The Christmas Lights

by Karen Swan

  She stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror: long blonde hair half pulled back in a messy topknot, the rest hanging down her back in tousled waves; turquoise beaded hoop earrings from a street market in Bali; black skinny jeans ripped at the knee, old-school Vans and a chunky black cashmere Gucci rollneck she had treated herself to, en route at Doha airport. Her ultra-tanned skin looked incongruous against the all-black outfit, calling her out as an interloper, broadcasting that she was just passing through . . .

  Shrugging on the new yellow jacket, she headed over to the main lodge. The air outside, on the brief walk over, had a purity and emptiness to it that registered like a slap. During their months in the Pacific, she had grown accustomed to the heavy, salty tang of the sea air, the constant hushing of the ocean an ever-present lullaby at her ear. But here, it was the very absence, the vacuum of both sound and smell, that set her senses ringing. She was acutely aware of the crunch of her own footsteps on the snow-dusted paths and she stopped for a moment to absorb the utter silence, twitching her nose like a hare as the cold stung at her cheeks. On the embankments, a heavy hoar frost was already stippling the grass so that tiny crystals glinted like diamonds in the early evening moonlight.

  She passed by the windows of the hotel, the scenes held within their frames like little amber-veneered vignettes of lives being well lived as various groups of friends sat in fireside chairs, some playing backgammon, others drinking and reaching for cakes stacked on an ottoman. The buzz of conversation and staccatos of laughter escaped the building like the puffs of smoke from the chimney as doors opened and closed intermittently, couples heading back to their rooms or coming in for dinner. The Christmas season was already underway – white lights traced the roof apexes, candles flickered at every window and red-ribboned eucalyptus wreaths were nailed to the doors.

  Bo entered, unable to resist a giant shiver as the warmth and glow of an open fire in the entrance hall enveloped her like a hug. The room smelled of pine and cinnamon cloves; two high-backed tartan chairs were occupied by an older couple reading the newspapers.

  She walked through the dining room, where a long table had been set up down the centre of the room, seemingly for a large group, and into the drawing room she had passed outside only a moment before. One wall was flanked by library shelving, an enormous fireplace set opposite it on the other side. A group of slick-looking Oslo-ites was monopolizing the sofas in the centre of the room, laughing uproariously every few minutes. Zac and Lenny were sitting in a couple of club chairs by the far corner, both listening intently to a woman who was perched daintily beside them on a tartan ottoman.

  Bo couldn’t see her properly from behind, she had her back to the room, but her long glossy caramel hair glistened prettily in the firelight, and Bo could tell just from the guys’ rapt expressions that she was attractive.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, coming to stand by Zac’s chair and wondering where she could sit given that all the other chairs were taken.

  ‘Hey!’ Zac said, his eyes brightening as he saw her and pulled her down onto his lap. ‘I was just about to come back and get you. Check you hadn’t gone to bed after all.’

  ‘No. I was just doing my hair.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he sighed, immediately burying his face in her mane – her freshly washed hair was his favourite smell; it didn’t matter that he was mid-conversation with the woman, nor did he care who was watching; she had learnt long ago that it was impossible to embarrass him.

  ‘Hi, I’m Bo,’ she said politely to the woman who was looking on with a warm smile. As she had suspected, she was striking to look at but Bo couldn’t decide whether she was simply pretty or in fact beautiful. Seemingly tall and athletic, she had a prominent bone structure that was almost masculine on the one hand – oval-shaped face, low hairline, sharp brows – and yet was offset by a pout mouth and lively, round hazel eyes.

  ‘Bo, it is such a pleasure to meet you. I’m Anna Rem, marketing head at Ridge Riders,’ she said, half rising from her perch to reach over a handshake. ‘I’ve been counting down the days to this. We are so excited you’ve teamed up with us.’

  ‘Oh, well that’s lovely of you to say so,’ Bo replied, slightly puzzled; she had no recollection of a meeting with Ridge Riders being booked in here. ‘But the pleasure is all ours. We love your stuff.’ As if to prove the point, she tugged the jacket closed.

