The Hidden Beach

by Karen Swan

  ‘– don’t want anything big. Town Hall and a room at the back of a pub would do me fine,’ Marc was saying.

  ‘Oh, you can do better than that,’ Tove chided. ‘This is your wedding we’re talking about.’ She placed her hands on the table. ‘Have you considered holding it at the Vasa?’

  They all laughed.

  ‘I can’t think of anything more tacky!’

  Tove looked hurt. ‘But it’s got history there. A sense of scale. This is a huge deal, guys. You’re getting married.’

  ‘It’s not an epic occasion in Swedish history, though,’ Kris said carefully. ‘Although we do love your enthusiasm.’ He patted her hand on the table.

  ‘Ugh, I’m so tired,’ Bell groaned, leaning over and resting her head on Marc’s shoulder. ‘I’m just going to go to sleep here. Don’t move, okay?’

  ‘Poor baby. Not getting enough sleep last night,’ he teased. Tove had of course wasted no time in telling him and Kris all about her athletic night as they were walking over here.

  She stuck her tongue out but her eyes were still closed as she rested on his shoulder, happily listening to her friends’ weary, hungover chatter, the gentle clatter of ice cubes as drinks were lifted and set down, other people’s laughs, bird song around them all . . . his salt-crusted dark hair, sun-bleached clothes, puttering about on that paint-flaked, under-powered boat.

  She opened her eyes, sensing something.

  The others were deep in conversation about the festival they had booked tickets for in Croatia next month, but she had an instinct she was being watched. She swung her gaze round the garden, looking at all the other people enjoying their Sundays, until –

  He gazed back at her. He had his baseball cap and sunglasses back on; it was almost like he was hiding himself away. His arms were folded on the table, a pint in front of him as the dark-haired woman – his sister – talked animatedly with two teenagers sitting opposite, neither of whom was remotely animated in return.

  She felt her stomach do a flip. When he had left the jetty today she had assumed he was leaving leaving; that he’d come here only for the Midsommar celebrations and would disappear to wherever it was he lived, never to see him again. But she realized now – she’d seen him in the shop on Friday, stocking up on essentials. Even if he didn’t live on Sandhamn, he was nearby. She was going to keep bumping into him like this . . .

  She swallowed, her body saying one thing about it, her head quite another.

  He inclined his head in the slightest of nods, a movement so slow and tiny, no one watching him would even see it as such, not unless they saw how he had tethered her with his stare, how she couldn’t look away . . .

  They had finished eating, she saw, the waitress coming over to clear the plates. He glanced up at her and sat back slightly to allow her more room, but his gaze came straight back to Bell.

  She felt paralyzed. After everything they had done, it seemed ludicrous that she couldn’t get up and walk over and say hello; to even smile. But they were separated by three tables, a patch of grass and whole other lives. Only last night united them, two perfect strangers looking to lose themselves for a few hours, to keep the darkness away. And this morning, as she had prepared to leave, he hadn’t asked for her number or where she was staying, or even her last name. He had pulled away from the jetty with burning eyes but an air of finality, no more wanting to shape a future from one night than she did.

  All of which was completely achievable, so long as she didn’t ever see him again.

  His sister got up beside him, all thin limbs and blow-dried hair. She was wearing skinny cropped jeans and red-soled ballerina pumps, a cotton shirt and pearls; she was understated in her style, yet still somehow screamed ‘rich husband’. He, by contrast, was in another faded t-shirt, a hole at the neck, navy cargos, battered boat shoes that looked the same vintage as his actual boat.

  She felt her heart constrict as he got up to leave too, his niece and nephew shuffling with bored torpor, fiddling with their headphones. She tried to think of something, a reason to make him stay, an excuse to talk to him; but there was nothing. It was done. He stood by his table and stared at her openly for a moment, before giving a smile as tiny as the nod, hidden in plain sight. No one else was watching. No one else cared. But as he turned away and followed his family out of the garden, she knew she did.

  Sandhamn, 27 July 2009

  He stared at his untouched lunch, not reading the paper open before him, his hand spread in a tense claw. Their laughter dominated the space, heads turning towards their vibrant group. They were young and beautiful, poised on the cusp of taking on the world.

  Though his head was down, the brim of his baseball cap allowed him to sneak furtive glances in her direction. He could see her friends joking about, the conversation open and buoyant – yet always somehow coming back to her, everyone’s eyes settling on her face like bees returning to a flower. Her fingers tapped against her glass as she talked, her bright hair worn up in a sleek ponytail and showing off her slender neck. Under the table, he could see she had kicked off her shoes and was scrunching the grass between her pink-varnished toes, her laughter tickling the air as the guy beside her cracked a joke. She clutched his arm, weak with amusement.

  She was with him. His friend. He remembered the contents of her basket . . .

  He looked away as she threw a casual, queenly glance around the garden. Was she aware of the way everyone watched her? Was it what she wanted? She had to have known what she was doing in the shop earlier, her impact upon people. Men.

