an uneasy sensation swirling in the pit of her stomach, a small monster settling into a restless sleep. She walked back out onto the deck, scanning the dusky millpond water for signs of a small boat puttering back into view; but there was only that big, blushing, empty sky and the vast, unbroken stretch of sea.
She couldn’t leave, clearly. She couldn’t get there, for one thing, but to leave the children alone . . . With a sigh of disbelief, she sank into the chair and texted the bad news to Per, staring at the half-drunk wine bottle and the glass with a smear of lipstick on the rim. She could already imagine her friends’ responses when they heard she’d cancelled on another date.
She waited in the growing dusk, with just one question going over and over in her mind.
What the hell was going on?
It was gone two when she heard the sound of the motor, raising her head from the sofa and looking out through the giant window. There was still light out there, but darkness hovered like a gauze veil, a suggestion rather than fact, and Hanna was an inky silhouette as she jumped into the thigh-deep silvery water and began to wade to shore. There was something exaggerated in her movements, her arms held that bit too extravagantly above her head, her legs kicking with an excitable flourish through the water.
Bell sat up, pushing her hair back as she tried to bite back her anger. There would be a good reason for this. Hanna wouldn’t have left her children – her babies – unattended here without a damned good reason.
The door slid open, almost silent on its tracks.
‘Bell!’
Bell saw how Hanna’s legs buckled at the knee in sudden fright at the sight of her sitting on the sofa, a blanket over her legs. But there was no relief in her voice. No ‘thank God you came’.
‘What are you doing here?’
Bell took a moment to respond. How could she reply without betraying the accusation in her voice? ‘I left my phone on the counter,’ she said steadily, quietly, not wanting to waken the children. Hanna’s voice, by contrast, was slightly too loud. Too . . . appeasing. She was drunk. ‘I came back to get it before I went out, and saw that . . . no one was here.’
She gave Hanna a moment to reply, but her boss merely nodded, open-mouthed, looking around the cabin as though somewhat surprised to find herself there. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘So I thought I should stay here. With the children.’ She waited again, giving Hanna another chance to explain, to make this all okay. ‘. . . I assumed something must have happened.’
Hanna looked back at her in apparent confusion, her eyes catching on Bell’s stained lipgloss, her hoop earrings (a complete no-no during the day, with the girls around). Suddenly, she slapped her forehead with a hand. ‘Oh my God, you were supposed to use the boat tonight!’ she cried.
Bell glanced in alarm towards the children’s bedrooms. Instinctively, she pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Sssh. The children are asleep.’
Hanna copied her, the movement clownish. ‘Ooops. Sorry.’ As though it was Bell’s kids she was disturbing, not her own. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot that. It completely slipped my mind.’
‘It doesn’t matter about the boat, Hanna,’ she said. Exactly how much had she had to drink? ‘But I was worried about the kids.’
Hanna tipped her head to the side, and the movement seemed to be enough to unbalance her, as she lurched several paces to the side, having to grab at the wall. ‘Aww, you are so sweet. Always worrying about us. Looking after us so well.’ She sighed dramatically and hiccuped. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you. I really don’t. I’m always saying it to Max. You are our angel. Heaven sent.’
‘Hanna—’
‘You must let me make it up to you.’
‘Hanna, I don’t care about the boat. I was worried that the children had been le—’
‘I insist. Tomorrow you are to have the day off. The whole day!’
Bell glanced down the corridor again, certain Linus would wake up. His mother was paralytically drunk, holding on to the wall and waving her arms about.
‘Sleep late. Go to Sandhamn. Go back to Stockholm, if you like. Have a three-day weekend, on me.’
Bell stared at her. ‘Hanna, it’s Midsommar this weekend. I was going to help you with the girls’ floral crowns tomorrow and get things ready before I went.’