‘Emergency! We’re out of milk!’ Bell yelled in panic.
‘But I only got some yesterday!’ Mats replied, his voice – and then bewildered face – appearing through the galley door.
‘Yeah, but did you have more of your shakes last night and this morning?’
Realization dawned as he gave an apologetic grimace. ‘. . . Oh.’
Bell rolled her eyes, not even knowing why she was surprised. ‘They’re going to be here in a few hours; I’ll go to the shops. Do we need anything else?’
‘Babe?’ Mats called, swinging himself down the short staircase by the ladder and landing softly like a cat. ‘Need anything?’
Justine walked through, wrapping her hair up in a towel. ‘We’re pretty low on peanut butter.’
‘Okay, peanut butter,’ Bell repeated, checking her purse was in her bag. She wasn’t strictly sure peanut butter was a vital ingredient for tonight’s coq au vin, but she supposed come breakfast . . . ‘The one with the seeds?’
Mats pulled another face as Justine sidled up to him. ‘Why can’t we just have peanut butter with peanut butter in it? I don’t want seeds in my butter. I’m not a frickin’ canary.’
‘It’s added goodness, babe,’ Justine grinned, hooking an arm around his neck and kissing him on the mouth. She was three inches taller than him, and often took advantage of the fact. The kiss became more involved –
‘Right, well, I’m off then,’ Bell groaned. It had been twenty-two days exactly since they’d met and she was looking forward to the month mark, when Mats said he usually began to calm down. ‘Be done by the time I’m back, please!’
‘Oh, he will be,’ Justine joked.
‘Oi!’ Mats protested, picking her up.
Bell skipped up the stairs and jumped off the boat, onto the concrete gangway. It was very wide and stable, something of a relief after three months at sea, although she preferred the rickety swaying of the wooden sort. Of the Swedish archipelago . . .
She immediately pushed the memories aside, refusing to let them settle. She had been disciplined and done a great job of outpacing her past, and she didn’t intend to let it catch up with her now.
She glanced up at the sky as she walked quickly through the marina, past the hundreds of glossy white boats, sails bound, masts swaying in the wind; it wasn’t called the City of Sails for nothing. Black clouds were billowing overhead like witches’ skirts, the forecast storm arriving pretty much on time.
The sight of it made her smile. She did her best to smile every day, refusing to sink back into the clutches of despair. She might have been here before, but Tove had sent her off with the actually wise wisdom that ‘life isn’t what happens to you, but how you choose to react to it’. So in the aftermath of those awful final weeks in the summer, she had first chosen freedom – and now she was choosing happiness. They weren’t inextricably linked yet, but she hoped one day they might be.
‘Hi! Hi!’ she called out to the increasingly familiar faces as she passed by their boats, hand raised in a friendly wave.
‘Hey, Bell!’
‘How’s it going, Bell?’
Their answering calls had different accents to the one she’d known during the summer, but the same carefree smiles and wind-whipped hair.
She turned onto the main strip, glancing in through the open door of the harbourmaster’s office as she passed, walking with a long stride. ‘Hi, Dan,’ she called.
‘. . . Hell?’
She stopped walking like it was a command. ‘Kris?’ she shrieked as a scraped-up man-bun on top of a very handsome head appeared around the door frame, swiftly followed by Tove’s electrified perm. ‘Tove?’
‘We were literally just getting your berth details!’ he laughed, running over and picking her up in a bear hug, swinging her around so that her legs swung out. ‘Jesus, there’s a lot of boats here! It’s Sandhamn on steroids!’
She laughed with delight, feeling like a little girl as he swung her round, the Swedish language like music to her ears after her Kiwi hiatus. ‘But I wasn’t expecting you for hours yet! I’m out of milk!’ she cried, effortlessly speaking Swedish back and feeling very over-excited as he put her down and Tove swooped in for her hug.
‘Travelling winds,’ Tove said into her hair.
‘Huh, I could have done with some of those myself,’ she said, pulling back and taking in the happy sight of them both. They hadn’t changed a bit. Admittedly, it had only been four months, but in that time, her entire world had changed.
‘Yeah? You’re okay? You made it across safely?’ Kris asked, forever concerned.
‘Well, I’m here, aren’t I?’ she laughed.
‘It couldn’t come a moment too soon as far as I was concerned. He was fussing constantly,’ Tove said, rolling her eyes. ‘Kept checking the charts, looking at wind speeds . . .’
‘Aww, my mother hen,’ Bell grinned, leaning into his arm and squeezing it. ‘I told you I’d be fine. I was in good hands.’
‘I hope you don’t mean that literally,’ he said.
She threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh, trust me, no! That ship has very definitely sailed. Mats is currently loved up with a bikini model from Brisbane.’
‘Well, you could be one of those. Just look at you!’
‘If I grew a pair of legs,’ Bell quipped, holding a hand several inches above her head. ‘Short-arse here.’
‘But you’re so thin!’ Tove frowned. ‘Were you even allowed to sleep?’
Bell laughed again, feeling the emotional release of being with old friends. She had missed it more than she’d realized. ‘Turns out sailing nine and a bit thousand nautical miles is all you’ve got to do to get a bikini body. There’s no coffee and cake shops in the middle of the Pacific!’
Kris chuckled. ‘Well, you look amazing, but then you always did. Curves are good, I don’t know why women don’t get that.’
‘Shame that you don’t,’ Tove muttered.
‘And Marc couldn’t make it?’ she asked sympathetically.
He gave a sad pout. ‘Exams coming up. But he sends his love.’
‘Ah, poor thing.’ She looked at him enquiringly, still worried about him in turn. ‘And it’s all good with you guys?’
Kris winked. ‘Better than good. We’re keeping the apartment warm and stocked up on humous and pot plants until you return.’
‘But that’s not the main news. Tell her the main news,’ Tove prompted impatiently.
Kris grinned. ‘Marc asked me to marry him and I said yes.’
Bell gasped. ‘Oh Kris!’
‘The wedding’s set for next June. Midsommar’s, in fact.’
‘Oh –’ Bell’s mouth parted, the word an immediate link to her heartache, images flashing through her mind on a silent reel – his eyes; the fireworks; Impressed yet?; the first press of his lips . . .
She saw them both watching her, seeing her freeze, like she had a pause button they could press. That easily, sending her back . . .
‘Ask who his best man is,’ Tove said, pressing play again.
She gave a quizzical shrug, shaking the moment off. ‘Who’s your best man?’
‘You’re looking at her,’ Tove said, giving a dramatic bow.
‘Oh dear God!’ Bell exclaimed in shock – also feeling crashingly disappointed. She knew it wasn’t a competition, but Kris had always felt like her special friend. ‘This is going to be the speech of all speeches, you know that, right? No mercy.’
Kris gave a hopeless shrug. ‘What could I do? She wants to wear a tux.’
‘I’ve always wanted a tux,’ Tove agreed.
‘You’re mad, both of you,’ Bell said, hoping her dismay didn’t show.
‘Have you ever worn a tux?’ Kris asked, one eyebrow arched.
‘Me?’ Her eyes widened as she saw the smile in his eyes. She gasped. ‘I get one too? I’m your best man too?’ Her hands flew up to her mouth in surprise.
‘How is that even a question?’ he demanded, outraged. ‘Of course you are!’
‘Well, I didn’t want to assume. I mean . . . I’m down here now, for one thing.’
‘Yeah, but not forever,’ Tove said, looking panicked.
‘No, but –’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing’s fixed. It could be five months. Could be five years.’
‘I do not think so,’ Kris said sternly. ‘I’m not losing my sister by another mister on account of Mr Right getting it wrong.’
Bell frowned, shifting weight, her easy mood deadening. ‘He wasn’t Mr Right.’
‘No?’
‘He was . . . Mr Right For One Night. That was it.’
Kris arched an eyebrow. ‘That wasn’t what you said when you got back to the city. You were in pieces.’