  His fingers drummed the wooden table, his sandwich beginning to curl in the midday sun, but he still couldn’t stomach it. He felt tied up in knots. Anxious. Sick. He took a sip of his beer, feeling it slide down his throat. He reminded himself it was cool, refreshing, relaxing . . .

  He looked back up at her again, and perhaps it was the abrupt movement of his head that caught her attention too, because their eyes met in the next moment. She looked straight at him – startled, but something else too. Intrigued? Interested? The smile faded on her mouth, but not in her eyes.

  Not in her eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bell walked over the soft carpet of pine needles, the sun glancing through the trees and heralding another thumping hot day. The air was ominously still, no trace of a breeze, sooty terns gliding effortlessly on the thermoclines. She wished she had some of their early-morning grace but she had woken with a distracted, nagging feeling, unable to fall into the deep and dreamless oblivion she had craved. She had kayaked back over here last night after the others had caught the ferry back to the city; it had felt too sad to be the only one left in the little yellow house, so she had put the key back in the Croc and crept into her cabin. Perhaps it was that extra day off on Friday, the holiday weekend a little too good, but she wasn’t ready for reality yet. She already knew it was going to bite.

  She stood in the shadow of the trees and watched the twins play in the shallows as memories played insistently through her mind, refusing to let her go just yet. They were abbreviated flashes, like a black-and-white cine film – the shock of those startling eyes he preferred to keep hidden, the reserve that had quickly become abandon, the low groans as their hands had roamed, his sadness in profile in the dawn light, his quiet acceptance of what must be in the pub garden . . . It had been a lapse of reason, a kink in the time continuum when they had briefly stepped out of their own lives and become different, other people. Rationally, she knew that. It was just a one-night stand. A hook-up. She couldn’t make this into more than it was.

  She watched as Hanna came out of the cabin, clasping a coffee between her hands, her gaze on the horizon. She was wearing her white linen shorts and favourite blue blouse, her hair drawn back in a sleek ponytail – a vision of composed femininity, impossible to link to the drunken wreck who had stumbled in, dishevelled, on Thursday night.

  She had left a posy of wildflowers in a glass beside the bed and a box of Bell’s favourite
biscuits from the bakery on the table, along with a yellow post-it on the top with ‘so sorry’ written in neat script and a sad-face emoji drawn beside it. Bell had sighed at the sight of the apology. It was something, she supposed, to make their reunion less awkward; but there still needed to be an explanation, some reason that ‘justified’ Hanna abandoning her children in their beds. It couldn’t be left unexplained.

  Hanna turned and went back into the house again and Bell, knowing she couldn’t hide out forever, stepped out of the trees with a sigh and onto the gentle curve of the tiny beach. The girls were as bare as babies and digging a trench with long-handled spades. Their high-note chatter carried like burbling water, and she found herself smiling as she approached. Their fine blonde hair was worn in matching French plaits, but the gentle fuzz around their heads suggested those styles had been put in one, or even two days before. The same ones she had done before she’d left?

  ‘And what do we have here?’ she asked them, her shoes in her hands as she kicked through the sand.

  They looked up at her with excited gasps. ‘We’re digging for treasure!’

  ‘Treasure! Oh well, please continue – I could definitely do with some of that,’ she ribbed. ‘Can you find me some gold, please? I really do need to get rich.’

  ‘Okay. But Mamma lost her ring, so we’ve got to find that for her first!’

  Bell felt her own smile fade. Were they joking? Was Hanna? Perhaps it was a ploy to amuse them for several hours. ‘Well . . . keep looking, then. Be Mamma’s heroes. I’ll come back in just a minute. Have you got suncream on?’ She reached down and tapped their little shoulders; they were tacky to the touch. ‘Okay, good girls. I’ll be right back.’

  She walked up the sand with a frown, and – dropping her shoes in the basket on the deck – stepped through the fully slid-back glass doors and into the cabin. The coffee cup Hanna had been drinking from was on the counter and she was juicing oranges, her back to the room.

  ‘Hey!’ Bell said brightly. Too brightly. It sounded forced.

  Her employer turned. ‘Bell, hi!’ She gave an equally fake smile, but up close Bell could see that her complexion was pale beneath the tanned, puffy pillows under her eyes.

  There was a half-moment of tension as they looked at one another for the first time since they had met here on Thursday night. Bell instinctively understood that now wasn’t the best time for accusations. Her boss, though no longer drunk, though outwardly composed, seemed hardly more held together than she had been then. ‘Good weekend?’

  Hanna pushed her immaculate hair back from her face. ‘Great! Oh my God, the weather! I mean . . .’ She shook her head in disbelieving gratitude, but her hand was shaking a little.

  ‘I know, right?’ Bell agreed, walking in and automatically scooping up the girls’ discarded pyjamas from the floor, eager for the distraction. ‘Did you enjoy Midsommar?’

