“She says her only involvement was to ask you to deliver some antibiotics to a charity. Is that true?” My voice falters. “I have to know, Johan.”
He stands up, puts the glass into the bin. “Yes. That’s exactly how it was. I hope my mother didn’t imply that Adelina was involved in the serious stuff.”
“She didn’t tell me much,” I admit. I sit down at the table. “But she was insistent that your imprisonment was my mother’s fault.”
Johan frowns. “I had a feeling she’d have said that. I’m sorry.”
“So Mum’s only involvement was these antibiotics?”
“Correct.” He comes over, crouches in front of me. “You don’t really believe your mum’s a criminal, do you?”
I feel too vulnerable to have him this close to me, looking at me with those impossible eyes.
“No.” I shift away from him. “But I didn’t believe you were, either, and then you pleaded guilty and willingly received twenty-five years ina maximum security prison. I don’t feel like I can trust anyone, anymore apart from my husband and children.”
Johan thinks about this for a moment. Then he stands up. “I get it,” he says. “That’s why I came. Just give me a moment.”
He takes the bin and its shards of glass out into the evening.
Thirty-two.
“I want to talk about us,” Johan says.
We’ve taken seats on either side of his table.
Let’s put a table between us, I said the first night I went back to his flat. Anything to keep our hands off each other a few more minutes.
Caught off guard, I stay silent. I don’t want to talk about us. Not now. I thought he was here to tell me what happened in Thailand.
“The messages between us on Roof the past few days,” he continues. “I’m not imagining it. Am I?”
After a pause, I shake my head.
Johan sits back. “We both have families. We are both good people, with no desire to cause harm. This has to stop.”
I nod, and before I know it, tears have filled my eyes again. Even this conversation, this ending of something that has not even begun, feels like a betrayal. I am a married woman with two beloved children. I should never have come to his house in the first place. I should not have even read his messages, let alone replied.
“I think this…thingbetween us is just part of the shock of beingback in touch.” His voice has relaxed a little. “I don’t think it’s real. Even though it’s felt very real at times.”
I tell him I agree, although privately I feel like his body is telling a different story. I can still read it.
“And I’m sorry I invited you here. That was insane. Mum’s in pieces. God knows, she went through it, watching me trying to recover. She was so happy when I met Freja.”
“I’ll leave soon,” I say. “I’ll drive back up to Stockholm tonight.”
“Oh no. I didn’t come here to kick you out. You’ve hired a car, you’re here—I just shouldn’t have invited you in the first place. That’s what I wanted to address.”
“Look, Johan—I should never have said yes to staying here. It goes both ways. The past…us…it’s felt pretty heady, the past few days…and I’m not proud of my choices. But I also think these are just normal human reactions. Who on earth could have stayed neutral through all of this?”
He nods, tracing a thumb along the grooved channels of his aged tabletop. I know for a fact that he ate at this table when he was a little boy. I remember him telling me about it, about breakfasts with only a window between him and the wild sea.
“Your partner…” he says. “Or husband, even—you’re married, right?”
“We are.”
“Is he a good man?”
“Very.”
