The Christmas Lights

by Karen Swan

  The betrayal was two-fold. Both of them had been playing her for a fool, protecting each other’s back. As she had long suspected, the primary relationship was between the two of them.

  She felt her world shift off-axis again as the revelation settled; she had thought leaving here was the answer, that once this final assignment was done and the contract was fulfilled, that they would all go back to their own lives as before – Anna and Anders would disperse like seeds from a pod and the Wanderlusters would go back on the road. It had been naïve, perhaps, but she had told herself that with time, she would forget Anders and slip back into how things used to be with Zac. But it was all a delusion. How could she go with them now? How could they possibly carry on when everything was built on lies?

  ‘Why have you told me this?’ she asked, looking at Signy flatly.

  ‘To help you, girl,’ Signy said hotly, seeing her despair. ‘You need to know that your worst moment can turn out to be your best. In every life, there is a defining moment of surrender where you must make a choice to let Destiny happen. You have to give yourself up to what must be.’

  Bo was quiet for a long moment, trying to make sense of her words. ‘I wouldn’t have pegged you as a big believer in fate,’ she finally muttered, staring at her hands.

  ‘When you live for almost a century, you see patterns that are invisible close-up. But when I look back over the course of my life, I can see that the most pivotal moments were always the ones beyond my control.’

  ‘That’s not very encouraging.’

  ‘It’s not about what happens to you; it’s about how you respond. Look at me.’ She looked out across the fjord, the majesty of that view. ‘Who has had a life richer than mine?’ There wasn’t a trace of irony in her voice. ‘And yet when my worst moment came, I believed my life was over. I had killed a man and I could see no way out.’

  Bo’s head whipped up in stunned surprise.

  ‘Yes, you heard me.’ Signy stared at her for a very long time, seeing her but not, her jaw sliding side to side as she recounted the events in her mind. It seemed an age before she spoke again, settling her gaze upon Bo with studied exactitude. ‘I’ve never spoken of this before – Anders knows nothing about it.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Bo said quietly.

  ‘I know that.’ She gave a heavy sigh. ‘But I am old and everyone who was there is long since dead anyway. No, my time is coming and when it does, I want to be free of secrets.’

  Bo stayed silent. There was nothing she could add to that.

  ‘The man I killed was called Rag Omenas. He was supposed to marry my sister Margit, only Margit didn’t love him. She loved another man, Mons, a newcomer to the village who worked for Rag’s father. One day – and I don’t know how exactly – Rag intercepted a letter from Margit asking her sweetheart to meet her at the seter that night. Rag followed him there and confronted them, before attacking them both. He fractured both Mons’ cheeks and an eye-socket and left him with internal bleeding. Then he hurt Margit.’ Her eyes misted, becoming rheumy, a chink in her armour. ‘He was crazy. A madman. So I picked up a heavy stone and brought it down on his head.’ Her eyes slid to Bo’s. ‘It was the only way to stop him, you see. It was us or him.’

  Bo reached out and covered Signy’s hands with her own. ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘And it changed me, right in that instant. I was fourteen years old and I had killed a man. I couldn’t stop shaking. But Margit was so brave, trying to think how to save me, when she – she had been hurt worst of all. I wanted to run away as far as I could get; Margit was insisting she would say it was she who had killed him – that Rag had attacked her and it was self-defence. But his father was powerful, he never would have accepted that. To lose his son and then have his reputation destroyed too?’ She tutted. ‘No.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘We didn’t. The mountain did it for us.’

  ‘The mountain?’ Bo looked at her, confused.

  ‘It fell.’

  For a moment, Bo couldn’t speak. ‘That was the same night?’

  Signy blanched. ‘We saw the wave head to the shore.’

  ‘But your family . . .’ Bo whispered.

