The Way Back Ch. 03

The hotel was comfortable and the staff efficient and attentive, and in the case of the receptionist strikingly beautiful. She was almost a caricature of a Swedish beauty, ash blond hair, deep blue eyes and a statuesque figure. She had a face that demanded to be gazed at in wonder and this we dutifully did.

She was clearly used to the treatment and smiled indulgently as she took us through the registration process in wonderfully lilting English. She did not react in any way to my appearance which sent her up in my estimation. At this point there came another revelation.

She turned and spoke to another woman behind the desk and when she turned back I thanked her and asked her where the lift was.

"Turn left along that corridor and you'll find it on your left."

"Thank you."

"You speak good Swedish. Do you come from Stockholm?" she said in English.

At this point I stopped dead and looked puzzled. David laughed.

"He didn't know he could speak Swedish!" he told the girl, "and I don't think he realised he was speaking it! He's had a bad accident and lost his memory."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I can see you have suffered a lot," she said, this time I knew it was Swedish.

"Your eyes are quite beautiful, so kind and deep. Perhaps your parents spoke Swedish at home? Your accent is very good."

I stammered that I didn't know, but that they were Swedish.

"Well," she said, "if there's anything you need, ask for Greta."

"That's my daughter's name."

"Oh, you have a wife and family?"

"A family and an ex-wife."

"I'm sorry. Anything you want, anything, just ask."

David asked what we'd been talking about, and when I relayed the conversation he nudged my arm as we ascended in the lift.

"You're in there!" he laughed. "When she said anything, she meant anything! I could tell by her expression and the tone of voice!"

"Patricia," I said solemnly, giving him a hard look.

"Point taken," but he laughed again, "It just that I would have thought that Greta is the chance of a lifetime."

"Trish is the chance for a lifetime," I replied in a lighter tone. "She's more than enough for me."

"That's what the three of us were saying about you before we met you at the pub. You are not the cheating kind of man. You are one of the faithful ones. I still think it's in your genes."

We arrived at our rooms and I invited him in for a nightcap and a plan of action for the morning. Our PI, Mr Hultmann, had already asked if we could see Mrs Alsvik the next day, so we needed to phone to arrange a time. David did this and we were set to meet her in the lobby of the hotel at 10.30. She had taken the day off work, for which David thanked her profusely.

When he rang off we discussed tactics for the meeting.

"What's the best approach, d'you think?" asked David.

"Well, you're the lawyer. I thought you were trained in this sort of thing."

"OK," said David decisively. "We could ask her what she remembered of the day and take it from there."

"She probably won't recognise me. If she's responsible for my beating up we need to be careful."

"So we give her the chance to tell us what she knows, then ask questions gently. I think we can find out quite a lot. We should wait to reveal who you are until we know more."

I thought that was sensible. So we finished our drinks and retired to bed.

After breakfast the next morning, I went for a walk alone through the snow. It did not seem very cold, and indeed it wasn't -- for Sweden, about the same as at home, except for the snow. I returned refreshed and knocked on David's door. He was ready and had paper, pen and recorder.

"I won't use them unless she's cooperative," he said. "Any statement she makes on paper could be useful though."

We sat in the lobby and waited, the photo in front of us. David saw her first and went to meet her, bringing her over.

"If you don't mind, Mrs Alsvik, I won't introduce my friend for the moment. You'll soon realise why. Can you humour me?"

"Yes, of course. Now how may I help you?"

"It's initially a missing person enquiry. I'm the gentleman's lawyer and I've got to get as much information together as I can for a court case. You were in York at the end of August just over two years ago?"

"That would be during the races? Yes."

"I have a photograph of a CCTV record showing you with someone. Can you tell me anything about him?" He showed her the photo.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

"You remember him?"

"Yes, and he is not my favourite person. He was so good and he said he would keep in touch and -- nothing. I tried his mobile after one then two weeks, but it was not in operation."

"Can you tell me the story? It would help me a great deal, and may I record it?"

She nodded and began. "We had been in York for a week on holiday. Well, half holiday, half a little work for Lorenz, he is my husband. Lorenz had to see a client for an hour, while I checked out of the hotel.

