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