  ‘Yes. We knew immediately what it meant. We had grown up listening to the stories of 1905.’ She closed her eyes for a long moment. ‘. . . Margit took charge. She knew in that instant we were orphans and that we were too far to save them, to do anything. But she also saw that it might save us.’ She nodded solemnly, her pauses becoming longer as she remembered, thought back. ‘. . . So, in spite of everything, we managed to get the body on the back of the horse and we brought it down as fast as we could, dumping him in the debris down there.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘It looked like he had been killed by falling rocks. And I was saved.’

  Bo had to force the words from her throat. ‘That’s . . . extraordinary,’ she gasped.

  ‘Life often is. It can be more tragic than we deserve, more punishing than we think we can bear.’ Their eyes met. ‘All you can ever be certain of is that it won’t follow the path you envisage. It will force you down roads you don’t want to walk, but you just have to trust. Look at me – it took a mountain falling down to save my life.’

  Both women stared at one another, understanding each other more deeply than could be explained.

  ‘– Bo?’

  She looked back with a start. Anders was standing by the door, concern on his face as he looked over at her. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘Your grandmother and I were just . . . talking.’

  ‘We need to head off if we’re going to do this. Time is tight.’

  ‘Sure.’ She went to stand up but Signy grabbed her hand, forcing her to stay crouched.

  ‘Think about what I have told you,’ Signy whispered urgently. ‘Let. Destiny. Happen.’

  Bo blinked back at her. ‘I’ll try,’ she mumbled, before making for the door – hoping to God a mountain wouldn’t have to fall down in the process.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked her, their legs moving in unison as they marched down the path towards Anna and the helicopter. ‘You looked upset.’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, glancing up at him, wondering how it could be that he had only been gone an hour and a half for her to have missed him that much. ‘. . . Your grandmother’s really incredible, you know.’

  He glanced at her. ‘She likes you too.’

  ‘Right? Are we ready to go?’ Anna asked, visibly inflating herself with a deep breath as they approached.

  ‘Yes,’ Anders nodded curtly.

  Bo stared at her, wondering how Anna could stand there and just act to Bo’s face, for there was no trace of her duplicity in her manner at all. No shame. No seeming regret. Only a sulky sorrow that Zac was giving her nothing more than a few drunken nights.

  Not that Bo was standing in judgement of her. How could she after what had happened – was still happening – with Anders? But to cheat and then lie about it so casually . . . ?

  He opened the door for them and Anna jumped in first, just as her phone rang. She looked over at them questioningly.

  ‘You’d better take that,’ Bo nodded. ‘It might be your office.’ No doubt they were wanting to add styling tips to her all-white snow-bunny outfit or give direction as to the pictures. After the damage of the last few days, they weren’t going to hit ten million for Christmas, but it was still in everyone’s interests to make sure today created a big splash.

  ‘Hmm, no – it’s an unidentified number,’ Anna said, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Well take it anyway, just in case,’ Anders muttered. ‘We’ll be out of reception over there.’

  Anna shrugged and answered it. ‘. . . Hei?’ she asked. Bo watched as a frown crumpled her brow before she silently held the phone out to her. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘For me?’ Bo asked, taking it from her. So then it was Zac? ‘Hello?’ She frowned. ‘. . . Who is this?’

>   Anders took a step closer to her as she turned and looked up at him, open-mouthed.

  ‘. . . Who?’

  His arm reached out to her. ‘Who is it?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘How did you get this number?’ Bo stared back at him but she was pale, her attention on the voice in her ear. ‘. . . You want to do what?’ she asked, pressing a hand to her ear. The reception was patchy. She couldn’t hear very—

  She fell silent again, listening to the voice but keeping her gaze on Anders all the while. His expression was concerned, focused. She was the only thing he could see. ‘Where are you?’

  Anders held his hand out. ‘Give me the phone. I will deal with him.’

  But she shook her head fractionally. ‘. . . Hello? Hello, are you there?’ She took the phone from her ear, checking the screen before looking back at him. ‘The signal’s gone.’

  ‘Who was it? Was it Him?’

  She was silent for a moment, trying to absorb what had happened. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ She frowned, concentrating.

