The Hidden Beach

by Karen Swan

  ‘Uh, look, I’ll keep Linus occupied until you’ve seen him and you know what’s best to do,’ Bell murmured. Hanna nodded, but Bell could feel the tension in her arms, and her skin was icy. ‘Just so I’m up to speed – what exactly has he been told about today? I’m assuming he’ll be suspicious as to the early start and not going in to school?’

  ‘I’ve told him we’re going on a road trip and having some special time together, just the three of us.’

  ‘. . . Okay.’ It wasn’t the most convincing cover story Bell had ever heard. She glanced at Max again. His arm was outstretched on the table, his body slumped against the chair. He looked . . . lost. Defeated, almost.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs made them all stiffen, Hanna withdrawing quickly and running her hands over her face and through her hair, as though prepping herself for another day at the office.

  ‘Liney, are you ready?’ she asked, turning her back to him but making an effort to sound distracted and busy as he trudged into the kitchen. His backpack was bulging, and his shoes were already on.

  ‘Yes.’ His face was still kissed with sleep, his eyes heavy. Bell knew he’d fall straight back asleep in the car.

  ‘Now, seeing as this is a special occasion today, do you want to bring the iPad?’

  The boy frowned, roused from his early-morning stupor by the question. ‘Huh? You never let me take the iPad from the house.’

  ‘But today . . .’ Hanna’s voice fractured and she quickly forced another grim smile. ‘Today is our special day. A one-off. Go get it.’

  ‘I can bring it?’

  ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I? But hurry. We’re just about to leave.’

  Linus gave a small squeal of delight.

  ‘Agh!’ Hanna said, hushing him before he got too excited. ‘And go up the stairs quietly, please. Your sisters are sleeping.’

  ‘Yesss!’ Linus stage-whispered, punching the air, his gaze sliding over to Bell. ‘Did you hear, Bell? We’re going on an adventure, just the three of us.’

  ‘I did!’ Bell gasped happily, falling into her role and pressing a hand over her heart. ‘How lucky are we?’

  ‘It’s going to be the best day ever!’ he said, dropping his rucksack to the floor and running from the room and back up the stairs like a stampeding wildebeest.

  Bell looked back at Hanna to find her and Max staring across the room at one another in agonized silence.

  No, today definitely wasn’t going to be that.

  Chapter Four

  They stole away from the city, leaving Stockholm’s waterways and copper roofs at their backs as they headed north on the E4, passing beneath vast green signs and a rosy sky until endless forests of pines lined the route. Linus remained resolutely awake, the novelty of his tablet on his lap keeping him engaged. Conversation between Bell and Hanna was muted.

  Bell had so many questions she wanted to ask, but it was impossible with Linus sitting in the back seat. Every so often she glanced across at her boss, seeing how Hanna’s knuckles blanched white on the steering wheel, her gaze set dead ahead with laser-beam focus, even though traffic was light. What must it be like to be driving towards a husband she hadn’t had a conversation with in seven years – a father whose son had almost grown up without him? What would their first words be? Hello? How are you? What’s the weather like out there? You grew your hair? You cut your hair? She frowned. Would the physical changes in Hanna alert him to the time he had lost? Did he know that almost a decade of his life had slipped past?

  So many questions, and not one answer. It wasn’t her business and yet, she had been pulled into this story too.

  They arrived in Uppsala before eight, Hanna pulling into a car park with an easy familiarity that suggested she knew it well. Bell looked around with mild curiosity as she stepped out of the car. Kris had told her it was Sweden’s fourth city, but there was nonetheless a quaint, small-town feel to the place, the skyline pierced by the dramatic gothic towers of a cathedral to the west. There were immediate similarities to Stockholm: the coloured buildings in red and yellow, every wall punctuated by multitudes of windows to maximize the northern light, barrelled mansard roofs. But unlike the capital’s wide, pale roads, here the streets were cobbled and shaded with a froth of trees; and the city was bisected not by the sea but a rushing river with cafes strung along its banks.

