by Zoë Folbigg
I will buy myself a new red lipstick and I will dare to wear it.
Sixteen
June 2018, Tromsø, Norway
‘Grethe! I need your help, we’ve run out of ice cream!’
Espen tears through the double doors of the ice cream parlour like an actor in a hospital drama. Surrounded by the pastel colours of the walls and furniture, he seems to have wandered off set. Two teens spoon-feed each other sorbet and kisses behind a low table at the back; a party of three families from a faraway land go quiet while they tame the drips and drops of their cones; a father and his young daughters drink milkshakes in the window seat. Espen sees Cecilie sitting on a high stool at the counter, keeping her friend, Grethe, owner of ‘Grethe’s Iskrembar’, company on a Saturday night in high summer.
‘Hei, you OK?’ Espen asks, giving his sister a loose hug.
Cecilie smiles but doesn’t reply as she stirs a long stainless-steel spoon into a blue sundae. Cecilie and Espen often don’t answer each other because they can respond to chit-chat without the need for words.
Grethe, with shoulder-length blonde hair tied up into a headscarf and a colourful shawl fashioned into an apron around her heavily pregnant tummy, eases herself towards the glass freezer display and gestures to an array of pale peach, pink, brown and yellow ice cream colours, clinging to almost-empty tubs.
‘We’re practically out too, Espen, I can’t keep up with demand today,’ Grethe shrugs. ‘Your selfless sister even volunteered to have Smurf flavour instead of cloudberry tonight, so I didn’t have to turn this party away.’ She nods to the big group dominating the small parlour and wipes a tired brow with the back of her hand.
Since the Lonely Planet put Grethe’s Iskrembar in its latest edition and said the cherry ripple, Arctic cloudberry and peanut butter flavours were all ‘to die for’, the blue hue of the mysterious unidentifiable Smurf flavour does less of a roaring trade than it used to, and Cecilie doesn’t mind having it tonight.
‘Actually, it’s OK,’ Cecilie smiles with long, blue lips.
This weekend is the weekend of Tromsø’s annual marathon, which means the town is teeming with tourists from all over the world wanting to run under the midnight sun, in a town where it won’t start setting again until late July. And then only for a few minutes. Carb loaders and support parties have filled the parlour all day ahead of the race tonight, and Grethe is about to close up.
Espen’s neat quiff dips a little in panic.
‘Shit, we’re totally out at the hotel, I told Chef I’d do a dash here.’
Grethe looks at the baby-blue clock on the pink wall above a vintage poster of two animated ice cream cones, and rubs her belly under its patchwork apron. She is thirty-three weeks pregnant, and could do with shutting shop early this evening.
‘Hang on, Espen,’ she says, connecting to the kicks and flicks within her tummy. ‘Let me look out the back and see what we have left in the freezer, I’ve barely had a chance…’ Grethe presses her palms into her tailbone to propel her heaving bump forward to the churning room full of mixers and freezers at the end of the counter.
Oliver, the Saturday boy, is cleaning down the paddles since they ran out of milk hours ago and won’t get any more from the dairy until Monday, so Grethe asks him to check the deep freeze as she can’t squeeze into it easily in her current state.
Espen stands at the counter and leans on Cecilie’s stool.
‘So, what’s new?’ he asks.
‘Nothing.’
‘I thought I might see you and Morten for kjøttboller at lunchtime. Not that I would have had a chance to chat. These bloody marathon runners are so demanding…’
‘Nei, I was playing harp and sorting out the house. Mamma’s home tomorrow, I did a big clean.’
‘Ah yes. I need to talk to her about that delegation. It would be amazing to get that many diplomats into my hotel. I bet they’re less high-maintenance than runners. I had to send Camilla to the Spar three times to get more pasta – now the whole town is out.’ Espen rolls his eyes.
‘I’m sure that’s not the first thing Mamma is going to want to talk about after an exhausting trip.’
‘I know,’ he nods, as he smooths Cecilie’s white-blonde, asymmetric fringe and tucks it behind the studded helix of her ear. ‘I miss you, sister. Please come work at the hotel.’
‘Is that how I get to see you? I have to work for you?’ Cecilie gives a small laugh and sticks a blue tongue out at her brother.
