Chapter Nineteen
The promised snow arrived on Tuesday and Ezz woke to a view of the peaks on the mainland completely white as if sculpted from icing, beyond the grey, fidgety sea. Across the road, the Jolly Abbot looked as if someone had dressed it in a white beret and the lights of the Christmas tree outside gleamed through a gorgeous snow jacket.
She dressed in leggings under green and purple hiking trousers, snow boots and ski jacket, with a pearly grey knitted hat.
Before she left for Rothach Hall, she called Thea. ‘We’ve got a couple of inches of snow in Skye. Are you still driving up here? I’d love to see you home, but not if it means taking risks.’
‘Already in the car,’ Thea reported cheerfully. ‘Dev’s driving. We have a dusting but we’re on the motorway and hope to at least get past Glasgow. Once we’re on smaller roads, if the snow’s a problem we might stop over.’
Ezz felt relieved. ‘Good plan. How are you?’
Thea sounded happy. ‘Currently no further cause for concern, so we have our fingers crossed. See you soon.’
Reassured, Ezz went out to clear her car, enjoying the rasp of the scraper and the creak of snow beneath her boots, even the chill air biting her cheeks. The sky was grey in the early light, pearly and luminescent. Breaking her usual habit, she approached Rothach Hall via the front drive and over the stone bridge to drink in the best view of the gorgeous grounds in a blanket of gleaming, twinkling white, where every tree and bush had been kissed all over by snowflakes. The hall wore snow on its sills, like ermine trim on its usual grey-stone robe, and the turret’s roof looked like an incongruous white beanie hat. Was Mats in his room in the turret now? Or in the shower? It was an interesting thought.
She changed gear for the slope up to the hall. Rothach Hall had big luxurious shower enclosures with jets that fired at you from all angles … A jolt to the steering wheel made her realise that her car had popped a wheel off the drive and into a flowerbed. Oops. Hurriedly, she straightened up. Good job Thea wasn’t in the car. Removing her mind from showers with Mats, Ezz drove more carefully up the carpet of snow and around the back of the house.
She did turn her computer on that morning but had barely worked through her email when Mats popped his head in the door with a grin and a bright, ‘Ten minutes, OK?’ before vanishing again.
The Scandinavians made light work of even Skye’s narrow roads in the snow. Mats drove the Volvo with Ezz, Astrid, Alvin, Erik and Grete on board, and his siblings piled their families into their respective hire cars. It took longer than usual to reach Portree in that weather, but they had to pause to drink in views of the mountains, white but for pale blue shadows on their shady sides. Once they’d crossed the moor to Broadford, pausing to take selfies with a dazzling white Beinn na Caillich rearing up behind them, they drove the winding, undulating coastal road. The pewter-grey sea scurried beside them, hustling around Scalpay and the Isle of Raasay, sending a fishing boat pitching and rolling on its journey.
Portree looked like something from the front of a chocolate box in its mantle of snow. The buildings rose like cakes on tiered stands. With snowy roofs, as well, those with white walls truly looked made of icing. The coloured buildings of the harbour were Christmas-card pretty, and the church they passed wore snow on one side of its bell tower, and even on the bell, like a white balaclava. Across the water, the Isle of Raasay glinted like a giant iceberg.
In the town, the tall Christmas tree twinkled with fairy lights and snow glittered along its boughs. Groups of people, presumably fellow tourists, queued to take photos with it. Ezz soon discovered that the greater the number of fairy lights festooning a shop or café, the more the children clamoured to visit it. Mats told Emil and Filip, ‘I’m going to buy you kilts for Christmas, so you’d better choose your tartan.’ They were shocked into silence, eyes enormous.
Finally, Emil protested, ‘It’d be like wearing shorts in winter – freezing.’
A smiling shop assistant with ‘Fiona’ on her name badge exhibited the sporrans and knee socks that traditionally went with kilts, but Emil looked unconvinced by Scottish traditional dress. Even livewire-Walter uttered a polite, but firm, ‘No, thank you .’
