‘You’ll be pleased to hear my headache has cleared.’
The conversation stopped and they all turned as one to find Emil standing at the doorway to the terrace. Bell looked up from her spot on the steps with Linus and the twins. They were eating off their laps as a treat, too excitable to sit at the table today, even for ten minutes.
The sky had clouded over in his absence, thick clouds stealing shadows off the ground, an ominous wind ruffling their hair and shirts.
‘Good!’ Hanna said, sounding pleased. Relieved. There was an edge of mania to her brightness. ‘Come and quickly have some birthday lunch, then. I’m afraid we had to start without you. The children were getting restless and it’s trying to rain, so we might need to move indoors shortly.’
He walked over, Nina catching his eye. ‘You do look better,’ she said, regarding him almost suspiciously. ‘I told you you needed to lie down.’
‘You are always right. I should listen to you more.’
His sister frowned, puzzled by his rare obedience as he sat down in the chair beside her. ‘Have I missed much?’ His eyes flickered over the group – Hanna, Max, her . . . Quickly back to Nina again.
Bell felt herself flinch. She was cast out already. Here but not.
‘We were just discussing the European elections,’ Nina said in a sangfroid tone that came with an invisible eye-roll.
‘Ah.’
The conversation resumed, Hanna seeming particularly engaged on the topic – Nina significantly less so – as Måns came over with a plate of poached salmon and cucumber salad and set it down before him. Bell watched Emil eye it without appetite, knowing that even if he could taste it, none of them were here for the food. He picked up his fork but held it limply in one hand and she could see the words building up inside him, like steam in a kettle. His eyes kept darting between Hanna and Max as they all tried to eat, and Bell noticed how the Mogerts didn’t make eye contact or address each other in his presence; there were none of the intimacies or endearments, touching hands or shared laughs that characterized their home life. Was it out of courtesy to Emil? Or because it was all over? Bell couldn’t tell. Everyone was on guard, playing games . . . They might as well have been strangers, and she realized that the last time the three of them would have eaten a meal together, Hanna would have been Emil’s wife and Max their guest. But now, the cards had been shuffled, the deck rearranged . . .
Emil ate a mouthful of the salmon, his stony expression reflecting the deadening of his senses, as around him, the conversation steadily died. Even Nina was unable to sustain a lively repartee in the face of his implacable quiet. Pretence was impossible. They all knew the moment was upon them. All he wanted was to talk.
Emil dropped his fork with a clatter, onto the plate as, beside him, Hanna flinched. Jumpy. ‘Max, I owe you an apology.’
Max stopped eating, his fork poised in mid-air. It wasn’t the statement any of them had been expecting.
‘Yes, I’m truly sorry if my recent . . . woes have proved troublesome for you. I expect you must have been somewhat disquieted with Hanna staying here over the weekend. Playing nurse to me.’
It was the first shot, whistling through the silence like a cannonball on the dawn battlefield. Nina sighed and reached for her drink.
Max looked back at him, steadily. ‘Not at all. Hanna’s a great nurse. I’m glad she was able to help.’ He placed the forkful in his mouth, but Bell was certain he wasn’t tasting his food any more either. His skin was looking almost grey with the stress.
A small smile played on Emil’s lips. ‘Oh yes. She was a great . . . a really great . . . help.’ He glanced over at Hanna as the stress landed on the innuendo; she wasn’t even attempting to eat, staring at him with a horrified plea in her eyes, a dawning realization that she had no control over this situation after all. She was out of time . . .
‘Emil –’ she whispered, but Emil’s attention was already back on Max.
Max continued to chew, but more slowly now. He looked over at Bell. ‘If the children have finished eating, they can go off to play . . .’ he said in a low voice.
It was like asking the ladies to leave the room before the men pulled out their revolvers and Bell could only shrug feebly in reply, for the three of them were already halfway down the lawn anyway, heading for the bouncy castle again, their cleared plates on her lap. She knew she should take them to the kitchen and steer well clear of this toxic scene, but her feet wouldn’t move. She had to know how this was going to play out. Like some kind of sadist, she needed to watch the man she wanted get back the woman he wanted.
A cold wind barrelled up the garden, parting the flowers and carrying salt from the sea.
‘You know,’ Emil said, sitting back in his chair, elbows splayed and lacing his fingers together. ‘People think that being in a coma for seven years is the most terrible thing, but actually, there are upsides.’
Bell glanced across at Hanna, her long hair streaming across her face. No filter for one, she thought.
Nina spluttered on her drink. This was her kind of humour. ‘There’s time to think?’
