‘Bell, can we talk?’
Bell hesitated at the door, hearing the tension in Hanna’s voice. ‘. . . Sure.’ They’d been tiptoeing around one another for the past few days, with cringing politeness and bright smiles that bordered on lunacy.
It was late and yet again, the children had only just gone to bed. Another day that had started early and finished way past their bedtimes had left them all feeling exhausted, the unsetting sun less of a friend to her mid-week.
‘Here.’
Hanna was holding out a glass of red wine to her. ‘Oh. Thanks.’ She wandered over and took it, sitting politely on the edge of the sofa seat.
‘Fun day today.’
‘Yeah.’
Hanna curled up on the armchair beside the sofa, tucking her legs up, her scarlet nail polish winking in the shadows of the cushions. ‘The girls are loving that water pistol you bought them!’
‘Oh, it was just a cheapie; they had them on offer in Westerbergs when I went to get the milk.’
‘Well, anyway, it was thoughtful of you – as usual.’
Bell gave a stiff smile. Compliments and wine were nice, but she would rather have been enjoying what remained of her evening in solitude. By contrast, she suspected Hanna was lonely without Max here, that she craved some adult company.
Hanna stared out into the night: the sun was bouncing along the horizon like a golden balloon, darkness a slow bleed that trickled like a stain from the higher reaches of the sky. She smacked her lips together and looked back over. ‘Bell . . . I hope you know how much you mean to us all. Not just the children, but . . . to Max and me, too.’
Odd thing to say. ‘I think so,’ Bell nodded, waiting for a ‘but’.
‘And you know you are absolutely pivotal to how we . . .’ She frowned, straining for the right word. ‘Well, how our family works.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And I’m very aware that you go above and beyond in helping us, really I am. Far beyond what your contract stipulates, and I probably don’t tell you enough how much your flexibility and . . . forbearance helps us –’
Bell held her breath. Whatever the hell was coming, it surely couldn’t be good if she was being this nice.
‘– especially when we’ve had so much change to deal with lately.’
Where was the damned ‘but’?
‘As you are no doubt very aware – but far too polite to mention – we’ve had a difficult few months. You saw at first hand how the, uh . . . miraculous news about my husband’s recovery and our subsequently disastrous visit to Uppsala threw me into a tailspin.’
Had it? Yes, Hanna had lost some weight, and she and Max had been more snappy with one another recently. But apart from last Thursday night’s freak events, everything had been business as usual. No mention of the Uppsala trip was ever made; the family seemed to have unilaterally agreed to a pact of silence on the incident, and it hadn’t been raised (at least in her earshot) since. Bell was a little ashamed to admit that she’d all but forgotten the poor man. Life had carried on for the Mogerts, with only a tiny stumble on their otherwise smooth path.
Hanna gripped her wine glass with both hands, the aquamarine ring gleaming under the lights. ‘I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t handled things very well. And I know I haven’t been . . . the easiest person to be around lately.’ She looked away again, embarrassment and something else – guilt? shame? – forcing her to avert her eyes. ‘I’ve been under a lot of strain, you see, trying to do the right thing by my ex – as you can probably imagine, there’s a lot of admin and practicalities, as well as all sorts of legalities that we need to sort out now that he’s recovering so well.’
‘Oh. Yes, well, I assumed –’ She wasn’t sure what to say. ‘But it’s great that he’s getting better.’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t recognize him as the same man,’ Hanna said, with what seemed like reluctant admiration. ‘He went to a specialist clinic in Switzerland and they’ve worked miracles with him. Honestly, he’s almost back to normal again.’
‘Almost?’
‘Well, the physical recovery is surprisingly quick, all things considered. It’s the mental and emotional aspects that are hardest to conquer. He’s not always . . . rational.’
‘Oh.’
‘Which makes negotiating with him tricky.’
Bell watched her. ‘What do you have to negotiate?’
‘Our divorce, for one thing.’
‘He must have known it was coming, surely?’
‘No. He didn’t know about Max and the girls.’
