30
THE END OF the season was almost upon them. It was hard to imagine now how different things would be if Astrid had stayed because the time she spent on the boat once the tours were actually up and running was such a small part of the summer in the end.
Eva had taken the commentary job in her stride after a slightly rocky start.
The biggest hurdle they’d had to overcome was finding a rhythm again once Isak joined them.
Leifur knew Eva had found it hard to work with him to begin with, and he’d thought it was quickly going to become apparent that Isak wouldn’t work out.
He’d seen it coming, the way he had been reluctant to learn from Eva on the last tour they did with Astrid, his only chance at having a proper handover from her.
With him being older than Eva, she didn’t feel able to challenge him about his attitude, but when Jonas suggested to her that she ought to as the more senior staff member between the two of them, things changed.
Eva grew in confidence, and Isak continued to arrive at work on time — something unprecedented in his days on the fishing boat, and he was fun, pleasant to be around and began to play a supporting role for both Eva and Leifur.
Jonas had called a staff meeting to discuss the plans for the end of the summer. After the tour on Tuesday evening, Leifur drove the three of them to Jonas’s house.
‘Do you think he’s got someone to take over from me?’ Eva said. She was due to leave for Canada in a few days and was worried about leaving them in the lurch.
‘You mustn’t worry about it,’ Isak said. ‘I’ve heard you say enough stuff about whales that I could take over from you.’
Eva laughed. ‘I’m still not sure you know the difference between a minke whale and a dolphin.’
‘That’s fair,’ said Isak. ‘But most of the guests don’t either. I reckon I can get away with it.’
Leifur smiled to himself. He and Isak were getting on better than they had in years.
Perhaps because the jobs they had on the boat were different and Leifur didn’t need to be Isak’s boss.
Isak, much like Astrid, had discovered that he enjoyed the customer-facing part of the job.
He was a naturally charming and attentive host, which surprised him as much as it did Leifur.
Leifur pulled the truck up outside Jonas’s house, and the three of them climbed out.
‘Nice place,’ said Isak. He knocked on the door, and Jonas answered almost instantly.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Go through to the kitchen. We’ll eat and then have a proper chat.’
‘Hi,’ said Rachel, who was already in the kitchen. ‘I hope you all like curry.’
‘Lovely,’ said Eva, going over to the stove to have a look.
‘Beer for you guys?’ Jonas asked.
‘Or we have wine,’ said Rachel.
‘Wine’s great for me,’ said Eva, while Isak and Leifur opted for beer.
‘How’s the whale-watching?’ Rachel asked. ‘Is there any difference in what you see compared to the start of the summer? ’
‘Not really,’ Eva said, looking at Leifur, who shook his head in agreement. ‘I think we could carry on, maybe reduce to two tours a day once the prime tourist season is over.’
‘What do you think about doing northern lights tours out in the bay?’ Jonas asked.
‘So we’re not waiting until after we’ve eaten for the business talk?’ Rachel said.
‘You know how it is,’ Jonas said, shrugging.
‘I should do by now.’
‘It’s a good idea,’ said Leifur. ‘Not many companies are doing that.’
‘And you don’t need me for those,’ said Eva.
‘We could put one of the team on board to do the northern lights talk,’ Jonas said.
‘I wouldn’t mind learning that,’ Isak said.
‘Actually, that would be great because sometimes we struggle to cover the existing northern lights tours if Brun or Siggi are away.’
‘You need to take the opportunity to have a break,’ said Rachel. ‘You’ve been working almost seven days a week.’
‘We’ve had time off for bad weather,’ Leifur pointed out.
‘Rachel’s right,’ said Jonas. ‘You’ve all worked hard over the summer. It’s easy to think we could carry on at this pace, but it’s important to take the opportunity for some downtime.’
‘Do you have anyone to take over from Eva?’ Isak asked.
Jonas shook his head. ‘No. Which makes it the perfect time to stop for a while.’
‘Altogether?’ Leifur was used to working at the pace they had been. Harder even when he’d been fishing. ‘The bad weather hasn’t hit yet, and there are still whales to see.’
‘We only put dates on the website until the end of August. We could have loaded on more dates, but I wanted to see how things were going. And I think we probably can keep going in some form over the winter, whether it’s whale watching or northern lights trips, but now that the summer’s over, let’s take a different pace. ’
‘Let’s eat,’ Rachel said, putting a pan of curry and a bowl of rice on the table. ‘Dig in.’
Leifur spooned some curry and rice onto his plate.
Although the full days had been a blessing, taking his mind of missing Astrid, perhaps it made sense to take stock of the summer and work through the winter at a slower pace.
He knew he’d paid back almost all the loan he’d had from Jonas, and that was despite the wage bill being bigger than they’d planned. It had been a good season.
Rachel, Isak and Eva went into the lounge after dinner, leaving Leifur and Jonas to talk.
‘What do you think about having some time off and starting back up in November, on a much-reduced schedule?’
‘Honestly, I’m not used to having time on my hands and I’m not very good at it,’ said Leifur. ‘I’d rather keep going even if it’s just a few trips a week.’
‘Okay. Let’s make a plan.’ Jonas opened his laptop and found the scheduling spreadsheet. ‘When Eva leaves, that’s the end of the whale-watching season for us. It’s hard to find a marine biologist willing to work seasonally, and we can’t afford to have a permanent one on the payroll.’
‘Agreed. But if we run any tours, we’ll need another pair of hands.’
‘I’ll find someone to help out,’ Jonas said. ‘Shall we agree on three northern lights trips a week until November? After that, the season really gets going, and we’ll have a feel for whether we want to increase it to six or seven times a week over the winter.’
