The air rolling through the car window is soft and clean, the sky a darkening mauve, and I am happy.
This time I don’t get lost. I know what I’m looking for and where to find it. I am homing.
Thirty-nine.
He’s sitting by the barbecue when I arrive. The sky is the deepest indigo now, the sea black. He’s got a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, the same blanket that used to cover his bed in Whitechapel all those years ago. He’s playing music quietly on a small speaker. Something ambient but upbeat—I never knew how to describe the sort of music he listened to, but I always liked it. There’s a pot of salt on the table, a beer, matches, oil.
It takes him a while to notice me, but when he does, he smiles. A lighthouse in the darkening.
For a while neither of us moves. I stand at the corner of his house, the sea moving silently past, the reeds blowing gently.
“Hello,” he says eventually.
That voice.
“Hello,” I say.
I walk across the deck toward his table. Whatever he’s barbecuing smells good.
Johan’s feet, poking out of faded jeans, look tanned under the lightof the lanterns rigged up around the table. So, too, does his face. I think he’s probably been out here all summer.
He pulls the blanket back up his shoulders. “Carrie Cole,” he says. “Do you want to come and sit down?” He doesn’t know why I’m here. When I contacted him last week I just said I was in town on business again and wanted to talk.
I sit on the bench, a couple of feet away from him. He turns back to the barbecue and flips over the meat. He has some onions loosely wrapped in foil on there, too, some corn. Beside him there is a lovely-looking salad in the glow of his lantern. He has always seemed so different to me, Johan Kullberg, but I do sometimes wonder if we’re perhaps more similar than I originally thought. Even though he’s never approached his endeavors with the angst or pathological perfectionism that drove me, he’s not a man of half measures. I saw his architectural designs when I looked him up the other week; they’re special. Even if the pride and care he’s put into them weren’t obvious, he has numerous testimonials now, people writing effusively about his attention to detail and tireless pursuit of beauty and function.
He shifts the meat and turns back to me, and as he does I catch the smell of his skin for a moment. Earth, sun, timber. He is pure heaven.
“How’ve you been?” he asks, when I fail to say anything. “How is life?”
“Good. Bad, too. But definitely more good than bad.” I do up my coat; I’m not quite close enough to the barbecue to absorb heat. “I’ve actually taken a job at Karolinska, under Yanika. A proper job. For a year. By necessity it’s quite junior, but she’s giving me all sorts of training that I’d never get if I did this year in the UK.”
He stops what he’s doing. “You’re living here? In Stockholm?”
“Yes.”
“What? Congratulations! I…wow. You always loved YanikaHatziz. A little too much, in my opinion, but that’s another matter. I’m glad you’re together again.”
I laugh. That is not unreasonable.
I shift slightly to be closer to the barbecue. Not too near, but close enough for me to be able to feel him. Sure enough, my body switches on.
“Dare I ask how things have been? With Robin?”
“If you ask the kids, it’s been OK. If you ask me, or Mum, it’s been a car crash. He’s been taking on all sorts of jobs for years. Being paid eye-watering sums to help clean up reputations. It’s amazing what a donation of a few million dollars can do for a corrupt-as-fuck multibillionaire. But Robin, it seems, is the go-to guy for that. He’s charming, he’s clean, he’s also very good at persuading charities to accept gigantic amounts of image-control cash.”
“Christ.” Johan picks up his beer and takes a long drink. “Do you want one?”
“Oh, yes please. Just one, though. I’m not staying.”
I redden in the darkness. Of course I’m not bloody staying.
Johan goes and gets a beer from a wooden cool box by the table. As usual, he looks strong, fit, and irrepressiblywell. I remember when I first met him, how unusual it felt to be in the presence of such a superbly healthy body, how drawn I was not just to those beautiful eyes but to the robust physicality of him, the outrageous health of the man.
He hands me a beer and we both take a drink. “Cheers,” I say, just as he says “Skål.”
He turns, then, and looks at me properly. “Would you like to do anymore small talk?” he asks. Those eyes are full of laughter, but I sense that he, too, is slightly uncertain. Maybe even nervous.
“Yes?” I say. “Or maybe no.”
