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 own –
‘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?’
And with the suitcase in his hand, he headed back into the trees again, without even so much as a glance Linus’s way. Hanna stared at his retreating back with an expression Bell couldn’t explain, only feel, but after a moment’s hesitation, she took the girls’ hands and followed on the path too. Linus came after, walking with the stiffly swinging arms of a toy soldier, the resigned fate of the prisoner.
Bell reached for him as he passed and took his hand in hers. ‘Ready for an adventure?’ she winked, forcing a jollity she didn’t feel. For his sake, she had to somehow find some positives in this perverse situation.
He nodded uncertainly. ‘You won’t leave me here?’
‘Hope to die,’ she said, crossing her heart. ‘Now, look out for the rottweilers, okay?’
He looked surprised, then managed a small smile. ‘If you keep a lookout for the sniper rifles and camouflaged man-traps.’
‘Deal,’ she said with a sharp nod, beginning to walk.
They strode through the woodland, moving through deep shade into sudden puddles of sunlight, the sun flashing over their faces like a playful sprite as they wove between the trees. Ahead, the twins were chattering like busy birds, stopping every few metres to admire a flower or pick up a particularly straight stick that might pass for a fairy wand. Hanna walked in silence behind them, oblivious to their games, her pale legs scissoring over the stones, slender as the birches, until after a few minutes, she stepped out of the wood and stood with the girls, bathed in a fierce light. Bell and Linus caught up with them a moment later, all of them taking in the view.
It was sensational, but not at all what she had expected of 007. It wasn’t a show space – all clipped box and clever topiary – but rather an old-fashioned garden, the sort that seemed to have fallen out of style. A real-life chintz, somewhat scruffy and overblown, it was as unlikely a thing to find in this landscape as a giraffe on an iceberg. Clover and daisies and buttercups speckled the grass, a few mature specimen trees dotted around, old flowerbeds a riotous jumble of colour with butterflies flocking to agapanthus and buddleia stems, towers of frothy pale blue delphiniums nodding in the breeze, pink and yellow roses rambling wildly up arched trellises, an old oak swing dangling from a four-metre length of thick nautical hemp rope.
The long, gently sloping lawn was fringed by the dense wood, hiding this garden and home from the curious gazes on passing boats. The house itself matched the garden, like a glove to a coat – wide and two storeys high, with a columned portico in the centre and a mansard roof, a row of seven large rectangular windows winking back at them. It was grand, but nonetheless stamped as an island house by the vertically grooved wooden walls that were the vernacular of properties in the archipelago. Those were usually a brownish-red (and significantly smaller) but this was a bold, juicy tangerine. A Bond villain’s lair it was not. Dr No wouldn’t have been seen dead in an orange house. It was far too . . . cheery.
Bell wished she didn’t like it. She wished she hated all of it – the gracious, somewhat tired-looking house, the enchanting, overgrown, blowsy gardens. ‘It’s going to be a nightmare playing football on that lawn,’ she muttered to Linus.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he breathed back.
‘Dibs I get to play downhill.’
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Yes it is. I’m way older than you. You’ve got youth on your side.’
He looked at her through narrowed eyes, wanting to lose himself in their game, but she could see the glint of fear in them and knew he was faking it as much as her.
Hanna looked across at them both, seeming baffled by their role-play as a tiny frown puckered her brow. She turned to Linus and crouched down so that her knees dipped into the cool grass. ‘Do you see how lovely it is, darling?’
Linus hesitated, then nodded.
‘This is your daddy’s home. Which means it’s yours too. All this is yours, isn’t that wonderful?’ He stared at her. ‘You can play in this garden – there’s not another island in the archipelago with a garden like this, did you know that? Not a single one. You’re going to have so much fun. And you can climb on the rocks, find the hidden beach –’
‘The hidden beach is here?’ he gasped.
‘I want to go to the hidden beach!’ Elise interjected, but Bell silenced her with a reproving look that seemed to work for once. The girls instinctively understood that nothing today was quite as it seemed. This wasn’t just any boat ride, any island, any garden . . .
Hanna nodded slowly. ‘Pappa pretended he forgot, because this island is privately owned, so you wouldn’t have been allowed over to play. But now you can.’
