eyes. The great, apocryphal hidden beach of the archipelago. An off-the-cuff comment made by Max once – that he’d played there as a child – had led to endless quests by the children (Linus, really) ever since, to try to locate it. Max had long since forgotten which island his parents had taken him to, and Bell was personally convinced no such thing existed; just a little boy’s imagination and a grown man’s nostalgia. ‘Okay. Well, you can lead the way. I appoint you chief orienteer.’
She wandered down the corridor and tidied away, pulling the duvets up on the girls’ cot beds, opening their blinds and folding their pyjamas. Linus’s room looked like it had been hit by a meteor. She stood at the door for a moment, staring in with weary despair.
A blue asthma inhaler was on the floor, and she went to pick it up. He and the girls sometimes became wheezy in the cold or when they had chest colds and because they only had one, Hanna always liked to keep it in the same place so that they would know where it was in case of an emergency.
She walked through to Hanna’s room and slipped it back into the bedside drawer, automatically going to close it again when something caught her eye, a glint of ice winking from beneath an old photograph. She reached for it and gasped – almost screamed with happy delight, in fact. But something made her catch the words in her mouth and hold them there. She stood, staring for a moment at the long, narrow box beside it and all that it implied . . . Then she closed the drawer again softly, walked back out of the bedroom and through the cabin to the kitchen. ‘Hanna, I found the ring.’
Hanna and Linus both looked up at her in astonishment.
‘What?’ She looked stunned as Bell held it out to her.
Linus dropped his spoon in his cereal bowl excitedly. ‘Mamma’s been looking for that all weekend!’
‘Where was it?’ Hanna croaked.
‘In your bedside drawer. I was just returning the inhaler, and –’ She shrugged.
‘It was never lost at all, Mamma!’ Linus laughed.
Hanna blinked at him as though she couldn’t quite understand his words. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she managed. ‘I’m so silly. I must have put it there and forgotten all about it.’ She slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘I must be getting old! How could I be so forgetful?’
‘Wait till we tell Pappa.’ Linus began eating again.
‘Bell, thank you. I can’t believe I did that. I’ve worried myself stupid all weekend, for no good reason.’
‘I’m just glad it’s found,’ Bell smiled, although technically, it had never been lost. Merely forgotten. It was a funny thing to forget, though.
She watched as Hanna slid it onto her finger again – I never take it off – a question running through her mind.
So why had she?
Sandhamn, 3 August 2009
It had been a long day and his feet burned as he jumped onto the old boat, already late for dinner. The stock-take had taken twice as long as it should have done when the bakery’s cat had leapt from its sleeping perch on the very top box and sent the whole tower crashing to the floor. Some of the tin cans were dented but otherwise fine, but half the tubs of herring had exploded on impact and he’d had to mop three times to get rid of every last speck, else the smell would quickly become unbearable once the temperatures rose again tomorrow.
He couldn’t wait to get back home and swim. The stench of fish sat on his skin and his whole body ached from shifting boxes all day; his lower back was stiff from manning the tills, which were set too low down for someone of his height.
All around him, the marina hummed to the low buzz of life as the boat owners went about enjoying their summer on the high sea – some catching the last of the sun on deck, or sitting chatting in foldaway cabin chairs with a glass of rosé; others hosing the waterproof cushions, polishing the bowlines or checking the sails. He unwound the mooring rope from the low bollard, ready to sink onto the bench and putter out of the marina and into the sound. Another day done . . .
A pair of soft, pretty feet with pink-painted toenails stopped in front of him, and he looked up. But there was no surprise in his face. He already knew