20
THE DAYS LEADING up to the tours beginning for real settled into a routine of spending the mornings on Brimfaxi , early afternoons in the office answering emails from customers and then by late afternoon the rest of the day was their own.
Since staying the night at her apartment for the first time, Leifur had stayed every night apart from the one when he went to his mother’s for dinner.
‘You’re welcome to come,’ he said. ‘She’d love to meet you properly, and she’ll be thrilled we’re seeing each other.’
‘Maybe next time?’ She had a feeling Peta had already known that something was going on between them, and she thought it might be good for them to talk alone.
Knowing how worried Peta must have been about Leifur over the past few months, she wasn’t sure about Peta’s reaction if Leifur told his mother that their relationship was planned to be short-lived, just for the summer.
It felt huge to Astrid to have committed to the tours for the entire summer, potentially missing out on some golden opportunity that might present itself.
But now that she and Leifur were together, she was pleased that she had this time to take a breather from her real life.
She couldn’t contemplate staying in Reykjavik on a tour boat for the rest of her career, because although she loved working on the sea and seeing the whales, it was a tiny fragment of what else was out there to discover and that’s what she didn’t want to leave behind.
The following day was going to be the first full day, with three fully-booked tours.
Astrid could see the tension in Leifur as they prepared the boat.
Not that there was much to do because they’d checked and double-checked everything a dozen times.
The only difference between the trial run and their plans for the real thing was that Jonas had introduced them to Eva, a university student from Reykjavik who was studying marine biology in Canada and was home for the summer.
She was going to run the galley and be in charge of the guests when they were on board, leaving Astrid free to concentrate on the whale-watching side of things.
Leifur had been reluctant to have another person on the boat, and Astrid had to remind him he’d felt like that about her and that it was important to give Eva a chance.
‘She’s the friendly, sunny kind of person who will be perfect for looking after the guests. And I want to help her out. This will be great experience for her if she wants to join a research trip on a boat one day.’
Leifur couldn’t do anything but agree. He was a creature of habit, and he didn’t like change.
Astrid knew that adding Eva to their tiny crew felt monumentous to him after two weeks of it being just the two of them.
It was all the years living with the structure and repetitiveness of working on a fishing boat.
And although the boat tours felt like the definition of repetitive to Astrid, it was nowhere near what Leifur was used to.
All the checking was him trying to feel at ease with every small part of what they were doing.
‘Come on, let’s go for a walk,’ she suggested. The sun was shining, although it was a blustery day, and a bracing walk along the seafront to the lighthouse at Grótta might be just the thing to blow Leifur’s anxiety away .
‘I think we should go to the office and check in.’
‘No.’ She was as diligent with her work as he was, but she also recognised the importance of taking time out to decompress. ‘We’ll only be a couple of hours, then if you want to go to the office we still can.’
Astrid led the way. It had been years since she’d ventured along the peninsula that led to the lighthouse, but almost as soon as the harbour was behind them, she remembered the feeling it gave you of leaving the city behind.
There were more houses along the coast road than there had been the last time she’d walked along.
They were getting ever larger, more sprawling and a long way from the typical Icelandic houses closer to the centre of town.
‘The coast here is so different from Hafnarfjoreur,’ said Leifur.
‘No lava fields.’
‘No, although I like the moss and lichen on the rocks by my house.’
‘Will you take me to your house sometime?’ She asked with the certainty that he would say yes. She felt as if nothing was off limits between them now.
‘Of course. I would have before, but your flat is much nicer. My place is dark in comparison.’
‘I bet it’s cosy,’ said Astrid, slipping her hand into his.
‘It is,’ he conceded. ‘It’s a great place to watch storms from. With the fire blazing and a hot drink in your hand while the waves crash on the rocks and the lightning lights up the fjord.’
‘I can imagine you doing that. You looked so content watching the sea when I saw you on the rocks.’
‘I still can’t believe you thought you were going to see a whale.’
‘Hey!’ She laughed, shocked but thrilled that he felt he could tease her and she’d take it in good spirit. It felt like a milestone. ‘At least I wasn’t the maniac waving to a stranger.’
‘That’s fair.’ He threw his head back and laughed, and Astrid felt warm inside that she was the one who had done this to him. At least partly. She had to give Brimfaxi some of the credit.
There was a set of metal steps that bridged the huge rocks stacked as sea defences that stretched along the coast and led down to a small sandy beach about halfway along.
‘Shall we walk along the sand?’
He nodded. ‘Sure.’ Almost as soon as they set foot on the sand, he picked up a piece of seaweed.
A huge bunch of kelp on a thick stem, like a cat-o'-nine-tails.
‘Look at this.’ A glint appeared in his eye and Astrid knew exactly what he was going to do.
She yelped and started running away from him, a quick turn of her head confirming her suspicion that he was chasing her with the seaweed.
She felt like she’d outrun him and turned around. ‘If that touches me, you’re dead, Leifur Magnússon!’ She could barely shout her threat properly for laughing.
‘That would be a shame. Just when we’ve got to the fun part.
’ He threw the seaweed into the sea, where it floated on the surface, making its way back to the beach with every wave.
She watched him walk towards her with a smile on her face, knowing that he would take her in his arms when he reached her.
He did, and then he pretended he was going to throw her into the sea.