  Linus, sensing food, allowed Bell to take his hand, and the two of them followed after Hanna’s brisk steps as she led them directly to a small cafe with a glass room at the back that overlooked the water. They ordered breakfast quickly, Linus eager to pull out his iPad again as soon as they were seated. Ordinarily Bell would have insisted he put it away at the table, but only because Hanna would have insisted on it first – and she wasn’t doing that today. Special rules applied here; seemingly everyone was being cut some slack.

  Hanna gazed through the window, watching a couple of ducks swimming beside the riverbank. Two young women jogged past with earbuds in, ponytails swinging.

  ‘It seems like you know this place well,’ Bell posited, not wanting to intrude on Hanna’s thoughts, but not wanting either to alert Linus to the strangeness of how their day was proceeding. Several times already she had caught him glancing up at his mother with a quizzical look, and he couldn’t have failed to notice their silence on the journey.

  It took Hanna a moment to process her words. ‘Yes, I studied here. The university is just over there.’ She nodded her chin vaguely over Bell’s shoulder, her voice so low that Bell had to strain to hear her. ‘It’s where we met.’

  ‘You and Ma—?’

  The almost imperceptible shake of Hanna’s head stopped her.

  ‘Oh,’ Bell murmured, wanting to kick herself. Hanna and Max were the automatic couple, in her mind.

  Hanna’s stare was distant, seeing back into the past, reaching out for a life that had since slipped from their grasp, like a rope in the water snaking away and leaving ripples long after it disappeared.

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘At a party.’ Hanna shrugged her eyebrows wryly. ‘I was going out with a friend of his at the time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, it was a tricky start.’ Her gaze darted like a dragonfly, nervous and flighty, never settling; Bell thought she was like a hologram of herself, there but not there. ‘But you know how university life is. My friends and I fell in love several times a week. I think we were in love with the idea of being in love.’

  ‘What made him different? How did he stand out for you?’

  Hanna gave a tiny smile that seemed to convey only sadness. ‘Oh, it was impossible for him not to stand out. Blending in was never an option; every room he entered, he became the centre of it. Everyone knew who he was.’

  Bell saw Hanna’s gaze track over to Linus – his head was bent, immersed in some shapes-logic game Max had picked out for him.

  The waitress came over with their drinks. Hanna was looking back out of the window, lost to the past again, and Bell glanced down as her phone buzzed with a new text.

  ‘Tonight? I want to see your pretty face.’ Ivan. Giving her yet another chance.

  She quickly switched off the screen and turned the phone over, not wanting the distraction. But Hanna didn’t want conversation either – or at least, she wasn’t up to it – and they sat in distracted silence, the minutes dragging, until the food came. Bell ate as if in competition with Linus, both of them feeling ravenous after the early start and car journey, but Hanna nursed her coffee like she was just using it to warm her hands, her unseeing gaze fixed on the river rushing past outside.

  ‘So where shall we meet you?’ Bell asked her, as they all walked back to the car afterwards. The hands on the church clock were nudging nine.

  ‘I don’t know yet. Keep your phone in your pocket. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s what.’ Hanna’s eyes slid warily over to Linus again. He was leaning against the car, his cheek pressed against the window tiredly. He looked bored
. He’d been promised an adventure, after all. ‘You may need to take a cab to the clinic,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Or else I’ll meet you back here again. Either way, we’ll speak.’

  ‘Sure,’ Bell nodded.

  Linus automatically opened the back door as she bleeped the locks.

  ‘No, Linus,’ Hanna said, stopping him from getting in. ‘Not yet. I want you to go with Bell for a bit and be a good boy for her, okay?’

  His face fell. ‘But where are you going?’

  ‘I’ve just got a couple of things to do first, but I’m going to meet up with you in a little while.’

  ‘But I want to stay with you.’

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ Hanna said curtly, her body stiff as he reached for her arm. ‘Not yet.’ She looked like she was about to burst into tears.

