Chapter 27
27
I delivered a baby!
Cecilie types as she walks over the bridge in the chilly wind. The August sun barely set last night and Cecilie didn’t go to sleep at all. She spent most of the night clutching Grethe’s pale tense hand, navigating her through the pain and the terror of every wave, until baby Ahyana Cecilie Margot arrived into the Arctic Circle, her father still out at sea. Cecilie attaches a photo of a pink and brown newborn with swollen eyes and beautiful lips. She doesn’t expect a reply, but one comes straight away.
Beautiful! Congratulations! Is Mamá OK?
She’s fine. She was amazing. So strong. Abdi arrived at 5a.m. I’m already on my way to work, I only had 45 minutes at home but I was so wired, I couldn’t sleep!
Well you’re strong too. Mi héroe. Well done you. A new career perhaps? Not sure of the word for partera… Midwife, I think.
Sí, midwife.
You’ve found your calling, Midwife Ceci.
Ahh, thanks. Not sure I could go through it again.
Well done my love.
My love?
Cecilie is thrown.
I thought we left that behind.
It’s late over there. But Hector doesn’t get drunk and careless any more. In fact, since they started messaging each other again, Cecilie has loved chatting to level-headed Hector. Always sober. Always coherent. Whether he’s stealing five minutes from the art desk at La Voz or sending pictures of himself in his uniform from Lazaro’s, Cecilie loves talking to solid, sensible Hector even more than she did before.
Maybe it’s a querida thing.
Yes, Hector probably calls everyone querida or mi amor. Cecilie’s not sure why, but ‘love’ still cuts through her like a knife.
I’m tired.
A black Audi pulls up on the other side of the arching cantilever bridge, heading the other way. Cecilie recognises Svein, the driver, his silver hair curling softly at the nape of his collar. The rear window lowers and Andreas is revealed, looking pleased to see Cecilie. The driver of the car behind him beeps his horn, but Andreas is unperturbed.
‘Everything OK with your friend?’ Andreas shouts across the traffic.
‘Yes.’ Cecilie laughs gratefully. ‘A girl. “Ahyana”. Born at 4.21a.m. I cut the cord! ’
Andreas looks impressed. ‘You want a lift?’
The horn beeps again, twice in quick succession. Or was it a second car joining in?
‘No thanks, don’t worry. You’re going the other way.’
Andreas’s car was heading away from the town, past Mount Storsteinen to the roads that lead to the Finnish border, but he imagines Cecilie won’t fancy the biting wind of the bridge at 8a.m., especially on so little sleep.
‘Jump in! It’s fine, it’ll take Svein, what, ten extra minutes? It will save you a lot more time than that.’
Cecilie is tempted. Her bones ache. She didn’t reply to Hector’s confusing comment and she’s too tired to try to make sense of it. Besides, he’s probably about to go to bed, to spoon his bony wife, so she nods across the traffic at Andreas, who moves along the back seat to make way and winces while Cecilie dodges the cars heading into town, towards the library, the cafe, and the hotels on the harbour. She opens the car door and slides in as a succession of three SUVs behind them beep, making Cecilie feel flustered, although Andreas and his driver aren’t. The car is warm and the plush leather seats are a comfort; the smell of clean upholstery reminds her of how this night she will never forget started.
‘Thank you,’ she says, looking across the back seat to Andreas.
‘Svein, why don’t you turn around in the car park of that cathedral there and head back across the bridge?’
The driver nods compliantly.
‘The i-Scand, yes?’ Andreas asks.
‘No, the library actually. The big white building at the back of the town, with the undulating roof.’
Svein nods again; Andreas doesn’t know Troms? very well but he knows that impressive building .
‘The library? Wow. Delivering babies at 4a.m. and studying by 8a.m.’
‘No, I work there.’
‘At the library? As well as the hotel?’
‘Yes. The library in the morning, a cafe in the afternoon, and at the hotel recently, during their busier evenings.’
‘You are as hard-working as your brother.’
