by Karen Swan
There was another silence and Bo knew exactly what Zac and Lenny were thinking – the last they had heard, Anders was a killer.
‘Thought you weren’t gonna do that?’ Lenny said, hostility slicing through his words.
Anders shrugged. ‘It’s your last day with Ridge Riders and we know each other better now. I’m happy to go if you want.’
‘Yeah,’ Lenny murmured. ‘We do know each other now.’
Bo swallowed. Were they going to confront him?
Anders’ eyes narrowed as he pretended to care about their innuendo and insinuation. He opened his arms out, defiantly letting the logs drop to the ground where he stood. ‘Okay, well why don’t I leave you all to talk it over?’ And he walked out, striding up to his grandmother’s cabin in nine strides.
‘What the actual fuck, Bo?’ Zac exclaimed, as soon as he was out of sight. ‘Did you not hear what they said about him the other night?’
‘And do you not read?’ she spat back. ‘If you took a few goddam minutes to find out the whole truth, you might discover the real story. His girlfriend was murdered! He walked in on it! He killed the guy whilst trying to protect her! Where’s your fucking compassion?’
Zac’s face changed at the sight of her white-hot fury, her bald facts, and he saw now the change in her, he sensed the distance. ‘I’m sorry.’ But it was an all-encompassing statement, not so much apologizing for rushing to judgement on Anders, she knew, as for his own behaviour. Like horses at the gate, they were off . . .
‘Sorry doesn’t interest me now.’
‘Things got way out of hand. I was paralytic. Lenny too. I never should have . . . treated you like that.’
‘I don’t care, Zac.’ She turned away to make the coffee but she was like Anders in his kitchen last night. She just needed to move, to do something.
‘You don’t care?’ Zac asked, an edge of concern blading his voice now, his eyes weighty upon her as she kept her back turned.
‘What are you saying?’ Lenny asked too.
Bo glowered at him. Was he really going to inveigle his way into their domestics now too? ‘Back off, Lenny,’ she said flatly. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’
Lenny took a step back, stunned.
She looked back at Zac. A switch had been flicked in her. Suddenly she couldn’t think or feel what it was that held them together, the magnetism between them had lost its charge. And yet, she couldn’t leave him. If the chemistry had failed, fate was forcing them together anyway, pushing them back on the road and away from the only person who had briefly promised her a home. ‘I’m saying I’m not interested in reasons or excuses.’ She sighed. ‘Let’s just move on.’
There was another long pause as he watched her tip the packet of coffee into the pot and she could almost feel his relief that she wasn’t pushing the red button, that she didn’t want to make the fight bigger than it already was. ‘Move on? Okay, yes, I agree. You’re right—’
‘I think we should leave here.’ She stared at the counter as she said the words that had to be said. ‘Let’s go to the Exumas.’
‘What? But I thought – I mean, you didn’t seem keen –’
She turned her head fractionally, facing him and Lenny in profile. ‘You reserved the flights, didn’t you, Len?’
Lenny straightened up. ‘Uh, yeah. Yeah I did.’
‘Fine. So then let’s go. Let’s split.’ Her voice was flat as she turned away again and stared out of the window, seeing Anders in the other cabin; he was leaning against the table, his head dropped, his shoulders hunched, his arms wrapped around his torso.
‘The flight’s tonight, you know that, right? We’d get there tomorrow morning: Christmas Day.’ Zac placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you really sure you want to go? I mean, it can wait a bit. It’s Christmas Eve now and you’ve made this place look so pretty . . .’ It was supposed to be a compliment, acknowledgement that he’d got it wrong with the tree and she’d made it right.
‘I’m positive,’ she said, feeling the tears press. ‘I want to go as soon as possible.’
‘Well, okay then. As soon as we’ve done the crevasse pass, we can head out of here.’
‘What?’ She turned to face him.
‘The crevasse pass? Anders has agreed to it; that’s why he’s here.’
‘No, forget that. Let’s just leave. Right now. I can’t be here any more,’ she said desperately.
