Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
The Firefly greenhouse was more of a green mansion, making it easy to spot from a distance.
A glowing hotbox of humidity, at odds with its wintery surroundings.
There was nobody about as I wandered in, and the sweet, zesty smells hit me from all sides.
Lush and fresh, it reminded me of Columbia Road flower market as I unravelled my scarf and whipped off my layers.
The floor was split between fruit and vegetables, with a small section at the front for salad-y things.
A row of trees stood tall along the back wall, and I spotted baby apples, pears and plums nestled in among their leaves.
The vegetables would have been less easy to identify had it not been for the hand-drawn pictures scattered among them: rhubarb, basil, lettuce, onions.
It was much the same vibe as my colour-coded filing cabinet and I loved it.
The greenhouse was full of good energy and the plants were flourishing in their patchwork of freshly watered plots, with plenty of space to grow.
Tore had been adamant we would carry on with the retreat programme despite the weather – even though most of the guests were hiding in their cabins, loath to leave the warm.
Somehow I’d managed to do the opposite and in trying to enthusiastically prove I’d given it a good go, I was the only idiot who’d turned up for the gardening workshop.
Henrik emerged from behind a cherry tree wearing a long apron and carrying a spritzing bottle in each hand. ‘Sara! Sorry, I didn’t realise anyone was in here.’ He walked towards me, spraying the lettuces as he went. ‘Looks like it’s just me and you for this session.’
‘Is it safe to be in here?’ I asked as the wind whistled through the glass. The vibrations reverberated across the ceiling and I wondered how long we had before the roof caved in.
‘Completely safe. I won’t let anything happen to you – don’t worry.
’ He said it with complete sincerity, but I could feel my cheeks turning red.
‘This building has survived worse storms than this, believe me. It’s solid.
’ He handed me an apron and a pair of orange gloves.
‘Put these on and let’s start. We could do the growth and grounding workshop you missed on the Monday you arrived? ’
I shrugged. ‘No idea what it is, but yes. Let’s do it.’ I pulled the gloves on and they felt gross and rubbery inside.
‘The others planted spinach, cucumber and carrots, so shall we do the radishes?’
‘Yes, chef,’ I said, wiggling my eyebrows cheekily.
Henrik rolled his eyes with a smile, his muscles rippling through his T-shirt as he grabbed a sack of topsoil and slapped it down next to a tower of cardboard pots. ‘Each pot needs filling halfway and patting down. Then we bury the seeds and add a touch of water.’
‘Is this the growth part of the workshop or the grounding?’
‘Both.’
We worked in companiable silence, patting tiny handfuls of cold soil into each pot in a productive rhythm. Henrik put some classical music on, and I inhaled the oxygenated air, enjoying the calming effect as we lost ourselves in the repetition of the job.
‘Our menu is all plant-based, as you know, and most of the food is grown here,’ he said proudly. ‘We are working towards self-sustainability, but it’ll take time. I want us to get to carbon negative and give back more to the environment than we take.’
He looked so earnest and genuine. I felt ashamed of my plastic soy sauce marlins.
‘Wow. That’s a very worthy goal. Is it possible in a place like this when you can’t control how much hot water and heating everyone is using?’
‘We control what we can. Starting with this. Not just standard versions either, I’ve been cultivating new varieties of beetroot, lettuce, cucumber, cabbage, spinach… all sorts. Jonas wants our food to have a specific taste that nowhere else can replicate.’
I was genuinely impressed. ‘That is such a cool idea.’
‘We think so. Assuming the taste is good.’ He laughed.
‘True. You don’t want Firefly to taste of smelly feet.’
‘That is one of the beetroot varieties I’m testing,’ he said with a cheeky smile.
‘We’ve put a lot of effort into our growing programme, and Jonas is experimenting with all the flavours.
I’ve even developed a secret sauce for the soil, to make sure everything gets the same set of nutrients.
And so far, so good. The greenhouse is thriving. ’
It certainly was. The fruit and vegetables were plump and plentiful in a glossy mix of colours. It was mind-blowing to me that Henrik was keeping so many plants alive at once – and they were bearing fruit. The yucca in my lounge didn’t look half as shiny, and it was plastic.
