The Distance

by Zoë Folbigg

  When Abdi stumbled across ice cream in the Arctic Circle, he was smitten with the woman behind the counter. Her eyes were bright blue and sparkling, wisps of blonde hair poked out from beneath a colourful headscarf tied in a bow at the front, reminiscent of a fabric he would see back home. He had asked to try one tiny scoop of each flavour, on a plate not a cone, so he could really find out which was his favourite – while also prolonging their encounter. He said he’d pay for it of course, but Grethe was too speechless to charge him, so she leaned on the counter and watched him eat. She had never seen anyone with such beautiful creamy skin before. She wanted to lick her finger and touch his face with it, the way she would dip a digit into the ice cream mix to check its consistency. Abdi’s skin was just right. When he finished, he looked up at Grethe, still watching him, her chin resting on her palm, and said he liked the yellowy orange one best because he had never tasted anything like it in the world.

  ‘Is it a fruit?’ he asked.

  ‘Cloudberry. Have you never tasted it?’

  Abdi smiled.

  Before he left, he recommended to Grethe that she put cardamom in her vanilla ice cream and cloves in her chocolate, and Grethe nodded and smiled, knowing he would be back.

  Soon, Abdi was no longer a stranger, and his spice advice turned out to be brilliant; his cardamom and clove-infused classics created big sellers.

  Creating something out of heartache. Taking a chance on a business. Taking a chance on love. Both girls were fatherless, but Grethe’s loss prompted another of her gutsy moves. Cecilie had never done anything with her inheritance fund; she’d never taken a risk in her life, nor dared to travel.

  As the cathedral stands in full view before her, Cecilie knows that having walked the entire length of the bridge, she has walked past the point where her father was last seen, and she wishes she knew where it was.

  At the end of the bridge, she turns right, walking past nervous runners warming up their legs as they make their way to the start line in the hub on the island over the bridge. The pavements are clear of snow, and will be for the next few months before winter’s white ink starts to hug the harbour. Although looking up at the green mountain to the tiny cafe terrace at the top, Cecilie can see small pools of snow dotted down the mountainside like spilt milk.

  No use crying, Cecilie thinks, as she edges left up a quiet side road to her house. She steps up onto the veranda with its waist-height white picket fence and elaborate lattice-front fascia and puts her key in the front door.

  Home.

  Home is quiet. Home is clean.

  Home is precisely how Cecilie left it this afternoon when she decided to wander into town to see how Grethe was bumping along.

  Cecilie puts her keys in a white oval bowl, takes off her DMs and throws her coat onto a row of pegs in the airy hallway. She walks through a set of French doors to the living room.

  Her harp is in the way, but that doesn’t matter because Karin won’t be back until tomorrow lunchtime, so she walks around it to turn the television on. Cecilie flicks through the channels, unmoved by the World Cup or wannabes auditioning for Stjernekamp. She goes back to the football match and mutes it.

  When are Mexico playing? Where will he watch it?

  Cecilie perches on the solid stripped-back wood of the coffee table her mother bought in Warsaw, sweeps her fringe behind one ear, and plants her bare feet into the thick sheepskin rug. She tilts her harp back onto her shoulder and plucks. So, ro, lillemann… pops into her head for the first time since that day – his wedding day. She’d banished it from baby rhyme-time sessions since then, and she banishes it again by going on a journey across the strings, dancing her gnarly fingertips along the timeline of her past.

  It was a strange choice of instrument for a 90s kid with a penchant for 80s electronica, but their mother was gifted a harp from her Russian counterpart on a visit from Moscow, and for months it sat in a huge case in the unused dining room at the front of the house.

  ‘Bloody thing!’ Karin would say if she stubbed a recently polished toe on the hard external case. Espen didn’t ever give the case a second glance, he was always too busy, even when he was a child. But one day, when Cecilie was thirteen and her imagination was running riot, she opened the box, plucked a string, and the noise that tickled back at her made her realise it could be the perfect soundtrack to the adventures in her head.