‘Yes, well, it was an emotional time. After everything that happened with Max, and Hanna and the kids . . . I was all over the place.’
They were both watching her closely, scrutinizing her for lies. ‘. . . Have you spoken to him?’ Tove asked.
She shook her head. ‘Clean break, you know. Best thing. Definitely.’
‘Along with switching hemispheres. Just to be on the safe side.’
‘Exactly,’ she said, realizing a moment too late it was intended as a joke. She gave a delayed smile.
‘Hmm,’ Kris intoned, looking thoughtful.
‘Hmm?’ she queried.
He looked at Tove. ‘Could be awkward,’ he said in a low voice, not moving his lips.
‘I told you. I did say,’ Tove hissed back. ‘She’s stubborn as fuck. She’s not gonna be down with this.’
‘Down with what? What’s going on?’ Bell demanded, feeling a flutter of anxiety. She didn’t like it when they ganged up against her.
Tove put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Just promise you won’t get mad, okay?’
‘Will I have a reason to get mad?’
‘No. None at all. We’ve done this from love.’
‘For love,’ Kris interrupted. ‘And because they wouldn’t stop doorstepping us.’
‘Doorstepping?’ The press? Had they found out she was the Von Greyers’ nanny? One quick Google search had been enough to confirm that Hanna and Emil’s divorce was now all over the Swedish papers.
Their gazes collectively rose to a point beyond her shoulder, and she slowly turned. There, standing twenty metres away, was a man in a baseball cap – and beside him, a boy with a skateboard.
‘Oh my God!’ she cried, stepping back, her hands flying to her mouth at the sight of them here. All the way down here.
‘He literally wouldn’t stop calling,’ Tove murmured, watching her like she might fall. ‘I had to pick up for the sake of my sanity.’
In a flash, Bell understood where her friends had got the money for the tickets. She should have known they didn’t have the spare cash to fly across the world to see an old friend and a boat race.
‘You’re not mad, are you?’ Kris asked, seeing how she had paled. ‘We tried to brush him off at first by saying you were with Mats. He didn’t care. He said he had to see you and talk to you in person. So we truck a deal, but with conditions: he’s promised to stay out of the way if you don’t want to see him. He said we can bring the kid to see you every day and he’ll go sightseeing or something . . . Say you’re not mad.’
‘. . . No, I’m not mad,’ she whispered, seeing how tightly Emil was gripping Linus’s shoulder, holding him in place; how Linus was straining forward; both of them waiting for a cue . . . Her arms raised up reflexively, held out wide, and in the next instant, the boy had broken free, dropping even his beloved board, and was sprinting towards her.
‘Bell!’ He rushed into her arms, his own around her waist and his head against her heart. ‘I missed you.’
‘I missed you,’ she gasped, not able to believe this was happening, her hands squeezing him, running over his hair, checking he was real. ‘Oh my God, I missed you so much! You’re really here? I’m not . . . I’m not hallucinating?’
He looked back at her, nodding happily. ‘No! We flew for a day and a half to get here. We wanted to surprise you!’
‘Well, you did that, all right!’ she cried, half laughing, a sob of shock escaping her as she looked up to see Emil, closer now but still hanging back, holding his son’s skateboard. He had his baseball cap on, but no shades; she could see his eyes, those eyes . . .
‘So, are we good? Is this all good?’ Kris murmured, scanning the seemingly happy reunion. ‘Cos we can go to the hotel or we can stay here with you. For support. Back-up. Whatever you want.’
‘. . . It’s fine, this is good,’ she murmured, smiling down at Linus as he beamed back at her. A sunbeam that had landed in her arms.
‘Okay. Well, laters then, we’ll give you some time,’ he whispered, kissing her temple.
‘Later, alligator,’ Tove said, touching her arm lightly.
Bell looked back at Linus again, barely aware of her friends leaving. ‘You’ve grown! My God, I can’t believe how much you’ve grown! Just straighten up.’ She measured the top of his head against her jaw. ‘Oh my God, half a neck! You were down here when I saw you last!’
