Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“They would,” Maya confirms. “And that’s why I flew over.
I was worried you’d be driving yourself mad and not talking to anyone.
” She pauses. “Plus, I’d still very much like to know why Johan was asking you about Dad’s memory.
Not to mention their phone call in Thailand.
I have to say, that’s really bothering me. ”
“I know,” I say. “But I can’t go there. Not while I’m doing this placement.”
She updates me about Dad and then I get out my laptop. I want to video call my children before I get drunk, which will probably take all of one cocktail.
—
An hour later, we’re looking Johan up on his company website. “I’ve looked him up probably even more than you have,” Maya admits. We’re on our second cocktail, neither of us used to spirits, both of us pleasantly fuzzy. “And dear Christ, Carrie, isn’t he just so beautiful?”
“Hmm,” I say, getting up to get some water. I don’t have to be in until nine fifteen tomorrow but I can’t risk a hangover.
“Will you make some toast?” Maya calls. She’s still staring at Johan. “Why did he stop diving? How did he get into architecture? So many questions…” She flicks back over to his Roof listing, which we looked at together earlier. “And he’s obviously got very good at photography.”
I message Robin while the bread’s in the toaster.
When I called an hour ago, the kids were in the middle of a furious argument; both were in tears.
Raffy shouted at Maeve that she was crazy in the head, which I know will have hurt her more deeply than Raffy could ever have planned.
Maeve threw a tube of toothpaste at him, which did nothing to improve the mood.
All good, Robin texts, with a dark, grainy picture of them asleep in their bunks. I zoom in on their blurry faces, wishing with every cell in my body that I could be there with them as they slept, even just for a minute.
Are you OK? he asks, like he does every day. I hope Yanika’s going easy on you.
All going brilliantly, I tell him, but he’s not online now. I hope he’s not out looking at the sky. I made him promise not to leave the kids on their own in the house at night but I’m not sure he’ll do what he’s told. Robin doesn’t function well when he can’t get out there with his lenses.
My sister’s navigating her way around Johan’s Roof listing, reading his description of the house. I get some plates ready and take the butter out of the fridge.
Then: “Oh shit,” Maya mutters, looking at my phone.
“What?”
“I pressed the Request to Book button.”
I freeze. “For Johan’s cabin?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”
I stare at her in horror.
“If I cancel the request, will he still be able to see that I did it in the first place?”
“Yes,” I whisper, even though I would give anything to make it a no.
But I’m a Roof host, I know how it works.
There’ll be a notification in Johan’s phone right now saying that “Carrie C” wants to rent his property for whatever spurious dates Maya’s entered to be able to search for his place.
There’ll be a picture of me. Unmistakably, incontrovertibly me.
“No,” is all I can say. “No…”
“I’ll handle it,” she mutters, white-faced. “If he even bothers to message you. I mean, he’ll probably just think you’re a bit drunk and having a snoop and he’ll ignore it…right?”
My heart is pounding. “Would you ignore that, if you were him?”
She doesn’t get the chance to answer because my phone is now ringing.
“No,” I wail. “He’s calling me.”
“What?” She stares at the phone in her hands. “How is this happening?”
“They added calling to the messaging platform recently.” I take the phone from her. “So guests can reach hosts quickly in an emergency…Oh shit, Maya. I don’t know what to do. He can see I’m online.”
Maya snatches the phone back and answers it. I feel like I might be sick.
“Hi,” she says. Her voice is not entirely steady. “Sorry, that was an error, my apologies…”
At first I hear nothing. Then, after what feels like an age, Johan’s voice says, “Maya? Is that you?”
My heart seems to stop at this point. Maya’s velvety voice has always been impossible to mistake.
“…No?” she tries. “Well, yes. Sorry, Johan. Please don’t blame this on Carrie. I had a couple of cocktails, and I was looking at your cabin…”
I want the world to end.
“Maya,” he says. “Wow. This is a surprise. Are you with Carrie?”
“Yes,” she mutters. “I’m so sorry. I’m a bit drunk. But, for the record, I’m so, so happy you got out of prison. I hear it’s a miracle to get a royal pardon. But I’ll stop talking now. Sorry. Bye.”
And then she hands the phone to me. Just gives me the phone, with Johan at the other end, as if this is my problem.
Terrified, I put the phone to my ear. He’s laughing. Not belly laughing, just chuckling quietly. It’s as if he’s right here next to me, mouth near my ear.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because there is absolutely no hope of styling this out. “I had no idea. I was making toast…”
“It’s not a problem.” There’s something about his tone that makes me think he may have had a few drinks, too. “I’m out. And there was no way I believed you wanted to rent my cabin. So I thought, fuck it, I’ll call.” I hear him smile. “Anyway. Hello, Carrie Cole.”
I can’t process this. I can’t process being in Stockholm, on the phone to Johan, everyone with alcohol in their system.
“It won’t happen again,” I say.
“No, it won’t,” Maya calls. “I’m really sorry. Just a bit carried away by being here in your city.”
After a long pause, Johan says, “In my city? Carrie, what does she mean?”
It’s unbearable. Just for a moment, I hate my sister even more than she hates herself.
“Yes,” I sigh. “I’m in Stockholm again. It’s a work thing. Obviously I had no intention of getting in touch. I can’t apologize enough.”
“OK…?”
I don’t know what to say, so I remain silent.
“Am I allowed to know what the work thing is?” he asks. His voice moves cautiously across this new landscape, its crevasses and buried explosives.
I take my phone to the tiny, uncomfortable sofa. Maya is cramming buttered toast into her mouth, ashamed yet enthralled.
I turn away from her. “I’m shadowing Yanika. She works at Karolinska Hospital. I…it’s a long story, but I quit surgery a few years ago, and I’m going back. So I came out here for a placement.”
