The One Day You Were My Husband (82)

I make myself smile as my son—my beautiful, gentle little boy—tells me about how he’s going to be allowed to stay up super-duper-wooper late on Monday because their plane doesn’t land until bedtime and THEN they have to get to Mummy’s apartment and THEN have dinner and THEN do some PLAYING! Maeve is apparently teaching herself to spin three Hula-Hoops at the same time outside.

I make myself smile and laugh; I match Raffy’s little whoops of excitement with my own. I clap my hands when he claps his and I have never hated myself more.

Robin is showing visible signs of stress. He’s terse, distracted, snappy with the kids. And I’m not surprised; I should never have agreed to disappear for two weeks when he has a full-time job and we don’t have any support. Nicola was going to do the odd school run, but she’s of course unavailable with Dad in hospital.

When he asks me how the cabin is and I say it’s lovely, he blows through his mouth like people do when they’re trying not to explode. “Sorry,” I add, but it doesn’t help.

“So has Maya gone with you?”

“No. She’s gone home.”

“Of course. Sorry. Well, nice for you to get some downtime.”

This poor exhausted man.

I cook an omelet with some winter herbs from Johan’s garden, using olive oil in a stone bottle that I know he will have chosen. Five minutes later, I put the whole thing in the bin. I can’t imagine ever eating again.



* * *



—

Mum calls just before 4 p.m. The sun has gone and the sea is now a pewter field of angles and flattened light; the color and depth of the water is long gone. Soon it will be totally dark, but there are illuminated buoys lining the boating channel and a couple of distant summer houses have their lights on. I’ve lit a fire. Robin taught me how to do that.

My mother’s voice is wary, and I can tell straight away that she knows why I’m calling. I hardly ever call her anyway, because she never picks up, but multiple calls from Sweden in one afternoon must have triggered all the warning systems.

“I ran into Kerstin. Johan’s mother,” is how I open. “Do you know why I’m calling?”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Carrie.”

But then the tears come and I can’t speak. Sobs rock my body.

Mum is silent through the whole thing, waiting for me to wind down. She says nothing until my sobbing comes to a halt, which means that there is no mistake. She has been expecting this call for many years.

When I have blown my nose she says, “Carrie, where are you?”

“I’m at Johan’s summer house near Stockholm.”

Then, after a pause, she asks, “And what did his mother say?”

“She said Johan was smuggling drugs into Thailand for you.”

“I see. And do you believe her?”

I close my swollen eyes. I have been delusional about Mum, Maya was right. I have forced myself to overlook her abandoning us as children, forced myself to see the best in her because the alternative was too much to face. Again and again I’ve ignored, smoothed over, been bought off, but not even I—fool that I’ve been—can move past this.

“Carrie?”

“Of course I don’t want to believe it. But where would Kerstin have got this from if it wasn’t true? She’s a good mother, a real mother. And I trust her.”

I hear something that sounds like a snort from the other end, which makes me want to smash my phone through the windows, right out into the freezing sea.

“Carrie. I did not send Johan into the country with methamphetamine. Of course I didn’t. You can’t really believe that, can you?”

“I can.”

“I sent Johan into the country with antibiotics for a rape charity. Prawat’s charity, in fact. I did not ask Johan to transport illegal drugs. I know nothing of that world. I know only its victims, the lives that are destroyed by it. I have spent many years of my life advocating for them.”

I sit down on a faded velvet chair.

Mum carries on. “I sent him in with antibiotics, and, yes, there was a small risk attached to that. I knew he didn’t have a medical license, I knew there could be an issue at customs, but this is something that happens all the time and never amounts to anything once the intention is explained. I warned him of that. But, Carrie. The important thing for you to understand is that I did not send him in with anything illegal.”

She pauses. “I’m shocked you’d think I would.”

“Because you’re such a great mother?” My voice catches. “You walked out on us when I was ten years old. Why should I trust your maternal instinct now?”

She doesn’t reply and I know I’ve wounded her.

“The main question here is why you asked Johan to go into Thailand with anything. Even antibiotics. Thailand, of all countries. How could you?”

Mum is quiet for a long while. “I did leave when your father asked me to. I am not perfect. Do I regret it? Yes. But, it was the best I could do at the time.”

I press a hand on my chest.

“Please, just tell me what happened.”

Mum sighs. “A medical charity in Myanmar supplied the antibiotics that Johan took to Prawat’s brother’s shop in Chinatown. You were with him. Chinatown is an easy place to make such a transaction; Prawat’s brother handled a lot of the aid we used to bring in.”