‘How will I find it?’
She smiled. ‘Trust me, you will. The Soviets accidentally dropped a bomb here on their way to a missile test site during the Second World War and – pow! – the hidden beach was created. It’s completely invisible from the sea. That’s why no one else knows about it. Only the people lucky enough to get to stay here.’
His interest was piqued – that was worthy of a Bond lair – and Hanna’s face brightened momentarily in response to his expression. ‘The fun is in finding it.’
Bell wasn’t so sure. How could a beach be hidden? They weren’t like socks kicked under the bed.
‘Trust me, you’ll love it here,’ Hanna went on, her voice thickening suddenly. ‘You were always supposed to play in this garden, darling. When you were a baby, I would think about how exciting it would be for you when you were a big boy of ten, able to go exploring. You’re so lucky.’
Had it not been for the way her voice splintered on the last word, her proclamations might have been convincing. Instead, Linus threw his arms around her neck. ‘I don’t want to be lucky. I want to be with you.’
There was an anguished silence as they gripped each other with tightly squeezed shut eyes. ‘And you will be, darling. Very, very soon. I promise.’
Bell saw the tears begin to stream, and watched as Hanna quickly pulled down her sunglasses from the top of her head as she pulled back from him. She tried to gather herself, glancing up at the house again and falling still as she saw someone standing there, watching them. Bell followed her gaze. A white-haired man was standing there, Linus’s suitcase positioned by his legs.
She watched Hanna turn back to her son again. There was something different in her expression now. ‘In the meantime, you’ve got Bell. She’ll be with you all the time. You won’t ever be alone here. Bell will look after you, as she always does.’
Linus nodded, his green eyes flashing between their two faces, but it was to his mother’s that his gaze returned. ‘You promise you’ll come back?’
‘Nothing can stop me.’ She forced a smile that fooled no one. ‘Now go up to the house and Måns will look after you.’
‘Who’s Måns?’
‘A very kind man who’ll help take care of you.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’ This time, it was Linus’s voice that shook.
‘It’s better if I leave you here today. But I’ll visit, I promise. I’m just across the water, remember that.’ Hanna rose to standing again. ‘Now off you go. Be a good boy for Mamma. And your father.’
Linus stared up at her, his shoulders heaving like an ocean swell, unformed emotions rolling through him like a storm. ‘. . . What if he screams again?’
Hanna’s mouth parted at the question, but no words came.
‘Then we’ll scream back,’ Bell said firmly, taking his hand in hers again and giving him one of her signature wry looks.
Linus looked shocked. ‘We can’t do that.’ He looked at his mother. ‘Can we?’
‘You won’t need to. Your father was sick then, but he’s much better now. You’ll see.’
Bell tugged his arm affectionately, pulling him away. ‘Come on. I want to see what our rooms are like.’
‘Do you?’
No. ‘Absolutely,’ she said, sticking her chin in the air. ‘I hope I’ve got a revolving bed.’
He nodded, as though that seemed like a good thing to have. ‘I want an observatory in mine.’
‘You might well have one,’ she sighed. ‘Have you seen the size of this place?’
‘The mirrors had better be two-way.’
‘They’d better be,’ she agreed. They trod over the grass, crushing daisies underfoot, the ground springy beneath their feet. ‘D’you reckon they keep cheetahs here?’
He looked up at her. ‘Why cheetahs?’
‘Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps your dad’s a fast runner.’
‘He was in a coma for seven years.’
‘All the more reason to run now he’s awake, then.’
Linus chuckled. ‘I think you’re the crazy one, Bell.’
‘You could very well be right, Linus,’ she grinned.
They were at the top of the lawn now, just a few metres from the feet of the white-haired man. He hadn’t moved a muscle in all that time. The suitcase was still standing on its side, beside him.
Linus gave a little startle at the sudden nearness of him and turned back, realizing he had distractedly left his mother and sisters by the trees. But they were not there now. Only a rabbit, hopping lazily through the longer grass, ears pinned back as it began to nibble on a dandelion.