"Allan, the man in the photo, heard me give my name and he asked me, in Swedish, if I was one of the Vasteras Alsviks, and did I know the Jonssons? Of course my maiden name was Jonsson as well, and it turned out he was a cousin of mine. We were both checking out of the hotel, so after doing that we went for a coffee -- that's the picture you have there. We had just met.

"He wanted to know why the families had lost touch, and I was able to give him the sad history of our grandfathers falling out; they were brothers.

"Well, suddenly I realised I had to get to the station or we would miss our train. Lorenz was nowhere to be seen. Allan gave me his mobile phone to call him. He, Lorenz that is, told me to go to the station and we would meet there.

"Allan said he was going to the station as well, so we went together. Then I had a thought. Lorenz had the credit cards, and I could not book the train to London. Allan was wonderful; he offered to buy the tickets for us.

"So I hugged him, that's the second photo. Then we got a taxi to the station and he bought the tickets for us. I asked him to call or write and gave him our address and email address and phone number. He promised.

"At the last minute Lorenz arrived and we rushed to the train and got on board. We had gone out of the station when I realised that we had not repaid him. We still haven't. I did not get his address, only his cell phone number. Does that help? I cannot think how."

"Well, Mrs. Alsvik--"

"Please call me Felicia."

"Well Felicia, Allan was the one who went missing. In fact after those photos nothing was heard of him. He disappeared."

She paled and her hand went to her mouth. David hastened to put her mind at rest.

"It's all right, Felicia, he's been found, but I'm afraid you're in for a shock. He was found badly beaten up in Newcastle about four hours later."

Felicia suddenly looked up and over at me, "Allan?" she asked tremulously.

"Yes, Felicia, I'm afraid so. They did a thorough job on me as you can see. It's a long story. It's been a long road to where you can see me now, and I'm afraid I've no recollection of you or anything that happened that day. That's what we're trying to do, put together the story of what happened to me. Those photos were used by my wife to divorce me. It was assumed that we'd run off together."

Felicia was looking more and more shocked.

"David," I said urgently. "Get us some drinks. Felicia here needs one."

"Coffee!" she hastened to say. "I am driving and the laws are strict."

David got three coffees and we drank in silence for a while. Then Felicia seemed to gather herself.

"Your wife should be told. Do you want me to phone her?"

"Too late for that, Felicia," I said tonelessly. "She's arranged to marry someone else. I don't want to mess up her life again."

"But it wasn't you!"

"She's making a new life. He's a nice bloke from what I know of him. I don't want to make trouble for them."

She thought for a while, then, "You must both come back to the house and have dinner with us." She smiled broadly. "We can pay you for the train tickets!"

She would take no refusal and we were driven to her house, where we spent the day until Lorenz came home. Part of the time was taken with David typing out Felicia's statement and getting her to swear to it and seal it as an affidavit. Lorenz had his story similarly recorded and attested.

Of course they had to hear the whole story of my life subsequent to our meeting. I was getting better and better at telling it. They were delighted I'd found Trish but sorry that it seemed a limited liaison.

In return Felicia told me the history of the family, coming eventually to the story of our respective grandfathers.

It turned out that my grandfather was engaged to a pretty young thing. He had to go away on the family firm's business and when he returned some months later, he found his brother, Felicia's grandfather, had got the girl pregnant and married her. The brothers never spoke to each other again. My grandfather was paid off and left Vasteras for good. He married, and the couple came to England where they had a son, my father, but no other children.The two sides of the family totally lost contact.

I learned much later that my father visited Sweden in his early twenties and met my mother there, and after a whirlwind romance over two weeks, she returned to Britain with him! My mother and father regularly went to Sweden with me to visit her relatives, but I lost contact after her death. Since I spoke Swedish fairly fluently, they must have spoken it at home.

We parted from Felicia and Lorenz with mutual promises to keep in touch. I promised not to get beaten up on the way home, and this time they had my flat address and phone number, and I had theirs.

After we returned to the hotel by taxi, we adjourned to the bar for extremely expensive drinks -- nothing extravagant, all alcoholic drinks are expensive in Sweden! It was time to consider what we had heard.

