He had no idea. So he sat in silence, letting the thudding, dull sounds of the motors from the vessel’s engine room merge with his confusion.
‘Maybe you want me to comfort you in some way?’
‘You have to excuse me, but I just don’t feel like it. And to tell you the truth, I don’t really understand why there should be any reason, at least not unless you’ve been lying to me the whole time.’
She got off the bed and put on a jumper from her suitcase. Hasty movements, as if she wanted to get out of there as quickly as he did. As she walked towards the bathroom he saw her run her hand over her left cheek. So much she had believed and hoped. And so much he had wanted and promised. A wave of tenderness passed through him. Above all else he didn’t want to hurt her. She deserved a little happiness after all she had been through, but to his amazement he discovered that he wasn’t ready for her dreams.
She stopped outside the bathroom door but didn’t look at him.
‘I’ll take the ferry back from Abo tonight.’
Then she stepped through the doorway and closed the door carefully behind her.
At the day-care centre there was no visible trace of Sunday’s meeting. Kerstin had seen to it that everything should be as normal as possible, and she stopped Eva on her way out the door to thank her once again for her efforts, for managing to quell the angry feelings and preventing the meeting from degenerating. And Eva had smiled self-consciously and assured her that she had only done what felt right and proper.
Axel was sitting in the back seat. She hadn’t told her parents why she was stopping by. That it wasn’t just to have coffee. She hadn’t revealed that the real reason was that she needed to borrow some money. A lot of money. And the thought that she would have to tell them all about what was going on, that Henrik was about to leave her for another woman, filled her with deep shame.
‘Mamma, look at what I got today.’
She cast a glance in the rear view mirror and saw something brown and red in Axel’s hand.
‘Oh, how nice. Who gave you that?’
‘I don’t know his name.’
How was she ever going to admit to her parents that Henrik didn’t want her any more, without shattering all their illusions about her. She knew that it would hurt them as much as it did her. Maybe even more. Most of all she didn’t want to disappoint them. Not after all they had done for her, all they had managed to give her.
Which she would not be able to give her son.
‘Don’t you know his name? Is he in one of the other classes?’
‘No, he was tall. As tall as you.’
Strange that Linda’s substitute would give presents to the children.
‘Was he working at the day-care today?’
‘No, he was standing outside the fence by the woods and then he called me while I was on the swing and said he was going to give me something nice.’
The car slowed without her being aware that she had put her foot on the brake. She pulled over to the kerb, pulled on the hand-brake and turned to look at him.
‘Let me see it!’
He handed her a little brown teddy bear with a red heart on its stomach.
‘What else did he say?’
‘Nothing special. He said I was good at swinging and that he knew a playground where there were a whole bunch of swings and a slide that was really long and maybe we could drive out there sometime if I wanted and if you said it was OK.’
A tight band was being strapped around her chest. She tried to keep her temper and not raise her voice and frighten him.
‘Axel, I told you not to talk to grown-ups that you don’t know. And you absolutely must not take anything that any grown-up wants to give you.’
‘But he knew my name. Then it doesn’t count, right?’
She had to swallow, take a deep breath.
‘How old was he? Was he like Pappa or was he more like Grandpa?’
‘Like Pappa but maybe not quite as old.’
‘How old was he then?’
‘Maybe seventy-five.’
‘Did any of the teachers see you talking to him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I’m not sure. Why do you sound so angry?’
How could she ever explain? The thought that anything might ever happen to him made her stop breathing.
‘I’m not angry. I just worry a lot.’
‘But he was nice. Why can’t I talk to him?’
‘Did you recognise him? Have you ever seen him before?’
‘I don’t think so. But he said maybe he would come by again.’
‘Now you have to listen to me carefully, Axel. If he comes by again, I want you to go and get one of the teachers so she can talk to him. Will you promise to do that? You mustn’t talk to him alone ever again.’
He sat in silence, picking at the red heart on the bear’s stomach.
‘Promise me that, Axel.’
‘All right!’
She took a deep breath and reached for her phone. All other thoughts were put aside except for the habitual instinct to call Henrik and tell him what had happened. Then in the next moment it struck her that he was on a secret love cruise with their son’s day-care teacher and thought he had more urgent activities to devote himself to than worrying about his son. From now on she was alone, she just had to get used to it. She put down the phone and decided to call Kerstin tonight after Axel was asleep and ask them to pay more attention in future. Or she might consider keeping him away from there until they had got hold of the stranger who knew Axel’s name.
That problem was solved as soon as she told her parents about the incident. They offered at once to let Axel stay with them for a few days instead. Until they were reassured that the man wouldn’t come back.
They were sitting in the kitchen with their coffee cups and a freshly baked sponge cake, and everything could have been just as timeless and secure as it used to be whenever she came back to her childhood home. Instead she now sat with heart pounding, filled with guilt and shame over her own shortcomings.
Axel had sat down by the old, out-of-tune piano in the living room and they could hear him clinking the keys, stubbornly trying to find the right notes to ‘Old Man Noah’, which she persisted in trying to teach him.
She had to tell them now, while Axel couldn’t hear what awaited him. That his pappa would be moving out, that he wouldn’t be living at home any more. Time after time she tried, but how could she find the words when she was forced to admit her defeat? That she had been rejected. Dumped. That she was undesirable. Not good enough for her man any more.
She sat there, growing more and more morose the more Axel figured out ‘Old Man Noah’, and she knew that time was running out.
‘How are things really?’
She met her mother’s gaze, realised that she knew something was wrong.
‘All right, I suppose.’
There was a brief silence as her parents looked at each other, that look of total understanding that made all words superfluous, a look that she had wanted to be able to share with someone her whole life.
‘Now, we don’t want to interfere, but if there’s something you want to talk about then . . .’
Her father let the sentence die unfinished and put the ball in her court. She felt her hands shaking and wondered if they noticed. Never in her life had she believed that she would ever have a hard time asking them for help, telling them the truth.
