Page 61 of The One Day You Were My Husband
Johan did look better. In the past three days, he had improved visibly and he walked to the counter unaided. He saw me and smiled, which threw me into still greater confusion. Johan Kullberg was the only person I truly knew; it was unthinkable that he could be involved with crime rings or drugs.
And yet.
“Hey, Carrie,” he said softly, before I handed the phone to Lucas. “How are you doing? Are you OK? Are you sleeping?”
I told him I was, but he knew I was lying.
Lucas, holding the phone receiver between us—and, very decently, talking in English—had much to impart from the Swedish Embassy. There was now an open line between the Swedish foreign office and the Thai authorities, he said, although nobody was giving much away about the sort of conversations they were having. “But we are working hard to getting your trial to happen with more speed than is normal, and we think there is progress.”
After a brief catch-up, Johan gestured at me to take the phone.
For several moments we just stared at each other.
“Carrie,” he said quietly. “I’m so sorry I was hard on you last time.”
“Nobody’s at their best right now,” I replied gratefully. This was the Johan I had married. I slapped a mosquito dead on my thigh. “Don’t even think about it. You look a lot better—do you feel better?”
“Yes. I was only two days into the antibiotics on your last visit. I’m still weak but I’m largely OK. Physically, at least.”
We looked at each other for another few moments. Johan should have been back in Myanmar, diving, in a few days. I should have been heading back to his flat in a few days—ourflat—to study, prepare, watch the leaves turn gold and the streets fill with school kids.
Then: “I love you, Carrie,” he said miserably. He held the phone with both hands, as if he were holding me. Lucas, kindly, unperched himself from his metal stool and moved away.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. Today’s phone was working perfectly. “But, Johan, please. I can’t take anymore of this. Lucas has just told me you’re being charged with smuggling methamphetamine in from Myanmar. And now my trust have called me into some possible disciplinary thing later on. I have to know what’s happening.”
“Your trust? You mean your hospital?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes. “No…Oh God, Carrie, I’m so sorry.”
I couldn’t see his legs, but I could tell one of them was jiggling.
“Carrie, listen. If there’s trouble with your job you really have to go back to London. This is going to drag on for months. Years, probably. You absolutely must not,cannotsacrifice all those years of training and backbreaking work. Not for me. Not for…well, this.” He gestured around us at the peeling paint, the stained wall his brother was leaning against, a hostile watchtower crouching under the scorching sun.
“You can’t just send me away,” I said. “You need to talk to me.”
He sighed. “Here’s the headline, Carrie. I made some poor decisions. Very poor. In doing so I’ve ruined my life, and my family’s lives. But I can’t bear to ruin yours, too. You need to go.”
He stood up.
My heart plummeted. “Hang on. What? Johan…?”
After a moment, he sat down again. Even with the corridor space between us, I could see his hands were unsteady. “I did bringyabainto the country, yes,” he said. “And I could try to explain it to you, but I don’t think you could ever understand. The bigger picture, it’s…” He looked away. “Well, it’s big.”
“Who was it for? Were you being paid? Are they paying you now? Is that where your money’s coming from?”
“I can’t talk to you about the other people. I can’t talk to you about any of this, Carrie. It’s not safe.”
I sighed. “You’ve got to give me some more information. We can’t help you if you won’t tell us anything.”
“I haven’tgotto give you information,” he said after a long silence. His leg was jiggling again. “And you’d be a lot better off just leaving here. I mean it. As soon as you can.”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
Lucas appeared at my shoulder. I handed him the phone.
They spoke in Swedish for a bit. I had always loved hearing Johanspeak Swedish, and thanks to my lessons I understood some of what they were saying. It was mostly about Johan’s parents, how worried Lucas was about them. Further up the row of visitors’ stools, a verbal fight had broken out between a woman and the man she was visiting. He was covered, shaved head to toes, in tattoos, his eyes dangerous lamps in a thick tangle of inky patterns.
