in a coma for seven years. ‘He’s . . . Linus’s father?’ She looked between them both. Max nodded.
Bell was stunned. In the three years she’d been working here, it had never been mentioned. She supposed she could have worked it out last night if she’d stopped to consider it, but she hadn’t thought to make mathematical calculations. ‘Does he know?’
Hanna whirled back to face her sharply. ‘No. And I’d like it to stay that way until we get up there and I . . . I know what we’re dealing with.’
Bell nodded, looking from Hanna back to Max again. He looked suitably bitten back too.
‘He’s awake, but we don’t yet know how cognizant he will be of what’s happened to him. It could upset him to see Linus so changed – he was little more than a baby when the accident happened.’ Her voice was brittle and hard, shining with jagged edges that could, at any moment, draw blood. She was a mother in defence. ‘On the other hand, he could be absolutely the man he was and the first person he’ll want to see is his son.’ She gave a helpless, exaggerated shrug and stretched her mouth into a grimace, tears in her eyes. ‘I have absolutely no idea what we’re walking into.’
‘Which is why you would be better to play it on the safe side and keep Linus here until you know the score,’ Max said to her back.
‘He’s been in a coma for seven years, Max!’ Hanna snapped, whirling round, and Bell could tell by her tone they had been arguing about this for hours. ‘What if Linus is all he wants? What if he’s distressed by his not being there? It could make things worse for him.’
‘I sincerely doubt he’s going to be that lucid.’
‘Oh, because you’re the expert?’
Max sighed, looking away with a shake of his head.
Hanna looked back at her. ‘I need to have options, Bell. I need to go in first and assess how he is. If he’s calm and lucid, Linus can come in. If he’s confused or distressed or . . . not right, he doesn’t.’
Bell nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘And if he is alert and okay, what are you going to say to Linus?’ Max asked, his voice sounding choked. ‘Are you honestly going to break it to him, in the doorway of that hospital room, that the man he’s about to meet is his real father?’ He stared at his wife with shining eyes. ‘How do you think he’s going to react to that? I mean, the shock – Jesus, the poor child! He needs time to process the facts before he’s presented with the reality! We always said we would tell him together, when he was old enough – the two of us, together –’
‘But we don’t have that luxury now! He’s woken up, and there’s no time left. He’s been nearer to being dead than alive, and we have to put his needs before ours – and before even Linus’s. It’s the very least he deserves.’
Max exhaled forcefully, his body rigid with anger and tension as Hanna suddenly dropped her head into her hands.
‘God, this is an impossible situation,’ Bell said quietly, walking over to her quickly and squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. It was a strange reversal of roles. Though her boss was only six years her senior, their very different lifestyles and choices often left Bell feeling almost adolescent in her company.
Hanna lifted her head again. ‘I just need options, Max, until I know what’s the best thing to do.’
‘Well, you’re his mother,’ Max retorted snippily. ‘So I don’t get a final say in it. I’m not even his adoptive father. When it comes down to it, I have no legal rights.’
‘This isn’t about legalities.’
‘Not yet it isn’t,’ Max said bleakly.
Hanna’s mouth parted. Bell’s, too. What exactly was ahead of them?
‘Uh, look, I’ll keep Linus occupied until you’ve seen him and you know what’s best to do,’ Bell murmured. Hanna nodded, but Bell could feel the tension in her arms, and her skin was icy. ‘Just so I’m up to speed – what exactly has he been told about today? I’m assuming he’ll be suspicious as to the early start and not going in to school?’
‘I’ve told him we’re going on a road trip and having some special time together, just the three of us.’
‘. . . Okay.’ It wasn’t the most convincing cover story Bell had ever heard. She glanced at Max again. His arm was outstretched on the table, his body slumped against the chair. He looked . . . lost. Defeated, almost.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs made them all stiffen, Hanna withdrawing quickly and running her hands over her face and through her hair, as though prepping herself for another day at the office.
‘Liney, are you ready?’ she asked, turning her back to him but making an effort to sound distracted and busy as he trudged into the kitchen. His backpack was bulging, and his shoes were already on.
‘Yes.’ His face was still kissed with sleep, his eyes heavy. Bell knew he’d fall straight back asleep in the car.
‘Now, seeing as this is a special occasion today, do you want to bring the iPad?’
The boy frowned, roused from his early-morning stupor by the question. ‘Huh? You never let me take the iPad from the house.’
‘But today . . .’ Hanna’s voice fractured and she quickly forced another grim smile. ‘Today is our special day. A one-off. Go get it.’
‘I can bring it?’
‘That’s what I said, didn’t I? But hurry. We’re just about to leave.’
Linus gave a small squeal of delight.
‘Agh!’ Hanna said, hushing him before he got too excited. ‘And go up the stairs quietly, please. Your sisters are sleeping.’
‘Yesss!’ Linus stage-whispered, punching the air, his gaze sliding over to Bell. ‘Did you hear, Bell? We’re going on an adventure, just the three of us.’
‘I did!’ Bell gasped happily, falling into her role and pressing a hand over her heart. ‘How lucky are we?’
‘It’s going to be the best day ever!’ he said, dropping his rucksack to the floor and running from the room and back up the stairs like a stampeding wildebeest.
Bell looked back at Hanna to find her and Max staring across the room at one another in agonized silence.
No, today definitely wasn’t going to be that.