‘We’re more likely to get disrupted by the weather at that time of the year.’
‘Exactly. It gives us a bit of room for manoeuvre. And you and Isak will still be paid the same amount over the winter,’ said Jonas, still looking at his spreadsheet as if he hadn’t just made the most generous offer in the world.
‘We can’t accept that.’
‘You can. You’ve both given everything to the company over the summer. If we worked out your hourly rate, I bet it would be a pittance.’
Leifur knew that wasn’t true. ‘I’d rather we were paying the loan off.’
‘I’m not going to be moved on this, Leifur. You run the boat and the tours with little interference from me. The business side of things is my call.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Besides, you think your brother would be with you on that?’
Leifur laughed. ‘Definitely not.’
They heard a knock at the front door, and Olafur appeared in the kitchen. ‘Am I interrupting?’
‘No, we’ve just finished.’
Jonas dished out another round of beers, and they went to join the others in the lounge.
‘Honestly, Rachel, you need to speak to this woman who brought her felted placemats into the shop today,’ Gudrun was saying. ‘She’s got a studio and is up for you taking tours there, and she could do workshops for you.’
‘That sounds amazing,’ Rachel said. ‘I need to start planning for next summer. I’ll pop in and get her details from you.’
It was the first time in a while that Leifur had seen Gudrun.
He’d been avoiding her. Astrid’s three months had been up around a month ago.
They’d not kept in touch over the summer, after agreeing it was best not to, giving them both space to move on.
But part of him had thought she would come back after the summer, and the fact she hadn’t was something he’d tried not to think about.
But seeing Gudrun, he’d have to ask how Astrid was.
And then he’d know whether she was still working and that’s why she hadn’t come back, or if she’d met someone else and that’s why she hadn’t come back to Reykjavik.
‘We haven’t seen you for ages,’ Gudrun said to him.
‘The weather’s been good recently, so we haven’t had much downtime.’
‘Have you heard from Astrid?’
He shook his head, bracing himself for the blow. ‘I guess she’s finished in Costa Rica now?’
‘She’s in Troms?, staying with her friend while she waits for her new job to start.’
‘She has a new job?’ Suddenly he wanted to know.
‘Yes, it’s a three-year contract working in Greenland over the winter. I can’t think of anything worse, but she’s very excited about the prospect of living in a wilderness for a few months.’
‘What’s she doing up there?’ It was easier to ask more, now that he’d started.
‘I don’t know. Something to do with narwhals.’
‘Narwhals?’ said Eva. ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’
‘So she won’t be back to pack up her apartment?’ Leifur asked.
‘Aren’t you two in touch?’ Gudrun said.
Everyone was looking at him now. ‘No, it was better to have a clean break.’
‘That makes sense,’ said Isak, to Leifur’s surprise. ‘If she’s always working away, you’d never see each other.’
‘She almost stayed,’ said Gudrun. ‘It’s the longest she’s been back for years, and I know she misses it.’ She looked at Leifur, telling him in one glance that it was him she was talking about. Astrid missed him.
And he missed her. The ache in his heart was there all the time, and he’d learnt to live with it. But now, having thought about her, which he tried not to do too often, it grew to an intensity he hadn’t experienced since they’d said goodbye.
He drove Eva and Isak back into town and, for the first time since Astrid had left, headed to her apartment. He kept the key in a zipped pocket inside his coat, and it had been untouched since she gave it to him. Leaving his truck on the road outside, he unlocked the door and headed up the stairs.
Although she’d said she was going to pack everything up, she’d left the bed made and some cushions and blankets on the sofa. It was enough for him to feel like she could walk through the door any minute.
He sat on the sofa and grabbed a cushion, giving it a quick sniff to see if there was any trace of her. He laughed softly to himself. What was he doing? Nothing had changed. Their situation — the very reason they couldn’t be together — was exactly the same as before.
Except he knew she wasn’t coming back now, and he knew that until tonight, he’d been harbouring a hope that she might.
Sighing, he got up and ran the tap for a minute before filling a glass and drinking it down in one.
Since he was here, he might as well stay the night.
It was late, and he had to be back on the boat in a few hours.
The bed here was definitely more comfortable than the berth on Brimfaxi .
In the morning, he made the bed and let himself out of the apartment feeling like it was yet another goodbye, but this time, he had more of a sense of closure.
He drove his truck to the harbour, parked and headed for the boat. His phone vibrated in his pocket, so he pulled it out, wondering who would text him so early in the morning.
Astrid: Sleep well?
Leifur: How did you know?
Astrid: Sol. This is the first time you've stayed?
He felt as if she was asking, why now? After four months? And it was hard to answer that in a text. He typed out a couple of messages and deleted them. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he called her.
‘I heard you’re going to Greenland, so I know now you’re not coming back.’
‘You weren’t supposed to be waiting for me.’
He exhaled. ‘Well, I guess I was.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, once he realised there was nothing either of them could say that changed what they’d known four months ago.
‘I miss you,’ she said.
If he’d had to imagine what Astrid might say in his dreams, this was it.
He missed her desperately, but it just made him feel worse knowing that she was still out of reach for him and they had no future.
They couldn’t both spend years waiting until the time was right and nothing else was going to be in their way.
If they wanted to be together, one of them had to want that enough to compromise, and it seemed obvious to him that neither of them was willing to take the risk.
‘I went there to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise until tonight, but I have been waiting for you and I can’t do that anymore.’
He heard a muffled noise, then she said, ‘And you mustn’t. I’ll always love you, Leifur.’ And she ended the call before he could say anything else.