Chapter Thirty-Two
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…thing between us is just part of the shock of being back 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.”
“And you’re happy?”
“Yes,” I say, truthfully. “Are you?”
He pauses. “Yes. Mostly. My stepson, Matteo, he’s amazing. And Freja and I have been very happy. Although—well, it’s been tricky lately, but I hope we can move on through.”
I stay silent.
“She knew something was up after I saw you in January. She asked what was going on with me and I told her we’d bumped into each other. She was upset.”
“She knows that was it, though? That we just chatted for half an hour?”
“Yes. But she wasn’t convinced it had stopped there. For me, at least.”
I ignore the sensations in my body. It always was this way with him; it means nothing. Besides, we’ve made an agreement now. Whatever it was that has not happened, it’s stopped.
“How long have you two been together?”
“Just over five years. Freja’s a physio. She helped when I got back. My hand didn’t heal very well after I lost a finger. My arm was all out of whack, too.”
I smile briefly, even though none of this is funny. “You met another woman in a hospital? Seriously?”
“God no. She was private. And it was nothing like when I met you.”
I see him register what he’s just said, the momentary alarm, then the resignation. Silently, we agree to let it go.
The fire I lit earlier is beginning to fade, glowing only softly now, and Johan gets up to put on another log.
I watch his back, grateful for a moment’s pause.
I used to drape myself over that back. Long and lean, always warm.
I’m relaxing, I’d say when he asked if I was planning to move.
You’re always telling me to slow down, and this is a good spot for me.
“Do you get on well with your stepson?” I ask. I don’t want to think about those times.
Johan smiles, easily now. “I do. He was only three when Freja and I met. He’s an absolute terror. I love that little guy.”
He’ll be a great stepfather. I imagine he’s like Leo’s dad from my kids’ class. He’s always taking Leo off to the moor to wild camp, or showing him how to make cool things in his workshop, or teaching him bass guitar. Robin and the other dads hate him.
“I’m not staying,” Johan says, blowing on the embers as he waits for the log to catch.
“Freja’s gone to see some old school friends in Lund for a few days.
Matteo wanted to go to my parents’ house for a sleepover—I need to join them in case he wakes in the night.
I just needed to—I don’t know. Straighten things out, in person. No confusing text messages.”
Brave young flames spark and creep upward. Wind buffets the side of his cabin, willow branches dance frenziedly outside the back windows. Johan closes the door of the woodburner and straightens up. We look at each other for a long, long time.
“Right then, Carrie Cole,” he says. “I’ll go. And—thank you. I’m glad we were able to clear that up.”
Before I know it, I’m on my feet. “No. Absolutely not.”
“I’m sorry?”
“No. You can’t drive all the way down here just to talk about something that hasn’t happened. It’s important to me, too, but our chemistry is not a priority right now.”
He puts his car keys back in his pocket and leans against the front door.
“You broke up with me with no real explanation. You being in prison wasn’t a good enough reason for me then and it isn’t now.
I know about my mum and the antibiotics but I still don’t know how or why you took the illegal drugs into Thailand.
Why you lied and said you were guilty if you weren’t.
How exactly your conviction was overturned.
And, Jesus Christ, I have a right to know!
It was my life, too! My whole life, Johan! ”
Outside, the wind gains speed. Johan is frozen, standing in front of the door.
“I can’t tolerate anymore secondhand information about why my life went up in flames. I need to hear the whole thing and I need to hear it from you.”