  ‘Oh yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘I didn’t see you there. I thought I’d catch you all dancing. It’s the girls’ favourite bit.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Hanna grabbed the coffee cup again. ‘Well, we decided just to keep it small this year, so we stayed here.’

  Bell was shocked. ‘You mean you didn’t go to Sandhamn at all?’

  ‘No. Max is under the weather, and the girls were just overtired. You know what they’re like – it always takes them a while to sleep well out here. Tilde complains the silence is too loud.’

  Bell smiled, but it hadn’t been a problem last year.

  ‘Did we miss much?’ Hanna asked.

  Well, my life changed, Bell didn’t reply. ‘Oh, you know, the usual. Floral crowns, frog dances, too much strawberry cake.’

  ‘And too much schnapps, I hope?’

  ‘Of course,’ Bell smiled, folding the clothes and plumping the sofa cushions too, shuffling the weekend papers into a neat pile and getting down on her knees to put the stray Sylvanian Family figurines back into their box. She was aware they were both at pains to be very busy and very jolly. She looked up. Hanna was pouring the fresh juice into a jug. ‘So Max got out here okay?’

  ‘Oh yeah, you know what he’s like – this is his happy place. Nothing can stop him coming out here.’

  ‘Did you go anywhere?’

  ‘We took the boat round to Swan Lake on Saturday and had a picnic there. We gathered the greenery for the girls’ garlands. It’s a good spot – lots of cotton grass and hare’s tail to put in with the flowers.’

  ‘I hope you took photographs.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Bell watched as Hanna went to the freezer and shuffled ice cubes from a tray into the jug. ‘The girls mentioned you’ve lost your ring. Please say that was a ploy to get them to –’ But her eyes fell to her boss’s hands and the conspicuous tan line around her index finger.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Hanna wrung her hand anxiously.

  ‘Oh, Hanna,’ she said quietly, knowing what it meant. Hanna’s ring had been designed with two pear-cut aquamarines, set side by side but facing in opposite directions so that they appeared to nestle together. Max had given it to her when the twins were born. Hanna always laughed that it was her ‘push’ ring, but – with the benefit of full disclosure about her first husband, now – it was clearly a substitute engagement, wedding and eternity ring in one.

  ‘I know. I’m beside myself about it. And Max is . . . well, he’s just so upset. It had huge sentimental significance.’

  ‘I know it did.’ Not to mention, it must have cost a bomb. ‘God, I’m gutted for you. Do you know what happened?’

  Hanna swallowed. ‘I don’t, really.’

  ‘You didn’t see it come off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Feel it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘When was the last time you remember seeing it?’

  ‘A few days ago? I can’t be sure. I never take it off, so I don’t notice it in the way I might something else.’

  ‘No, of course. But you think you might have lost it on the beach?’ Bell looked out at the twins still digging, still chatting happily.

  ‘Maybe.’ She shrugged, seemingly giving up. ‘It could be anywhere.’

  ‘Well, you have lost weight recently,’ Bell said lightly, sensing the observation trod on dangerous territory somehow. She stood up and crossed the room with the piles of clothes and toys, setting them down on the island. ‘It must have slipped off your finger.’

  ‘Yes.’ Hanna stared at the offending hand, her brow furrowed. ‘I knew it was getting too big. I should have . . . I should have taken it off when I had the chance.’ Her voice sounded strained, bitterness inflecting the words.

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. These things happen. Is it insured?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ She trailed into silence.

  ‘I know, it’s not about the money,’ Bell murmured. ‘God, I’m so sorry, I really am.’

  The sound of bare feet, sounding sticky on the wooden floors, made them both look up as Linus walked through, his hair a deliciously wild tangle that told Bell he hadn’t brushed it once since she’d left before the weekend either. His sleepy eyes brightened somewhat at the sight of her.

  ‘Hey, champ,’ she grinned, ruffling his hair as he leaned in to her briefly by way of greeting.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘You look like you were hibernating, not sleeping!’

  He grinned as he shook his cereal, already on the counter, into a bowl. ‘It’s ‘cos it’s so quiet here.’

  ‘I know. Good, huh?’ She squinted at him suspiciously. ‘Have you grown?’

  His mouth turned up in a lopsided smile at the tease. ‘You’ve only been gone three days.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I missed you,’ she said, ruffling his head again as she picked up the pyjamas and toys. ‘Now, I’m going to put these away. Have you made your bed?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Not yet. I only just got out of it.’

  ‘Okay, well, when you’re finished eating, do that and we
can make a plan for the day. I think we should let Mamma have a day to herself, don’t you?’

  She looked to Hanna for clarification that was okay, to find her boss looking back at her with a grateful stare that bordered on desperate.

  ‘Great. Well then, get your thinking cap on for where to go.’

  ‘I want to find the hidden beach.’

  Bell rolled her 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.