The Distance

by Zoë Folbigg

  How embarrassing! They must have noticed.

  Kate mats her fringe down to hide traces of webbing and wonders what she would look like with red lipstick on. Would George find her sexy in red lipstick, or would that repel him too? She can’t think of an actual event she would wear red lipstick to. Perhaps the PTA summer social, if she can drag George along. He so hates these things and acts like a spoilt child in the weeks running up to them if Kate ever reminds him that it’s happening; that so-and-so will be there. But when he’s there he seems to enjoy them and gets stuck in.

  Kate takes her phone out of her cardigan pocket and slides it onto the telephone table. She remembers the text received by mistake this morning and feels discomfort in the pit of her hungry stomach.

  Can’t wait for lunch X

  Rewrapping her cardigan around her, Kate decides to leave the empty breakfast bowls for A Bit Longer, kicks off her shoes, and goes upstairs to their office. A little study at the top of the stairs that overlooks the satisfying neatness of their garden.

  It was the neatness of the garden that won them over when they were looking at family homes in Suffolk. Kate and George were renting a one-bedroom flat in Blackheath when Kate fell pregnant with Chloe. George’s family were in Dorset and Kate’s were in Norfolk, but George relented and said Suffolk was as close as he could be to Kate’s sister and parents. They looked around many villages and towns, but Claresham made do, with its nice village green, strand of essential shops and decent schools. The house was a new build in a cul-de-sac and Kate and George didn’t mind that it lacked character – the sixteenth-century cottages that lined the green were far too dark and pokey for a growing family. This greige house on The Finches was perfect: detached, functional, low-maintenance. A good family home. The fittings were nice, the garden was spacious enough, if not very verdant, but that would come with time. There was a garage and space on the drive for two vehicles and, most importantly, it was a short car journey away from the train line to Liverpool Street where they both commuted to, working in the offices of Digby Global Investors in the City. Nowadays, Kate rarely goes further than the village.

  Can’t wait for lunch X

  Kate looks out onto the garden and sees a goldfinch on the bird feeder, but it doesn’t hearten her as it usually would. Her rumbling tummy makes her feel both fat yet hollow, and the agitation coming from within it gives her an urge to delve. She sits down at the desk and randomly taps a button on the keyboard to awaken the computer.

  X.

  Lights flicker and a machine twinkles at the attention. Desktop, dock, documents… Kate clicks on the tab that says Google calendar and looks at the colour-coded diaries. George’s diary is blue. Kate never cares to look at it, she’s usually busy in the default family diary, colour-coded yellow, full of Brownies, Beavers, birthday parties, dancing and gymnastics. She looks at today, then clicks on George’s blue box.

  Dentist 0830. Stand-up with Swiss team 1100. Meeting AIA 1130. Lunch B 1300. Toby appraisal 1530. Chloe school 1930.

  Lunch B.

  It must be Baz from the Sydney office. Of course, why would she think anything else? Kate blows a sigh of she’s not sure what towards the computer and sees her black muted reflection in the screen. Drawn and tired.

  Maybe I will try the red lipstick for the PTA summer social. I’ve got four months to practise applying it.

  Seven

  March 2018, Tromsø, Norway

  Cecilie stamps the snow off her boots and wipes her feet on the coarse mat.

  ‘Do you have a spare half-hour?’ she asks her friend Morten.

  ‘I’m hardly busy,’ he replies, pushing frameless spectacles up his nose, then beckoning Cecilie in with a jaunty wave.

  Morten has only had one customer all morning, which means the salon is spick and span: not a hair on the floor, every horizontal wooden panel on the wall cleaned to perfection (not that you can tell, they’re meant to look artfully distressed), sparkling smear-free mirrors, and the aroma of fresh coffee wafting through from the room at the back. Morten is always happy to see his boyfriend’s twin sister, as if she were his own, although Cecilie rarely has cause to go into a hair salon.

  ‘You want a chat or a haircut?’ Morten laughs, already heading towards the back kitchen to make another round of coffee, so they can sit down for a gossip.

  ‘A haircut actually.’

  Morten stops in his tracks and pivots around conspiratorially. ‘Really?’ His mouth hangs open, revealing the gap between his two front teeth. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Had I better call Espen?’