We agreed that Felicia and Lorenz had cleared up one mystery. She was not a femme fatale luring me to a mugging with her sexual favours. Nor had I been having an affair. However it brought us no nearer to my beating up, or the reason for it, beyond a straight mugging, but that in turn was countered by my mysterious arrival in Newcastle, dumped from the red car.

"There's another thing," said David taking a sip of his beer. "These photos from the CCTV footage don't show Lorenz anywhere. Why not? He must have walked through the station and joined you both. Why didn't the PI find those shots?"

"If you think about it," I reflected, "the PI would have got the hotel shots first, and Lorenz would already have left. So he wouldn't have been looking for a third person. He would have stopped looking once he got me and Felicia at the booking office, and Lorenz, from what he said, met us briefly there and then they ran out of the booking area and straight onto the train.

"The CCTV could have missed him altogether. Colin said the CCTV only takes frames every so many seconds, so it's not like a film. Shame though. It would have made things much clearer for Derek and Ann if Lorenz had been seen with Felicia and me, and shaking hands with me. Ann might have still been waiting for news, she might have looked harder for me; even found me."

"Unlikely. I think the chance of her finding you in Newcastle was non-existent. Don't forget you had no identification on you and you weren't exactly recognisable!"

I had to agree. So we had to be content with what we had. The next day we were on our way home. That day was really cold. We visited Jan Thomasson, the buyer I'd done business with in York, at his office in Stockholm, but beyond being appalled at my condition and expressing his condolences, he was unable to help. He had left the hotel earlier that day, and in any case didn't see me because he was at the races. He was able to attest that I had not consorted with any women while at the hotel. So at least I had three different witnesses who agreed I had been faithful to Ann all the time.

That was of little use; it would not affect the divorce. If I were to crash in on Ann and Derek at this stage, there was that catch twenty-two situation of her reaction to the new me, and the necessity of her choosing Derek or me. I'd been through all that over and over, and it would not work. The divorce should go through. Hell, I hadn't even set eyes on the woman yet!

I said as much to David and he muttered that it was time I took a look at the woman I was giving up. I didn't like the tone of his voice: would she affect me that much? I couldn't see how.

So we returned home on Thursday armed with three affidavits and a lot of knowledge about my family, and some family I never knew I had before, and so it had been a productive journey.

As we travelled from the airport, I idly wished my parents had lived longer, dying as they did relatively young, soon after one another when I was at university. From them I could have gained some more information about my family in Sweden, but that's a common story; the young are not interested in family history and when they do take an interest it is often too late. In any case, all that knowledge was now lost to me.

------

ELEVEN

On Friday I felt tired when I woke up. It had been an emotional few days and my poor old body was reacting against the strain. But I dragged myself out of bed, showered, shaved and breakfasted, keeping myself on the go. I drove to work and arrived before Geoff. I was looking through the specifications for the latest round of jobs when he arrived.

He was eager to know what had transpired in Sweden and I gave him the whole story.

"Well," he said when I had finished. "So the woman did not lure you to the mugging. I'm glad Jan Thomasson was able to give you a clean moral bill of health! Not that I ever suspected you of anything. So when are you going to meet Ann and acquaint her with the truth of the matter?"

"I've not thought things through yet, Geoff. I need some time to assimilate the new knowledge. My immediate reaction is to let her get on with her life. Facing her with the news that she was wrong about me can only hurt her."

"But Susan thinks you're going to have to meet your children. They deserve that, Allan. More, they are entitled to it, don't you think?"

"Yes, I want them to have me in their lives again, but I have to do things carefully. They aren't going to be too badly damaged by another few weeks. After the decree absolute I think would be the time to start thinking about it. David has already secured access rights, very open ended as well, so there won't be a problem. He says Ann has a strong sense of justice and doesn't want to deprive them of their father. That bodes well, but I don't want to mess Ann up in the process."

"You have some feelings for her then?"

"No, not really, she's a person and I wouldn't want to mess her about. I wouldn't mess anyone else about so why start with her?"