‘Oh.’ Bell bit her lip, thinking back. It had been, what, six months months since he’d woken up? Six months that Hanna had kept her new family a secret?
‘Yes. I only told him last week. I kept putting it off, you see; I could never find the words to tell him.’
Bell blinked. Much the same as she hadn’t been able to find the words to tell Linus, either. ‘How did he take it?’
‘Terribly.’ Hanna scrunched her eyes tightly at the memory. ‘That was what Thursday was about. I had had a few glasses of wine here, and I suddenly screwed up the courage to go and see him and just do it.’
‘But it didn’t go to plan?’
She shook her head. ‘I think he could tell I’d had a few drinks to steady my nerves; he offered me some more, and I accepted – I wanted it to be a civilized discussion, I thought we could deal with it as friends. We ended up wandering down memory lane, reminiscing about the good times – about Linus as a baby, our honeymoon, how we met. But then . . . then he kissed me.’
‘Oh!’
‘Yes.’
Bell stared back at her, hearing what she wasn’t saying. ‘And you kissed him back?’
‘At first, yes.’ Hanna nodded, biting her lip. ‘It’s just all so difficult and confusing.’
Bell felt a bolt of concern for Max. ‘. . . Well, it’s understandable,’ she managed. ‘You were married to him, there’s bound to be lots of deep emotions between you both still. And as you said, you don’t have to be enemies just because you’re not together any more.’
‘That was what I hoped. But when I stopped . . . it,’ Hanna stammered. ‘And I blurted out the truth about Max . . . I think he was so shocked and hurt; I think he felt humiliated.’ She sighed, pressing a hand to her forehead. ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. He’s a good man who had a bad thing happen to him, and then I had to sit there and explain to him what he’s really woken up to – that the life he left behind no longer exists. The wife he left no longer exists.’
‘His shock must have been immense.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look in his eyes.’ Hanna splayed her hands questioningly. ‘I tried telling him that I had had to make the best decisions as things were presented to me at the time. The doctors had said there was almost no hope that he would recover, so, for Linus’s sake, I had to move on with our lives. But he just won’t accept that I’m with Max now, that we have the girls. He refuses to even hear their names.’
Bell winced. ‘God, Hanna, I’m sorry, that’s awful.’
Hanna looked back at her with a hopeless shrug. ‘Awful for me, but worse for him. He’s not a bad man, he’s a sad one. He’s been through so much and suffered so unfairly. It feels like the ultimate betrayal for him to endure all that, only to come through it and find we’d left him behind.’
Bell nodded sympathetically. ‘I can see that, but there’s no villain in this. You are not a bad person, Hanna. You made the best choices you could, in incredibly difficult circumstances. You’re all in an impossible situation. You, Max and him.’
Hanna looked back at her gratefully. ‘You know, I travelled up to that clinic every single month for those seven years. I’d tell him about how Linus was doing at school, and I would read his school reports. I’d tell him about how tall he was getting and how lucky we’d got finding you. And in all that time, there was never once a sign that he heard any of it. Nothing. Not a finger twitch or a flutter of an eyelid.’ A sob escaped her suddenly. ‘I tried to do my best by him, but now . . . now I think it would have been better if he hadn’t woken up!’
‘Oh Hanna, you don’t mean that,’ Bell hushed.
‘I do, Bell, I do. He won’t accept our marriage is over. Even after I told him the truth, he kept saying things could get back to how they used to be now that he’s back. Like Max and the girls don’t even exist! He said he had based his entire recovery on getting back to being the man he was before, for our sakes, and he won’t give up on us now, even if I have.’
‘Well, that’s . . . just the shock talking. It’s a blow for him, clearly, if you have been his main motivation to recover; but he’ll come to terms with the new reality, painful though it may be. You did the right thing telling him. He had to know sooner or later.’
‘You don’t understand. He’s angry and hurt, so now he’s lashing out.’ Hanna looked back at her, eyes red-rimmed and watery, and Bell suddenly knew this wasn’t the first time she had cried today, or even in the past hour. ‘When he finally realized I was serious about staying with Max, he turned on me. He’s saying he wants joint custody.’