  Cecilie removes her long grey feather-down jacket with a lime-green lining as if she’s about to go into battle and slings it onto a hairdresser’s stool.

  ‘He might micromanage everything at the i-Scand, but my brother doesn’t have to approve my haircuts. Besides, he’s disapproved of these for years,’ Cecilie says, tugging on a ragged end of a long blonde dreadlock as she looks into the mirror.

  Morten pulls his braces up over his checked shirt, making him look like a friendly garden gnome, as he readies himself for the task at hand.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he says, ushering Cecilie into his favourite chair, the one closest to the windows that look out onto the small high street.

  Cecilie slinks into the square-shaped seat of the brown leather chair and looks at her face. For someone with such delicate features, with fingers that can pluck a harp like an angel, Cecilie is quite ungainly, and she slumps forward to look at her reflection, her DM boots anchoring her to the well-swept floor.

  Morten lifts ends of rope before they can entwine themselves into Cecilie’s jumper, the seat, the ground.

  ‘It’s a big deal, Cecilie, I’d have to get rid of all this length, your hair would be almost as short as mine,’ he says, smoothing his hands across the light brown fluff that caresses his dome.

  ‘Take them off, short is good,’ she says determinedly. ‘I just want them gone.’

  Morten looks at Cecilie’s reflection in the mirror and they lock eyes. He wants to ask if it’s about The Mexican, but he recognises that obstinacy in those dragonfly green irises. He sees it every time he and Espen have an argument, so he decides not to push his luck. Anyway, it’s academic. Cecilie wants a haircut, so he will give her a haircut.

  ‘OK, well I have no bookings until 3 p.m. and Nils is in Oslo for a few days, so the salon is ours. Let me get you that coffee first. Milky, ja?’ Morten walks to the kitchen and lets out a chuckle. ‘Espen won’t believe it! Your mother neither.’

  But it’s neither Espen nor her mother who Cecilie thinks of as she looks in the mirror and stares at her reflection. The mirror frames Cecilie’s face perfectly. Blonde twists cascade past cheekbones that rise like the two curves of a loveheart and tumble past her chin. Her eyes are several shades lighter than her jumper, a colour unique to Cecilie and Espen, and it’s a colour Morten is mesmerised by. ‘You must be the only two people on the planet with this eye colour,’ he often marvels. Brother and sister blush when Morten says it: thick lashes sweep down in unison as Cecilie and Espen wonder what their father’s eyes were like. They can’t remember.

  Cecilie’s otherworldly beauty doesn’t need reinforcement, and she rarely bothers, but for a flick of eyeliner above feline eyes, parallel to the arch of the dark-blonde brows that reach out to her temples. Looking at her face in the mirror for so long makes Cecilie see herself through the eyes of Hector Herrera, and she rises out of her body, out of her chair, and flutters across the timeline of her life. From above, she sees Hector pacing a room, remembering what he said to her the first time they saw each other’s faces. Then she slides a tiny bit further back and looks down on the library, at the time they first found each other.

  Eight

  June 2013, Day One

  Cecilie wasn’t looking to cause trouble for herself the day she met Hector Herrera. She was in the library at 8 a.m., as usual, before chief librarian Fredrik came in
at 8.30. The two of them would always chat quietly, genially, and be ready to open for 9 a.m. Cecilie always loved to hang out in the library before anyone else got there. It’s such a peaceful time of day. Dark in the winter; light all summer, the huge glass façade of the modernist four-storey building looks out onto the small grid of the town, the harbour, its bridges, its mountains beyond, the world below. Sometimes in winter Cecilie can see the Northern Lights through the window that rises all the way to the top floor. A green whisper arcing overhead, reminding her how isolated she is from the world she reads about in the books on the shelves.

  That day, Cecilie didn’t go to the basement first, to sort out the children’s activity table. She didn’t put out the pencils and paper ready for the school trip, or the soft-back books and tambourines in anticipation of the baby rhyme-time session. That light and bright June morning, Cecilie got herself a milky coffee and went up the open staircase to the rows of computers on the first floor. She turned the machines on with a satisfying switch switch switch of the clean white sockets behind each terminal.