‘Bo, babe – today’s our last day with Ridge Riders. We promised them a big send-off and contractually, we have to do it. We’ll be in breach of contract otherwise and I don’t want anything getting between us and that two hundred thou.’
She couldn’t bear it. Another whole day – with Anders out of reach? With Him within arm’s length? Abandoning the coffee, she walked past Zac, not wanting to look at him lest he should see it all written in her eyes, but he caught her by the elbow and swung her into him.
‘Bo. Baby, look – I know it’s been rough. But what they’re saying about us? It’s bullshit, you know that. Don’t take it to heart—’
She stared at him in disbelief. Did he really think she cared about the noise on social media?
‘But we’ll show them what we’re all about. We know what we’ve got. We’re back on track, starting today.’ He took her hand and kissed it, his eyes pinned on hers. ‘It was one stupid night but I’m going to make everything up to you, just you wait.’ He smiled, confidence coming back into his eyes now. ‘This time tomorrow we’ll be on a beach, swimming with pigs, and all this will be a distant memory. We got it wrong coming here, but that’s how it is sometimes. Some you win. Some you lose.’
She closed her eyes as he kissed the tip of her nose, seeing Anders’ face in her mind’s eye: his sad eyes, his fragile heart.
Some you lose.
Lodal, 13 September 1936
The blood was forming a river, snaking slowly through the hay, the sweet metallic smell cloying as she sat slumped, watching it ooze. Margit was cradling Mons in her lap as Brit went down to saddle the horse; they had to get him to the doctor quickly. Ashi and Kari were trying to comfort Sofie where she lay curled on the ground, sobbing hysterically and refusing to stand.
But Signy had collapsed where she stood, shivering uncontrollably on her own and reliving the moment through open eyes. What had she done? Over and over the question ran through her mind on a loop. It had all been so fast, so terrifying. Too much. The reasons were numerous but the fact of it was simple: she had killed a man and damned her own soul.
She knew there was no escaping this. Rag was the lensmann’s son, the village’s heir apparent. He couldn’t just disappear; this couldn’t be explained away. His family had money, power, connections . . . No, she would be taken from her family, far from here. She would never again stride out over the fields, the goats butting her knees, the sun on her face, flowers under her palm, falcons in the sky. Her first summer of freedom was to be her only one. Her life would stop right here as surely as Rag’s, her soul twisted around his in an eternal dance of death.
She felt her shakes increase – and it was a moment before she processed that the vibrations weren’t coming from her. It was a growing feeling, a gathering sound – a monstrous moan like the earth was yawning open, distant and then suddenly here, the ground shaking violently beneath their feet. The girls gasped and cried out, throwing their arms protectively above their heads, lest the roof should fall along with the sky.
‘What’s happening?’ Kari screamed.
Getting to her feet on wobbly, coltish legs, Signy staggered from the barn onto the grassy path. The animals were going berserk in their pens, the horse bucking in the field. Birds were shaking themselves from the trees and taking flight through the dawn sky.
What . . . ? The sound was apocalyptic, as though the heavens were falling to earth; it was bigger than anything they had ever heard and their gazes were automatically pulled to the far edge of the plateau where – from here – the ground seemed to drop away i
n a vertical slice. A great grey plume of smoke was filling the valley, barrelling through in roiling plumes, reaching up for the clouds.
‘No!’ Margit screamed, coming to stand by her, the torn dress hanging at the shoulder. ‘It can’t be. Not again.’ Her hands flew to her mouth and she braced, as though expecting something else, something more – and a moment later, it came. ‘No!’
Signy began screaming too, panicking wildly now, trying to comprehend what her eyes were showing her: white froth topping and foaming as the wave built into a moving wall, hundreds of feet high. ‘What is that?’ she screamed as Margit clutched her, trembling violently herself, as helplessly they watched it surge towards the village. Their home. Their family. Nils. ‘What is that? What is that?’
It broke, sinking from sight as suddenly as it had come and Margit too slumped to the ground, her head hanging like a broken-necked tulip, her skin scratched and bruised, silent tears streaming over her cheeks.
