It makes sense when I think about it now. Yes, I had fallen in love with him, but I also just wanted a proper husband. A husband who was exactly who he said he was. Someone who’d be there for longer than a few hours.
—
Robin comes back in from the shed with some of the crémant I buy for Pig Shed guests. “No sign of the Geminids yet,” he says, yawning. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to face getting up.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The Geminid meteor shower. It’s happening around two a.m.” He drops the ice into the glasses. “I’m shattered, but this one’s set to be pretty spectacular. What should I do?”
“I love you, my dear nerd,” I say, after a pause. “Come here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Would you take any notice if I told you what to do?”
He admits he would not. Then he comes over and kisses me and we hold each other for a few moments, united and content. We have no idea what’s coming, what I’m about to find in an unsuspecting corner of the internet. I am benignly oblivious, as almost all of us are in the moments before our lives change.
Four.
Now: Devon, December 2022
I book my flights to Stockholm while Robin plays with his new camera lens. Life, in that moment, is simple and good.
After paying for the flights I go up to check on Raffy, waking him just enough to take some more salbutamol. Heavy and sleepy, he doesn’t protest. I curl myself around him while he falls quickly back to sleep. I inhale the sweetness of his hair, his oaty breath. “I love you,” I whisper, kissing him.
A few moments later Robin comes up.
“Are you happy with his breathing?” he whispers. In the darkness I see the lighter shape of my husband’s arm, feeling around for Raffy’s body.
“Yes. For now. But I won’t stop checking him.”
Robin’s hand lands gently on his son’s belly. “Let me share the burden, Carrie. I might be up for the meteor shower anyway.”
But he knows I won’t. He knows this miserable use of my medical training, this sleepless vigilance, is how I manage the anxiety that sitsin the heart of any mother who’s been in NICU watching her child trying to live.
We gently reinsert Maeve’s legs into her bed, because they’re sticking out at ninety degrees. We tuck one of her unicorns under her arm and both of us kiss her. She’s always busy in her sleep, this sweet girl, and her little forehead is always damp with perspiration at night.
We return downstairs and I start searching for accommodation. The fire, which I lit hours ago, murmurs gentle stories in its stove and the fizz is lovely. I allow my gaze to slide off around our sitting room: the bulging, plaster-blown walls, the fireplace lintel with its centuries-old taper burns, the groaning beams.
The main purpose of my trip to Sweden is to go to a conference held by Roof, the competitor to Airbnb that markets our holiday let. Every year, Roof invites all its European hosts to a conference where we learn about everything from specialist insurance to property photography. Normally I don’t go, but this year I was ready. The fact that Yanika Hatziz lives in Stockholm was a bonus.
All of the Roof hosts in Stockholm are offering subsidized rates on their apartments, but they’re still pricey. I look at cheaper options further out and then, on a whim, increase my search area to include the wider archipelago surrounding the city. I once read a novel about a politician staying in a summer house by the Baltic sea, investigating a suspicious death. I love the idea of a little coastal hideaway.
I immediately fall in love with a little summer house near Trosa but, really, it’s too far out.
And then Robin, who’s been quiet for a while, sends me a booking confirmation for a very trendy-looking hotel in Stockholm, almost next door to the conference venue. He’s paid for it himself: a superking bed and a vast bathtub that I can soak in, alone, no children coming in toscream or drop crisps in my water, no laundry spilling out of the basket or skids in the toilet.
He smiles when I thank him, tells me he wants me to have the most comfortable trip possible, then goes off to load the dishwasher.
Before turning my attention to travel insurance I take one last look at the cabin that caught my eye. It’s beautiful. Stylish and peaceful, photographed by someone who knows how to make a camera sing. There’s a large red pendant light over a big scrubbed table, bunk beds with thick woolen blankets, views straight out over a flat silver sea. I scroll down to read the description, because I love this house.
That’s when I see it. A photo of the host, the name Johan. A mild sensation in my chest: he looks a bit like a Johan I once knew.
I start reading the description. “This cabin has been in my family for three generations…”
My eyes track back to the photo, because it looks so very much like him that I want a longer look. How novel, I think to myself; how funny. A Johan look-alike, hosting a cabin by the sea near Stockholm.
I reread the name Johan, allow myself to look at the thumbnail photo of a man in a green T-shirt, laughing at something off camera. He looks so much like the man I married. He has longish hair, tied up, and even though the picture is tiny you can see he has knockout blue eyes.