  ‘Bo?’

  ‘He said his name was Antonio Spandelli; he owns a small magazine here called Northern Spirit. He wants to interview me.’

  ‘Interview you?’ The word hung in the air like a pomander, wariness drifting from it like a scent. ‘That could just be a cover story. Something to bring you to him.’ Like offering to help carry a heavy box . . .

  Anders was standing close, his concern radiating from him like a white light and drawing Anna’s attention. Bo felt her look between them both questioningly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, trying to examine her instincts. ‘He didn’t sound suspicious. He said his wife’s from Eidesdal?’

  ‘Yes, that’s in the next valley.’ He was watching her so intently, Bo wasn’t sure he’d even blinked.

  ‘He said they’re over from Oslo to spend Christmas here. He follows us on Insta and recognized some of the locations in our posts. He wants to set something up whilst we’re all in the area. He said he’s been trying to track me down himself because he thought he’d have a better chance of success if he could pitch it to us in person, and that he’d enquired in the shop when he went in with his wife. When that failed, he contacted Ridge Riders, who gave him Anna’s number.’

  Anders looked down and a few seconds later held up the screen for her to see – he had googled Antonio Spandelli, proprietor of Northern Spirit magazine: salt-and-pepper hair, bespectacled, soulful brown eyes, a good head of hair for a man in his late fifties, early sixties. He certainly didn’t look menacing. ‘Did he sound like he looked like that?’

  ‘Can you sound like a look?’ she asked, a small laugh escaping her as relief began to take a hold, for in spite of it, he had sounded like he looked – bookish, considered, polite. And his wife had been with him – a small detail Stale had omitted but which made all the difference surely? ‘But yes, I’d say so.’

  ‘So you think Spandelli is not Him? He’s not here?’

  She heard the unspoken question – ‘you don’t have to leave?’ – and she knew that if this was a reprieve, it was only a brief one. She had to tell him her latest discovery, before he began to believe, to hope . . . ‘He may not be in Gerainger, no; but he’s still somewhere close.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  She swallowed, glancing over at Anna, and – not caring about being rude – pulled him by the arm, away from her so that they could speak more privately. The suspicion on Anna’s face instantly magnified tenfold.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you this, but He posted something again while we were in Alesund – it was about what I was wearing that night, something that couldn’t be seen in the footage. It meant he had to have been there that night, that he was nearby.’

  She watched the light go out in him again. ‘But if he was that close to you and yet he still didn’t do anything, he didn’t try to talk to you . . . what does he want?’ Anders asked in exasperation.

  ‘He’s watching me. Keeping me close. It’s what he does.’

  ‘But why? Why you?’ His frustration had seeped out now and he dropped his head in his hands, tension like a harness across his back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, clutching his forearm, hating that she was putting him through this. He had been here before and suffered enough for four lifetimes. He deserved some happiness, some peace.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Anna called over.

  They ignored her. He took a deep breath, regaining focus. ‘We need . . . we need to dial it back. If he’s that close, then surely you’d begin to recognize if the same guy kept popping up wherever you went?’

  ‘I’m vigilant to the point of paranoia,’ she said quietly, remembering as she said it Lenny’s slurred accusation outside the bar: You’re paranoid.

  ‘Then there has to be something. Something that tells us who he is.’ Bo watched him, seeing his desperation to work it out, his need to help. ‘You said he started up again when you got here. But when exactly?’

  She thought back. ‘. . . It was the first or second night, I think . . . Yes, the second. He said he was back; had I missed him.’ She shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Like he was reintroducing himself then. Putting you on notice. Warning you.’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘So why then? What happened that day?’

  ‘Uh . . .’ She frowned, thinking hard. ‘Nothing spectacular. We were just here, getting set up, I think. The boys went into town to get food and supplies. Anna came back with them. Zac talked you into being our guide . . .’ She shrugged. ‘That was kind of it.’

  He glanced across at Anna; she was sitting side-on on the helicopter bench, watching them intently. ‘Could it be something to do with her, then? She was a new element to your lives.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Bo said consideringly. Before shaking her head. ‘But why should she be a trigger for him? And besides, he wouldn’t have known about her then. We didn’t really do anything that day so I just posted throwbacks – you know, archive footage. He wouldn’t have known she was with us.’

  He looked at her through slitted eyes. ‘Okay, so then not Anna. What was his next message?’

  She gave a heavy sigh, hating that she had to think about it, relive it all. ‘Um . . . it was a few days later; the night of Annika and Harald’s party.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  She bit her lip, not wanting to say it. ‘He called me a slut.’

  ‘A slut?’ He looked angry. Although he had seen some of the gossip and innuendo that night, she had managed to keep his message a secret, feeling ashamed somehow. ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I was hardly dancing on the tables. It was all carols and children and gingerbreads.’ But they knew – she and he – that it had also been the first time she had let her guard down, the aquavit and antibiotics loosening her inhibitions and spurring her to act on her curious pull towards him: to find out what he really thought about her, to know more about his girlfriend.

  She saw him remember it too, memories of the ‘night that wasn’t’ as he’d done the gentlemanly thing flashing between them both and she felt the pull towards him increase, like a magnetic charge being turned up. She wanted to touch him, to reach out and feel his skin against hers. But Anna was in the helicopter, looking at them through the door with a puzzled expression.

  He blinked back into focus. ‘Exactly. So what did you post? . . . You ate the risengrynsgrot and got the scalded almond – I remember filming that . . .’ He was thinking hard.

  ‘Which reminds me. You owe me a marzipan pig.’ But it was no time for jokes and the flash of his intense blue eyes, so stern and protective, made her stomach flip. ‘. . . I kept posting pictures of you,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Me? How? When?’

  ‘When you were chatting to some of your neighbours. I’m sorry. Clearly I didn’t know anything about your past or I wouldn’t have done it. I thought you were just being . . . coy.’


  ‘Coy?’

  ‘You were getting a lot of comments from my female followers! They all wanted to know who you were. So I mucked around a bit, taking secret photos of you and uploading them. I did tag the website if that makes it any better? It was just a bit of fun, I thought. Although I guess I had had a few aquavits by then . . .’

  But he wasn’t listening to her excuses; his eyes had narrowed in thought. ‘So – the night he called you a slut was the night you were mainly posting things about me?’

  She hesitated. ‘Well yeah, I guess. Maybe. Why?’

  ‘Well that’s it. If it all started up when you got here, hired me, came out to the party with me –’ He looked at her with glittering eyes. ‘The trigger is me.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The helicopter circled, an eye in the sky, looking down upon the snowy slopes that fell in almost vertical drapes here, the rock face pleating in on itself as the fjord meandered at its base. They were at Sunnylvsfjorden, a sixteen-mile-long, straightish channel which was the next fjord up from Geraingerfjord and led on to the greater Storfjord and the sea. The sky was clear, the light so blindingly pure that it felt to Bo that they were set within a brilliant-cut diamond – the world around them all hard angles and refracted light.

  She had wanted to stay up there with him. It felt safe in the sky, all the dangers and threats on the ground reduced to mere specks. And as they had swooped above the fjord, their downdraught splaying concentric circles on the skin of the water, heading for the fabled Mount Åkernes, Anders had pointed out another shelf farm at the base of its slopes, telling her it had been unoccupied since the 1950s. Was that the farmer on whose land Signy’s husband had hunted, she wondered, and who had first spotted the widening crevasse? The buildings, all turf-roofed and blackened timbers too, were set on a ledge much closer to the water than the Jemtegards’ farm, but the land above it was so sheer, access from the ridge above would have been nigh-on impossible. They began to rise up the face of the cliff and she could see that when the crevasse did finally split and tear away, the farm would be in the direct run-off zone. It would be obliterated. Little wonder it had been abandoned.