‘I know!’ he laughed excitedly. ‘Dad thinks I’m going to be taller than him.’
‘Well, I think he might be right.’
She glanced at Emil again, her heart beating fast. He was another few steps closer. He’d travelled halfway around the world, only to stop short the last six feet? Still, she couldn’t talk to him yet. Not yet. She needed time to recover, to process what was going on.
‘How was the voyage?’ Linus asked, helpfully bringing her attention back to him again.
‘Oh, long! Tiring! We’ve been resting since we got here. We did it in nine weeks in the end. As feared, we hit the doldrums in the ITCZ.’
‘The what?’
‘The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. Remember I told you about that once? It’s near the equator.’
‘Oh.’ Linus nodded thoughtfully, clearly drawing a blank. ‘Guess what!’
‘What?’
‘We flew economy. Dad’s never flown coach before. But Mamma made him. She said it was a condition for this holiday. And we watched films all the way over. Back-to-back, we didn’t stop, did we?’
‘Nope, we didn’t,’ Emil sighed.
Bell couldn’t stop a bemused smile at the thought. She could see, now he was closer, he looked exhausted.
A few fat drops of rain fell onto the ground – weighty, forceful – and she eyed the sky again. She figured they had less than a minute –
‘Where’s Mats? I want to see him.’
‘He’s, uh . . . busy,’ she said quickly. ‘But don’t worry, you will. He won’t be long.’
Linus eyed her warily. ‘Is he still your boyfriend?’
‘He never was, Linus. He was my special friend, remember?’
‘Bell, I’m not a baby. I know that’s just a different way of saying he’s your boyfriend.’
‘Oh!’ She tried to look put out. ‘Well, for me, it means he’s sort of like a boy best friend. More than a normal friend, not quite my brother.’
‘Huh.’ He gave a careless shrug. ‘I’m going to have a brother!’
‘And how amazing is that?’ she gasped, holding her hand up for a high five.
‘Mamma says I can help choose his name.’
‘Very cool. Although I’m thinking not Blofeld. Or Oddjob.’
He laughed. ‘Pappa chose those for the cats, not me. Besides, I’m nearly eleven now.’
‘Yes, you are,’ she sighed, ruffling his hair again. ‘Can’t you slow down a little? You’re making me feel old.’
He looked at her again, then dropped his head against her once more. ‘I missed you.’
A throb of tears pressed from nowhere. ‘I missed you,’ she said in a thick voice. ‘So much.’
A sudden clap of thunder made them all jump as the sky’s bucket was tipped and the rain began falling at double time, raindrops pelting the ground, the boats, them . . . Linus yelped with delight, scarpering to the relative cover of the awnings of the marina cafe, beside the harbourmaster’s office. But Emil didn’t move and neither did she as they stood staring at each other through the rain for several moments. The sky had become dark, the clouds almost black, and yet the light had taken on an almost glowing quality so that everything felt saturated, more deeply itself.
He walked over at last, breaching the last small gap, hesitation in his eyes. ‘. . . Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘I hope you don’t mind us . . . stopping by like this.’
Stopping by? He had his sister’s way with words. ‘No, of course not.’ She stared into those eyes that had caused her so much trouble. Heartache. ‘It’s a lovely surprise,’ she swallowed, looking away. ‘How’s Max?’
‘Fine now. Pretty much fully recovered.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ she said, relieved, looking straight back at him. The offer to sail south with Mats had been perfectly timed for a clean getaway for her, she couldn’t stay, not for an extra minute, not for another tragedy, but no sooner had Stockholm disappeared from sight than she had berated herself for leaving when he had still been so sick. ‘I felt so bad . . .’ She didn’t finish the sentence, not that she needed to. He knew he was the reason why she’d gone, and he didn’t say anything for a moment as he read the unsaid words in her eyes. ‘. . . It turned out it was his heart, not his head.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘But the fall . . .? He hit his head on the rocks.’
‘Yes, but he fell because of the heart attack. All the stress . . . he had an undiagnosed condition apparently.’