‘There’s less thinking going on than you may suppose,’ he grinned. ‘But it is very peaceful. There’s a lot to be said for that. Cutting out all the noise, the chatter, the distractions . . . It’s been one of the more disconcerting things to have to readapt to; life is so loud.’ He sighed, letting his shoulders rise and fall, looking amiable and relaxed. ‘No, more than anything, I think, if you are lucky enough to pull through it all, you emerge with Perspective. With a capital P. What’s life all about? Why are we here? What really matters?’ He threw his hands out questioningly, looking round the table at the faces looking back apprehensively. Bell realized it was actually a question. ‘It’s not that –’ He waved a hand indicating the house. ‘Forget all this –’ He jerked his head towards the private fairground on the lawn, the parked helicopter, the large, lush, mature garden on a tiny Baltic island. ‘All it boils down to is love.’
No one spoke. They didn’t disagree. They just didn’t want to go where this conversation was heading. Not Nina, not Max and not – from the look of barely controlled panic on her face – Hanna. She really wasn’t ready for this, Bell realized. The way Emil had spoken to her in the bedroom, so certain of his plans, she had assumed Hanna was complicit, that they had discussed this. But there was no disguising the fear on her face now. Her eyes were shining with tears as she looked between the two men. It was clear Emil was going rogue, off-book.
‘And I have always loved this woman.’ He covered Hanna’s hand with his own, drawing it into him and holding it against his heart. Bell stared at it there, remembering how she had lain with her head in that exact spot, for just one night. ‘You know that, Max. You were one of the first people I told that I’d met the girl I was going to marry! Remember it? I introduced you to her that day in Vardshus, in the garden? You were on your lunch break and we’d piled off the ferry with some friends; it was the start of the summer – party, party, party. Life was good, eh? You remember?’ He nodded, never letting go of Max’s gaze. And Max, likewise, both men held in a lock. ‘Of course you do. You were my best man. The best man I knew.’
Bell looked at Max in surprise. He’d said they’d been friends, that he’d gone to their wedding – but to have been best man? That wasn’t just a detail, it was a statement.
Emil tapped the side of his head. ‘Which brings me to another coma upside – clarity. Capital C. Some things now, from years ago, I can recall like they happened this morning. Not everything – there have been things that were just . . . just out of reach.’ He tapped his head again. ‘Hence the headaches, you see.’
Hanna was pressing her lips together, her body held in the contracted state before a sneeze, or a sob.
‘And when I look back now, I think I knew you were in love with her too. I think I did know it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I just . . . refused to see it. I didn’t want to see it. I mean, my wife and my best friend.’ He made a crazy face. ‘Who the hell wants to see that, right?’
Max didn’t reply but he had stopped eating now, his cutlery returned to the plate, his arms splayed on the carver chairs as he sat back, listening. Waiting.
Bell couldn’t take her eyes off him. Max had been in love with Hanna for all those years, before Emil’s accident? He’d been their best man?
‘So maybe I can’t blame you for swooping in while I lay there, not dead but certainly not alive for seven years. Maybe I’d even have done the same. All’s fair in love, right, especially when the other guy’s . . . you know . . . a vegetable.’
Hanna gasped. Bell winced at the savage language.
‘But again – upsides!’ He smacked the table with his palm, an almost jocular gesture were it not for the fact that the look in his eyes in no way matched the words coming from his mouth. ‘You took care of my family and that’s a good thing. I mean, I know they were more than adequately provided for financially, thanks to Nina’s efforts setting up the trust.’ He gave a silent clap to Nina and she nodded her acknowledgement warily. His anger threaded every word and she looked as worried as the rest of them now. ‘I know you set up home together in a house that my family paid for, but you were a father to my son. You kept my wife warm at night. I should be thankful for that. You . . . minimized their suffering.’
‘Emil –’ Hanna faltered, but he silenced her with a look. Of course, there was no real gratitude in his eyes, but there was something else missing too. No . . .
No . . .?
Bell gave a shiver of trepidation at his steeled manner. Everything felt ‘off’, somehow. There was a chilling calculation to all of this that was far removed from the passion, the desperation he had shown upstairs. He wanted his family back, she understood that, but did that mean destroying Max first? Humiliating him? And why wasn’t Max fighting back and defending himself? If everything Emil said was true, there were also mitigating circumstances. Max wasn’t a monster.
The wind gave a low moan, like a dog turning over, just as Emil gave a sigh. ‘But of course, the thorn in everyone’s sides is that I somehow, against the odds – against the gods! – inconveniently recovered. And so now I’m back, and everything’s got to change again.’ The silence yawned as the statement hung in the air like smoke after the bullet’s left the gun, both men staring at one another. ‘Because you know, Max, of course you know, that Hanna’s mine again. You knew it when she heard I’d been hurt again and she ran out in that storm.’
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?’