Bell squeezed his hand and made him look at her. She gave him the slow blink they sometimes shared in the playground when he didn’t want to hug her in front of his friends.
‘You must be Isobel?’ the man said to her, after a moment.
She turned to face him, gripping Linus’s hand more tightly in hers, though whether that was for his benefit or her own, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was, she had to protect this child against these people. ‘Yes. But please call me Bell.’ Her voice was polite but firm, her eyes steely.
To her surprise, the blue eyes looking back at her were kindly. ‘I am Måns, Mr Von Greyer’s valet. And this must be Master Linus?’
Linus stared back at him, anachronistic against the grand orange house and the valet’s crisp suit, in his cut-off jean shorts and trainers. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ His voice was robotic and he looked ready to run.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, young sir. Everyone is very excited that you have come to stay with us. Won’t you please follow me?’
They both stared after him for a moment, wrong-footed by the warm welcome. Bond villains weren’t supposed to have friendly old men as their sidekicks. Nor orange lairs.
They followed him into the building. It was immediately cool and shaded inside, the brightness of the day falling in long strips through the large windows. They both looked left and then right. The house was a series of interconnecting, open airy salons, high-ceilinged with old, worn strip-wood floors. There didn’t seem to be much furniture but what there was – stickback chairs, diamond-doored cabinets, curvy long-case clocks – was very old and seemed to be largely pale and peeling, in the old Gustavian style, a baroque fashion that was very different to the Mogerts’ modern, minimal aesthetic. Bell had the impression of peering through bright light and dust, even though the place was clearly spotless; everything was muted, hushed, as though a veil of silence had been hung over the roof, in distinct contrast to the bright, almost shouty exterior. She tried to imagine Linus haring about in here, and couldn’t. It wasn’t that it was grand per se, just that it was somehow disapproving of frivolity.
They caught up with Måns on the stairs – which wasn’t hard – treading slowly behind him, their eyes casting nervously around at the dark oil paintings on the walls, up at the crystal lights, hands gliding over the polished elliptical handrail. They swapped glances in silence, noticing every creak of the floorboards, the sheer scale of the house dwarfing them. Bell felt like it was swallowing them whole.
Upstairs, the house felt a little cosier, but it was a matter of mere degrees – maybe half a metre off the ceiling heights? There was more furniture, though, dressing the spaces and making it feel like a home rather than a museum – rugs at spaced intervals on the floors, an antique smiling wooden horse on bows.
Måns walked towards a closed door at the end of the corridor, furthest from the stairs. ‘Master Linus, you will be sleeping in the room that your father had when he was a child. He was most insistent it should now be yours. Everything has been kept exactly as it was, including all his old toys.’
Bell arched a quizzical eyebrow, but said nothing. Clearly neither Måns nor his employer knew the first thing about kids. They wanted new and they wanted tech; old Action Man figures – or whatever the guy had played with as a boy himself – weren’t going to cut it with his press-ganged son.
‘Your father is waiting for you in here.’ Måns paused, as though about to say something else, but he appeared to think better of it, and turned away and knocked on the door instead.
There was no reply, but he opened the door anyway and entered. ‘Your guests, sir.’
Bell and Linus looked at one another as they stood on the threshold. ‘You okay?’ she mouthed to him.
He nodded, but she could see the tension in the downward pull at the corners of his mouth. The man they were about to meet had threatened this poor child’s mother with a ruinous court case, public shaming and loss of custody. How could she put a positive spin on that?
She dipped her head closer to him, speaking in a hushed tone. ‘Remember, he’s your dad and he loves you. A very sad thing happened to him and he was poorly for a long time, but all he wants is to get to know you. That’s all this is. And I’ll be here the whole time.’
‘Promise?’ Linus breathed.
‘Hope to die,’ she mouthed, crossing her heart again. She gripped his hand harder and, taking a long, deep breath, they walked in together.
Måns was standing motionless in the centre of the room, his long shadow in the window frame flattering his stooped stature.
‘Where is he?’ she asked him, more snappily than she had intended.
The old man looked back at her with a look of fluster and bewilderment. She suspected it wasn’t a familiar feeling for him; he seemed to ooze capability. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bell. I have absolutely no idea.’