She winced, remembering that awful day and what Emil had put him through. He had the decency to look ashamed about it now. ‘It was just as well the helicopter was there,’ she said neutrally.
‘Yes.’
‘And you, of course. You kept the compressions going. You saved his life.’
‘He would have done the same for me.’
She looked at him, seeing the calmness in his face as he spoke about the man marrying his ex-wife. ‘And Hanna? How is she?’
‘Blooming. She’s taken a sabbatical to look after Max and have time with the girls before the baby comes.’ He said the words with a fluent ease, as though he could have been talking about an aunt or a mutual acquaintance. ‘She sends her love. She misses you, though. We all do.’
Oh. Was that why he was here? Was this a charm offensive designed to drag her back to her old job? ‘Well, I think I’m done with nannying for a bit,’ she said shortly, looking away. She felt a sudden, strong urge to get away from him, for Kris to come back. She didn’t want this after all – she had been doing just fine. Fine-ish.
‘Bell –’
She looked back at him, her heart aching with the pain that came from just looking at him. ‘You know, you could have just emailed. You didn’t need to get on a plane and fly for a day and a half. In economy.’
He hesitated, seeing her agitation. ‘Well, apparently it’s good for me. Although my back would disagree.’
They were getting soaked, but neither of them appeared to notice. He took a step closer to her but she instinctively stepped back.
‘Bell, I’m not here because we want you back as our nanny,’ he said, reading her with an expert eye. ‘Nor am I here because I’ve caved in to Linus’s daily pleas that we come to see you. I am a strict father these days. I have boundaries.’ He arched an eyebrow slightly, sounding rather like his sister. ‘I also have a very strict pocket-money policy, much to Linus’s dismay.’
She watched him, sensing his attempt at levity. Brightness. ‘Does he still believe he owns a boat?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Well, that sounds positive.’
‘He didn’t think so.’
A small smile escaped her, but she flattened it down again. ‘Look, Emil—’
‘I know you probably won’t believe this,’ he said quickly, cutting her off, hearing her tone. ‘But there are a lot of things that are positive now. Things that might have seemed impossible in the summer.’
‘. . . Good. I’m glad.’
‘Max nearly dying clarified everything. Suddenly none of it mattered. It was just ego and fear and half-memories, I know that now. Hanna and I – we went to couples counselling.’
She frowned. ‘Couples counselling? But—’
‘We did it to “devolve our relationship and try to build a new platform for our relationship going forward”.’ He gave speech-mark fingers, an almost-smile in his eyes.
‘Oh.’ It all sounded very Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘Did it work?’
He blinked. ‘Yes. We do brunch.’ That wry tone he shared with Nina hovered in the corners of his words.
‘Okay.’
‘And we talk about you. A lot. What we did, dragging you into something so toxic. We wanted to make it up to you, but didn’t know where you’d gone.’
‘I couldn’t stay.’
‘I know. I also thought I knew what loss was – until you disappeared.’
The words stripped back her defences, peeling back the layers she had worked so hard to close. ‘Emil –’
‘I had to basically beg your friends to tell me where you were. When they wouldn’t, I resorted to bribery.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not the sort of thing the New Me would condone, but I was desperate. Tove calls me her stalker although I actually think she’s quite pleased to have one . . .’
It was a quip, but she couldn’t smile. Her emotions were rushing through her like floodwaters, and the smile in his eyes faded too. ‘When they said you were with Mats.’
‘Not like that.’
‘I know that now.’ His eyes burned. ‘But I wouldn’t have blamed you if it had been like that. The way I treated you . . . rejecting you, pushing you away, trying to pretend you meant nothing when in reality, you were everything. I was chasing an idea, something that, deep down, I knew I didn’t want – but it was all I knew . . .’ He took a step in again, but this time she didn’t retreat. ‘I felt so alone after I woke up properly. I didn’t remember the meeting with Linus at all and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t come. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. Hanna kept making excuses, saying I needed to get better first, so I channelled everything into that. Getting back to my family, becoming well enough that they would see me again . . . It became my entire life. My only focus. It was absolutely impossible for me to imagine that there might be another path. And even when you were right there, showing me . . . I couldn’t trust in it.’ He swallowed. ‘Not until it was too late, and I’d ruined it all.’
