by Jagger, Kait
Rules for living in Shetland
Rule 3: Fake it till you make it.
It had been Luna’s idea to join the knitting club that met weekly at various houses in and around Lerwick. This despite the fact that she could not knit.
‘It’s a way of ingratiating ourselves in the community,’ she’d explained to Dagmar, and when her boss frowned her incomprehension she simplified, ‘A way of making friends.’
This week’s session was taking place at the home of Judith Andersen; at eighty-nine Lerwick’s oldest and most accomplished knitter. Not that any of the other twelve or so women in the club was a slouch, Luna reflected, looking around Judith’s small front room and adjacent dining room, currently pulsating to the sound of clicking needles. Dagmar herself was an excellent knitter – she’d made the black cable jumper Luna was wearing tonight – as was Ruth, from whose craft stall Luna had purchased her first, dark grey Shetland wool sweater on her third day on the island.
Luna, meanwhile, was sitting with Ruth’s nine-year-old daughter Maisie at a hastily installed card table next to the kitchen, laboriously working on a scarf, the simplest, most basic item of clothing she could make. And even that looked messy and uneven compared to Maisie’s sterling work; Luna hadn’t ‘learnt the trick of getting the tension right’, according to Judith.
But never mind. The knitting was secondary to Luna’s purpose anyway. With a show of sighing, she stood and walked over to Ruth where she sat with a trio of knitters on the settee.
‘What have I done wrong here?’ she asked, kneeling next to her. Ruth took her scarf and examined it, tsking under her breath.
‘We’re going to have to pull this entire row out to fix it,’ she said, starting to unravel Luna’s hard work of the past ten minutes. The women next to Ruth began to laugh and Luna cast them a guilty, slightly clueless look – a look that was not entirely her own.
Quite early on during her time on Shetland, Luna had realised that she would need help to accomplish what needed accomplishing here. No matter what Sören thought, at the end of the day she was just a PA. So when on her second day Malcolm had presented her with the bombsite that was his office, she’d been in her element, setting to on the stacks of paper, creating order out of chaos.
But the act of charming the locals, making friends with farmers, trying to win them over to her cause? That was another matter entirely. It required skills that Luna knew she lacked. So she had taken to pretending to be other people from time to time, as the occasion demanded.
For situations like this, where guileless sweetness was needed, she pretended to be Jem, the sweetest, most guileless person she knew. And when she was talking to builders at the site of the new wool processing building, or representatives from the local board of commerce, she pretended to be Nancy, her silver-tongued, hard-negotiating friend.
And then there was Stefan. She found that despite her best efforts, he would not stay in the drawer of her imaginary apothecary chest where she kept trying to put him. Some days he seemed to be with her constantly, a shadow standing just behind her shoulder, watching her. She remembered going to visit an old farmer named Petersen during her second week here, who practically chased her off his land.
‘Nae mair shargin!’ he’d screeched at her. ‘Feck off, du n dat Swedish wumman.’
Luna had driven off in her car, hands shaking, until imaginary Stefan, sitting just behind her in the back seat, observed, ‘Sometimes it goes not so well, this first encounter.’ She could practically hear him laughing as he added, ‘Maybe not as bad as that, but…’
When she saw Petersen standing at the bar of her local pub the following night, and Luna’s first instinct was to give him a wide berth, it was Stefan who whispered in her ear, ‘Go on, give it a try. What is the very worst thing that could happen, flicka?’ So Luna walked over and in the millisecond after he turned his sour gaze on her, she tried to act like Stefan, to do what he would do. Lifting her hands, she said, ‘I know, I know, but your glass is empty, and I’m buying. I insist.’ To her surprise, the old man let her, and when she’d briefly put her hand on his shoulder and made to move away, he asked her to sit and apologised for his behaviour the previous day.
She came home that night full of the joys, though she was careful not to share her triumph with Dagmar, for Mr Petersen had had a few choice words to describe her Swedish boss. But that night, for the first time, she saw how it might be possible to win men like Petersen over.
From then on, she pretended to be Stefan most of all when she was talking to farmers, asking them questions, trying to gain their confidence. She began to hear his calm, rational voice in her own, and it made her feel stronger. So she stopped trying to stuff him into a drawer, and learned to live with his wraith.
Rules for living in Shetland
Rule 4: If and only if you comply with rules 1, 2 and 3, you can relax your guard at home.
It was gone 9pm before Luna and Dagmar got back to the cottage, running from the car to the door in the driving rain. Luna paused in the doorway to wave at Liv as she entered the bungalow, then entered the hallway and immediately stripped off her sweater, resisting the omnipresent urge to scratch her neck and chest where the wool had come into direct contact with her skin.
Dagmar went straight to the front room to check her emails, so Luna headed to the kitchen to tend to the Rayburn. The old cast iron cooker also served as boiler and water heater for the cottage, and it required regular fuelling. As much out of fear of cold showers as anything else, