by Karen Swan
‘I know!’ he laughed excitedly. ‘Dad thinks I’m going to be taller than him.’
‘Well, I think he might be right.’
She glanced at Emil again, her heart beating fast. He was another few steps closer. He’d travelled halfway around the world, only to stop short the last six feet? Still, she couldn’t talk to him yet. Not yet. She needed time to recover, to process what was going on.
‘How was the voyage?’ Linus asked, helpfully bringing her attention back to him again.
‘Oh, long! Tiring! We’ve been resting since we got here. We did it in nine weeks in the end. As feared, we hit the doldrums in the ITCZ.’
‘The what?’
‘The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. Remember I told you about that once? It’s near the equator.’
‘Oh.’ Linus nodded thoughtfully, clearly drawing a blank. ‘Guess what!’
‘What?’
‘We flew economy. Dad’s never flown coach before. But Mamma made him. She said it was a condition for this holiday. And we watched films all the way over. Back-to-back, we didn’t stop, did we?’
‘Nope, we didn’t,’ Emil sighed.
Bell couldn’t stop a bemused smile at the thought. She could see, now he was closer, he looked exhausted.
A few fat drops of rain fell onto the ground – weighty, forceful – and she eyed the sky again. She figured they had less than a minute –
‘Where’s Mats? I want to see him.’
‘He’s, uh . . . busy,’ she said quickly. ‘But don’t worry, you will. He won’t be long.’
Linus eyed her warily. ‘Is he still your boyfriend?’
‘He never was, Linus. He was my special friend, remember?’
‘Bell, I’m not a baby. I know that’s just a different way of saying he’s your boyfriend.’
‘Oh!’ She tried to look put out. ‘Well, for me, it means he’s sort of like a boy best friend. More than a normal friend, not quite my brother.’
‘Huh.’ He gave a careless shrug. ‘I’m going to have a brother!’
‘And how amazing is that?’ she gasped, holding her hand up for a high five.
‘Mamma says I can help choose his name.’
‘Very cool. Although I’m thinking not Blofeld. Or Oddjob.’
He laughed. ‘Pappa chose those for the cats, not me. Besides, I’m nearly eleven now.’
‘Yes, you are,’ she sighed, ruffling his hair again. ‘Can’t you slow down a little? You’re making me feel old.’
He looked at her again, then dropped his head against her once more. ‘I missed you.’
A throb of tears pressed from nowhere. ‘I missed you,’ she said in a thick voice. ‘So much.’
A sudden clap of thunder made them all jump as the sky’s bucket was tipped and the rain began falling at double time, raindrops pelting the ground, the boats, them . . . Linus yelped with delight, scarpering to the relative cover of the awnings of the marina cafe, beside the harbourmaster’s office. But Emil didn’t move and neither did she as they stood staring at each other through the rain for several moments. The sky had become dark, the clouds almost black, and yet the light had taken on an almost glowing quality so that everything felt saturated, more deeply itself.
He walked over at last, breaching the last small gap, hesitation in his eyes. ‘. . . Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘I hope you don’t mind us . . . stopping by like this.’
Stopping by? He had his sister’s way with words. ‘No, of course not.’ She stared into those eyes that had caused her so much trouble. Heartache. ‘It’s a lovely surprise,’ she swallowed, looking away. ‘How’s Max?’
‘Fine now. Pretty much fully recovered.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ she said, relieved, looking straight back at him. The offer to sail south with Mats had been perfectly timed for a clean getaway for her, she couldn’t stay, not for an extra minute, not for another tragedy, but no sooner had Stockholm disappeared from sight than she had berated herself for leaving when he had still been so sick. ‘I felt so bad . . .’ She didn’t finish the sentence, not that she needed to. He knew he was the reason why she’d gone, and he didn’t say anything for a moment as he read the unsaid words in her eyes. ‘. . . It turned out it was his heart, not his head.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘But the fall . . .? He hit his head on the rocks.’