‘Of Linus?’ Now it was Bell’s turn to be shocked.
‘Yes.’ The word came out as a sob.
‘But he . . . he can’t! He’s been in a coma for seven years. Even if he knew his son – which he doesn’t – how would he be fit to look after him?’
Hanna fixed her with a steady stare, and something in her eyes made Bell feel a tremor of alarm. ‘Because his family are powerful, Bell, and incredibly wealthy. Even in the coma, he had the best care money could buy – all the best surgeons, experimental treatments, pioneering drugs. And from the moment he woke up, they threw another fortune at his rehabilitation – he spent eight weeks at that specialist clinic in Switzerland basically being . . . rebuilt.’ She stared bleakly into space. ‘He’s normal now – he can walk, talk, run, lift, carry, you name it, there are no physical impediments to block his claim . . . And there isn’t a judge in the land that would deny him access, or even dare to try.’ She sank further back into the chair, as though there was safety in the cushions.
‘Oh my God,’ Bell murmured, feeling waves of panic beginning to slap against her insides. ‘Does Linus know about this?’
‘Nothing.’ Hanna shook her head wildly. ‘I’ve been trying to keep it from him till I had, I don’t know, control of the situation? After the hospital visit went so badly, and that stupid doctor –’ Her voice snagged on the words, tearing and becoming ragged. ‘I could have had her licence for that.’
Bell swallowed, remembering the immediate fallout only too well. She could see why Hanna hadn’t gone near the subject with her son again.
‘But I’m going to have to tell him now. Tell him everything,’ she sobbed, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘I have no choice. His father wants access and if I don’t grant it, he’s said he’ll take it to court. He’ll have the top family lawyers in Europe, and I won’t stand a chance. It’ll all get into the press.’
‘Surely if his family are that powerful, they’d get some super-injunction or something?’
‘On the contrary, he’ll want it out there. He’s the victim in all of this. Imagine how the narrative will read – the scion to Sweden’s Camelot wakes from a tragic accident and coma to find his wife shacked up with another man. They’ll dig up my life with Max, go through our tax returns, our bins, our social media . . . They’ll paint me as the bitch who didn’t wait.’
Bell winced. It was an intimidating prospect. She closed her eyes, thinking fast, remembering Linus’s terror at the hospital. How would he react to being told that the wild man he’d seen raging and screaming obscenities in that hospital bed was his real father? That that same stranger wanted Linus to go and live with him for half the time? ‘Okay, well then, you need to find a compromise. Clearly, as his father, he does have rights – so Linus needs to be told the truth, and they need to be reintroduced to each other. Properly.’
‘That was my plan too, and I thought he was on side with that. He knew that after the hospital visit went so badly, it was going to need to be handled better the next time he met Linus. He was the one putting off their meeting; he said he wanted to be strong for him when they met properly. He wanted to be the father Linus might remember.’
‘But Linus doesn’t remember him, does he?’
‘No. But he doesn’t believe that.’ Hanna looked straight at her. ‘But then, I don’t know – something’s changed this weekend – Midsommar got him all revved up. He texted me this morning saying he’s been deprived of his son for long enough. He’s lost over seven years already. He wants him with immediate effect.’
‘What?’
Hanna inhaled deeply, swelling herself up with disbelief and despair as she shook her head. ‘He wants Linus to go and stay with him – from tomorrow.’
Bell gasped in horror. ‘Tomorrow? But he can’t do that! No way! The man’s a stranger to him!’
‘I know. I know. That’s what I told him, but he won’t listen to me. He says he may not have rights over me, but he does over his son.’
‘But –’ Bell spluttered, the thoughts rushing too fast to form words. ‘He’s only thinking about himself, not what’s best for Linus.’
‘I know that, you know that – but he doesn’t! He thinks because he can walk and talk again, that that’s enough. I’ve told him it takes more than that to be a father to a child who doesn’t remember him – who, who doesn’t even know about him.’ She began sobbing again. ‘Oh God, how am I going to tell Linus about all of this? What can I say? I panicked that day in the hospital, and I lied.’
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.