Signy stared into the void, her little body shaking violently in the new silence. It was minutes before she was able to move. ‘W-what was that?’ she whispered, balling herself up as small as she could and nestling against her sister, like one of the runt kids to its mother, her voice stripped thin and bleached white with terror upon terror. ‘Margit?’
Margit slowly lifted her head to look at her, taking her hand in her own and squeezing it tight. ‘I think it was an answer.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Signy?’ Bo peered around the door, seeing the old woman sitting in her chair and looking out across the fjord. The log basket had been freshly stacked, golden light glowing through the stove-glass. ‘We’re about to go. I was just checking you’re okay before we leave?’
‘Where is Anders?’
‘Loading the helicopter.’
Signy stared back outside again. ‘Come in. You’re letting in the cold.’
‘Well we’re just about to—’
‘I said come in.’
With a sigh, Bo did as she was told. ‘Do you need anything? Some water? A blanket?’
‘Tell me where you’re going today. My grandson is being evasive.’
Bo perched on the blue velvet settle beside the rocking chair. ‘Have you heard about the crack that’s developed along Mount Åkernes?’
‘Heard about it?’ she scoffed, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Girl, my husband was one of the first to spot it.’
Bo’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’
‘Why should that surprise you? We know all the old farming families here. My husband hunted there every winter. He was with the farmer when they saw the first slip of the back scarp.’
‘When was that?’
‘1964.’
‘Wow! Okay, well then, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say we’re doing a walk through the crevasse.’
There was a short pause. ‘. . . Why?’ Signy looked scornful.
It was a good question – why indeed? It wasn’t an experience, it was a gimmick, just a dare – walking through the fatal chasm on the most monitored mountain in the world. ‘Because no one’s done it before and it will make for good footage,’ she said honestly.
‘But it could slip at any moment.’
That wasn’t strictly true. Rather like an earthquake predictor, the sensors would register dramatic shifts in geological activity for at least seventy-two hours in advance. ‘I know,’ she said instead. If there was one thing she had learnt, it was that there was little point in arguing with the woman. ‘But that’s sort of the point – the thrill of it. Zac and Lenny are climbing up to it from the water right now – Anders took them up in the rib earlier and now he’s come back for me and Anna and he’s going to fly us up there to meet them. Apparently there’s a research station where we can land.’
‘Is he aware, this man, that this danger is real? That it is not a joke?’
Bo assumed ‘this man’ was Zac. ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think he can be. He does not understand the human cost. The mountain will fall.’
‘One day, yes. My understanding is that it’s a one-in-a-thousand-year event,’ she said benignly.
‘Oh, is it?’ Signy asked, clearly rhetorically. ‘So the fact that it happened twice in thirty years in my lifetime in the next fjord up from here counts for nothing, I suppose?’
‘I – I didn’t know that.’
‘Why would you? You are tourists. But I have already lived through two and experienced one of them myself.’ Her voice dimmed. ‘It was what brought me here to this fjord in the first place.’
Bo was aghast. ‘What happened?’
‘Part of the mountain beside our village came away. Mount Ramnefjell, it is called. The rocks fell two and a half thousand feet into the lake. The force of it hitting the water created a wave three hundred feet high.’
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
‘I was fourteen at the time. Seventy-four people died – and I knew every single one of them. My parents. My brother—’
‘Oh my God,’ Bo said again, the words more a moan.
‘It happened at dawn when almost everyone was sleeping, still in their beds. All the farms in my village, Lodal, as well as the neighbouring village, Nesdal, were swept away by the wave.’
‘So then, how did you survive?’
There was a pause. ‘Because I wasn’t there. I was further up the valley at the seter with my sister and some of the other girls from the village.’ She glanced sideways at Bo, taking in her blank expression. ‘The seter was our summer farm. It was where we took the animals to graze in the summer and where we could make hay for the winter stocks.’
‘So then it was just sheer luck that you weren’t there?’