Last month, Espen moved out of their mother’s cosy home at the foothills of Mount Storsteinen, and in with Morten, in the apartment above Nils’ salon, just a stone’s throw from the i-Scand.
Even when Cecilie and Espen started studying at the Arctic University on the outskirts of the town, they lived at home rather than on campus. It was easy. Karin always made her children feel welcome to remain there, even when they were no longer children. Actually, it was rather convenient for Karin, having her kids look after the house while she was in the capital, or travelling Europe giving speeches and attending summits. When Espen said he was moving in with Morten, Karin worried that Cecilie wouldn’t be able to look after the house on her own.
‘It’s not that you’re not capable my darling,’ she said with a sweep of her hand, ‘it’s just your brother manages 100 staff at the hotel. Running a house is like a smaller version of that, I know he can do it with his eyes closed.’ For a progressive woman in a male-dominated sphere, Karin Wiig was surprisingly backwards when it came to their current domestic set-up, especially given it was she who had put out the dustbins, changed every light bulb and erected every piece of flat-pack furniture since her husband Kjetil had fled the family when the twins were four; becoming the seventh person to jump off the bridge that year. Unlucky number seven.
Perhaps that’s why Karin wanted Cecilie to have an easier life, to have Espen look after her, although Cecilie hadn’t shown any signs of ever wanting a man to look after her, not since the Mr Lind debacle. She was self-contained and content in her dreamy bubble.
‘It’ll be fine Mamma,’ Cecilie said. ‘I’m always the one who does everything in the house anyway,’ she added, making a face by crossing her eyes at Espen as she said it.
Morten couldn’t help but agree. Espen put so much energy into empire building at the i-Scand that all he could do was sit back on the couch in his cashmere onesie when he was at home.
‘Cecilie will be fine,’ Morten had reassured Karin. ‘Although I’ll insist on taking her to lunch more often if I’m not at the house so much,’ he added with a wink.
Cecilie is managing the family home perfectly well thank you very much. The fridge is always filled with fresh food, alongside Mette’s leftover cakes from the Hjornekafé, the recycling is always ready for collection and the cosy cushions on the low grey sofa always look plumped up and pristine. Cecilie does leave her harp right in the middle of the living room when her mother is away, but that doesn’t matter. And she does miss the chatter of Espen and Morten, curled up on the sofa late on a Sunday night as the three of them used to, watching a movie. Cecilie even came close to messaging The Mexican the other day, the house felt so quiet and private. She thought no one would even know, except for Hector of course. And maybe his wife. Which made Cecilie feel sad and silly, so she thought better of it. Picturing Hector Herrera in his new happy role as husband made it easier for Cecilie to step away from her phone.
I miss him.
‘Come on,’ Espen says, with a click of his finger. ‘It’s Saturday night and you could be working a shift at the bar, earning money, meeting hot businessmen, making loads of tips… I need a good-looking mixologist like you.’
He looks at his sister and smiles. She looks so different to the girl with the dreadlocks, and he loves it. If only the sadness and inertia of that little cloud still floating above her head would fizz away.
‘I don’t need money,’ shrugs Cecilie.
‘Everyone needs money.’
‘Well I
don’t need any more money than I already have. I don’t spend money. The library and the cafe pay me enough.’
Espen looks down at his sister’s dishevelled Dr Martens and rips on the knees of her light blue jeans and raises an artfully groomed eyebrow.
‘Come on, look at you. Have some ambition. You could be anything you want to be; do anything you want to do. The world is your oyster, Cecilie, and you’re eating blue ice cream on your own on a Saturday night?’
Cecilie’s eyes fill up and she scratches the soft hair at the nape of her neck. Hector’s face flashes in her mind, adding fire to the ice on her tongue.
I miss him so much.
‘Be anything I want? What, like a “mixologist” mannequin in the dizzy heights of the i-Scand hotel? Letting diplomats or smug biotech boys touch me up, just for tips? Or listen to the banal shit of lonely businessmen while I pour them a whisky? You call that ambition, brother?’
The three families sitting together in the middle of the parlour stop planning their marathon vantage points and crane their necks, to try to understand what Cecilie’s terse tone is all about. Espen looks at them, quick as a flash, and they look away.
