Under One Sky

Chapter 37

37

NOVEMBER 2018, TROMS?, NORWAY

Karin Wiig sits on her low grey sofa drinking a large glass of red.

‘Ah, it is so good to be home, darling. If I never see that odious Finn again I will be happy. Shame he’s not up for re-election for another three years…’

Cecilie curls into a ball on the sofa next to, but not touching, her mother. Close but distant. Cecilie is dreamy and not that interested in European politics. Her mother can’t be doing with the mundane mechanics of the small-town outpost her daughter is anchored to. Tonight is a rare moment of closeness as the two of them sit on the sofa watching Dirty Dancing .

‘I need to go to Brussels the week before Christmas. I was thinking you might like to come with me, so we can pop to Bruges for some market shopping – how does that sound, darling?’

‘Thanks, Mamma, I’m not sure.’

Cecilie doesn’t want to go anywhere. It is two weeks since Hector Herrera said he was leaving his wife and coming to Europe and she hasn’t heard from him since. That hollow gift. The grand gesture. Nothing. Cecilie knows Hector had read her texts. She knows he ignored her calls. But she can’t work out why he suddenly shut her out, why he ghosted her, just at the point she was planning a trip; to finally leave the Arctic Circle, for the first time in years, for a romantic rendezvous behind Big Ben or under the Eiffel Tower – and her confusion and dejection is making her not want to go anywhere.

‘Why so listless, Cecilie? I’m sure Espen will give you time off work for a trip with me.’

‘Yeah, but there’s the library and the cafe… I can’t just drop everything and go.’

I said I’d drop everything for him.

‘Darling, babies will keep gurgling, coffees will still be drunk, and the world won’t stop turning just because you’re taking a long weekend away. Come on, get out of here for a few days. Andreas was telling me how keen he is to get you to Copenhagen – and it’s such a wonderful city. Where’s your adventurous spirit, Cecilie?’

Cecilie looks at the fire roaring in the hearth, and her eyes lose focus.

‘Which reminds me. Christmas. We need a plan.’

‘What do you mean a “plan”, Mamma? It’ll be the same as ever. Espen and Morten won’t want to host in their flat – so we’ll do it here. I can cook it again.’ Cecilie feels despondent. She had imagined this Christmas being different, but it’s going to be the same as all the others.

‘You did do a delicious dinner last year. But your uncle and aunt want to join us; they’re not going to the US this Christmas, and I’ll send for Mormor and Morfar again. Their carer might want to stay, but let’s hope not.’

‘That’s fine, Mamma, I can cook for… nine. Morten is a great sous-chef. ’

‘What about Andreas? There’s room for him at that table.’ Karin gestures her wine glass towards the window.

‘He’ll be with his kids.’

‘Invite them!’

Cecilie looks at the crackle of a kamikaze flame, darting out of the fireplace. ‘Mamma, we broke up.’

Karin puts her glass down on the oak coffee table and repositions herself.

‘Why?’ she asks, running her fingers through her sleek silver bob. ‘I mean, I know he was married, but he was such a good sort.’

‘He was divorced, Mamma, they had divorced. But it wasn’t that. He just wasn’t the sort for me.’

He’s not Hector.

Karin looks at her daughter in bewilderment. ‘But he was so… genial. So affable. He had such good potential.’

Cecilie follows the flames in the fire and decides not to respond. She feels too broken to put up a fight.

Karin perches on the edge of the sofa now, her body upright and tense.

‘Did you do this because of The Mexican?’

Cecilie doesn’t answer and Karin puts a hand to her brow. ‘Darling, you’re living in a dreamworld. Your brother said The Mexican got married.’

Cecilie thinks of Pilar, her tight dresses and full hair, and feels wretched.

‘Me ending things with Andreas has nothing to do with The Mexican… with… with… Hector.’ Cecilie struggles to say his name out loud, she’s so unaccustomed to it. ‘Just because Andreas likes me, and I’m thirty, doesn’t mean I’m going to settle down with him, convenient as it might be for you. ’

‘It’s not convenient for me at all!’ Karin says, taken aback. ‘I just want you to be happy, Cecilie. You’re so alone.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be happy with Andreas. I don’t love Andreas.’

‘And you love someone you’ve never met? Darling, do you know how crazy that sounds? And clearly you’re not happy obsessing over a man you’ve never even met. I’ve never seen you so miserable. At least Andreas put that beautiful smile back on your face.’

‘Don’t, Mamma, I can’t go through this right now…’ Cecilie uncurls from her foetal ball on the sofa and stands. Her heart is going up in flames like the logs on the fire.

‘Where are you going?’