‘Luck? No. No one was lucky that night.’ Signy’s eyes became distant, fixing on a faraway point – further, Bo thought, than the waterfall on the other side of the fjord. ‘Death was in the valley, both high and low.’
Bo looked at her, confused but not liking to press. They were quiet for a few moments, both lost in thought. ‘You said it happened twice in thirty years?’
‘Yes. This was 1936 but it had happened before that in 1905 on the same mountain, sending another giant wave over the villages. Twenty-four people perished that night too but only nine bodies were ever recovered. And then it happened again in 1934 at Tafjord just over the mountains from here – forty lives lost.’ She looked at Bo with hard eyes. ‘So when people like him behave as though these dangers are just a joke . . .’ She gave a contemptuous shrug. ‘Something to make him look brave . . . he does not know the meaning. Real bravery takes sacrifice.’
Bo knew then she was thinking of her grandson and what he had given up trying to protect Inger. ‘Please don’t be angry with Anders. He didn’t want to take us. He’s only doing it to help me.’
Signy looked at her, her shrewd eyes travelling over Bo, assessing her like she was a racehorse. ‘I know. He does a lot for you.’
Bo stared at her hands, not sure what to say; this was becoming dangerous territory. Signy always seemed to see right to the heart of her. ‘Did he tell you we’re leaving tonight?’
The old woman looked alarmed, on the back foot for once. ‘Tonight?’ she frowned. ‘But your booking runs into the New Year. Don’t you like it here?’
‘It’s not that. I love it here.’
‘Then what?’
Bo stalled. There was no way to possibly explain an online troll to her. ‘We just have to move on. It’s time for us to go.’
Signy stared again. ‘. . . Is it because of her? That girl? She has come between you?’
‘Who?’ And when Signy didn’t reply. ‘. . . Anna?’ Bo gave a small laugh. ‘No. No . . .’
But as Signy continued to stare, her intimation loud and clear, the smile faded from Bo’s lips. ‘I saw her in the cabin that morning. Before you came back.’
‘Yes. She was seeing Lenny briefly,’ Bo explained calmly. But even as the words left her, she remembered that day, the morn
ing after her ‘fight’ with Anders: how she’d seen Anna in the bath-towel through the window. Zac’s overcompensating welcome. Lenny’s . . . Lenny’s photographs of that morning showing the two coffees on the tray, ready for breakfast in bed.
But Lenny never drank coffee.
Signy shook her head. ‘They were in the bedroom together.’
Bo looked out of the window, feeling a cold wind whistle through her as she watched Anna standing with Anders down by the helicopter. She was looking down at her phone, ignoring him. Was she frightened of him now? Did she believe the hype, the headlines? It was a studied contrast to Bo’s last image of her as she and Anja had run over delightedly helping Lenny and Zac off the ground. Where had Zac stayed that night and all yesterday – at a hotel? Or at Anna’s?
Bo had thought her pale when she had emerged from packing up her things in the storehouse earlier, handing over today’s kit – a white fur-trimmed belted jacket and matching stirrup trousers that seemed more St Moritz than Stranda – without a smile; but Bo had put it down to a lingering hangover, the cold . . . She’d not said much either, uncharacteristically standing by quietly as the men had run through their final checks of climbing equipment, Zac’s studied purpose and intensity for this final expedition doing a great job of covering for the fact that he was actually . . . ignoring her.
Bo stared into space, trying to feel the hurt she knew must come with this news. But it wasn’t emotion that was clamouring at her, so much as logic. Perhaps it was all too soon, too shocking to absorb yet, but as the truth settled into clarity, she knew it wasn’t just Zac who had deceived her, it was Lenny too. Lenny had covered for him, she saw that now – his swagger out of the cabin deliberately leading her to assume Anna was his conquest; Anna and Zac’s subdued mood as Lenny had taken it too far in the slope-side restaurant, kissing her intimately in front of them all; he had taken advantage of her knowing she couldn’t resist or say no . . . that was why she’d been so angry with him afterwards. And if Lenny had helped Zac cover his tracks once, who was to say he hadn’t done it countless other times as well?
