Page 10 of The One Day You Were My Husband
The similarities are actually uncanny.
Suspiciously so.
I move in closer to the computer, zooming as far as I can.
Hollowness spreads rapidly in my chest.
I look away, then back at the screen, and my hand flies up to my mouth as if to stop myself shouting out, because it’s him.
Johan Kullberg. The man I was married to for all of four hours. The man I believed to be my one great love.It’s him.
—
I don’t sleep.
I stay up all night, staring at Johan’s name on my computer screen, zooming in on the pictures of his house, pressing a hand hard down on my sternum to stop my heart erupting through my chest wall. Disbelief, paralysis. A moth fluttering at the windowsill, bars of moonlight rolling silently across the living table. I make my hourly trips to Raffy’s bedside as if in a dream.
It really is Johan. He got away. He got out of Thailand. And after all he put me through, he never found it within himself to pick up the phone and tell me.
—
When Robin doesn’t appear at 2 a.m. for the meteor shower, I give in and google Johan’s name.
I made a promise to myself when Robin and I got together that I would never google Johan again. It was disrespectful in a very obvious way to Robin, but it was harmful to me, too. No matter how many times I looked him up, the facts didn’t change, and my despair only grew in scope. Johan had betrayed and then abandoned me. He had put my career at risk and he’d consigned me to years of grief. Google did not hold any information that could change this.
He’s a recently qualified architect, I read. He lives in Stockholm. He has a partner and son. His employer’s self-conscious website says he’d write songs and go running if he had time for hobbies, but for now he’s taking on a broad portfolio of design projects and being a dad.
In the spasm of disbelief at seeing him here, leading a normal life, a thread of anger begins to unspool. He is an architect. Adad. A decent,upstanding family man with aspirations and a network of friends and colleagues. What a great-sounding guy!
The anger spreads like a mold spore. This comfortable new life he’s built for himself, without any thought for me. No email of explanation. No apology. How could he not have told me he’d got away? How am I finding out like this?How?
Google brings up four photos of him. Two from the time before he was dragged off by armed men, reported in the Swedish press: the Johan I married, the smiling, beautiful, free young man, full of tall stories.
One photo of him—thin and ill-looking with what look like blisters, or maybe bruises, on his face—from a Swedish newspaper article in 2016, when he apparently flew back to Sweden to start his life over. I don’t spend much time looking at this one. It’s too painful.
Tears of anger, of humiliation, are gathering. Even if Johan couldn’t find it in his heart to contact me, how could his parents have failed to? Six years have passed since he flew home. Why is it that not one person in that family cared enough to reach out to me?
And how has any of this come about in the first place? We’d been told there was no possibility of him getting out of there alive. What changed?
A tear escapes and runs down my cheek. I read and reread the articles but the Swedish language skills I talked so cheerfully about a few hours ago elude me and I falter, derailed by irrelevant conjugations.
The final picture of him is on the website of his architectural firm. Thoughtful, half smiling, an expression I once cherished. He’s wearing a T-shirt. He never really loved shirts.
The photo is black and white but I can still see his freckles, the impossible blue of his eyes. He has a beard, something I’ve never been sure about. He is still deceptively beautiful. After all that has happenedto him, after all these years, he is still very clearly the sort of man who causes people to stop and stare.
Six years back in the world. Clean water and real food. Freedom, safety. And achild. He has a little boy. A small Johan. I imagine stubby fingernails and wild curls. A stout little bottom, a freckled nose, that same way of seeing beneath someone’s skin. I catch myself smiling, but the shock soon washes back in. There is nothing sweet or redemptive about any of this.
Has he looked me up, stared at pictures of me online, like I am doing now? Does he care?
Abruptly, I close the laptop, stand up, sit down.
I have to remind myself that I wouldn’t have responded even if he had contacted me. The truth is that by the time he somehow escaped the sordid mess he created in Thailand, I was in love with someone else, someone trustworthy and kind. I had rebuilt myself, drawn a line. I would not have allowed Johan anywhere near my life if he’d reached out.
I go upstairs and check on Raffy again. I cuddle him and then I cuddle Maeve and I whisper “Sorry,” into their hair, again and again. I had no business googling Johan. I am amother. A wife. These two children, these infuriating, noisy, perfect little souls; and their dear father, my rock; our drafty old cottage on the southern slopes of the moor—they are what I chose. Not Johan, whoever he really is. I am sickened by my actions.
Too agitated to consider sleep, I steam clean the kitchen floor, spray down the food cupboards, scrub the bin. I make a solemn promise to my family that I will never look Johan Kullberg up again. I wash windows, trim browning plant leaves, then pause at 4 a.m. to fuel myself with strong tea, because I’ve barely eaten since lunchtime and I’m shaking.
Sometime before five, I sit back down at my laptop.
