‘Ah!’ he said interestedly. ‘And when will you be four?’

‘October the eleventeenth.’

He laughed, light-hearted and relaxed. ‘Lucky you. That’s the best date in October.’

‘Off you go now, girls, have a go on the helter-skelter,’ Hanna said. A moment later, as the girls could be heard tearing over the lawn, she added, ‘Emil, do you want to lie down? You look pained.’

‘You are as white as a sheet,’ Max said, chipping in.

‘I’m fine,’ he replied in a flinty tone. ‘What I want to do is talk.’

There was a deafening silence, and Bell realized, from her spot scrunched up on the floor, that she was holding her breath too. This was it. He was doing it. He was going to tell Max everything and blow apart their little family unit, even as the girls played just metres away.

She wished she could get on her knees and peer over the windowsill to see Hanna’s face right now. Was she reaching for his hand under the table, beseeching him not to do it, to give her more time? Because she wasn’t ready yet, Bell knew that. She was confused, certainly, balancing on a tightrope in storm-force winds, but to choose between them . . . Emil might have the certainty of his convictions, but Hanna didn’t. Not yet.

There was the sound of a gasp again, a chair being scraped back.

‘Right, that’s it.’ Nina’s voice intruded. ‘You’re coming with me. The talking can wait. We’ve got all day for that. You need to lie down, even if only for ten minutes.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘No. You’re not.’

There were more sounds of scraping, a low groan followed by irritable tuts. Footsteps, retreating.

A silence.

Then Max’s voice, calm, measured, tight. ‘So, are you going to let him tell me what the hell’s going on, Hanna? Or do you want to get in there first?’

Ingarso, Stockholm archipelago, 24 June 2012

The pen rested in the cradle of his finger and thumb, the teal ink showing through on the front side of the receipt. It was tiny. Innocuous. Unremarkable. But he already knew that scrap of paper and those four words were going to change all their lives.

The hidden beach, midnight.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Bell stopped on the landing as the two dark-haired heads appeared above the top stair.

‘Come on. You were getting worked up, I could see it,’ Nina panted, Emil’s arm around her shoulder as they climbed slowly together. ‘You had that crazed glint in your eyes you always got when you were about to swear at me as kids.’

‘I was not about to swear at you,’ he muttered.

‘No, but you were about to do something else just as mad. Now take a ten-minute time-out and cool yourself down.’

‘I’m not a child!’

They stepped onto the landing and Nina glanced up, as though sensing her presence. Bell suspected she had the finely tuned instincts of an attack dog. ‘Oh. You’re there, Bell.’