  Bell crouched down on her heels beside him. ‘Linus, you know that saying “Spoiler Alert”?’ He looked back at her sullenly and she wrinkled her brow, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her lips. ‘Well, isn’t it someone’s birthday coming up soon . . .?’ His eyes widened. He’d been counting down to ten for the past nine weeks. Double figures, at last. ‘And wouldn’t it be a shame if a special surprise got ruined . . .?’

  A delighted smile spread across his lips as he got her point and she smiled back, inwardly cursing that this meant she was going to have to set up some sort of surprise on Hanna’s behalf for his birthday.

  Hanna shot her a grateful look as she squeezed Linus briefly. ‘I won’t be long, okay? You be good for Bell, and I’ll see you in a bit. Quick as I can.’

  They watched as she got into the car and drove away, her face pale behind the glass.

  ‘Mamma looks sad,’ Linus said, watching the car pull into the rush-hour traffic.

  ‘No, she’s not sad,’ Bell said, thinking the same. ‘She’s just tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Because we all just woke up?’

  Bell looked down at him as he slipped his hand into hers. ‘Exactly. Because we all just woke up.’

  He was staring straight ahead, but the view kept disappearing every few moments, his eyes opening but always closing again too, as though the darkness that had claimed him was something sticky, unable to quite let go of him. He felt a dread he couldn’t explain, a fear that crept through him on hands and knees, circulating to every crevice and nook inside him. He knew what they had told him: this body that now moved at will and responded on cue had been a prison – his prison – for years. It had been a testing site, a laboratory, as they cut and excised, prodded, poked, manipulated, bathed, turned, experimented, tweaked . . .

  He was lucky, they said, but it didn’t feel like that. Black shadows lingered not just around the periphery of his vision, but inside him too – a hole that threatened to grow and swallow him whole. Something was missing. He was alive, he was awake, and yet . . .

  No one was speaking. After all the fuss and the shouts and the lights and the beeps and the faces, now everything was quiet and still. He didn’t like it. Silence held threat for him – it was the land of the sleeping, the unconscious, the dead.

  He wasn’t dead – was he?

  But then something came to his ear – a sweep, like the hiss of a wave – and to his eyes, a light. It was a light that grew brighter as it drew nearer, something pale and golden filling his blurry field of view. Two eyes, pale as Arctic ice, linked with his, reconnecting him to the world and blotting out the shadows. Filling him up.

  No, he wasn’t dead. This was life. She was life. She was his life.

  His wife.

  They were in the Stadstradgarden, watching the skateboarders and chasing pigeons, when the call came an hour and ten minutes later. Hanna’s voice was like porcelain: thin, fragile, but with light shining through. ‘Come now.’

  She texted the address and Bell booked an Uber, running with Linus through the park together in a race, back to the street, to catch him in time. Bell pipped him to the post, just. ‘Where are we going?’ Linus panted, worn out but excited as they slid onto the back seat.

  Bell hesitated, a twist of anxiety in her gut. It wasn’t her place to tell this child the full truth that was awaiting him. ‘We’re meeting up with Mamma now. There’s something she wants to show you.’

  ‘You’re fast,’ he sighed, dropping his head back on the seat as the driver took them across town. ‘Considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’ Bell asked in mock outrage. ‘That I’m a girl?’

  ‘That you’re a grown-up. Most grown-ups can’t race.’

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ she said, dropping her head back against the seat too. ‘I’m not really a grown-up.’

  He frowned. ‘But you’re old.’

  ‘I’m twenty-six!’ she laughed, tickling him by squeezing his thigh.

  ‘That’s old.’

  ‘Yeah, fair enough. I’ve still got stride length on you, though. See?’ She extended her leg and pressed it against his. ‘A good six inches, I reckon. You’ll be overtaking me soon, and then it’ll be game over.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll be taller than you?’

  ‘I know it. You’ll take after your parents and they’re both t–tall, aren’t they?’ She stumbled, realizing she had no idea how tall his biological father was. And he had no idea Max wasn’t that man.

  It was still such an unbelievable shock, even to her. She put her hand on his head and ruffled his hair. The poor child. He had no idea what they were driving towards.

