Chapter 9
9
MARCH 2018, TROMS?, NORWAY
Cecilie rubs the fuzz of her short white-blonde hair.
‘I feel like an animal!’ She laughs, looking up at Morten through his reflection in the mirror.
‘You look like a forest sprite!’
‘I feel as light as one,’ she says with a shake of her head.
Morten sweeps up the heavy blonde locks, turned a dull shade of grey from eight years of matted life.
‘You definitely dropped a few kilos,’ Morten says as he sweeps methodically.
The door of the salon opens and Espen walks in, the front of his white-blond quiff swept up, forming a perfect arc that falls to one shorn temple.
‘It’s true! Hallelujah!’ he exclaims, tucking his phone into his suit pocket. ‘You look so pretty with all that grubby hair gone!’
‘Doesn’t she?’ says Morten, leaning on his brush and gazing adoringly. Cecilie’s exposed face is even more beautiful without the distraction of hair.
‘You could come work at the hotel now!’ Espen claps, before giving it some thought. ‘Maybe in a few weeks, give it a little growth time to look a bit less… severe.’
Cecilie thumps Espen on the arm as she stands to pull her coat off the stool. She is almost as tall as her twin.
‘I don’t want to work at the i-Scand. I don’t want to wear a uniform. I’m happy at the Hjornekafé.’
Cecilie remembers a no-uniform pact she once made with Hector, and feels wretched and sad.
‘What, with batty old Gjertrud bickering with Ole over cake every day?’
‘Don’t be mean, Espen. Gjertrud and Ole are lovely. Just because they’re enjoying life at a slower pace. All birds cannot be hawks, brother. Some of us are cuckoos.’ Cecilie gives a sarcastic smile and throws on her coat. She rubs her soft shorn hair again and realises she’s going to have a cold head.
‘Here, take this,’ Morten says, throwing her his yellow and turquoise hat with a red bobble on top.
‘Thanks.’
‘But you could speak English all day at the i-Scand. And with me as your boss, I’d give you the best shifts.’
Cecilie’s arched brows meet in the middle. ‘I’m not bothered about my English any more.’
She thinks back to that first sighting of Hector, scrutinising her through his computer lens. It made Cecilie want to know everything about him; about his life, his body, his smell, his country; to make her English even better so there were no misunderstandings. Better still, she could learn his language.
Soon they were chatting through little green boxes on their phones, punctuating everything they did with a photo. At first, it was always in the safe parameter of pen pals learning about each other’s culture. For months, they never mentioned Pilar unless it was a place Hector had been with her; Hector didn’t ask if Cecilie had a boyfriend, even though she secretly wished he would so she could tell him she didn’t.
She so desperately wanted to touch the newspaper Hector was holding in his hand; inhale the corn and coriander of his lunch; stroke the raw skin of his latest tattoo; be able to converse fluently with him, some way or another. So Cecilie embraced any chance to improve her English: she read Time and Newsweek in the library; spoke to the British, American, Australian and Canadian customers who faithfully walked through the door of the Hjornekafé, flocking to Troms? in winter in search of the lights, or in summer to marvel at the midnight sun. But she doesn’t need to learn new ways to say bollocks any more now that Hector is married, and she doesn’t need the heavy hair that’s dragged her down for so long.
‘I love your hair,’ Hector had said once he’d recovered from the shock of her beauty.
Now the hair is gone, and with it, in a pile on the floor, the hope Cecilie felt as they’d grown to know each other, as they’d fallen for each other, as they’d admitted they loved each other.
‘Why so sad?’ asks Espen, looking at his watch to get back to the afternoon bustle of check-ins, chambermaids and restaurant bookings.
Cecilie’s face crumples as she puts on Morten’s bobble hat.
‘You don’t like it? Oh gosh, that’s what I was worried about!’ Morten drops his broom and rushes over to put an arm around Cecilie’s shoulder while Espen looks on awkwardly. ‘But I think you look divine. Only you could pull this look off, Cecilie. Perhaps when it grows a bit I’ll shape it into an edgy sweep that…’ Morten doesn’t finish; he is winded by the emotion of Cecilie slumping her face into his chest and sobbing into his checked shirt.
Morten wraps both arms around Cecilie and gives Espen a look of trepidation. Espen shrugs; he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what goes on inside his sister’s head. She is the half of him he will never understand.
‘It’s not the hair…’ Cecilie sniffs as tears tumble down her cheekbones and into the red and blue fabric of Morten’s shirt. ‘It’s my heart.’