As they meandered from shop to shop, the pavements fast turned to slush with the passage of many feet, even in the freezing air rising from the harbour. Ezz gradually realised she was being treated as if she were ‘with’ Mats, his family leaving her a place beside him when they stopped at a cute café for hot drinks and scones. Even Grete and Erik left an Ezz-sized space beside Mats to walk with him when they left the café again.
Just after two o’clock, she received a text from Thea. We’ve stopped overnight at Loch Lomond. It’s a more expensive hotel than we usually manage, but Dev thinks the baby needs the luxury! X
Ezz returned, I agree. X She put away her phone, happy that baby jokes indicated optimism from Thea.
They left just as Skye’s early sunset was casting a rosy tint over the snow and bouncing blindingly from the sea. Ezz and Mats were the only ones in the Volvo to stay awake. The pink-cheeked children flaked out in their car seats, and Grete and Erik sagged gently towards each other in the back row as they dozed. Ezz began to glance through her email on her phone while Mats drove but he rested one hand on her thigh. ‘Enjoy the last of the day,’ he suggested, indicating the lavender dusk creeping over the island and the headlights illuminating the glistening snow beside the road.
She thought of invoices, orders, voicemails, staff records, the year-end and the thousand other things that presently came under her remit without an assistant or a receptionist, and grimaced. But she knew that she’d be able to lengthen her hours when the Larssons had gone. Then she’d only have work to worry about … apart from her birth family, her new niece or nephew, hopefully, and her row with Valentina. She put away her phone and enjoyed watching the sun set above the snow.
On Wednesday, Thea and Dev stayed put in their cosy Loch Lomond hotel to let the snow pass, then on Thursday, rain poured in from the west, swamping the Outer Hebrides before moving on to deluge Skye from angry purple clouds. When Mats appeared through the white door, Ezz held on to her desk as if he might try to detach her bodily from it. ‘You Scandinavians might consider it just the weather for another sightseeing trip, but I’m staying in my nice warm office.’
Mats gazed mournfully at the rain sluicing over her windowpanes. ‘I have to go and feed the ponies alone?’
‘Yep.’ She grinned. ‘And keep the cart on the drive as far as possible because the ground’s going to be icy mush with thawed snow and now this torrent.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ he said drily. ‘If I don’t get washed away, I’ll carry on with the spreadsheets later if the kids are occupied with their cousins and other adults will keep an eye on them.’
‘That would be great.’ She blew him a kiss and he trudged off to get his rain gear.
After working steadily all morning, undisturbed by the landline, stray Larsson children or even Mats, she was thrilled to receive a call from Thea, upbeat and bouncy. ‘Hi. We’re finally home. We stopped at the supermarket in Broadford and got drenched with freezing Skye rain, and now I’m going to nap.’
Ezz’s heart melted with relief. ‘You’re OK? Baby behaving?’
Thea heaved a sigh. ‘Seems to be. We’ve got everything crossed that we’ve survived a nasty scare. I’m to see my midwife on Friday, when I’ll be fifteen weeks.’
Ezz opted for cautious optimism. ‘Aw, Thea. I’m so thrilled for you. Would you and Dev like to come to dinner this evening at mine? Save you cooking?’ She decided to invite Mats too, but, in a spirit of mischief, thought she’d keep that as a surprise.
‘That would be great.’ Thea yawned noisily. ‘I’ll probably have had two more naps by then. I’d never realised that pregnancy was so tiring.’
Settling down to work after texting Mats about dinner, Ezz made steady inroads into negotiating with a printing company for next year’s pamphlets designed to attract visitors to enjoy Rothach Hall and its grounds and then paid invoices from the tree surgeon and the company that supplied cleaning materials.