‘Do you meditate back home?’ Henrik asked, once we had the first line of pots complete.
‘Not really,’ I said, being honest. Unless I could count swearing under my breath. ‘I find it hard to empty my mind. I know you’re supposed to acknowledge the thoughts and let them go, but I’ve got too many going on at once. I just spend the whole session imagining myself as air traffic control.’
‘We’ve got a morning meditation on Sunday, if you want to try again?’
‘I’ll be back home by then, if this snow ever stops.’ Although the thought of going home was slightly less appealing today. ‘I’ll do it if I’m here, for practice. But it’ll only be a one off – I’d never fit it in in real life.’
Henrik nodded while he potted. ‘The gurus say you should meditate for twenty minutes a day. Unless you’re too busy. And then you should do it for an hour.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘I’d need two hours then. My brain is honestly too full. I don’t find it very helpful.’
‘That’s London for you. All that city noise takes a while to quieten down.’
‘Have you been?’
He gave me a look. ‘Yeah, plenty of times. I’m not some country bumpkin, you know.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting you were!’
‘Did you think I’d lived my whole life in this forest?’
‘It was an innocent question.’
‘I was working in New York until a few years ago and travelled all over the place. Australia, Japan, London.’ He waved like a magician as if it was some far-off land. ‘I came home to help Pa and Jonas with the retreat – it was getting too much for them without my mother.’
I didn’t ask where she’d gone; we hadn’t known each other very long, and it felt wrong to pry. He’d tell me if he wanted to. ‘What were you doing in New York?’
‘Trading. Day and night, up to my neck in pressure.’ His eyes glazed over at the thought. ‘I was so ready to move back home when the time came. I was completely burnt out.’
‘I can’t imagine you doing all that ‘buy! Sell! Sell!’ up and down the trading floor. It doesn’t seem very… you.’
‘It wasn’t. And I wish I could say it felt right at the time, but it didn’t. I finished my PhD in Oslo and was offered a shit-tonne of cash to be a trainee trader in New York, and I took it.’
Well, this was a turn up for the books.
‘It must have felt like a different planet compared to all this.’ I gestured out at the silence.
‘It did. It was brutal. I could never have prepared enough for that kind of lifestyle. The pace, the panic, the anger; it was everywhere, and it was relentless. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.’
He grabbed a bag of radish seeds from the wheelbarrow and tipped a small pile out onto the table.
‘I get it. It’s hard to resist when they dazzle you with cash.’
Henrik shrugged. ‘I could have said no – I’m a big boy.
We all knew the money was a stick dressed up as a carrot, but it worked.
Every time I got a payout I’d think three more months and then I’m gone.
But the bonuses got bigger, and each quarter was more tempting than the last. I should have quit while I was ahead, but I stayed in the game too long and ended up having a breakdown. ’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’ Why was the corporate world such a shitshow?
I wanted to put my hand on his and reassure him it wasn’t his fault.
‘These hellish jobs creep up on us all. The moneymakers have a way of keeping you close and chewing you up at the same time. Holding our noses to the grindstone until we can’t take anymore. ’
He gave an mirthless chuckle. ‘In a funny way I’m glad I got ill. It was a relief to have a get-out. I’d still be there, otherwise. Crawling through tunnels like a lab rat trying to find the light. I’d lost all sense of myself and wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘A perfect case study for the Firefly mind and body transformation programme!’ I said, baffled by this new information. ‘A PhD, no less. He’s fit, smart and loaded, ladies and gentlemen. The original triple threat. Come and get him while he’s hot.’
‘Hardly.’ He gave me a bashful smile. ‘I’m certainly not loaded anymore. I had the New York job and the New York girlfriend to go with it, and my money went on living the high life – if you can call it that. A penthouse apartment, weekends in the Hamptons, expensive dinners, a driver – the lot.’
Curiouser and curiouser. Who was this guy?
‘It wasn’t all bad, then.’
‘Not all, no. The slices between work and sleep were amazing. But I was exhausted pretty much continuously.’
‘Like the rest of us, then.’
‘I made a lot of money for a lot of people and when you make it rain, they’ll do anything to keep you working. You’re a lawyer, I’m sure you know what I mean.’
