Chapter 16
The bed looked more inviting than it was comfortable, and it really wasn’t ideal for what they’d just done.
He’d have to sort out something better for next time.
Because he felt sure there would be a next time.
But for right now, lying in each other’s arms while the fire flickered, casting shadows on the walls as darkness fell outside, it was perfect.
‘Where will you live when the hotel’s up and running?’ Lotta asked, idly running her finger up and down his breastbone.
‘I think in the short term I’ll probably live here, make some improvements to it as we go along.’
‘It’s lovely, but you need an extension so you can have a toilet, and somewhere to hang coats and leave boots when it’s wet.’
He chuckled. ‘That’s true. It’s not very practical.’
‘I don’t mind peeing in a bucket for a couple of days.’
‘I appreciate it,’ he said, giving another low laugh. He loved that Lotta had been fine with using a bucket for the weekend. He’d put it in the neighbouring cabin and shown her earlier, holding his breath in case she wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t mind at all.
‘I might do it myself when I finish work. It would feel good to build it with my own hands, with timber from my own woods.’
‘You’re using trees from here to build with?’
‘There’s a huge number of trees that must have been planted years ago for that purpose. All along the long side at the back of the farmhouse, and on the land across the water from there. My grandfather, or maybe his grandfather must have planned it to be a lumber forest.’
‘How do you know?’
‘If they’d seeded naturally, they wouldn’t be as perfect as they are. The trees are very straight, strong, and from excellent stock, so there are hardly any knots in the wood. We felled some and sent them to be cut just to see, and we plan to fell some more now we know how great the timber is.’
‘That’s so cool,’ Lotta said. ‘It’s like a gift someone planned for you all those years ago.’
He smiled at her, his heart growing a size at the way she was looking at him. ‘Another discovery that makes it seem like this is the only thing I can do. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I do. I could see it on your face the moment the island came into view this morning. You looked like you’d come home, like you belong here.’
‘It’s the only place I feel like myself,’ he said. It was easy to say these things to Lotta. He knew he could show her the parts of himself he’d never shared with anyone before, and she would be gentle with them. ‘My parents’ house always felt like home but not anymore.’
‘Sometimes home is more about people than a place. It will always be your parents’ house and it must feel like they’re missing from there.’
He nodded. ‘So I don’t know why this feels like home to me.’
‘Maybe it’s a feeling that you’re treading in the footsteps of the generations that came before you. That they’re watching over you.’
‘You don’t think that’s weird?’
‘No. Maybe a bit spooky now that it’s getting dark,’ she giggled into his chest. ‘But it must be something like that drawing you here and making you feel like it’s yours.’
He’d always felt like a practical person more than a spiritual one, but there was something in that.
‘Do you have somewhere like this, where you feel like you’ve come home?’
‘No, I don’t have anywhere like that.’ She sounded matter-of-fact rather than sad.
‘You don’t feel like that about your home, or your family’s home?’
‘No. My flat in London is rented; it’s affordable, and that’s the only thing going for it. And my parents sold the house we grew up in as soon as we’d all moved out.’
‘Maybe it’s a good thing not to have the past to go back to all the time.
Every time I go back to Loddefjord it’s like my parents should still be there.
Nothing’s changed. It’s full of all our childhood memories as well as all their stuff, and sometime we’re going to have to deal with all of that.
None of us wants to, which is why we haven’t.
Your parents have done the hard part already. ’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘I’m sorry, this is a morbid conversation. Shall we eat?’
‘Yes. How will we do that?’
‘I think a pan on top of the stove will work for the sausages.’
‘The whole place will smell of sausages for ever and a day. I think we should make a campfire.’
It would take longer, but she looked so excited at the prospect, he couldn’t say no.
‘Okay. We will need to collect some stones to make a fire circle.’
They both pulled their clothes on, then Mats put some logs on the fire to keep the cabin warm, because sitting outside, even next to a campfire was going to be chilly.
‘Do you think this is a good spot?’ Lotta asked, clutching a few rocks to her chest. She’d moved away from the cabin, but they were still surrounded by trees, and Mats felt like somewhere more open would be better.
‘Or next to the water?’
‘Yes! In that beautiful spot with the view of the mountains.’
They headed for the tip of the island with their arms full of stones and wood. Once they emerged from the trees, the light of the almost full moon lit their way.
Lotta spread her stones on the ground and went to collect more from the shoreline while Mats arranged some smaller twigs and pinecones to get the fire going.
‘I’ll go back for the food,’ she said.
‘I’ll come with you and fetch the chairs. We’ll get cold if we sit on the ground.’ He also worried that she would lose her bearings in the dark and miss their cabin.
‘This is so exciting,’ she said, grinning up at him as he put an arm around her shoulders.
‘I’m so happy you like it here,’ he said.
‘I love being here with you, Mats. It feels so special.’
He stopped walking and turned to kiss her. ‘It means everything to me that you feel like that.’
They fetched their food, more wood for the fire, and the two chairs from the cabin and some blankets, and headed back to the fire, which by now was ready for some bigger logs.
Mats crouched down next to it and used a stick to encourage the fresh logs to nestle into the glowing heart of the fire, while Lotta arranged the sausages in the pan and then went to rinse her hands in the fjord.
‘Oh my god, it’s freezing!’ she shrieked, shaking her hands and running back to the fire.
Mats laughed. ‘Come here.’ She perched on his leg and warmed her hands over the fire, then he sat down and pulled her onto his lap.
‘What are we going to do when you live here?’