  ‘You look just stunning in that,’ Anna sighed. ‘We knew the colour would be perfect against your hair. You know our designers had you in mind when they first sketched it?’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Bo smiled, feeling flattered as she shrugged it off and hung it from the hood on one of the ‘wings’ of the armchair.

  ‘Oh yes. You two are our dream couple.’ She looked across at Zac too. ‘You embody everything our brand stands for: natural beauty, adventure, grit, strength, power, integrity.’

  ‘Stop, you’ll make Zac’s head explode,’ Bo quipped, trying to mask her embarrassment at such fawning. ‘He’s already quite pleased enough with himself as it is.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Lenny laughed, sucking his breath through his teeth and throwing Zac an amused look. His camera swung from his neck like a lanyard from one of his beloved concerts and Bo was quite convinced if he wasn’t their photographer, he’d have been on the road with a band instead.

  ‘So, are you staying here too?’ Bo asked.

  ‘No, our offices are based in Alesund, where you flew into earlier. I’ve only come over tonight to say welcome and to touch base with you, make sure everything’s okay here?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely, we’ve been through the clothes already and they’re great. Everything fits,’ Bo said. ‘And this place is gorgeous. It’s making me feel Christmassy already,’ she said, looking across at the giant Norwegian spruce tree in the corner. ‘It’s hard to feel festive on a white sand beach.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Zac tutted. ‘I’m a Kiwi. Sunny Christmases are my shtick.’

  ‘It’s the one thing we shall never agree on,’ she smiled at Anna. ‘But this is a great start to our Norwegian adventure. I only wish we could stay here for more than a night.’

  ‘Uh-uh-uh,’ Zac said, bouncing her on his knee slightly. ‘That’s against the rules.’

  ‘Rules that we put in place, Zac,’ she said, tapping his nose playfully. ‘We can bend them if we want. It wouldn’t be a disaster to spend a couple of days recovering from the journey in comfort.’

  ‘Rules?’ Anna queried.

  ‘We only stay in hotels for transfers, when we’re on the road. And we never endorse them either,’ Zac explained. ‘The fans love that we integrate ourselves in the fabric of the places where we live. You can only ever be a tourist in a hotel and that’s everything we’re not about. Authenticity. That’s our vibe. Going native.’

  ‘Ah, of course – hence the shelf farm,’ Anna smiled, agreeing eagerly. ‘The fans will love it. Guaranteed.’

  Bo suppressed a groan. They weren’t so much going native as going wild – according to the photos she’d seen, the shelf farm was a tiny cluster of rickety wooden buildings clinging to a narrow ledge halfway up a fjord-side mountain. It had cold running water, walls, a roof and that was about it.

  ‘I still don’t think it’s a cardinal sin to enjoy a couple of nights being looked after,’ she muttered. ‘That journey was brutal. I’d do anything for a massage.’

  ‘Anything?’ Zac asked, reaching up and kissing her on the cheek.

  She rolled her eyes, swatting at him, but from the corner of her eye she could see Lenny was snapping away and that their work had begun – a few hours in and they were already upholding their end of the $200,000 deal: her sitting on Zac’s lap, fireside, their jackets hanging from each wing of the chair . . . She could practically predict which filter he’d apply.

  ‘It’s funny seeing you both in proper clothes again,’ Lenny said, stopping to look down at the screen and scrolling back through the shots.

  ‘I know,’ Bo said, look
ing down at Zac and taking in his grey-black jeans, boots, and a chunky knitted brown and cream Norwegian folk sweater – no doubt an ironic joke intended by Lenny but Zac still rocked it. ‘I think we all stick out a bit with our tans though. There’s such a thing as being too brown.’

  ‘Not at all. It makes you look very glamorous,’ Anna said.

  Bo reached down to take Zac’s drink off the coffee table. ‘Mmm, what’s this? It’s good,’ she said, sipping from the highball glass.

  ‘Polar-bjork, gin and tonic water.’

  ‘Polar-bjork?’ she frowned. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Birch essence,’ Anna supplied, reaching for the English translation easily.

  ‘It’s so good – really . . . aromatic,’ she said, trying it again.

  ‘I know, right?’ Zac agreed. ‘Even Lenny likes it.’

  ‘Better than Aperol,’ he shrugged. ‘Still worse than beer.’