  Cecilie and Espen’s music teacher, handsome Mr Lind, told Cecilie, long before she knew him as Jonas, that the harp was a gift in more ways than their family could imagine, and he arranged for a teacher to come into school so Cecilie could have lessons. Soon she was playing everything from Delibes’s ‘Flower Duet’ to Kylie’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, and she loved how the music set her free when she played.

  But this sombre Saturday night, alone in her mother’s sprawling house, despite her argument with Espen, Cecilie doesn’t feel sad striding her harp. She strikes up the plinky-plonky chords of Hans Zimmer, composed for a marimba, and dances around the room without even moving her bottom from the coffee table’s edge. Her heart swells, her breath intensifies, her feet push down on the pedals, and she feels nothing but goodwill, nothing but a desire to speak to the man she loves.

  You’re so cool.

  She looks up at the large clock on the wall and counts back seven, which is harder to do when all your fingers are in use. Striding the strings, she continues, her head moving, then cuts the music short as she stands abruptly and pads across the room, through the French doors, to her coat hanging by the front door, and takes her phone out of her pocket.

  Cecilie hovers her chapped thumb over the home button and scrolls through people she recently messaged. Cecilie doesn’t message many people: Grethe, Morten, Espen, maybe Fredrik at the library or Henrik in the cafe if either of them is running late and need to let the other know. A short scroll down and Hector Herrera’s beautiful face sits in a tiny circle on the left. In the photo, he is laughing and looking to a person just beyond the camera, not directly into the lens. His eyes shine. His skin is warm and his cheeks are flushed with pink patches of elation and inebriation. His bow lips are sealed as if they are primed to kiss. Cecilie strokes the circle and opens up their last exchange, three months ago.

  She doesn’t read the conversation back. It’s already etched into her eyelids when she tries to sleep at night.

  Her harp-worn thumb, with a delicate silver ring at the base of it, hovers over the keypad.

  Cecilie is no longer Arctic Fox, and Hector isn’t I Feel You. They dropped those monikers years ago with familiarity and tech upgrades, and replaced playful names with playful pictures, faces in circles, and Hector Herrera is now just Hector in her phone. Cecilie’s picture is impish and playful, her eyes are crossed and she’s sticking her tongue out. Her heart-shaped face fills the photo. You can’t see her dreadlocks in the picture; Hector wouldn’t know she’s cut them off anyway.

  I can’t not have him in my life.

  Hei stranger, how are you?

  Send.

  Two blue ticks indicate Hector Herrera received and read her message instantly. It is lunchtime in Mexico.

  An ellipsis dances a Mexican wave as frantically as their hearts beat and Cecilie knows he is replying right now.

  Hola, guapa! How are you? I miss you!

  I miss you.

  OK thanks. Working hard.

  You at the cafe ahorita?

  Nei. At home. A rare night off…

  Cecilie pauses, and decides to make herself sound more interesting.

  He’ll never know anyway.

  I’ve taken a third job, the one at my brother’s hotel. Busy busy.

  Wow, what about our no-uniform pact, comadre?

  Hector adds an emoji of a fist in solidarity.

  Things change! Espen talked me round. I work in the bar there now, I’m a mixologist.

  Mixolo… qué?

  I make drinks!

  Like Tom Cruise?

  Huh?<
br />
  Cóctel.

  Ah, yes just like that. I shake my little silver thing like a demon!

  Cecilie adds an emoji of a Martini, followed by one of a cocktail she imagines she might conjure in her imaginary job.

  Jajajaja.

  I get to sleep with the clientele like Tom Cruise too.

  Cecilie adds a winking face.

  There is a pause. Cecilie wonders why the hell she’s lying. What is she trying to achieve?

  He married her. Is she there right now?

  Hector sends a sad face and Cecilie slumps back into the low rectangular sofa with a sigh. She puts her feet on the wooden table and her eyes glaze over while she stares at the silent TV in front of her. The footballers become a blur.

