The One Day You Were My Husband (13)

I stop dead in the middle of the kitchen, bowl in hand.

“Oh my…oh, shit.”

I look behind me, as if Maya is somehow in this room, not five thousand miles away, walking by a frozen lake. How has this not occurred to me? Johan is a Roof owner, too, and the conference is in his city. How could I not have thought of this?

I didn’t think about this because, until a few days ago, I believed Johan would be in Thailand for the rest of his life.

“Oh God, Maya. I’ve enrolled, I’ve paid…But I—No. I can’t go, can I? I cannot possibly go.”

“No, you can’t,” she agrees. “Hey! Biscuit! Come back! BISCUIT.”

My inability to travel since becoming a mother has prevented me visiting my sister for years. I haven’t even met Biscuit. I feel Maya’s absence from my life as keenly as I felt it the day she left to go and start a new life with her partner, Eagle, back in 2010, when I’d just met Johan.

“I could contact the conference organizers and ask if he’s going?” I suggest weakly. The thought of seeing him fills me with unquantifiable anxiety but I’m angry, too. Stockholm was meant to be my time.

“Still no,” Maya says briskly. Her “no” has the sliding vowel sound of her permanent home, a reminder that she has bedded into American life, that I will never get her back.

“And Carrie. No matter how badly he did you over, no matter how badly he broke your heart, your trust, your career and, let’s face it, your life, for a while—before all of that happened, you loved him like he was the last man on earth. You adored him.”

I close my eyes. Out of nowhere, a memory has sprung of Johan and me lying in bed one morning. Our faces were close.

Your eyes are so beautiful, he said. Exactly the same color as my childhood cat’s. I asked him if this was a compliment. Oh, yes. She was crazy beautiful.

We lay there for what felt like hours, staring at each other, smiling. Then he opened his mouth to speak, and I thought he was going to say something serious like I love you. But instead he just said, Meow. And he placed a thumb carefully by the side of my eye, stroking my skin delicately, like you might stroke a cat’s paw. Meow.

“Don’t underestimate how much that could derail you,” my sister says. “If you somehow saw him. Or even if you didn’t. Just being there in the same city would be enough.”

I open the kitchen door quietly to check that Robin hasn’t crept downstairs, but the hallway door is still closed. My husband has never crept anywhere in his solid, no-nonsense life; it’s only my guilt that drives me to check.

“Have you told Mum?” Maya asks.

“Yes. She was gobsmacked. She actually got quite tearful.”

“Seriously?”

“Mmm.”

“That’s considerate of her,” Maya says. “Getting all misty-eyed about your ex-husband without any thought for you.”

“Oh, Maya, give her a break. Of course this is emotive! She dropped everything and flew to Thailand to help him!”

“Until she decided she wasn’t going to help him anymore and bundled you back on the first plane home.”

I sigh. Neither of us has an easy relationship with our mother—I don’t think anyone does—but Maya and Dad are particularly savage in the way they talk about her. Or at least, Dad was, until Mum became just a name in a sea of disparate memories.

“Mum only stopped helping Johan when we found out he’d lied to us all along. She was there for me, Maya. In my darkest hour—she came through. Don’t be so quick to forget that.”

Maya changes the subject. “What did she say about Stockholm? Does she think it’s a bad idea?”

“She thinks it’s a very good idea, actually. Meeting Yanika is far more important than a one percent chance of bumping into Johan were her words.”

“Typical.” I can hear barking in the background. “Biscuit!” Maya yells. “It’s a squirrel! Stop it!”

I add milk to my Rice Krispies, even though I don’t want so much as a spoonful.

All these years, and Johan can still seep in. He can still control my mood, my actions, even my ability to feed myself.

I tip the cereal into the food waste bin. Nobody will know. “I won’t go,” I say. “I’ll cancel. I…Maya, thank God I talked to you. This whole thing is madness.”

“It is. Oh, Carrie. You poor thing,” she says, all sympathy now she’s successfully intervened. “This is so huge. I can barely take it in. Are you OK?”

“Not really.”

“Are you eating?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, Carrie.”

“It’s been a little too much, on top of all the stress with Dad.” I pause. “Although, actually, it’s dialed down the worry about Dad slightly, which I feel awful about.”

“Stop it. You’re allowed to think about other things. Especially things as big as this.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, I’ll sort it out in my head. Eventually. I’ll cancel my flights right now. If my brain doesn’t implode first.”

“You are going to be fine,” my sister says firmly. “And your frighteningly large brain is not going to implode. Especially not over Johan bloody Kullberg.”