‘It’s a four-star international hotel,’ he counters with a hush. ‘Interesting people walk through the doors of the i-Scand every single day. What’s wrong with wanting to welcome them to our town? To make them feel comfortable? To have pride in what you do?’
Cecilie looks at her brother in despair. His pale green eyes are the exact same shade as hers but they have a determination within them that Cecilie has never known. She decides to diffuse the discussion with her usual whimsy.
‘Look, thanks for the offer, but really, Espen, I’m fine. I like my life. What’s wrong with being happy in your skin and just… being? I don’t want to be in Strasbourg or Brussels with Mamma, or earning “megabucks” in your hotel on the harbour. When did being happy and grateful for what you have become a crime?’
Espen shrugs. ‘It didn’t. But you’re hardly the poster girl for happiness, are you?’
‘Fuck you, Espen.’
Grethe comes back to the counter. The teens in the corner clean the last of their sorbet from sticky lips; the tourists start putting their coats and scarves back on; the dad in the window lays a sleeping daughter down on the banquette while her sister slurps up the leftovers.
‘Right, Oliver managed to find one tub of peanut butter, half a tub of triple chocolate and two and a half tubs of vanilla, but that’s all I have,’ Grethe says. ‘You can take them if you want to, I’ll close up soon anyway.’
Grethe looks up and notices tension between the twins.
‘Everything OK?’ she asks.
Espen glosses over it with businesslike panache.
‘Grethe, you’re a star. Can you put it on the account and I’ll settle up Monday?’
‘No problem,’ she says, wincing at another kick from inside her. ‘Oliver, can you help Espen carry it back to the hotel?’
‘For sure,’ says a languid teenage boy, tucking a blond curl behind his ear.
‘And don’t let him steal you from me,’ she says, giving Espen a playful look. Last year Grethe lost her favourite sundae girl, Solveig, to Espen and his blasted hotel. Solveig had been wooed by the tips.
Espen nods his appreciation and turns to Cecilie. ‘I’ll call round tomorrow, yes? Catch you and Mamma.’
Cecilie doesn’t answer. She spoons the last drips of Smurf-flavoured ice cream into her mouth and keeps her focus forward at Grethe as the bell above the door signals Espen and Oliver’s departure.
Grethe wipes down the counter.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Just Espen being Espen.’
Grethe lets out a little laugh, but it soon turns to a wince as she takes another pounding from within.
‘Here, what can I do? Let me help you close. You should call it a day. Sit down.’
Grethe gives a grateful sigh. ‘Thanks, sweetie, you’re the best. Can you turn the sign around to “closed” please?’
‘Sure,’ Cecilie says, slipping off the stool and walking to the door. The party of three families leave as she does, and she sends them on their way with a smile. Only the father and his daughters, and the sorbet-sticky couple remain. ‘Hey, do you want to come back to mine and watch a movie?’ Cecilie asks, as she clears away napkins and detritus from the tables pushed together in the middle of the room. ‘Dirty Dancing, for old times’ sake?’
Dirty Dancing was released on Cecilie and Espen’s first birthday, and it was Karin and Kjetil’s first night out after a gruelling year of twin feeding, weaning and teething. Karin begged Kjetil to take her to the cinema one night soon after the twins had turned one, and she fell in love with the footwork and the freedom that those 100 minutes gave her.
When Cecilie was eleven, she discovered the old VHS on her mother’s shelf, and she and Grethe must have watched it 4,000 times as teens. Confused that the soundtrack to their infancy was like something from the 1960s, but loving how Baby was swept off her feet in a fantasy land far away.
In the spacious cosy living room of the Wiig family home, Cecilie and Grethe had eaten freshly popped popcorn, worked out the dance routines, and quoted the film, line for line, as they watched, tummy down on the rug, gazing with their heads resting in their palms. Sometimes they ordered Espen to try to lift them up and over his head, during a particularly tricky manoeuvre, which he never could.
Almost twenty years later, Grethe’s moved on.
‘Sorry, I need to rest my swollen ankles at home. Abdi might even be back from the boat.’
‘Hey, no problem, home is best for that bubba of yours. I’ll tidy up out here for you.’
