Chapter 33
Kenneth was mopping the wet floor of the exhibition and tickets room and Hamish was cashing up and looking forward to celebrating with Florrie up in the apartment before he had to open the club for the evening.
Christmas Eve was going to be the biggest bash of the year and the bar bills would be through the roof, especially after today.
When the man let himself inside with the authority of someone who owned the place, or could if he wanted to, Hamish stopped and stared.
‘Are you Mr Skelton?’ the man said dryly, looking around the room. ‘I’m Maxim Norheim.’
At this, the little door that led to the concession stand flew open and Florrie burst in. ‘Dad? What are you doing here?’
Hamish swept back his hair and stood up straight as he watched them embrace, Florrie a streak of pink and purple as she ran to him.
‘Well, somebody has been refusing to fly out of Scotland. I had to come here and check you hadn’t been kidnapped,’ he said with a laugh and a look at Hamish that unnerved him deeply.
Kenneth was gripping his mop like it was a claymore sword and watching his co-manager like a man waiting for the nod to spring to his defence.
‘I can see now…’ Maxim said, wryly, putting his daughter down and taking a long look at what she was wearing, ‘…that it’s much worse than kidnap. You’re working here?’
‘I’m helping out,’ she said, seemingly not all that fazed by his arrival.
‘For free?’
Florrie glanced between Kenneth and Hamish, and Rhona who’d joined them, still brandishing her stovies ladle. ‘There wasn’t quite enough to pay me, so I’m volunteering. Everyone else is getting a proper wage though.’
Maxim ran his leather gloved hand down his face like he was very tired.
‘Dad, this is Hamish, my… boyfriend,’ she said, and even though this was not the time or place for it, Hamish’s heart grew three sizes and he broke into a silly grin to match Florrie’s who’d never actually used the word boyfriend before.
Not a man for bad manners in business, Maxim returned Hamish’s handshake.
‘Are you really here to check on me?’ Florrie asked.
‘Because you can see my audit went better than expected and, based on our ticket sales for today and the coming weeks, we’ve got the launch off to a really profitable start, and who knows maybe the snow will stick, and we’re looking to get quotes on fixing the old chair lift, and…
’ she stopped. Maxim’s face had clouded.
‘I came to see my girl,’ he said. ‘Now I’m here and seeing this… business in operation, I’m not sure I should have come.’
‘What do you mean?’
Maxim looked around the displays, passing over Rhona with her spoon dropping mashed potato onto the floor. He took in the signs with their handwritten prices in what passed as the pocket-money gifts area, selling old badges and postcards and what looked like homemade bags of shortbread.
‘It’s… amateurish,’ Maxim said, and Hamish felt the word like a halfpipe wipeout.
‘It’s not. It’s local, it’s small, it’s… family!’ Florrie wasn’t holding back. ‘It’s… Mum!’
‘Huh?’ said Hamish and Maxim at the same time.
‘Are you OK, Flors?’ Hamish said, darting out from behind the counter.
‘You’re very pale all of a sudden…’ Then Hamish, following her gaze, stopped too.
The door opened, and in walked a woman who looked almost exactly like Florrie but older, followed by a man and two teenage boys, all with backpacks on their shoulders.
Maxim turned last, and very slowly, as though he knew what was awaiting him. Then, seeing his ex-wife, everyone started exclaiming at once about what the hell was going on, and Rhona and Kenneth, realising they were intruding on an awkward family reunion, hastily made themselves scarce.
It wasn’t going to be the cosy Christmas Eve dinner Florrie had been looking forward to but, after the shock had worn off, she had to admit it was nice to see her mama, and to meet Oskar and the boys, Felix and Magnus, who mostly hogged Hamish’s sofa and stared at their phone screens and tried to pretend meeting their older stepsister and her dad and her boyfriend all in one day wasn’t extremely weird and stressful.
Florrie did her best stretching out the pork and lamb ribs she’d made specially for Hamish to try, a taste of her Christmas Eves at home as a child, but she also threw in some frozen pizzas and rustled up some sides and salad, and her mother had been sure to bring jars of Christmas Julesild, or pickled herring, in her hand luggage, so there was going to be plenty of food to go around, really.
‘You’d gone so quiet. And Oskar said he could see I was fretting so why not fly to you for Christmas Eve? So we did,’ her mum said over her wine glass at Hamish’s kitchen counter with her new husband by her side. ‘We’re staying at the Cairn Dhu Hotel for a couple of nights.’
‘Right.’ Florrie wanted to laugh at the strangeness of it all but knew it would be too hard to explain if she did.