Rivulets of rain ran down the planes of his cheeks and she knew what he was leading up to.
‘Emil, I get it, really,’ she said sadly. ‘I understood it then, too. But even if you and Max and Hanna are all good now, it’s still too complicated for me to go back to. Hanna was my boss. Linus was the child in my care. I can’t . . . step out of being the nanny to them.’
‘You can.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, they already know—’ he blurted. ‘I told Hanna. About us. About how I felt about you.’
Bell’s mouth parted. ‘You did what?’ she gasped. ‘Why would you do that?’ She glanced across at Linus, seeing him watch them closely from the safety of the awnings.
‘Well, for one thing, I had to account for why Linus and I wanted to cross the world to find you. For another, I thought she should have fair warning before I did everything in my considerable power to bring you back.’
It was seemingly another joke, something to buy time as she absorbed the news that Hanna knew. Hanna knew. She ran her hands over her – wet – face. ‘Shit – oh my God, what was her reaction?’ she winced, wanting and not wanting to know all at once.
He inhaled slowly. ‘Shocked at first, naturally. But then . . .’ He shrugged. ‘After a while, she said she could see it.’
‘See it?’ she repeated, dumbfounded, peering at him through her fingers.
‘Us. Together. She thinks we’d be good for each other. She knows you won’t stand for my bad behaviour, for one thing. And she knows that Nina likes you, which is little short of a miracle because she really does abhor most humans. And she knows that you love Linus, of course.’
‘Well, of course. But –’
‘And that Linus and I both love you.’
It was such a simple statement, and yet it contained a world within its words. She stared at him in stunned silence, oblivious to the rain pouring down her neck as he stepped in to her, closing the gap between them finally. They loved her? He loved her?
He hooked his finger and trailed it lightly over her cheek. ‘Bell, I know I’m no catch. I’m never going to be perfect. I was a flawed man before the accident and I’m always going to be, no matter how much therapy I have. I don’t deserve you but I will do everything in my power to try to deserve you.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t you take a chance on me?’
Could she? she wondered, staring into his remarkable eyes. He wasn’t the easy option by any stretch. He was difficult and stubborn and had no filter. But she’d felt something on that Midsommar night, when his hand had cupped her head and his lips had first kissed hers – she had understood in that moment of perfect stillness, that since Jack’s death her heart had been like a frightened bird beating its wings frantically against a cage, and he, he had been a warm pair of hands around her. He had woken her up again and they were both awake now.
‘Hey,’ she said quietly, realizing something else.
‘What?’
‘You’re speaking in English.’
A smile curled his beautiful mouth, enlivening his eyes. Those eyes. ‘Impressed yet?’
She took off his cap, pressed her hands to his cheeks and kissed him; she kissed him though the rain was dripping off their noses and eyelashes, and running in sheets over their cheeks. She kissed him though she knew this was a point of no return for her heart. There would be no turning back. ‘I love you both too,’ she whispered, seeing how his eyes burned and his fingers clutched against her waist, the flame between them flickering and beginning to dance again.
Linus darted out from the safety of the awning, cheering with pumping fists, and they both jumped, having forgotten him momentarily. ‘Dad wants you to be his girlfriend but he told me not to say anything!’
She laughed. ‘You did very well to keep it a secret. I never would have guessed.’
Emil reached for him, hugging Linus into them both in a happy huddle. A little family. He looked up at the cascading sky, closing his eyes and feeling the rain on his face. ‘You know what?’
‘What?’ she smiled.
‘. . . I think we should go for a walk.’
‘In the rain?’ Linus gasped, eyes shining at the contrariness of it.
‘Of course – this is the very best time,’ he said, cupping her head and kissing her again. He pulled away, his eyes burning brightly. Fiercely. ‘It reminds you you’re alive.’