‘Yes, but he fell because of the heart attack. All the stress . . . he had an undiagnosed condition apparently.’
She winced, remembering that awful day and what Emil had put him through. He had the decency to look ashamed about it now. ‘It was just as well the helicopter was there,’ she said neutrally.
‘Yes.’
‘And you, of course. You kept the compressions going. You saved his life.’
‘He would have done the same for me.’
She looked at him, seeing the calmness in his face as he spoke about the man marrying his ex-wife. ‘And Hanna? How is she?’
‘Blooming. She’s taken a sabbatical to look after Max and have time with the girls before the baby comes.’ He said the words with a fluent ease, as though he could have been talking about an aunt or a mutual acquaintance. ‘She sends her love. She misses you, though. We all do.’
Oh. Was that why he was here? Was this a charm offensive designed to drag her back to her old job? ‘Well, I think I’m done with nannying for a bit,’ she said shortly, looking away. She felt a sudden, strong urge to get away from him, for Kris to come back. She didn’t want this after all – she had been doing just fine. Fine-ish.
‘Bell –’
She looked back at him, her heart aching with the pain that came from just looking at him. ‘You know, you could have just emailed. You didn’t need to get on a plane and fly for a day and a half. In economy.’
He hesitated, seeing her agitation. ‘Well, apparently it’s good for me. Although my back would disagree.’
They were getting soaked, but neither of them appeared to notice. He took a step closer to her but she instinctively stepped back.
‘Bell, I’m not here because we want you back as our nanny,’ he said, reading her with an expert eye. ‘Nor am I here because I’ve caved in to Linus’s daily pleas that we come to see you. I am a strict father these days. I have boundaries.’ He arched an eyebrow slightly, sounding rather like his sister. ‘I also have a very strict pocket-money policy, much to Linus’s dismay.’
She watched him, sensing his attempt at levity. Brightness. ‘Does he still believe he owns a boat?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Well, that sounds positive.’
‘He didn’t think so.’
A small smile escaped her, but she flattened it down again. ‘Look, Emil—’
‘I know you probably won’t believe this,’ he said quickly, cutting her off, hearing her tone. ‘But there are a lot of things that are positive now. Things that might have seemed impossible in the summer.’
‘. . . Good. I’m glad.’
‘Max nearly dying clarified everything. Suddenly none of it mattered. It was just ego and fear and half-memories, I know that now. Hanna and I – we went to couples counselling.’
She frowned. ‘Couples counselling? But—’
‘We did it to “devolve our relationship and try to build a new platform for our relationship going forward”.’ He gave speech-mark fingers, an almost-smile in his eyes.
‘Oh.’ It all sounded very Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘Did it work?’
He blinked. ‘Yes. We do brunch.’ That wry tone he shared with Nina hovered in the corners of his words.
‘Okay.’
‘And we talk about you. A lot. What we did, dragging you into something so toxic. We wanted to make it up to you, but didn’t know where you’d gone.’
‘I couldn’t stay.’
‘I know. I also thought I knew what loss was – until you disappeared.’
The words stripped back her defences, peeling back the layers she
had worked so hard to close. ‘Emil –’
‘I had to basically beg your friends to tell me where you were. When they wouldn’t, I resorted to bribery.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not the sort of thing the New Me would condone, but I was desperate. Tove calls me her stalker although I actually think she’s quite pleased to have one . . .’
It was a quip, but she couldn’t smile. Her emotions were rushing through her like floodwaters, and the smile in his eyes faded too. ‘When they said you were with Mats.’
‘Not like that.’