‘I might not have come if I’d known your father was coming here,’ she went on. ‘What is it that he wants?’
Maxim had excused himself and carried off his wine glass after their toast, saying he’d ‘let the women get on in the kitchen’ and he’d be back for dinner.
At this both Oskar and Hamish, busy preparing salads and sides, had given each other a look that told how they both did the lion’s share of the cooking in their relationships, and what was he on about?
Florrie had caught it, and she’d liked the feeling it gave her.
She was being cared for, and evidently so was her mother, but she couldn’t help worrying about her dad.
What was he thinking, turning up here at Christmas?
She didn’t like to side with her mum in this, but she too thought there had to be something Maxim wanted.
‘Will you guys be all right up here, if I go and talk to him?’ she said, and her mother had replied that she and Hamish would be, ‘absolutely fine; we have a lot to talk about,’ and she’d moved in on him over the salad bowl like he was in for a (hopefully) mild, motherly grilling.
‘I’ll look out for your boyfriend,’ Oskar reassured her when she paused in the doorway, and then she ran down the metal stairs past the Ptarmigan, which would be opening soon, thinking how nice it was to have been in a room absolutely full of people she was actually related to.
It had been a long time since she could say that.
Maxim hadn’t touched his wine. The glass was still full and abandoned on the ticket desk down in the hire shop.
He had his back to her, reading one of the displays when she found him.
‘Are you hiding?’
‘Ah! Florrie! No, not hiding.’ She took his glass to him, putting it in his hand. ‘Well, maybe a little bit hiding.’
Florrie stayed silent, waiting for him to come out with it. She tipped her glass so it clinked on her dad’s.
‘Ah, Sk?l. God Jul.’
‘Happy Christmas,’ Florrie replied. ‘It’s a long time since I heard you speak any Norwegian.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a long time since I had to. A very long time.’ He lifted his eyes to the floors above where his ex-wife was no doubt scaring the life out of Hamish with her questions.
‘Why here?’ he said, suddenly. ‘And why him? You could have come back to Aspen, had the corner office, ski passes, spa and gym, whatever you wanted.’
‘Is that what you wanted, for me to come and live with you? Really?’
‘I thought you knew that? I offered you this job hoping I could get you to come home.’
‘Aspen isn’t home to me.’
He received this like it was news to him. ‘Ah. But this is?’ he asked, a little sorrowfully.
She took her time answering. ‘It wasn’t at first. I thought everybody here was a bit mad, if I’m honest. But then, they really took care of me. It was as though they could see I was floundering. And they brought me in. I have actual friends here, and they all love it here, and so do I now.’
‘It’s only been a month. Less than a month! You… you love this guy? Hamish?’ Maxim pulled a face like it simply couldn’t be possible.
Florrie laughed. ‘I do, yes, I really do. Loving him has been the easiest part of this whole thing.’
He sighed and turned to look at the picture she’d found him staring at. It showed Hamish years ago when he first started at the ski centre, operating the chair lift from the control box. The sprinklers were casting rainbows over the dry slope in the summer sun.
‘He began life in ops, it says here,’ Maxim read.
‘That’s right. Now he manages the place, well he and his friend do.’
‘I started in mountain operations too, before you were born, in Myrkdalen, a working winter holiday.’
‘I know. That’s how you met Mum.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you ended up staying.’
‘We got married. I worked my way up at the resort. Ended up on the board. Then Snowmass poached me, and…’ he held his free hand up. ‘The rest is history.’
‘Hmm, like you were.’
His eyes flew to her face.
‘You just left us, Dad. I don’t think you’ll ever understand how bad it was without you. You made Mum miserable. You’re the reason she sold the house after Omma died. She couldn’t live there on her own with all the heartache you left behind.’
Maxim nodded. ‘I know. If it helps, I’m sorry. I was ambitious. I wanted it all.’
‘Now you’ve got it,’ Florrie said, not caring if her voice was sharp and bitter.
‘I don’t have everything.’ Maxim studied the picture some more. ‘I’m the one living alone, remember? Especially now your brothers are off doing their own thing.’
Florrie hadn’t ever considered that her father might be lonely. She saw it now in the slope of his shoulders, his lowered eyes. ‘That’s why you’re here? You don’t want to spend Christmas alone?’
He didn’t answer for a long time, seeming to think hard.
‘And I’m the reason you feel like you have no home,’ he said eventually. ‘I get it. But am I the reason you’re clinging on to this place? Because if I am… if you’re trying to recreate something that you lost, please don’t throw yourself into something…’