‘I couldn’t stay.’

‘I know. I also thought I knew what loss was – until you disappeared.’

The words stripped back her defences, peeling back the layers she had worked so hard to close. ‘Emil –’

‘I had to basically beg your friends to tell me where you were. When they wouldn’t, I resorted to bribery.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not the sort of thing the New Me would condone, but I was desperate. Tove calls me her stalker although I actually think she’s quite pleased to have one . . .’

It was a quip, but she couldn’t smile. Her emotions were rushing through her like floodwaters, and the smile in his eyes faded too. ‘When they said you were with Mats.’

‘Not like that.’

‘I know that now.’ His eyes burned. ‘But I wouldn’t have blamed you if it had been like that. The way I treated you . . . rejecting you, pushing you away, trying to pretend you meant nothing when in reality, you were everything. I was chasing an idea, something that, deep down, I knew I didn’t want – but it was all I knew . . .’ He took a step in again, but this time she didn’t retreat. ‘I felt so alone after I woke up properly. I didn’t remember the meeting with Linus at all and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t come. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. Hanna kept making excuses, saying I needed to get better first, so I channelled everything into that. Getting back to my family, becoming well enough that they would see me again . . . It became my entire life. My only focus. It was absolutely impossible for me to imagine that there might be another path. And even when you were right there, showing me . . . I couldn’t trust in it.’ He swallowed. ‘Not until it was too late, and I’d ruined it all.’

Rivulets of rain ran down the planes of his cheeks and she knew what he was leading up to.

‘Emil, I get it, really,’ she said sadly. ‘I understood it then, too. But even if you and Max and Hanna are all good now, it’s still too complicated for me to go back to. Hanna was my boss. Linus was the child in my care. I can’t . . . step out of being the nanny to them.’

‘You can.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, they already know—’ he blurted. ‘I told Hanna. About us. About how I felt about you.’

Bell’s mouth parted. ‘You did what?’ she gasped. ‘Why would you do that?’ She glanced across at Linus, seeing him watch them closely from the safety of the awnings.

‘Well, for one thing, I had to account for why Linus and I wanted to cross the world to find you. For another, I thought she should have fair warning before I did everything in my considerable power to bring you back.’

It was seemingly another joke, something to buy time as she absorbed the news that Hanna knew. Hanna knew. She ran her hands over her – wet – face. ‘Shit – oh my God, what was her reaction?’ she winced, wanting and not wanting to know all at once.