Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen.
Twelve and a half years after that night, I find myself in Stockholm Arlanda: my first time in a foreign airport since becoming a mother.
My phone takes a while to pick up a local signal, and a sudden desperation to connect with my children vaults in my chest. I’ve never been this far away from them.
I turn my phone off and on again, striding at unnecessary speed through arrivals.
Outside, there is snow on the ground. As we came in to land we passed over endless pine forests and scattered archipelago islands in gray-black water.
This place is already everything I imagined Sweden to be, and I haven’t even left the airport.
“They’ve really got their act together,” Robin said this morning at five thirty, as I was leaving for the long journey to Heathrow.
“Everything works there. We think this island of ours is the last word in modern living, but go to Sweden and you’ll realize what a shambles this country is.
And they’re all very good-looking. They speak incredible English…
” He didn’t stop talking. I think he was nervous.
When I left he grabbed my hand and held it, tightly, for a long time.
“You don’t have to go,” he said. “If this feels like too much or if it triggers anything, just come back. I can drive to Heathrow to get you if you need me. OK?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just please stay in touch with Nicola.”
Dad’s been settled in his care home for three weeks now, and because he has no real idea what is happening, he’s mostly quite peaceful. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d resisted or become distressed. It would have been too much to bear.
I have not found any peace with his move, no matter how entirely I accept its necessity.
The thought of his books and pictures and piled-up newspapers with no Dad to read them or straighten them out, of his neatly rolled-up umbrellas and carefully polished shoes by the front door with no Dad to wear them, the knowledge that his day is filled with strangers speaking in bright, loud voices breaks my heart completely.
To make matters worse, he got COVID almost as soon as he moved and, although it’s passed, it has wiped him out.
Having been there every day since he moved, I am really not OK about leaving him, but he has Nicola and Maya, who’s postponed her return to the States until he’s better, and a large team of trained professionals.
I have to trust them, just like I hope patients will soon trust me. He’d have wanted me to go.
I check my phone again. Still no signal.
I follow signs for baggage claim and toggle to a different service provider.
Robin told me to do this—I don’t know anything about travel anymore.
He gave me adaptor plugs and a luggage padlock and a bank card that didn’t charge for international transactions.
The world has changed while I’ve been in my bunker.
I spent time on the plane thinking about Robin.
About why I haven’t told him about Johan getting out of Thailand, when our entire foundation has been built on trust. What would it matter to Robin, after all?
Why would he care? Robin knows all about Johan and me.
He knows I healed, eventually, that I came to hate the man for all he put me through.
And he knows that I fell in love with him, Robin Carghill: honest and loyal in all the ways Johan had failed to be.
I’ve resolved to tell him when I get back.
Speak to him face-to-face about finding Johan on Roof, about all the shock and resentment it’s brought up.
I’ll apologize for failing to talk to him straight away but I know he’ll understand.
As Dell said, he’d probably have had the same emotional experience if he were in my shoes.
I step forward with my new passport and say “Hej” to the man on border control, because that’s what it says at the entrance to Ikea, and I remind myself that all is well.
My phone finally starts working as the luggage belt lurches into life.
We have a lovely FaceTime, the kids in pajamas, Robin scraping melted cheese off the floor in the background.
Maeve is singing at me, upside down on the sofa, and Raffy is patiently waiting for an opportunity to talk me through all thirty of the pictures he did at school today.
They have a falling out over dessert choices and I have to end the call because my bag is coming.
“Sorry!” I call to Robin, who can’t even hear me.
But he texts to wish me a good first night and to let me know that Dad seems to be holding up.
I miss and love you so much, he writes. It is just too weird, you not being here.
Go and be brilliant, then please come back. xx
And then I’m heading down to the airport train, way down underneath the airport, and I have nobody to look after, nobody to think about other than myself, for the first time in years.