‘More so; I’m a midwife too now, you know.’ Cecilie winks through her sweeping fringe. The strange concoction of happiness and fatigue make her feel unusually bold.
Andreas looks back at Cecilie, sitting in her regular clothes and not her uniform. She looks fresh, despite not having slept, and he likes how her blue jeans, frayed at the knee, and green Converse boots offset the stuffiness of the car, his driver, their suits.
‘So how was the birth?’
‘Not pretty. But I saw a miracle happen before my very eyes. Not many friends get to experience that.’
‘Brutal, isn’t it? I was at both my sons’ births and they were pretty gruesome. It would have put me off having kids if I were a woman.’
Cecilie swallows the lump in her throat. Until now, it hadn’t put her off, or made her feel sad, but a defensive fog rises from the pit of her stomach and the wind has been taken from her wings. In two months’ time, Cecilie will turn thirty, and she’s never even had a proper boyfriend. She has never been able to walk hand in hand with the man she loves.
As the car turns around in the jagged shadow of the white concertina of the Arctic Cathedral, Cecilie suddenly feels a little na?ve, a little intimidated. Not by Andreas himself, but by his age, his experience, by what he’s been through in his business, his life, his divorce. It’s a feeling she had before. But her tired, dreamy mind digs deep into her resilience reserves.
Not many people can say they delivered their friend’s baby.
‘It didn’t put me off, it was magical,’ Cecilie says, looking up at the crisp blue sky as the car rolls back onto the bridge. Cecilie always has a knack of putting a magical spin on something, and flashes of what Grethe, Ahyana and she went through in the night tell all those uncomfortable feelings to be gone with a wriggle of her nose.
Andreas glances across in awe and they lock eyes.
Cecilie feels for her phone in her pocket, just to check it’s still there, as it didn’t vibrate again after Hector called her ‘my love’.
He must have gone to sleep.
‘So, the cable car. I’ve not been up there.’
‘Yes, you said.’
‘Will you show me around? I leave Saturday night – shit, that’s tomorrow – but I have tomorrow morning free. Is the cafe any good at the top? I could buy you lunch…’
Cecilie’s face flushes pink, making her green eyes look as bright as her shoes. She feels flattered, if a little scared. But tomorrow is Saturday, and on Saturdays, Fredrik, Pernille and Leif cover the library, and Henrik and Stine have everything in hand at the Hjornekafé. Cecilie searches her brain for an excuse.
‘Well, I’m not working until the evening shift at the hotel, but Grethe’s mother Mette might want some help at the Iskrembar…’ Andreas’s gracious smile wanes. ‘But that’s OK, I’m sure Mette will be fine with Oliver,’ she adds, feeling guilty. Grethe had ordered Cecilie not to work at the Iskrembar while she was on maternity leave, not when she had three other jobs and barely any time off as it was. Plus, Cecilie hasn’t been up the Fjellheisen herself in months. It would be nice to show off the view to a tourist .
‘So…?’ asks Andreas with an eyebrow raised playfully.
‘Sure,’ Cecilie says, to her surprise. ‘That would be wonderful.’
As Svein navigates through the morning traffic to the library, Cecilie and Andreas sit in comfortable silence. A flash of a smile appears in the corners of their mouths as they look out of their respective windows.
‘This is it,’ she says, pulling her bag across her body as Svein pulls up. Cecilie pulls the sleek silver handle and edges out. ‘Thanks for the lift. Again!’ Her nose creases up nervously as she looks at Andreas. Cecilie breaks the tension by turning to Svein. ‘Thanks so much.’
Svein nods.
‘See you at the Fjellheisen. Say 10a.m.?’
‘Ten is good.’
‘Shall we pick you up?’
‘No, it’s fine, I live right near it. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, at the ticket office at the bottom.’
On no sleep, tomorrow morning seems so far away that it takes the edge off Cecilie’s nerves, and she walks down the side of the library to the staff door, without looking back at the smitten businessman in the black Audi.