  She looked up to the top floor, to the quiet reading and writing areas among the rows of books, but decided not to go up and turn the lights on, she didn’t want to draw attention to her private world in the public glass space. Anyway, it was June, and there was sufficient light night and day to not warrant them.

  At the second terminal in, on the first row of machines, Cecilie leaned over the desk without sitting, typed in the staff login, and waited for a sand timer flipping over and over on itself to align her to another time. Another latitude she had no idea she would soon long for.

  Switch switch switch. She stalked the library, awakening, opening, connecting, before coming back to the second terminal. She sat down at a screen, facing out over the Arctic Circle below her.

  Cecilie tied her locks into a thick trunk running down her back and took a sip of milky white coffee, holding her cup with her thumbs threaded through holes in the wrist of her jumper. Cecilie went on her usual journey across the world: NRK for her news fix before the bundle of papers arrived. Facebook to see what friends who had set sail from this port town were up to, as far afield as Oslo, Edinburgh, San Francisco and Quito. Then her habitual look on NME to see what was going on in her favourite music sphere. At home Cecilie unwinds by playing the harp to an empty house, but picks herself up again to British synth-pop and electronica.

  Depeche Mode played Leipzig last night.

  Cecilie took a sip and sought out gig reviews, finding herself in a chatroom for other 80s electronica Anglophiles in no time. She thought she might scour the reviews, the forums, the chat, to find out about future concert dates that hadn’t yet been announced. She logged in and gave herself a moniker: Arctic Fox. With delicate hands that had dry pads for fingertips, she typed.

  Arctic Fox: Anyone know if DM are coming to Scandinavia?

  I Feel You: More likely Scandinavia than Mexico @arcticfox! Been too long since they came here.

  Cecilie’s eyes widened and she marvelled at the world she was connected to. Like-minded music fans thousands of kilometres away.

  Arctic Fox: You in Mexico?

  I Feel You: Siiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

  Arctic Fox: Wow, what time is it there?

  I Feel You: Party time. Where are you? Copenhagen??? They play Copenhagen tomorrow. Stockholm in a few weeks. Go go go!

  Arctic Fox: Nope. I’m in neither.

  The steam from her coffee cup rose above Cecilie’s head towards the roof.

  Arctic Fox: I’m in Norway – in a building, a library in fact, inspired by a Mexican architect.

  I Feel You: Félix Candela?

  Arctic Fox: Yes! You know him?

  I Feel You: I studied him. Love that dude’s waves.

  I Feel You added a smiley face and an emoji of a great wave.

  Cecilie looked up to the curve of the thin, white parabolic roof that hugged the glass tiers of the library like a snowdrift. It made her feel cosy and safe and she inhaled another slug of coffee, then put her mug down to type.

  Arctic Fox: Small world!

  The apples of her cheeks rose as she smiled at the words on her screen.

  I Feel You: So, what are you doing in the library, Arctic Fox?

  Arctic Fox: I work here. I’m the only one here right now. Opening up.

  I Feel You: Well… encantado. Nice to meet you cool Norwegian librarian girl who likes Depeche Mode.

  Cecilie felt the change in tone. She twisted a blonde rope around her right index finger.

  Arctic Fox: How do you know I’m a girl?

  I Feel You: I dunno… I… I Feel You…

  Arctic Fox: Hahahaha.

  Cecilie added a smiley face with a wink. She had a definite feeling that I Feel You was a boy, but if she had understood Spanish she would have already known he was.

  Encantado.

  Someone called Dave Gahan’s Left Bollock entered the conversation.

  Dave Gahan’s Left Bollock: Get a room.

  I Feel You: Jajajajaja. Sorry Dave Gahan’s Left Bollock! Just bein friendly, nada más. Cool name!

  Arctic Fox: What is ‘left bollock’?

  Hector Herrera clicked on a box to message Arctic Fox privately.

  I Feel You: Bollocks bollocks bollocks.

  Arctic Fox: Yes, but what is bollocks?

  Hector’s grasp of English swearwords was better than Cecilie’s then. He knew what bollocks meant, so he eagerly cut and paste an explanation from the dictionary, hoping Arctic Fox wouldn’t leave the conversation.

