The Hidden Beach

KAREN SWAN

Contents

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Part Two

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

The Secret Path

In loving memory of

Sophie Lowry

‘I had a dream I was awake and I

woke up to find myself asleep’

Stan Laurel

Prologue

Stockholm, March 2013

In the final moments of his life, it was her face that filled his mind. Images spun round and round, of the light catching her pale hair, her head thrown back so that her long neck was exposed, eyes slitted with heady pleasure. Everything about her was radiance and beatific grace, as though she was not solid at all but a heavenly conceit, a constellation of stardust fallen from the skies into one deft, perfect form . . .

In seeing all this, there was much that he missed – the early autumn puddle glinting darkly, deeply; the low, discernible electric burr of the tram behind; the singular scream that pitched into the air and tore through the city’s sky. He knew none of it.

For him there was only light.

And then darkness.

Part One

Chapter One

Stockholm, December 2018

Bell wheeled through the lights, standing on the pedals, her trousers tucked into her socks and her breath still coming hard from the last hill. She was one of the few cyclists on the road actually pedalling; all around her were commuters on their electric bikes and scooters, looking a lot more composed – and a lot less late. At least the Baltic blast that had chilled her as she’d stepped out of her apartment ten minutes ago was now merely notional, her cheeks stained with a laboured flush.

She swerved right into a narrow street and, leaning harder on the handlebars, began her ascent up the short but steep hill that she would be walking straight back down again in a few minutes’ time. Glossy black cars flanked either side of the road, some with drivers already in the front seats – for this was embassy-land, the handsome townhouses painted in deeply pigmented shades of loden, umber and terracotta red.

Reaching the top with a gasp, she finally allowed herself to sink back onto her seat again, knowing she could glide the rest of the way from here. The background drone of rush-hour traffic became muted, the birdsong and buzz of her spinning wheels amplifying as the streets fanned out, becoming wider and brighter. Parked Volvos, Audis and Jaguars stood outside plain but generous townhouses, as indicative of the family neighbourhood as the playground set atop the small, anomalous hill in the middle of the square: a rocky outcrop that the bulldozers had been unable to flatten when the city was being developed, so they had been forced to build around it instead. Bell loved the curious anomaly – the city’s smooth, ordered surfaces disrupted by a jagged poke of something older and wilder. Feral. It was probably the reason why families had settled in this district in the first place. There wasn’t a child in Stockholm who didn’t love to run and climb over it; teenagers snuck their first cigarettes and kisses on it . . .