She couldn’t, is what I keep coming back to. Unless there was a far greater deception going on. Unless Mum is the reason Johan still won’t tell me what happened. Unless it’s my own mother who he expected to have told me everything.
Is she the one person I should have been looking at all along?
Impulsively, I call Johan via the Roof app, but he doesn’t answer. I take a large stick and start bashing at the reeds by his wooden jetty, but it doesn’t help. I just need to talk to Mum.
The afternoon passes and the air becomes icy. I march up and down the root-snagged path from Johan’s deck to the sauna shed, watching the clouds zip across the brilliant winter sky, the reeds moving frenziedly. At one point, in desperation, I go inside the sauna, sorting manically through the life jackets and old oars stored in the vestibule as if trying to find a secret letter. A sign. Something that might help me.
I find a spider and an old bottle of sunscreen, dried white cream plastered around the neck. It’s covered in old greasy finger marks, probably Johan’s. I hold it in my hand. He had his whole life ahead of him. His career. His relationship with me.
Could my mother really have been the person responsible for bringing an end to all of that? Has she held the answers I longed for, all these years? Was her help and hard work in Thailand no more than a smoke screen?
No, my heart wants to tell me. But the truth is: I don’t know. I am a woman of nearly forty who has never truly known her mother.
—
Raffy calls. Performing your first Hartmann’s procedure has nothing on talking to a child you feel you’ve betrayed. A sweet, funny child who cannot contain his excitement about his trip to Sweden onMonday, where he’ll get to spend three illegal bunked-off-school days with Mummy and Daddy.
I make myself smile as my son—my beautiful, gentle little boy—tells me about how he’s going to be allowed to stay up super-duper-wooperlate on Monday because their plane doesn’t land until bedtime and THEN they have to get to Mummy’s apartment and THEN have dinner and THEN do some PLAYING! Maeve is apparently teaching herself to spin three Hula-Hoops at the same time outside.
I make myself smile and laugh; I match Raffy’s little whoops of excitement with my own. I clap my hands when he claps his and I have never hated myself more.
Robin is showing visible signs of stress. He’s terse, distracted, snappy with the kids. And I’m not surprised; I should never have agreed to disappear for two weeks when he has a full-time job and we don’t have any support. Nicola was going to do the odd school run, but she’s of course unavailable with Dad in hospital.
When he asks me how the cabin is and I say it’s lovely, he blows through his mouth like people do when they’re trying not to explode. “Sorry,” I add, but it doesn’t help.
“So has Maya gone with you?”
“No. She’s gone home.”
“Of course. Sorry. Well, nice for you to get some downtime.”
This poor exhausted man.
I cook an omelet with some winter herbs from Johan’s garden, using olive oil in a stone bottle that I know he will have chosen. Five minutes later, I put the whole thing in the bin. I can’t imagine ever eating again.
—
Mum calls just before 4 p.m. The sun has gone and the sea is now a pewter field of angles and flattened light; the color and depthof the water is long gone. Soon it will be totally dark, but there are illuminated buoys lining the boating channel and a couple of distant summer houses have their lights on. I’ve lit a fire. Robin taught me how to do that.
My mother’s voice is wary, and I can tell straight away that she knows why I’m calling. I hardly ever call her anyway, because she never picks up, but multiple calls from Sweden in one afternoon must have triggered all the warning systems.
“I ran into Kerstin. Johan’s mother,” is how I open. “Do you know why I’m calling?”
“Oh,” she says quietly. “Carrie.”
But then the tears come and I can’t speak. Sobs rock my body.
Mum is silent through the whole thing, waiting for me to wind down. She says nothing until my sobbing comes to a halt, which means that there is no mistake. She has been expecting this call for many years.
When I have blown my nose she says, “Carrie, where are you?”
“I’m at Johan’s summer house near Stockholm.”
Then, after a pause, she asks, “And what did his mother say?”
“She said Johan was smuggling drugs into Thailand for you.”
“I see. And do you believe her?”