  Anna laughed and Lenny looked pleased that his joke had found a receptive audience. His eyes lingered on her for a moment as though he too was trying to decide whether she was pretty or beautiful.

  Bo relaxed back against Zac, swinging one leg idly. The large group on the sofas had quietened down a bit; in fact, most of them were on their phones. ‘So – anyone ready for dinner? I’m starved.’

  ‘Just about. We were hammering out the last details for tomorrow,’ Zac said, squeezing her knee.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Her spirits sagged again at the thought of more travelling. At moving on. She looked across at Lenny – their logistics coordinator – waiting for the itinerary.

  ‘We’re heading down the fjord tomorrow.’ He glanced at Anna. ‘Storfjorden – is that it? Am I saying it right?’

  ‘Very good,’ she nodded and Bo saw the spark flash between them.

  ‘So we’re going down the fjord road en route to Gerainger, which will be our new base. Now because we’ll be driving, we won’t get much actual fjord action; Anna was saying most of the roads go via mountain tunnels—’

  ‘That is right. Between the mountains and the lakes, travel around here is difficult. No railways can get here so the tunnels, bridges and ferries are all part of the road networks.’

  ‘There’ll still be some good viewpoints from the roads in some places though; Anna’s been marking them for us on the map,’ Lenny said. ‘Plus the valleys on the other side of the fjords should be pretty dramatic in themselves, so if we get any height, they’ll shoot well as backdrops. Just dress warm. We’re gonna be in and out of the car all day—’

  ‘Well that’s not going to be a problem,’ Bo said, smiling at Anna again. ‘It’s so good of you to have come over here like this. You’ve been so helpful. We’ll make sure to get some really great footage for you.’

  The deal was simple enough: $200,000 for a fortnight’s collaboration – they would post at least one image per day on both her and Zac’s Instagram grids, plus video footage in the stories and some joint images on their blog. It was to be subtle, nothing too overt or showy, but getting the logo in as often as was naturally possible was preferable.

  ‘Well I can hopefully be of more help to you when I join you properly the day after tomorrow.’

  Bo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Huh?’

  ‘At the farm. I’ll be staying there with you.’ She hesitated at the sight of Bo’s expression. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  Bo looked across at Zac. She had thought the company were simply sending over the product and leaving them to it; that was how they usually worked. They had always agreed that if these endorsements were to have any integrity, then independent curation was crucial. ‘No—’

  ‘Yeah you did,’ Zac said, patting her thigh heartily. ‘Remember Ridge Riders are picking up the tab at the farm? So in exchange for that, Anna’s just going to hang out with us in the run-up to Christmas.’

  Bo blinked. Christmas was a fortnight away. And this was the first she had heard of it. Zac and Lenny always negotiated the small print and T&Cs but why were they changing the usual arrangements? They could afford to rent the farm. Why give up editorial control for that?

  ‘This two weeks coming up is our most crucial trading period so we really want to make sure we maximize our opportunities with you guys,’ Anna said apologetically. ‘But don’t worry, I won’t be directing you or anything like that. I’m just an observer more than anything. We already know you know how to communicate to your followers.’

  ‘. . . Okay,’ Bo said benignly. But she couldn’t help but feel unsettled. Upset even. Now they would go from being a trio to a quartet? There would be yet another person watching them, shadowing them, sharing the experiences that were supposed to be exclusive to them as a couple? How ironic, she thought, that the business of showing their simple life together required a small team to convey it.

  Anna shot an awkward look to Lenny, as though he was already an ally.

  Bo looked away and was startled to find the group at the next table watching them, a couple of the girls photographing them on their phones. It made her flinch to realize the lenses were trained upon her like sniper eyes.

  Realizing they’d been rumbled, the group quickly dropped their phones down, but it was too late. They had been listening, snooping, eavesdropping . . .

  A dark-haired girl, seeing the shock on Bo’s face, quickly got up and rushed over. ‘We’re so sorry. We didn’t mean to intrude. But it’s just . . . well, you guys are Zac and Bo, right?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Lenny grinned from the armchair. ‘You follow Wanderlusters?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Who doesn’t?’ the girl laughed, looking back at Bo with a look of unabashed admiration. ‘We are totally obsessed with you guys. I just live for your stories. Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re here. That this is actually you.’ For a moment, Bo thought the girl was going to pinch her just to check. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t suppose you’d pose for a selfie with me, would you?’