  Cecilie rises, until she is in a corner between the ceiling and the wall, of a high-rise apartment in a low-rise town, looking down at Hector on his phone as he watches the very same football match. She can only see the top of his head and so desperately wants to capture the flash of his eyes, but he’s looking down at his phone. She looks around the room, and as she hovers from up high, willing Hector to look up, she can’t tell if his wife is sitting on the armchair next to the sofa. It’s all such a blur. Yes, that’s right. Perhaps she’s in the bathroom. Is there a figure of a woman in the kitchen making a torta?

  The world’s highest paid footballer curves the ball beautifully and the commentator’s Spanish roar snaps Cecilie back into the muted silence of her living room. She looks up at the screen and sees a man elated, charging towards a crowd in triumph.

  So, how’s married life?

  He loves her.

  Good thanks, same as before.

  Hector wonders why the hell he’s lying. And changes the subject.

  Hey I’ve been asked to illustrate a children’s book!

  Wow, that’s amazing!

  Yeah, I met this author in Mexico City and she wants me to illustrate her books, and the publisher is really cool… I’m working really hard on it.

  Wow. I’m so happy for you! That’s wonderful, well done. What’s the book?

  It’s about a little panda cub called Pablito, he’s really cute. He gets into lots of adventures and scrapes while he looks for a mate. I’m doing loads of drawings now, not going out chupando any more…

  His wife must be an inspiration.

  Married life suits you.

  Why did I lie about the job? He has always been honest with me.

  Something like that.

  Well I’m really happy for you, Hector, congratulations.

  This hurts too much.

  Gracias. It made me happy. Hey you wanna FaceTime? It would be great to see you. That would make me really happy. And I could show you Pablito.

  Oh no, it’s OK. I was just checking in really.

  You said you weren’t going to…

  Cecilie doesn’t respond.

  But I’m glad you did… It was good to see your crazy face pop up on my phone.

  Cecilie sends a crazy face emoji.

  Look, Hector, I have to go, I’m working a late shift. Loads of tourists in town. Better get over to the hotel.

  You said you had a night off.

  Shit.

  I did. Well. Afternoon off anyway. I said I’d do a late. Those cocktails don’t shake themselves you know!

  What’s your uniform like? Traidora!

  Bleurgh.

  Tell me, I want to know.

  Cecilie pauses.

  Shit, what do Solveig and Camilla wear?!

  She remembers.

  White blouse. Black miniskirt. Black tights. Not very me.

  Sounds cool. As long as there’s no tie though right? Remember our no-tie clause?

  No tie.

  Hector sends a wink face.

  Cecilie sends a sad face, as her own face gets hot.

  This was a bad idea.

  I have to go now. Get across the bridge.

  Ceci nooo! We’ll talk later yeah?

  Maybe.

  It hurts too much.

  Don’t say farvel. I hated farvel.

  Cecilie tries to swallow but her mouth is dry.

  I hated it too.

  Hasta luego then x.

  And with his kiss, Cecilie kills the conversation and sends her phone to sleep.

  Cecilie didn’t tell Hector that she is sitting alone in a sprawling family home on a Saturday night.

  Hector didn’t tell Cecilie that Pilar, who got fired from her job, went out with her friend Xochitl at 11.30 p.m. last night and hasn’t been seen since.

  Eighteen

  June 2018, Suffolk, England

  Under the shroud of her large, brown plastic sunglasses, awkwardly perching on the bridge of her nose, Kate looks up and down the quiet platform like a really incompetent spy. With a niggling pain that makes her regret not going to the loo before she left the house, she hops up through the open doors and onto the train before they slam together behind her broad bottom.

  Kate looks left and right, to both sides of the half-full carriage, and turns left to sit where there seems to be fewer people.

  Face forwards, Kate thinks, as she slumps into a double seat, her hips chafing against the flipped-down table as she goes. She flips it back up as she lands in a plump puff of dust.

  If anyone I know walks up the train they’ll only see the back of my head.