‘Thanks sweetie, I’ll just cash up.’
As Cecilie wipes down the vacant tables, she resigns herself to spending another Saturday night alone.
Seventeen
Walking back across the cantilever bridge towards the mainland, her homeland, Cecilie doesn’t look at the peaks of the mountains, anchored reassuringly beyond the water and the houses ahead. She doesn’t try to spot the moving cable car of the Fjellheisen, which will whisper up the mountainside into the small hours, so tourists can see what daytime looks like at midnight, as they try to spot miniature marathon runners from above. She doesn’t look to the stained-glass façade of a white concertina building just beyond the bridge; the most northerly cathedral in the world and an Arctic accordion that plays its tune to lure Cecilie back over the windy strait. She buries her face into her snood, inside the collar of her long grey feather-down coat, and stares at the yellow threading on her black dishevelled boots as each foot propels her forwards. Cecilie thinks about how, in just a few months’ time, she and Espen will turn thirty. He is already organising an elaborate party for the two of them in the largest function room at the i-Scand that Cecilie isn’t particularly excited about but will turn up to and smile.
Thirty.
She thinks of Grethe, her friend since nursery. They went through every first together: first steps, first palm-print paintings, first books, first crushes, first heartbreaks… Cecilie didn’t share these triumphs and tragedies with her mother the way Grethe told Mette everything. Cecilie would turn to her harp, or get lost in books: Ibsen, Hamsun, Austen and Woolf… She didn’t have as many friends as Espen or Grethe had, because she was mostly happy in her own world; she had Peer Gynt, Emma Woodhouse and Mrs Dalloway for company. But there was no one like Grethe when Cecilie wanted someone to belt out ‘She’s Like The Wind’ with.
Both girls went to the Arctic University; Grethe studied tourism and hospitality alongside Espen; Cecilie studied literature. Soon after graduating, Grethe’s father, Tore, died of a heart attack as he was cleaning up the Hjornekafé one night after closing. His first career, pulling twelve-hour shifts on an oil rig, had taken its toll on his body, so he opted for a quiet life running a quiet café, until he died young at forty-nine. His devastated daughter put her inheritance money to good use and
set up a business, deciding that an ice cream parlour could work in the Arctic. She had learned everything she needed to know about running a small business, not from her degree, but from her parents and their moderate success with the Hjornekafé. All Grethe needed to do was learn to make ice cream. Optimistic and practical as she was, she packed a bag and hopped on a flight to Florence, where she spent a month immersing herself in the art of gelato.
Grethe’s Iskrembar was a huge success, despite the temperature rarely reaching fourteen degrees, even in high summer. But Grethe was the toast of Tromsø: Tore’s girl had grown a business from scratch, she had brought something new to the town, and she had learned every stage of the process herself: from engineering the equipment to learning how to make the perfect ice cream base, then churning it and crafting it into delicious new flavours (with a little help along the way from an immigrant taste tester).
‘Why don’t you start a business, Cecilie? If you come up with a good business plan, I’ll fund you,’ Karin encouraged when they were strolling over the bridge arm in arm en route to Grethe’s grand opening. The conversation resonated with Cecilie. Not because of the pressure she felt to be something more than just a librarian or just a waitress, but because Mamma rarely walked anywhere. There was always a driver ringing on the doorbell to take her mother to the airport, or a car whisking her from one appointment to the next. Karin didn’t drive, yet it was so unusual for her to walk. That evening, Cecilie pulled her mother’s arm into her ribs for comfort, and her whimsical way meant she wasn’t upset by the suggestion that she too should start a business. She was just happy to be walking arm in arm with her mother; happy for Grethe’s success.
At twenty-six, Grethe met Abdi, a Somali immigrant fisherman, whose family had escaped war and ended up in the Arctic. Abdi had found work on the Hurtigruten, the expedition ship that sails up and down the Fjordland, netting the night’s catch of the day for the tourists on board and stopping for a sundae whenever he was in town. Grethe was instantly taken with Abdi, the day he walked into the Iskrembar in search of something to remind him of home. His favourite ice cream in the world came from a parlour in Mogadishu, where Italian rule had seen Neapolitan gelato reach the horn of Africa.
