a husband she hadn’t had a conversation with in seven years – a father whose son had almost grown up without him? What would their first words be? Hello? How are you? What’s the weather like out there? You grew your hair? You cut your hair? She frowned. Would the physical changes in Hanna alert him to the time he had lost? Did he know that almost a decade of his life had slipped past?
So many questions, and not one answer. It wasn’t her business and yet, she had been pulled into this story too.
They arrived in Uppsala before eight, Hanna pulling into a car park with an easy familiarity that suggested she knew it well. Bell looked around with mild curiosity as she stepped out of the car. Kris had told her it was Sweden’s fourth city, but there was nonetheless a quaint, small-town feel to the place, the skyline pierced by the dramatic gothic towers of a cathedral to the west. There were immediate similarities to Stockholm: the coloured buildings in red and yellow, every wall punctuated by multitudes of windows to maximize the northern light, barrelled mansard roofs. But unlike the capital’s wide, pale roads, here the streets were cobbled and shaded with a froth of trees; and the city was bisected not by the sea but a rushing river with cafes strung along its banks.
Linus, sensing food, allowed Bell to take his hand, and the two of them followed after Hanna’s brisk steps as she led them directly to a small cafe with a glass room at the back that overlooked the water. They ordered breakfast quickly, Linus eager to pull out his iPad again as soon as they were seated. Ordinarily Bell would have insisted he put it away at the table, but only because Hanna would have insisted on it first – and she wasn’t doing that today. Special rules applied here; seemingly everyone was being cut some slack.
Hanna gazed through the window, watching a couple of ducks swimming beside the riverbank. Two young women jogged past with earbuds in, ponytails swinging.
‘It seems like you know this place well,’ Bell posited, not wanting to intrude on Hanna’s thoughts, but not wanting either to alert Linus to the strangeness of how their day was proceeding. Several times already she had caught him glancing up at his mother with a quizzical look, and he couldn’t have failed to notice their silence on the journey.
It took Hanna a moment to process her words. ‘Yes, I studied here. The university is just over there.’ She nodded her chin vaguely over Bell’s shoulder, her voice so low that Bell had to strain to hear her. ‘It’s where we met.’
‘You and Ma—?’
The almost imperceptible shake of Hanna’s head stopped her.
‘Oh,’ Bell murmured, wanting to kick herself. Hanna and Max were the automatic couple, in her mind.
Hanna’s stare was distant, seeing back into the past, reaching out for a life that had since slipped from their grasp, like a rope in the water snaking away and leaving ripples long after it disappeared.
‘How did you meet?’
‘At a party.’ Hanna shrugged her eyebrows wryly. ‘I was going out with a friend of his at the time.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, it was a tricky start.’ Her gaze darted like a dragonfly, nervous and flighty, never settling; Bell thought she was like a hologram of herself, there but not there. ‘But you know how university life is. My friends and I fell in love several times a week. I think we were in love with the idea of being in love.’
‘What made him different? How did he stand out for you?’
Hanna gave a tiny smile that seemed to convey only sadness. ‘Oh, it was impossible for him not to stand out. Blending in was never an option; every room he entered, he became the centre of it. Everyone knew who he was.’
Bell saw Hanna’s gaze track over to Linus – his head was bent, immersed in some shapes-logic game Max had picked out for him.
The waitress came over with their drinks. Hanna was looking back out of the window, lost to the past again, and Bell glanced down as her phone buzzed with a new text.
‘Tonight? I want to see your pretty face.’ Ivan. Giving her yet another chance.
She quickly switched off the screen and turned the phone over, not wanting the distraction. But Hanna didn’t want conversation either – or at least, she wasn’t up to it – and they sat in distracted silence, the minutes dragging,