  They sank into an easy silence as they wove through the city, past a pink castle and garden squares. Bell checked her phone for new messages again – one from Kris reminding her he was working tonight and to finish the chilli in the fridge for dinner; one from Tove asking if she wanted to meet up for a run – and she went back to Ivan as well, reluctantly having to decline meeting up tonight too. Even if she was back in time, she was going to be wiped out by the early start this morning. She finished the text with sad face emojis, hoping he’d understand but already half expecting him to give up on her. He had three nightclubs in Södermalm, but when she’d told him she was a nanny, he probably hadn’t banked on it being her job that would make it so hard for them to meet.

  She was just pressing send when the taxi pulled to a stop and she looked up to see they had stopped outside a modern, glass-fronted building, with ‘Larna Klinik’ engraved in a vast granite column.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ Linus asked as they walked through the automatic sliding doors into a minimalist atrium, softened only by feathery potted trees.

  Bell scanned the stark space, her gaze skimming over the dark-suited receptionist tapping a keyboard behind a walnut desk. She was looking for Hanna’s distinctive berry coat amidst the smartly dressed professionals standing, talking, in small groups and hushed voices, or reading on the leather chairs. It looked more like the lobby of a corporate hotel than a hospital.

  ‘Bell. Linus.’

  They both turned at the sound of Hanna’s voice, and saw her waving to them excitedly from the mezzanine. She pointed to the staircase off to the far side, and Bell jogged after Linus as he took off to join her. Hanna had taken off her coat to reveal a camel turtleneck jumper and trousers which, from a distance and against her light hair and pale skin, gave her an impression of being indistinct and amorphous. But there had been energy in her movement, and as Bell got to the top of the stairs she saw an intensity in Hanna’s blue eyes as she hugged her son.

  Bell felt her own anxiety lift a little. ‘All okay?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘Better than okay. Incredible,’ Hanna said breathily, taking Linus by the hand and patting Bell’s arm warmly. ‘More than we could ever have hoped. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Wow,’ Bell beamed. ‘That’s so great.’ After the scene she’d been greeted with last night and again in the kitchen this morning, she’d been braced for the worst, worrying what the hell Linus was going to see here today.

  They walked briskly down a wide, all-white corridor that was
lined on one side with vast glass windows looking onto the main thoroughfare in and out of the town. Although it was busy with sluggish traffic, no noise permeated here, a muffled hush maintained by murmuring voices, soundproofed walls and soft-close doors.

  ‘Mamma, why are we in a hospital?’ Linus asked her curiously, ogling a tray of filled specimen pots being wheeled past on a trolley.

  Hanna stopped outside a door and crouched down so that they were eye to eye. She fiddled with the collar of his jacket and smoothed his hair behind one ear, gazing at him lovingly but seeming to see beyond him somehow too, as though searching for another face within his. ‘Because they serve the best – the very best – ice cream in town. Right here.’

  Linus blinked back at her. His expression was complacently blank, but Bell knew he was perplexed as to why anyone – even a nine-year-old boy – would want ice cream at ten o’clock on a cold December morning. ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘Do you want an ice cream?’

  He nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Sure.’

  The door to their right opened and a nurse came out, smiling over at them perfunctorily as she began walking down the corridor, carrying various utensils on a tray. The door immediately began to swing closed on its hinges, but not before Bell glimpsed a narrow montage of the scene within: several doctors were standing around a bed. There was the usual array of high-tech machinery banking the room, and – rather less usual – a large contemporary abstract print on the wall.

  ‘But, before we do that –’

  Bell turned back to them, hearing the tension flex in Hanna’s voice again. How was she going to do this? How was she going to reintroduce her son to his long-absent father?

  Hanna took a big breath. ‘There’s someone I thought you’d like to meet.’

  Linus blinked back at her, perfectly still. ‘Who?’

  Hanna froze momentarily. ‘. . . An old friend.’

  ‘Of yours?’

  ‘Of both of ours. But you were very little the last time you met, so you may not remember.’ Hanna tipped her head fractionally to one side, as though it was a question, a nudge to remember a long-forgotten face.