Immediately after Ezz had eaten a sandwich at her desk, Gwen arrived, her long raincoat open over her striped housekeeper’s uniform. ‘The wee ’uns can eat more than a plague of locusts,’ she announced with a broad smile. ‘Caitriona and I are going shopping. Young Walter consumes so much Irn-Bru and shortbread, I think he must be trying to turn Scottish. Is there anything you’ll be needing?’
‘Fresh basil, if they have some please,’ Ezz answered, thinking about this evening’s dinner, and passed over the money.
Mats arrived about three, wandered into her office, kissed her just below her ear and said, ‘Spreadsheet time. Yes, please, to dinner. Mum says to remind you about fika on Sunday, the last advent before Christmas.’ Then he strolled out again in the direction of the assistant manager’s cubicle, leaving her smiling.
For the rest of the afternoon, she was aware of the tapping of his keyboard reaching her faintly whenever hers was quiet. At five-thirty, she shut down her machine. She had a meal to prepare, and her routine had been disrupted so much lately that she was behind with laundry and other household chores.
Rain was still lashing the window when Ezz heard the opening of the hall’s front door and it closing with a bang.
Then Mats’ voice exclaimed, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Ezz paused, frowning. Who? And why did Mats sound so curt?
A calm female voice answered. ‘I’ve come to see my children.’
A horrible sensation seized Ezz’s chest, as if her heart had turned to rock and was rolling slowly towards her toes. The voice was familiar and Ezz had a nasty feeling that it was Inger, Mats’ ex, Astrid and Alvin’s mother.
‘How did you get here?’ Mats sounded bewildered.
The female voice neared Ezz’s office door. ‘We sailed to Monte Carlo after Corsica, as planned, but Andreas and I had a major disagreement.’
Shit . It was Inger. Ezz froze at her desk, thoughts flying.
Inger continued impatiently. ‘His friends kindly lent me a car and I drove up through France, stopping overnight in Calais. Then I got the ferry across the Channel, drove through England, encountered snow in Scotland, so stopped again. Today I drove to Mallaig and took the car-ferry to Armadale. And here I am. Where are Astrid and Alvin?’
‘In the apartment,’ Mats began. ‘But—’
Then suddenly, Inger was standing in the door to Ezz’s office in a white overcoat with its hood thrown back, dark hair and full-face make-up immaculate. She didn’t smile. ‘My luggage is in the boot. When you’ve seen it’s brought in, perhaps you could park my car around the back for me. Thanks.’ And she tossed over a set of keys.
Ezz had to catch them or let them hit her in the face. Stupefied, she watched Inger turn, stalk across the lobby and open the white door. Apparently, if she’d changed in the year and a half since Ezz had last met her, it was only to become yet more entitled.
‘Inger!’ Mats barked. ‘Just hold on.’ He appeared in Ezzie’s line of sight, casting her a quick, grim: ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ then chased Inger through the door and out of sight.
Ezzie gazed at the door that snapped shut behind him. Her fingers still stung from fielding the rudely thrown car keys. Inger was here. If she’d spent her long journey planning how to remind Ezz that she was an employee, she couldn’t have done a better job.
When Mats didn’t reappear, she rose and slipped into her outdoor things. She strode from her office, across reception and through the front door, flinching as the rain flew into her face. At the foot of the steps stood a small but sporty white car – an Alpine, its badge said, a brand she’d never heard of, but it looked expensive. Five suitcases were jammed into the boot and on the seats. Five! One by one, rain seeping coldly down her neck, she hauled them up the steps and left them in a neat row outside the white door, remembering that she’d performed exactly the same task when Mats, Grete, Astrid and Alvin had first arrived.
Back at the car, with measured movements, she climbed into the driver’s seat – which was on the left – and drove around the building and parked. Then she took the back way into the hall and positioned the car keys neatly atop the largest case. Numbly, she retrieved her bag from her desk, and left for the evening.
Driving home along Manor Road, which had become single-track by virtue of the huge puddles at its edges, she supposed drearily that there would only be three for dinner. Mats would be busy.