Unlocking the house, she ran back in again, eyes fixed on the handset and the glowing blue digital screen. It would go to voicemail any –
‘Hello?’ she panted, reaching it just in time.
‘Hanna? Hanna Mogert?’
Her shoulders sagged. ‘No, I’m sorry, she’s not here. Who is calling, please?’ she asked in brisk Swedish.
‘This is Dr Sorensen from the Larna Klinik.’ The woman’s voice was officious and clear. As a psychotherapist, Hanna worked with a lot of different institutions and facilities, although this one was new to Bell. ‘I tried her cell just now but it wouldn’t connect.’
‘Yes, she’s rushing to work. She probably didn’t hear it in her bag. Can I take a message for her?’ She tried not to sound as impatient as she felt. Glancing back, she saw Linus on the top step, a look of panic dawning on his beautiful face, lips moving rapidly as he tore through his repetitions again. ‘Ninety-six,’ she mouthed to him.
‘It would be preferable to speak to her directly. It is urgent.’
Bell suppressed a sigh. ‘Well, you’re welcome to keep trying her. But she’s dealing with an emergency herself, so I’m not sure how contactable she will be this morning.’
There was a pause down the line as options were considered, weighed, discarded, accepted. ‘And to whom am I speaking?’
‘I’m her nanny.’
‘Of long standing?’
Bell frowned. Was she being interviewed? ‘Three years.’
‘I see.’ That appeared to pass muster. ‘Well, then, if you could pass a message on to her, please.’
‘Sure. It was Dr Sorensen, you said . . .’ she muttered, grabbing a biro that had been left beside a half-done crossword and writing it on the top of the newspaper. ‘From the . . .?’
‘Larna Klinik. She has my number.’
‘Okay.’
‘It is really very urgent. If you can please pass on to her –’
Linus stepped back over the threshold, eyes wide, tears threatening. ‘Bell, I can’t remember them. They’ve gone.’
‘– so the sooner she can get here the better.’
What? Bell blinked at Linus blindly as the two simultaneous pronouncements clashed and clattered in her brain, each one vying for her attention. She turned away from him, certain she had misheard the voice on the phone.
‘I’m sorry, that makes no sense. I think you must have the wrong number . . .’ But even as she said it, she frowned; the doctor had clearly asked for Hanna Mogert. ‘Hello? . . . Dr Sorensen? . . . Are you there?’
Chapter Two
The day ticked past with leaden boots. Somehow she had managed to get the kids to school and kindergarten only a few minutes past the bell; somehow she had managed to tidy the kitchen, buy lingonberry jam, make dinner and get the ironing done before collecting the girls again and giving them lunch. Somehow she had managed to sing songs and read stories to them, and even more surprisingly, somehow she had managed to get them to tidy their bedroom. But what she hadn’t managed was to get hold of Hanna.
Ninny, her secretary, had confided that Hanna was dealing with a patient in the midst of a psychotic break – but that if it was about the kids, she could get hold of her for Bell. Reluctantly, Bell had declined. It wasn’t about the kids, and she didn’t think her message – bewildering though it was – could compete with the needs of someone in such acute mental distress. Not to mention, it might all turn out to be a mistake anyway. Perhaps Dr Sorensen had in fact been trying to get hold of another Hanna Mogert, a Hanna to whom this scenario would make perfect sense.
Max had called in a short while ago to talk to the kids before going on to his client’s dinner; but although the message had sat poised at her throat, ready to be shared and diluted and expelled, explained and clarified and laughed upon, Bell had stayed silent. It might just be that he was the very last person she should tell.
Holding a coffee cup between cold hands, she glanced anxiously at the kitchen clock for the thousandth time. But it didn’t matter how often she checked it, she couldn’t seem to make those little hands move around more quickly. Five twenty-five. Linus was in the playroom downstairs, dejectedly watching TV, having lost the eights not to Nils but to quiet little Brigitte Carlsson.
His teacher talk was in just over half an hour, and with no word from Hanna at all, Bell was resigned to the fate of her evening plans. She had already texted Ivan asking for a rain check, but taking the girls out after dinner to sit quietly whilst she listened to Linus’s school report was not going to be fun. She would need to find something to occupy them – Elise was a terrible fidget, and Tilde was always prone to getting overtired after supper.
Her hand trailed over the sludgy grey-green handrail as she skipped downstairs, past the crowded gallery of black-and-white family photographs which had been carefully framed, but always seemed to have one or two askew. She stopped and straightened a small one of Hanna and Linus taken when he was a toddler: they were sitting on a sandy beach, their matching blonde hair streaming in the wind as their cheeks pressed together, eyes slitted against the bright sun. It was a snapshot of joy, and all of the other pictures told the same story – that this was a happy family.
Was it?
She frowned, continuing down into the basement. The washing machine in the utility to the left was drumming away quietly, tossing and turning and soaping and rinsing the children’s clothes from their muddy play in the park yesterday. The door left ajar into the small WC gave a glimpse of the patterned Moroccan clay tiles Hanna had fallen in love with on a trip to Marrakesh with Max.
She peered around the playroom door. It had high-level windows that allowed natural daylight to, if not flood the room, certainly trickle into it; all-white walls and a pale larch floor helped too. To her relief, it was still tidy. More days of her life than she wanted to count had been devoted to taming this one space, but for the moment at least, the paint brushes and pencils were still in their pots on the lime-green Ikea craft table; jigsaws and books were stacked in colourful neatness along the wall-to-wall bookcase; there were no tiny Sylvanian Family characters hiding in the bright swirls of the rug, waiting for a bare foot to tread on them.
Linus was lying on the red beanbag, a packet of sour peach sweets perched on his tummy and his curls splayed out. Only a heap of Lego bricks lay scattered to his far side, the progress on a half-made F1 car no doubt stalled by the absence of a single, vital piece.
He was watching Doctor Who in English; all the children were fully bilingual with barely a trace of an accent, and Bell’s own Englishness had been one of the reasons they’d been so keen to employ her, even though she’d never nannied before. Hanna and Max had asked her to always converse with the children in English, even though she was fluent in Swedish herself; her grandmother had hailed from Gothenburg on the west coast and until the day she’d died, when Bell was twelve, had always insisted on addressing her in her native language.
‘Hey.’
He twisted to look back at her, his eyes seeming wider than ever in his upside-down position.
‘You ready? We should head off in a few minutes.’
‘Oh . . . I guess.’ He turned away again, and she saw the disappointment in the stiffness of his little body. He was a perfectionist and a worrier, always seeming to expect so much of himself.