loves and trusts deeply.’ Hanna nodded, desperation in her eyes, her mouth a narrow slash of bitter regret. ‘You are the only person I can ask, Bell. The only one we trust.’
Bell swallowed, hating even the idea of this, hating the very idea of this man and what he wanted. He was a victim here too, she understood that, but he was risking his son’s wellbeing with this demand, and putting himself first. Couldn’t he see that?
‘It would mean . . .’ Hanna sounded hesitant again and Bell braced, wondering what else was coming. What could possibly make this situation worse? ‘I’m afraid it would also mean staying out here for the entire summer. No trips back to the city at the weekend. Linus would need you there at all times.’
No time off at all? Bell was going to have to put her entire life on hold for the summer? She could already hear her friends’ reactions to that.
Hanna gave a small cry as she saw her expression. ‘Bell, I’m so sorry to ask it! But I’ve already negotiated a new salary for you – triple what you’re on. Money means nothing to him. He’ll pay anything, just so long as he has Linus.’
‘It’s not about the money,’ Bell mumbled, looking away, feeling conflicted. She had plans booked in – the festival in Croatia, a mini-break to Copenhagen booked with Tove –
‘I know it’s not. And I know I have no right asking you to give up your entire summer for us. But he’s my son.’ Her voice cracked again, the words splintered and hoarse. ‘And I know you love him too. If you don’t help us, I don’t know what else I can do. Please, Bell.’
Bell looked at her, experiencing up close the full force of a mother’s desperation. She’d never been good at saying ‘no’ at the best of times.
Now was hardly the time to start.
Chapter Thirteen
He opened the shutters and looked down the wide tranche of lawn, able to just make out the sea twinkling through the narrow-legged alders. It was a midnight-blue this morning, the breeze a gentle south-westerly breath. The flowers swayed and nodded in their beds, a nuthatch singing from the aspen tree. Ingarso, his island refuge, had never looked more beautiful and he felt a quiver of anticipation, as though it was a sign that nature, the universe, was on his side today.
He turned away, catching sight of his own shadow cast in the sunny rectangle on the wooden floor. It was elongated and thin, something of the hermit still in its harsh lines and angles. Was he changed enough? Did he still look like the wild man in that hospital bed? Was his son going to run from him again? He closed his eyes, remembering the boy’s golden hair – he had his mother’s colouring, but the curls were his. And those eyes – green, clear, so close to his own –
‘Good morning, sir.’
He looked round. Måns was carrying his breakfast in on the tray. The grey hair was now snowy white, the upright deportment softened to a slumped stoop in the seven years he had been ‘away’ – as it was referred to by the family – a slight tremor in the hands these days; but he remained the man he had known all his life, quiet but indomitable. Dependable. Always in his corner. Seeing everything, but saying nothing. The living embodiment of discretion being the greater part of valour. Their first words to one another, after he’d come home, had been about whether he still wanted sugar in his coffee.
‘Another beautiful day, sir.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he replied, walking out of the sunny patch and back into the cool of the room. Unlike everything else in this house, he and Måns were the only things changing in it. The walls were panelled and still painted the same soft pearl grey of his boyhood, the reed-legged brick-red linen settle still pushed against the end of the bed, the moody August Strindberg oils – which his teenage self had wanted to replace with Green Day posters – still hanging between simple crystal wall chandeliers. He stared at Måns’s polished shoes on the rug as he set down the tray; there was a tiny red mark in the linen fibres; it looked like a bloodstain, but he knew it wasn’t that. He knew precisely what it was and how it had come to be there – a lingonberry unwittingly transported in on the knee