‘For a walk.’

‘It’s snowing. It’s dark!’

‘I don’t care. I just need some space before I say something I’ll regret…’

Cecilie grabs her snow boots from the shoe caddy by the large front door.

‘Something you’ll regret? Don’t turn on me, young lady,’ Karin snaps sternly.

‘Young lady? I’m thirty!’

‘Then act like it. When I was thirty I was dealing with the shitstorm your father left us in and breaking my back to make a living, to build this. So get real, Cecilie.’

The door slams.

Get real.

Cecilie wraps her coat around her and tramples in the first thick snow of the season. She is drawn by the twinkly lights of the harbour, pulling her to the bridge. Crunch crunch underfoot as Cecilie’s eyes fill with each step she takes in the virgin snow. At the quiet junction, she hears the slow hum of the Fjellheisen down the road to her left; organ pipes blow a haunting soundtrack from the white concertina of the Arctic cathedral to her right. She walks towards it.

Why hasn’t he called? Where has he gone? Did she take his phone?

A gap peeps through the clouds and Cecilie spies the green whisper waving like a theatrical curtain overhead, ridiculing her from the heavens. She walks up the footpath to the bridge, not knowing where to go or why she’s going there, with tears streaming down her cheeks and marches on. She stops at the point she said goodbye to Andreas, the place where her father jumped, and looks over the edge. Suicide railings stop at eye level; Cecilie rises on tiptoes to see what it would look like to jump.

Where was he?

How cold is that water?

What does it feel like to drown?

So many questions Cecilie has pondered every time she walks the bridge, every time she plays her harp. Questions her twin has never bothered his busy brain with.

‘It happened, there’s nothing we can do about it,’ he once said when they were eleven. And Karin thought Espen was the one who questioned everything; that Cecilie was blind.

The Northern Lights above have disappeared and a blanket of thick dark cloud starts shedding another layer of snow.

You said you’d come.

Cecilie punches the metal barrier in front of her with two fists, frantically banging until her knuckles start to bleed.

Through her tears, she can just about see the water beneath her, and in it she sees a familiar face swirling in a pattern of the strait below her. Telling her to go home.

Cecilie closes the front door and drops her coat and boots on the floor with unusual disregard. The fire in the hearth is reduced to a final smoulder in the dark living room. All but the hall lights are off. She climbs the stairs quietly and looks through the crack in the door to her mother’s bedroom. Karin Wiig is in bed but can’t sleep. She is fidgeting under her eye mask with her back to the door, which is slightly ajar. Cecilie gently pushes it wider so as not to alarm an already troubled woman and climbs into her bed, for the first time since she was a little girl, hugging her mother from behind.

‘I feel like I’m drowning, Mamma,’ Cecilie says, sobbing as she holds on tight to her mother’s arms, the pads of the fingers on her bloodied hands gripping Karin’s shoulders. ‘At the library, at the Hjornekafé, in Espen’s stupid hotel, every time I look at my phone…’

Karin pushes her eye mask into her hair and rolls over to face her daughter, her silk nightdress twisting slightly out of place. She strokes Cecilie’s hair and tucks her sweeping fringe behind a cold red ear.

‘He said he would leave her, Mamma. He said he would come to me. He said he was going to come to Europe for Christmas.’

‘Shhh, Cecilie,’ Karin whispers, taking her daughter in her arms, her tears tumbling onto silk.

‘I believed it. I thought he was coming. His face was so sincere, so beautiful… I thought he was coming.’ And for the first time in her life, Cecilie lets out a sob that makes her entire body shake as she clings to her mother. She has never felt so broken.

‘Oh, my darling Cecilie. Beautiful, beautiful girl.’ Karin holds Cecilie to her chest, then lets her go. The heat of their bodies is too much under the fifteen-tog Hungarian goose down. She looks into her daughter’s eyes, lit by the light of the open bedroom door bouncing off Karin’s dressing-table mirror. Green flashes mottled by tears. ‘Don’t rely on any man to pull your strings; to make you happy. Not The Mexican, not even Espen. You have to find your own way. Men don’t make women happy. You’re the only person who can make you happy.’

‘But I thought?—’

‘Hush now, Cecilie. There’s nothing you can do about him. There are things you can do to affect your future though. Quit the hotel if it’s upsetting you this much. Make choices that will bring you happiness. Come travelling with me. We’ll take wonderful trips together.’

The prospect seems all too awful, so Cecilie sobs loudly into her mother’s silk nightie, heartbroken and baffled – but blind no more. She is determined not to sit and wait; not to shed another tear, not to dwell on Hector Herrera, for a minute longer.