‘No!’ she screeched, clinging to him with every ounce of strength she could muster, even though she knew he would never actually do it.
‘One, two, three…’ He lifted her and let her fall quickly, never letting her go, but making her feel like she was falling for a split second.
‘Leifur!’
Then he pulled her to him, holding her closer than she’d ever been held before.
She nuzzled into his neck, breathing him in and letting his beard scuff her cheek.
It felt so good. The warmth of him, the solidness and the safety of feeling his arms around her was intoxicating.
Why had she suggested a walk when they could have taken some time off by staying in the cabin?
As he put her down on the sand and they resumed their walk along the beach, she spotted something on the high tide line and pulled Leifur’s hand until they reached it. There was something among the small rocks and pieces of seaweed.
‘You look as if you’re expecting to find something,’ he said.
‘Seaglass.’ Astrid couldn’t drag her eyes from the sand. ‘Look!’ Holding the emerald green nugget up to the sky, the sun glinted through it. ‘I think green and clear are the most common ones.’
‘Let’s see if we can find something special then,’ Leifur said.
It was addictive looking for the small pieces of broken glass that the sea had tumbled into jewels just waiting to be discovered.
Astrid smiled at him as he bent down to pick up a piece of clear glass, thinking how nice it was to share things like this with someone else.
One of her favourite things in the world was to hunt for seaglass at every beach she went to, and of all of them, this was always where she’d found the best of it in abundance.
‘I’ve never done this before,’ said Leifur.
‘Perhaps it’s more of a girl thing.’
‘Perhaps. But it’s very absorbing. I can understand the appeal. What do you do with the glass?’
‘I have a glass jar. I put it in there and keep it on a windowsill. I love seeing it in the sunlight, and it’s nice to have a jar of souvenirs from all the places I’ve been.’
‘I’ve collected pieces of driftwood over the years. It washes up on the shore by my house. ’
‘What do you do with those?’
‘All sorts of things. I collected a lot of small pieces and strung them together to make a decoration for my mother. I have a larger piece across my mantelpiece. It must have been out at sea for a long time because it’s so smooth and bleached by the sun.’
Astrid loved these small glimpses into Leifur’s life. They were like little gifts he gave her every so often.
‘I’ll come round to yours on Sunday night.’ They’d agreed to have Monday as their day off.
‘That gives me no time to prepare,’ Leifur said, bending to pick up another piece of glass and putting it in his pocket.
Astrid loved that he was enjoying collecting the glass too. ‘What do you need to prepare? It can’t be untidy. Aren’t fishermen renowned for being very organised and precise and tidy?’
‘I think you’re confusing me with being a sailor. A fisherman isn’t at home enough to keep everything like that. But then that helped keep things tidy. Now I’m at home more… or I was,’ he grinned at her. ‘It’s not that tidy.’
‘I don’t mind. You don’t need to tidy up for me. I want to see it exactly as it is.’
He chuckled and shook his head. ‘Well, that’s not happening. I might need to retract the offer.’
She snuggled into his side, and he put his arm around her shoulders.
It was the best feeling ever. She felt happier than she had ever remembered and never thought that would be because of a man.
Finally, she realised what it had been like for Gudrun when she’d met Olafur.
She understood the looks that passed between them even now, years later, and that scared her a little, because that was love.
Was that what this was with Leifur? Love?
It couldn’t be. More importantly, she couldn’t let it be, because it would be heartbreaking to leave him after the summer.
They needed to keep things light, keep having fun without getting too serious.
If she was starting to feel like she belonged in his arms, if his embrace was the one place in the world where she felt like she’d come home, it would make everything harder when she had to say goodbye.
‘Why don’t you stay at yours for a couple of nights?’
He frowned. ‘Really? So I can tidy my house for you?’
‘No. I meant it when I said you don’t need to. But maybe it’s a good idea since we’re starting the tours. We need to focus on that. And we both need some sleep.’
‘Okay,’ he said, shrugging.
Her suggestion had ruined the mood between them, and she felt guilty because on some level she’d done that intentionally.
It was self-preservation. She needed to be more careful, and being together every night, as if they lived together, wasn’t the way to guard her heart.
Moving out of Gudrun’s was deliberate, so that she could be independent and enjoy living in Reykjavik on her own terms and she had lost sight of that.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for? It’s a sensible suggestion.’
But Astrid felt as if she’d spoiled it before they’d even started. Being in a relationship wasn’t something she was used to navigating, and clearly she wasn’t very good at it.
‘Hey,’ she pulled his hand to stop him walking.
When he looked at her, he had sad eyes, and it was like a punch to her gut.
“Stay with me every night,” was what she almost said, but it was too late to turn that around and anyway, now she’d decided, she knew it was the right thing to do.
Both of them being tired on the first day wasn’t an option.
‘It’s just for a couple of days. We’ll be exhausted and probably not great company for each other.
Let’s give ourselves a break from having to talk to anyone, at least overnight.
’ She hoped it sounded lighthearted, and it elicited a half-smile from Leifur .
‘It’s okay,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her. ‘We don’t have to spend every night with each other. That would be ridiculous.’
‘It would be wonderful, but we can work up to it.’ She reached up and kissed him.
‘Come on, I want to make it to the lighthouse this side of midnight.’