‘I know that now.’ His eyes burned. ‘But I wouldn’t have blamed you if it had been like that. The way I treated you . . . rejecting you, pushing you away, trying to pretend you meant nothing when in reality, you were everything. I was chasing an idea, something that, deep down, I knew I didn’t want – but it was all I knew . . .’ He took a step in again, but this time she didn’t retreat. ‘I felt so alone after I woke up properly. I didn’t remember the meeting with Linus at all and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t come. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. Hanna kept making excuses, saying I needed to get better first, so I channelled everything into that. Getting back to my family, becoming well enough that they would see me again . . . It became my entire life. My only focus. It was absolutely impossible for me to imagine that there might be another path. And even when you were right there, showing me . . . I couldn’t trust in it.’ He swallowed. ‘Not until it was too late, and I’d ruined it all.’
Rivulets of rain ran down the planes of his cheeks and she knew what he was leading up to.
‘Emil, I get it, really,’ she said sadly. ‘I understood it then, too. But even if you and Max and Hanna are all good now, it’s still too complicated for me to go back to. Hanna was my boss. Linus was the child in my care. I can’t . . . step out of being the nanny to them.’
‘You can.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, they already know—’ he blurted. ‘I told Hanna. About us. About how I felt about you.’
Bell’s mouth parted. ‘You did what?’ she gasped. ‘Why would you do that?’ She glanced across at Linus, seeing him watch them closely from the safety of the awnings.
‘Well, for one thing, I had to account for why Linus and I wanted to cross the world to find you. For another, I thought she should have fair warning before I did everything in my considerable power to bring you back.’
It was seemingly another joke, something to buy time as she absorbed the news that Hanna knew. Hanna knew. She ran her hands over her – wet – face. ‘Shit – oh my God, what was her reaction?’ she winced, wanting and not wanting to know all at once.
He inhaled slowly. ‘Shocked at first, naturally. But then . . .’ He shrugged. ‘After a while, she said she could see it.’
‘See it?’ she repeated, dumbfounded, peering at him through her fingers.
‘Us. Together. She thinks we’d be good for each other. She knows you won’t stand for my bad behaviour, for one thing. And she knows that Nina likes you, which is little short of a miracle because she really does abhor most humans. And she knows that you love Linus, of course.’
‘Well, of course. But –’
‘And that Linus and I both love you.’
It was such a simple statement, and yet it contained a world within its words. She stared at him in stunned silence, oblivious to the rain pouring down her neck as he stepped in to her, closing the gap between them finally. They loved her? He loved her?
He hooked his finger and trailed it lightly over her cheek. ‘Bell, I know I’m no catch. I’m never going to be perfect. I was a flawed man before the accident and I’m always going to be, no matter how much therapy I have. I don’t deserve you but I will do everything in my power to try to deserve you.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t you take a chance on me?’
Could she? she wondered, staring into his remarkable eyes. He wasn’t the easy option by any stretch. He was difficult and stubborn and had no filter. But she’d felt something on that Midsommar night, when his hand had cupped her head and his lips had first kissed hers – she had understood in that moment of perfect stillness, that since Jack’s death her heart had been like a frightened bird beating its wings frantically against a cage, and he, he had been a warm pair of hands around her. He had woken her up again and they were both awake now.
‘Hey,’ she said quietly, realizing something else.
‘What?’
‘You’re speaking in English.’
A smile curled his beautiful mouth, enlivening his eyes. Those eyes. ‘Impressed yet?’
She took off his cap, pressed her hands to his cheeks and kissed him; she kissed him though the rain was dripping off their noses and eyelashes, and running in sheets over their cheeks. She kissed him though she knew this was a point of no return for her heart. There would be no turning back. ‘I love you both too,’ she whispered, seeing how his eyes burned and his fingers clutched against her waist, the flame between them flickering and beginning to dance again.
Linus darted out from the safety of the awning, cheering with pumping fists, and they both jumped, having forgotten him momentarily. ‘Dad wants you to be his girlfriend but he told me not to say anything!’
She laughed. ‘You did very well to keep it a secret. I never would have guessed.’
Emil reached for him, hugging Linus into them both in a happy huddle. A little family. He looked up at the cascading sky, closing his eyes and feeling the rain on his face. ‘You know what?’