  I Feel You:

  bollocks

  noun UK /ˈbɒl.əks/ US /ˈbɑː.ləks/ uk

  [ plural ] offensive for testicle

  [ U ] offensive nonsense:

  That's a load of bollocks.

  Bollocks to that (= that's nonsense)!

  Cecilie laughed to see the explanation laid out so clearly before her in black and white.

  Arctic Fox: Ah I get it now! Testiklene in my language.

  I Feel You: We have many words for them in mine. Cojones, huevos, pelotas, aguacates, albondigas… But yes, Dave Gahan’s Left Bollock must be a superfan. But never mind the bollocks…

  I Feel You added a smiley face with a wink and two hazelnuts and Cecilie laughed.

  Arctic Fox: Hahaha. Thanks. So where are you partying?

  I Feel You: Xalapa, Mexico. You?

  Cecilie quickly googled Xalapa and her eyes widened. It looked so… different to the pale jagged landscape around her, full of whites, greys and blues.

  Arctic Fox: Well, I’m not partying, I’m working. Tromsø, Norway.

  I Feel You: Hang on, lemme google…

  Cecilie liked how honest I Feel You was about looking Tromsø up, when she had just searched his homeland surreptitiously. While Cecilie waited for a response she looked at the clock in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. It was 8.30 a.m.

  Fredrik will be here any minute.

  A second later, Cecilie heard the heavy side door to the library open and clink shut, followed by the soft noise of a bike being wheeled in. A jangle of heavy keys clattered down onto the welcome desk.

  Like clockwork.

  Fredrik, a broodingly handsome mountain of a man with a bushy beard and hair tied into a bun, must be the most reliable man in the Arctic Circle: always arriving at 8.30 a.m. precisely, always able to call in a book from anywhere in the world for any visitor to the library, always wielding a flask of green tea and a jam jar of Bircher muesli, soaked overnight in almond milk in his fridge at home. Morten had been trying to matchmake Cecilie with Fredrik ever since he and Espen got together, but Fredrik was always reliably – yet annoyingly – entwined with, and loyal to, his yoga-teacher girlfriend, saluting the sun with her day, and night, at this time of year.

  Being pulled away from another world gave Cecilie a feeling of urgency in her tummy, she knew she ought to hurry up.

  ‘Hei Cecilie,’ said a soft, deep voice.

  ‘Up here!’ s
he called, standing and walking away from her terminal, to start pulling out the stands with magazines and journals on them. She did that every morning. Checking her favourite news and music sites in a world beyond the library before she started checking the newspapers and journals inside the building, putting out-of-date ones on a pile for the recycling box. Bringing the bale of papers on the desk up to the first floor. Only, that morning, Cecilie had got a little sidetracked and was running behind. She looked back to the screen.

  I Feel You: You still there…?

  I Feel You: Arctic Fox…?

  I Feel You: Ah no mames…

  Cecilie walked back to the machine and put the well-fingered newspapers down next to the keyboard to free her hands so she could reply.

  Arctic Fox: Hei, still here, I have to get to work now though. Bookworms incoming, 30 minutes!

  I Feel You: Tromsø library. I see where you are now. Beautiful. It’s like the pavilion at Valencia. Félix Candela designed that one. You been to Valencia?

  Arctic Fox: Nei. Never left Norway. Have you been to Spain?

  Hector Herrera, sitting among the colourful mess of his colourful apartment in the tallest building in town, thought about his ties to Spain. His girlfriend Pilar, across the room, cross-legged on the sofa as she put on her make-up ready for the night out ahead of them, looked like Spanish royalty with her hooded eyes and haughty nose.

  I Feel You: Nah. I only left Mexico once. Pinches gringos let me into USA.

  Hector inhaled his cigarette and suddenly wondered if Arctic Fox was a kid. If she had never left Norway she might be a child, in which case he really ought not to be talking to her at all, let alone doing winking smiley faces. But then the kids Hector knew, the children at the orphanage or the students at Pilar’s school, preferred Demi Lovato to Depeche Mode, so he blew that thought away as he exhaled a stream of smoke at his dented laptop with a cracked screen.