He remains silent. I can hear the distant sound of music; he must be outside a bar.
“Anyway, sorry again. I’ll cancel the booking request and leave you to your evening.”
I hear him exhale. “Was it because of me that you quit surgery?” he asks. “Did you lose your job?”
“No. I had extremely premature twins a few years ago. Nothing to do with you.”
“Oh. Good.” His voice is soft. “And, for the record, I’ve a friend who had a baby at seven months, it was frightening.”
“Mine were born at six.”
He whistles. “Jesus, Carrie. Well—that’s a whole other conversation.” He pauses for a moment and I know he’s imagining me as a mother. “What I was trying to say was that I’m glad it wasn’t because of me. That would have been awful. You were born to do that job.”
For a moment, I allow myself to smile gratefully. Nobody has really wanted me to go back. Even Mum, who’s far more interested in careers than she is parenting, has been doubtful, and Robin’s still worried I’m going to have a breakdown. He’s been calling every morning at six o’clock to check in.
“Carrie…” Johan’s voice is close, quiet.
“Yes?”
“I’m—I’m glad this is happening. Us speaking. I’ve thought about you a lot since January.”
I’m not sure I’m breathing.
“I’ve been wanting to…” He stops, and I hear him rubbing a hand over his face. He always did that in times of uncertainty. “Have you been OK? Since we met?”
Maya is quite literally on the edge of her seat. There is no point in me taking the phone into the bathroom. The walls are made of fiberboard; she’d hear every word.
“Yes and no.”
He remains silent, as if inviting me to continue, so I do. “I spent years thinking you’d been trafficking drugs. Sleeping with other women, leading a double life. So it’s blown my universe up a little, discovering that that wasn’t the case.”
“This is what I keep thinking about. You dealing with that on your own, day after day, month after month, year after year. No closure, no explanation, nothing.”
I shake my head. I won’t be derailed by concern and kindness.
It’s far too little, far too late. “You say that, Johan, and yet an explanation is the one thing you still refuse to give me. You thought someone else had explained the whole thing to me and yet you won’t tell me who that someone else is or why they haven’t spoken up. And so here I am. Still in the dark.”
I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t.
“Look,” I say. “I need to know: Was it Dad?”
“Was what your dad?”
“You asked about Dad’s memory loss, specifically in relation to what happened in Thailand.
And then I found a call from Dad’s mobile to our hotel in Bangkok, the night you arrived.
It was at exactly the time I was scratching my head, wondering what had happened to you.
Johan, if my father was involved—if he’s the one you expected to tell me—I have to know. ”
Johan goes silent, and my sister comes over and holds my hand.
“Oh, Carrie,” he says eventually. Somewhere in the background, I hear an engine revving. “…I wish you’d got in touch earlier to ask. That phone call to Thailand…” He breaks off. “Hang on. Let me get somewhere a bit quieter.”
After a few seconds he returns to the line. “Just ducked into a side street.”
“And?”
He sighs. “The call from your dad’s mobile was him calling me back. I called him as soon as I checked in to the hotel because I wanted to ask him if I could propose to you.”
That silences me.
“Your dad was, as ever, very kind and insisted on calling me back on the landline in our room so I wouldn’t have to spend two hundred pounds asking him the question.
We had a lovely conversation; I still remember it—I always enjoyed talking to him.
We talked for ages—he was telling me so many funny things about you as a little girl—and that’s why I was so late for our first dinner.
You were exhausted and upset by the time I got to you. I felt bad. That’s the story.”
Maya and I look at each other. She touches my flushed cheek with the back of her hand.
“You called him to ask permission?” I ask, even though I heard him perfectly well the first time.
“Yes.” I hear him rubbing a hand over his chin again. It’s as if we’re in a phone box together. I can hear his breath, the sound of his facial skin under his fingers. “Yes, I did. My proposal was not a moment of madness on a boat. I was very serious about it. About you. Us.”
I try to concentrate only on the facts.
“But you still won’t tell me why you assumed I knew what had happened to you?”
“I can’t, Carrie. It’s not a won’t, it’s a can’t.”
“This can’t be real,” I say eventually.
“I know,” he says. “I often find myself wondering if it really happened. I mean, I’m such a regular, boring guy. Sometimes I can’t believe it was anymore than a bad dream.”
There’s another long pause. A car horn beeps near him; someone walks past with a bunch of jangling keys.
“You and me, though, Carrie,” he says. His voice has changed. It sounds as if he’s standing next to me again. My body responds immediately.
“You and me were real. We never felt like a bad dream. Our time together was the one thing I held on to, no matter how bad things got. Some days it was what kept me alive.”
—
After Maya has gone to bed, desolate at the chain of events she’s set off, I finish her abandoned drink and pour myself another.
Beneath me, the city is quiet and unguarded, a silent carpet of light and slow-moving traffic.
I stand at the window, looking across at the faraway black ribbon of the Soderstrom River, beyond which Johan will probably be arriving home to his partner and stepson.
I think about my own husband and children and feel the burn of self-loathing once again. What am I doing here?
I climb in with Maya, who’s asleep with an arm flung over her head, just like when she was a baby.
I allow myself to stop thinking about my family for a moment.
To think instead about Johan. The sound of his voice.
The sound of him smiling down the phone.
I fight it, then stop fighting. I bathe in these guilty waters.
I reach for my phone. I’m not sure what I’m planning to do, but I know I’m in danger now. Maya doesn’t stir as blue light spills over the bed.
Calmly, without any effort to stop myself, I open up the Roof app and open my messages.
I stare at the picture of his face, the green T-shirt, the laughter in his eyes, and then I press Contact Host.
Our relationship was very real to me, too, I type into the chat box. Then I press send.