She said it so easily, but the reality that they’d suspended the moment they stepped onto the island came crashing down.
‘I don’t know. Part of me thinks if I had met you before, I wouldn’t have taken on the island.’
‘No, Mats,’ she said gently, her palm against his cheek. ‘Don’t think like that. This is bigger than us.’
‘But it’s going to stop us.’
‘It makes it harder, but it was already going to be difficult even if you still lived in Oslo. I’m not going to be flying over here for much longer.’
‘So, what are we going to do? It feels too soon to make life-changing plans.’
He’d already made a life-changing plan, and he had no room for manoeuvre.
He was all in on this project, and there was no going back.
But he couldn’t ask Lotta to make a life-changing decision based on a few weeks of knowing each other, even if he knew she was the one for him.
It had to be her wanting that just as much for herself, with no hint of him pushing her.
‘Our relationship has already been life-changing.’
He looked at her. She was watching the fire but flicked her eyes to him, checking what he thought about that.
‘You don’t have to say that,’ he said softly.
‘It’s true. I want to give us a chance. I’m up for that. But I suppose I feel like a lot is already starting to change in my life. The contract with Snug could change everything for me, and I need to give that chance to play out before I can commit to anything else.’
‘I get that,’ he said, although his heart sank. ‘It feels unfair… It’s going to be hard for me to even meet you halfway.’
‘I know what I’m getting into, Mats. And I know that what we have is already something special.
Something that is already better than anything else in my life before.
I don’t want that to slip through my fingers because of geography.
’ She stood up and rolled her shoulders, turning to face him. Waiting for his take on it.
‘My head is saying it’s too soon.’ He held back from telling her his heart disagreed.
He wanted to tell her to move here, to Norway, to Oslo, even to the island, but he sensed she needed him to take the pressure off.
And he needed to be sure there could never be a point in the future where she was living here and could turn around and say that she’d made the wrong decision.
He couldn’t be responsible for her happiness in that way.
‘Your heart is all I care about,’ she said. ‘Your heart brought you here, to this island, and it sounds to me like your head might normally be in charge of that kind of decision. What does your heart say about us?’
He stood and took her hands in his. Hers were still cold from the fjord, and he rubbed her fingers in his. ‘My heart is yours, Lotta. Whatever you decide to do, it’s too late for me to save myself,’ he said, smiling.
She took his cheeks in her hands and kissed him. ‘Thank you. For not expecting anything.’
They cooked the sausages, folding slices of bread around them.
The mysterious square breads that Mats had chosen, which had a spongy texture, followed them.
He laid them one at a time in the pan, layering brown cheese slices on top, for just long enough to warm them through, then he rolled them tightly into a spiralled bready stick.
‘This is the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in ages,’ Lotta proclaimed. ‘We don’t need the smores.’
‘I could eat a smore,’ Mats said, finishing his second cheesy dessert.
‘We need a stick.’
Mats didn’t have to wander far to find a longish stick that would be suitable for spearing the marshmallows. He pulled his knife out of his pocket and began stripping the bark from one end.
‘You just had that knife in your pocket?’
‘We’re camping,’ he said, raising an eyebrow.
‘It’s sexy,’ Lotta said, laughing.
‘The knife is sexy?’
‘You being all hunter-gatherer is sexy.’
He grinned, loving the way she was looking at him.
They laid a blanket on the grass next to the fire, any worry about being cold long forgotten in favour of lying side by side in the glow of the flames.
‘It’s amazing to think we’re the only people here,’ Lotta said.
‘We’re probably the only people to spend a night here for thirty years.’
‘Will you be sad to share it with other people?’
‘No, I’m looking forward to it being back to what it was before it was abandoned. It would have been a busy working farm. I know we’re not farming, but I like the thought of there being life here again.’
‘I can understand that. Why didn’t your father tell you about it?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s one of those questions you wish you’d asked before it was too late.
I know he was estranged from his parents, and I think it was because he didn’t want that life for himself.
I guess it was a time of change when there were more opportunities for people if they moved to the cities than there had ever been before, and he wanted that, not this. ’
‘And now you’re doing the opposite.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘It’s a great thing, Mats. It’s leaning into your heritage, doing something that means something to you.’
It was as if she were reading his mind, because the first thing he’d thought when she pointed out that it was the opposite, was that he was betraying his father.
Shunning the life his father had wanted to embrace, and had believed in so much that he had lost his own family over it, if that’s what had happened.
Was that why his siblings had been reluctant?
‘Hey,’ Lotta said gently. ‘What’s this about?’ She ran her fingers across the crease in his brow.
‘I’m letting my father down.’
‘Absolutely not.’ She surprised him with the sternness of her response.
‘Your father was proud of you. I might not have met your parents, but I know that you and your brother and sisters are close, that your family was close, and families like that thrive by supporting each other no matter what. Because they love each other. Even if your father didn’t understand, you would have helped him to, and I’m sure he would have listened, Mats.
Because he loved you and would want you to be happy. ’
He nodded and smiled tightly, fighting the lump in his throat. ‘Thank you.’
‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’
She stood up and held out a hand to him.
The fire was dying down, but Mats sloshed some water from the fjord over it to be safe.
They loaded themselves up, carrying everything they’d brought with them in one go back to the cabin, where the glow of the firelight through the window welcomed them back.
Lotta’s words rang in his ears. His father might have been puzzled at his decision, but deep down Mats had to believe he’d have been behind it.
He had pictured his father and mother exploring this place with him many times, just as he had with Lotta that morning, and his imagination always showed them smiling and excited. That’s what he had to cling to.