would be very dull to be otherwise, don’t you think?’
Her eyes met his for a moment, and she felt a charge between them. There was definitely something there, a chemical attraction that seemed to have ignited a spark. ‘So have you ever been to England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Cambridge. I worked there for a short time.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Oh, a bit of this and that. Some bio-engineering.’
‘Some bio-engineering. Huh.’ It didn’t sound like something people would dip in and out of. ‘Did you like it there?’
‘Cambridge? Sure. The university’s so beautiful.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘Did you go there?’
‘Who, me?’ she laughed. ‘Oh no. I didn’t go to uni full-stop.’ She shook her head, a large dot of pink staining her cheeks. ‘I didn’t get the grades, sadly. I had a place to read geography at Manchester.’ She forced a smile, not wanting to remember any of that time now, either. ‘But it just wasn’t to be. Not the path for me.’
‘You believe that? You don’t think you determine where you end up in your own life?’
‘Definitely not that,’ she spluttered. ‘I honestly think you end up where you’re supposed to be, one way or the other.’
There was a short pause. ‘So you think it was pre-destined that you should end up drinking beer on a boat on a tiny island in the Swedish archipelago on the longest day of the year with a perfect stranger?’
She laughed, her head tipping back slightly so that her profile curved at the sky. He really was a perfect stranger. Quite perfect. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, sensing their acquaintance make a small shift from stiff, formal politeness to something more unguarded and relaxed. More shapeless. Or maybe that was just the beer thinking for her. ‘Well, clearly this is but a moment in the bigger picture,’ she conceded. ‘But was I supposed to end up in Sweden?’ She sighed. ‘I think I was.’
He kept watching her, the weight of his stare like hands on her shoulders. ‘So, what did you do then, if not university?’ He took a swig of his beer.
‘I sailed round the world.’
He paused, the bottle at his lips. ‘What?’
‘Yeah. We had a boat and we just . . . headed off. No particular plans, we just went with the wind.’
He stared at her as though she was a changeling, shifting in front of his very eyes. ‘Who’s we?’
‘Me and my fiancé, Jack.’ She swallowed. There always seemed to be a ring around his name when she said it out loud; like an audible force field. ‘We did that for a couple of years. And then after that, well, I found myself in Sweden and I’ve ended up staying here ever since,’ she went on quickly.
He stared at her with narrowed eyes, and she knew he’d picked up on what she hadn’t said. ‘And what is it you do here, then?’
‘I’m a nanny.’
‘And your fiancé . . .?’
Oh God. ‘Died.’
The word was like a bullet, stopping everything in its tracks, stopping his bottle mid-arc from reaching his lips again. His hand dropped down. ‘. . . I’m sorry.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ She gave a too-bright smile and shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t mean it’s fine. Obviously.’ Her breath came like a gasp, tension in the muscles around her mouth. ‘Clearly it isn’t. But it . . .’ Her leg was jigging, she realized, and she put a hand on her thigh to stop it. ‘It just is what it is.’
He watched her, seeing the physical accompaniments that came with the words. ‘When did he die?’
‘Nearly four years ago.’ She nodded, swigging her beer a little too deeply, her movements suddenly wide-ranging and spasmodic.
‘The loss is still fresh.’
‘Yes, it is.’ It struck her as a surprisingly open thing to say. Most people looked the other way and changed the subject if it came up. She felt an expectation to be over it by now.
‘And it’s why you were sad up there just now?’
She shrugged, biting her lip. ‘Sometimes it just hits me. Times like this, really – celebrations, anniversaries, Christmas . . . Most of the time I’m okay.’
He stared at his beer. ‘I’m sorry. You seem very young to have gone through something like that.’
‘So was Jack.’ She glanced at him, but something in his eyes made her hold his gaze. What was she seeing? Sympathy? Compassion? Understanding? Empathy? There was something intangible about him that went beyond the solitary, something ‘held back’, an invisible cloak of vulnerability draped over his shoulders. ‘. .