‘What?’ she smiled.
‘. . . I think we should go for a walk.’
‘In the rain?’ Linus gasped, eyes shining at the contrariness of it.
‘Of course – this is the very best time,’ he said, cupping her head and kissing her again. He pulled away, his eyes burning brightly. Fiercely. ‘It reminds you you’re alive.’
Acknowledgements
My loyal readers will know I visit every location I write about, and I usually do enough research beforehand that I know what I want to see before I get there. This time, it was different. I have several good friends of Swedish descent and they’d shared enough stories over the years that I knew I wanted to set a book in Stockholm; it’s one of the coolest cities in the world, so young, so colourful, so techy . . . What I hadn’t expected was to fall in love with the wet, wobbly bit beside it, speckled with scattered crumbs of land. The archipelago was a revelation to me – it’s desolate, I’m sure, through the winter, but through the summer months, utterly stunning isolation! Grand old houses on rocky outcrops, regattas, pine forests, picnics and, of course, teeny tiny cabins. If you’ve read even one other of my books, then you’ll know I’m a sucker for a ramshackle hut, be it on a mountain, a fjord or a beach. I fell in love with the Swedish way of summering, feeling a genuine regret that this was not part of my own life story, and I really hope I’ve been able to impart some of its rustic purity and simplicity to you. If you can’t get there yourself, hopefully the story within these pages is a good second best.
Emil’s story was inspired by a real news story that seemed almost too good to be true. I looked into traumatic brain injuries further, and certainly such a recovery is sadly a freak rarity, bordering on the miraculous, but it is possible, and by then, my interest had been peaked with this thought: imagine waking up and finding yourself a stranger in your own life; everyone you loved has moved on . . . It’s chilling and tragic, and I honestly didn’t know how I was going to answer that question. However, my editor Caroline Hogg and agent Amanda Preston were both quick to see the appeal, keeping me calm when the collywobbles invariably set in and feeding back with observations and suggestions that really tightened up and refined the story. I honestly could not put a book out into the world without their eyes on it first. Thank you, both.
A huge debt is also owed to the Pan team at large – the copy- and sub-editors who tirelessly fine tune the details so that the story rings true and feels authentic; the marketing and advertising and co
mms teams who make sure that you get to know the book is out there; the sales teams who ensure it’s actually on bookshelves so that you can buy it; the art department who make sure you want to pick it up from the bookshelf when there’s a thousand other alternatives . . . you get the point. It really does take a village and I’m just so grateful that all these talented people are working on my side and not the competition’s!
This is also the time to thank my friends. I really do go to ground when I’m writing these books. I say ‘no’ to most things, don’t call, forget to reply to texts. I’m well and truly off the grid, the world’s worst friend, and it is always such a relief that they allow me to just pick up where we left off, without recrimination, when I re-enter the real world.
Finally, above all and always, my family. They are my beating heart and although I spend my days creating new worlds, nothing would exist for me without them. They are my beginning, my middle and my end. The end.
The Hidden Beach
Karen Swan is the Sunday Times top three bestselling author of seventeen books and her novels sell all over the world. She writes two books each year – one for the summer period and one for the Christmas season. Previous winter titles include Christmas at Tiffany’s, The Christmas Lights, The Christmas Party and for summer, The Rome Affair, The Greek Escape and The Spanish Promise.
Her books are known for their evocative locations and Karen sees travel as vital research for each story. She loves to set deep, complicated love stories within twisty plots, sometimes telling two stories in the same book.
Previously a fashion editor, she lives in Sussex with her husband, three children and two dogs.
Visit Karen’s author page on Facebook, follow her on Twitter @KarenSwan1, on Instagram @swannywrites, and her website www.karenswan.com.
Also by Karen Swan
Players
Prima Donna
Christmas at Tiffany’s
The Perfect Present
Christmas at Claridge’s
The Summer Without You