  She looks at her mobile. It is 9.51 a.m., the train is leaving exactly on time, and Kate, desperate that no one should see her doing something perfectly normal for a woman who might be shopping the summer sales, or meeting a friend for lunch, or going to a gallery while her kids are at school, feels her heart race as they pull out of the station. She leans against the window on a train she used to travel daily but now feels like an alien craft.

  None of my family know where I am.

  Kate removes her navy summer jacket and puts it over her small floral handbag on the seat next to her in the hope that no one else will want to sit there. So she can be on her own. So she can compose herself. So she can work out her strategy. This is only the second off-peak service of the day, winding through her rural idyll before bursting into the noise and chaos of London, and the carriage is only half-peppered with People In Less Of A Hurry. A retired couple, wearing gilets and cords, look relaxed as they head to the Wallace Collection. A smart, heavily made-up woman, who Kate assumes must be going to an interview, checks her reflection in a small compact mirror. Three women, not much younger than Kate, talk about how guilty they felt dropping their toddlers at nursery while they toted cool bags full of prosecco, strawberries and cream. A man in a suit listens to a podcast. Perhaps he had a dentist appointment and is going in late.

  The train before must have been much busier, Kate thinks, blowing a sigh of relief.

  She removes her sunglasses and places them carelessly on the jacket next to her as she smooths down her fringe. She smiles wryly, and Kate feels a little bit bad knowing she would tell Chloe off for being so careless with her own sunglasses. Although Chloe’s probably cost more than these make-do shades Kate got in the Next sale three summers ago.

  She repositions herself in the seat and tugs on the seam of her black bootcut trousers. They feel uncomfortable between her thighs. She feels uncomfortable. Kate hasn’t felt like such a fish out of water in a long time, but she has been waiting patiently for this opportunity, ever since she found a long blonde hair entwined in the fibres of George’s stripy scarf.

  That hair. It’s consumed her. At first, Kate went back to scour George’s diary, to look at the repeating patterns. ‘Lunch B’ came up several times since she first noticed it in March. Then Kate started to use the Find My iPhone app on her mobile – usually reserved for timing dinner, seeing where George is on the train line, so she knows when to put the chicken pie in the oven; so she doesn’t overcook the veg. But since Kate found that hair, she’s used her phone to track George more and more: to see whether he really was going to badminton (he was, although he did sometimes go
to the Red Hart with the gang afterwards), or whether he took a detour when he popped to Waitrose (he didn’t). But mainly to see where he was heading on the days it said ‘Lunch B’. Sometimes it was Spitalfields Market, sometimes it was Galvin La Chapelle. Last Wednesday it was to The Shard, but Kate couldn’t work out if he was back eating octopus at Hutong with ‘B’ – and clients, or whoever – or whether he was in a suite at the Shangri-La. Either way, he was there for over two hours and the infuriating little green dot couldn’t specify which floor he was on.

  Last Friday evening, when Kate was trying to work out when to put the pasta on and looked on her phone to see where his train was between Liverpool Street and Claresham, she noticed he was offline. Even after he came through the door, had watched Newsnight and gone to bed, his phone, sitting defiantly awake on the bedside table next to him, showed that he was offline. Had he disabled Find My iPhone so Kate couldn’t find him? There wasn’t a little green dot pulsating by their bed, and it agonised Kate as George lay with his back facing her. Even the brown moles on his pale skin started to look like green dots taunting her.

  On Sunday morning, while Jack was playing cricket and George was standing on the rough chatting to Nigel Pickover, Kate sat on the soft grass at the edge of Claresham village green, sunglasses on, and slipped George’s phone out from the inside pocket of his light blue linen jacket. She put the jacket over her knees and pretended to shiver on the fresh midsummer morning. Beneath it she secretly tapped George’s passcode into his phone so she could reinstall the app. 240576. His date of birth. It didn’t work. His passcode had always been his date of birth ever since he got that phone. Kate tried hers. That didn’t work either.