"OK, point taken."

We moved on to business and worked together for the rest of the day. I was going to cancel my physio when I awoke that morning, but after the day's work I felt better and went for my regular pounding. It did me good as it always did, I could tell by the aching joints!

On Saturday I rose late for me, about ten. I decided to go walking in the Peaks. I drove out there and walked onto Kinder Scout, remembering to walk for half the time I wanted to be there, so I could spend the same time coming back. It is all uphill going and therefore downhill coming back.

My intention was to spend the time thinking. In reality I hardly thought at all, but my body, especially my legs got a fine work out. When the air is freezing and the wind is so strong that you need to lean into it and then it begins to rain and the rain turns to sleet and hits you horizontally, you stop thinking and all attention is on the weather and the struggle against it.

I'd had enough of the great outdoors and drove home. It was only when I'd parked the car at the flat that I realised I had driven the route from memory without thinking. That felt really good!

As I sank into my favourite armchair and enjoyed the winter sun slanting across the room, I felt utterly content. I began to consider my life so far. Since I returned to Manchester I'd been the centre of the hopes and enthusiasm of my friends. I'd been sucked into the search for the meaning of my injuries; for the solution to the mystery. I'd been on the receiving end of a campaign to get me back with Ann who I still did not know.

Through it all, there was Trish. She had been the solid home for my spirit; my encouragement and support. The thought began to take shape that after all, the two of us might settle down together permanently. I had rehearsed all the reasons why this would not work, but after her guilt trip about Tim I wondered if she were ready for a totally committed relationship. Perhaps, I thought. The time away together in Wales might clarify things. But, I reasoned, I really had everything in life I needed as things stood. Of course I had completely forgotten about New Zealand.

I realised I needed to settle more into work. It was my company and I should be more involved. My physical health was improving; I hardly needed the stick except when I got tired. My limbs still ached, but the physio and gym work were countering the worst of it and I was physically very fit. Mentally my memory was returning in spurts, and my short-term memory constantly surprised me, though I still carried Geoff's little wonder as a back up.

The problem was getting some memory of Ann and the children. I remembered a family playing in the back garden at Cherry Tree it was more what they played: catch, frisbee, cricket etc. rather than what they looked like. I sporadically remembered things about their school life: Greta's exam results, or the older lad coming back from a school trip. It was again what happened rather than a picture of the event. What I did not have was any memory of my emotional life with Ann or even of any moments of affection. It puzzled me but I was confident such memories would return in time.

It was dark by the time my thoughts drew to an end and I felt much better. There is something satisfying about watching the winter sun set and the growing coldness of the night outside repelled by the warmth of the flat. I stirred myself to make a sandwich for my evening meal and a pot of tea. I had just finished when the phone rang. It was Trish phoning from work.

"Allan, I've something to ask you."

My heart sank. What disappointment was coming my way?

"Well?" I asked, my feelings evident in my voice.

"Hey! Cheer up! I wanted to ask if I drove over tonight you would mind?"

My spirits lifted at once. "I'd be delighted!" Now I was smiling.

"It'll be very late, one or two a.m."

"No problem; just use your key, I won't bolt the door."

I went to bed and was sound asleep when I felt a warm body slide into bed beside me. I vaguely wondered who it was, but was asleep again before I could answer my own muddled question. In the morning I woke early as usual to find her sleeping peacefully beside me, a half smile on her pretty face.

I left her sleeping and went to buy a newspaper. I was doing the crossword when I heard her go to the bathroom, and made a pot of tea with which to greet her when she went back to bed. I took it to her and had begun to undress to get back into bed when she insisted we get up and set off for Wales as soon as we'd had some breakfast. I was a little disappointed but acquiesced, and within the hour we were on our way, with the winter sun at our backs and the early Sunday roads relatively empty.

The hotel was good, the food excellent and the weather mainly dry if cold, the wind being from the north off the sea. We had a leisurely few days, touring in the car to places where we could hike. We went to the coast and, suitably muffled against the biting wind, walked along the beach enjoying the sight and sound of the breakers. It was, she said, almost as cold as Tynemouth!