His lovely bright eyes were now dark and flat.
‘I really do,’ I whispered. ‘The American dream, eh?’
He nodded despondently. ‘Jonas calls it the Norwegian nightmare. In the end I had no choice but to stop. I physically couldn’t do it anymore. Migraines so bad I couldn’t see, my back was totally fucked – you get the idea.’
‘Did the bosses care?’
‘Nope. Paid me off and replaced me with the next guy on their list. Another grad with fresh eyes and a full tank of nerve, while I got on a plane back here, completely broken.’
‘Sounds like you got out just in time. Sometimes I wonder if my work is breaking me, but it’s hard to see it when you’re in it.’
He opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘It’s none of my business, but the panic attacks are a big clue, right?’
I stopped at that. I had been trying to convince myself that they had nothing to do with work and everything to do with everything else.
The divorce going through, forgetting to eat then eating and drinking too much, moving back home…
the non-stop juggle of life. It was bound to stress me out every now and then.
But if Henrik could clock it that easily…
‘Work is fine. I’ve just had a lot of big changes recently.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said, but he didn’t look convinced.
‘It must have been a culture shock coming back to all this quiet,’ I said, looking around. I wanted to keep talking about him, this unexpectedly fascinating man. ‘From the city that never sleeps to a handful of people at a time.’
‘I much prefer the peace,’ he said, pouring another bag of soil across the pots. I followed behind to smooth the tops, tucking in our radish babies.
‘Just call me your gardening sous chef,’ I said, standing back to admire them.
‘They look good, don’t they?’ Henrik spritzed them with his water bottles, managing two full sprays before it started to sputter. ‘Can you turn the hose on, at the wall?’
I walked to the back of the greenhouse and turned on the tap.
Henrik stood there with the hose, but nothing happened.
I waited a few seconds then turned it up, just as the water shot out all over him.
The hose leapt out of his hand and thrashed around on the floor like an angry snake, pissing water everywhere.
‘Sorry!’ I yelped, turning it off and running back to where Henrik and the radishes were now drenched. He’d wrestled the hose into a watering can but not before it had soaked him through. His T-shirt was translucent, and he had to wring out his beard.
‘Luckily I needed a shower,’ he said, smiling as he untied his apron and stripped off his soaked shirt.
I smothered a giggle. ‘I didn’t think it was on.’
‘Well, now you know it was.’
I couldn’t help but stare at his big arms and smooth, muscly back as he disappeared into the bathroom to dry off. I wondered if he had a Norwegian girlfriend these days to go with the hip, Scandi lifestyle. Surely he couldn’t be single?
‘Do you want to borrow my scarf?’ I called, not that it would be much use on its own. ‘And gloves? Or I can run up to the house and get a jumper from Jonas?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a spare. Just don’t tell anyone you saw me in it.’ He reappeared in a T-shirt that was far too small for him with a glittery Cinderella on the front. As he got closer I could see it was covered in shapes and scribbles.
‘Big Disney fan, eh?’ I said. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’
He laughed. ‘Greta’s goddaughters came to visit in the summer and brought me a present. It was the biggest size they sold apparently – in kid’s sizes – but I managed to squeeze it on.’
I couldn’t help but smile. ‘How cute. What did they write on it?’
‘Uncle Hen,’ he said, pointing out the letters. ‘Then there’s a carrot, an apple, some broccoli and a chocolate cake.’
I melted at the thought of this big handsome Viking letting two little girls draw all over him.
‘Are they vegan as well?’
His eyes were back to twinkling. ‘No chance. But they know I do the growing and Jonas does the cooking. They like to help me water the plants when they come, and on a good day they are angels. On a bad day… chaos, of course.’
‘You can’t beat the chaos of kids,’ I said, wistfully.
‘Too true. Do you have any?’
‘No. But hopefully one day.’
Henrik nodded. ‘Ella and Kaja are Greta’s flower girls so we’ve been seeing them a lot recently, for dress fittings and to explain what will happen where. It’s been fun having them around – I’ll miss them after the wedding.’
Could this be? A man who actually liked spending time with children. A proper family man. So they did exist. Henrik’s New York girlfriend must have been an idiot. Fancy having this tall drink of water by your side and letting him go.