  There it was – the S-word. It was ironic, Bo always thought, that the very thing that had made her and Zac Insta-famous was the one thing she now sought desperately to avoid. She had learnt from experience – somewhere around the four million mark – that once one person had clocked them and asked for a picture, everyone else would do the same and things would quickly descend into chaos. Two years ago, when they had been in Tokyo to open a flagship store for a brand they had promoted, they had been spotted wandering off-duty in a back street. One fan had led to ten, to a hundred, until the police had had to close off the street to control the crowds. In the police car back to the hotel, Zac had thought it had been incredible; she’d been terrified.

  She supposed the same couldn’t be said of here though. It was quiet enough and no one else in the hotel seemed to recognize them; or if they did, they didn’t care. ‘Sure she will,’ Zac agreed, jiggling Bo off his lap. ‘Go on, babe.’

  Bo smoothed her hair off her shoulders as the girl got her phone ready. She held the camera out in front of them but Bo reached up and automatically angled it to look down on them from above. ‘More flattering,’ she smiled, the girl looking at her as though she’d pronounced a great philosophical truth.

  ‘And one with Zac?’ the girl asked, as soon as the shutter clicked.

  Bo took a breath and turned around to her fiancé. Wasn’t it ever thus? One photo became two, became all their friends wanting one too . . .

  ‘Sure,’ he beamed, jumping up to join them and throwing an easy arm over the girl’s shoulder. If he was aware of how good he looked in that sweater he didn’t show it, and the girl looked like she might faint with joy as he pressed his stubbled cheek to hers and said ‘cheese’.

  ‘Thanks,’ the girl said.

  ‘No problem,’ Bo said, straightening up, wanting to get to their dinner table now. ‘It’s lovely meeting you. Have a great stay—’

  ‘Hey, would you all like a photo?’ Lenny asked, putting down his glass and reaching out towards the group for their phones.

  Bo looked over at him
in astonishment.

  ‘Ohmigod, are you sure?’ a couple of them chorused.

  ‘Sure. I’m their official photographer, this is what I do. It’s no bother, right, guys?’

  Chapter Three

  Lodal, June 1936

  The track underfoot was soft from all the recent rain, deep puddles making the horses stumble occasionally and the butter churns clatter on their backs. Signy could feel the mud splatter along the hem of her dress as she darted on and off the path in a sort of dance, herding back the goats that strayed too far with a cry of ‘hei’ and an outstretched lunge with her stick. But she felt as they did – yearning to roam, giddy with excitement; they had been released from the winter barns three weeks ago in order to become lightly reacquainted with the heady freedoms of outdoor grazing again, but this was the real point, what they’d all been waiting for. The buføring, when they brought the animals from the farm to the outfield pastures, was the mark of summer proper. It was to be her first season and she felt like she had been waiting for it her whole life. She ought to have gone the year before, having turned thirteen, but a broken leg incurred by jumping from one of the hayricks had put paid to that and she had had to look on as her sister Margit and their friends wound up the mountain paths without her in a cacophony of cowbells and clanging pots.

  All her childhood she had listened, rapt, to the stories she heard from the older girls about their summers as seterbudeias, or milkmaids. The work was hard, there was no doubting it – long days spent tending and milking the herds, churning butter, making soured cream and cloudberry jam, grass-cutting and hay-tossing. But if hard labour was the price, freedom was the reward: nights spent under bright skies and evenings around fires; bathing in the stream; midday sleeping on the rocks; and there would be no grown-ups to boss her about. No Mamma to make her wash the stockings; no Pappa to send her to collect firewood. Yes, the farmhands would come by once a week to take the dairy produce they had made back to the farm where they would be stored in the stabbur, or storehouse, for winter; they would check the girls were okay, happy, well and in good health. They would bring news from the village and perhaps some treats too: flatbreads or fresh herrings. But apart from that, the summer would be theirs. Just her and her sister and their friends and the animals.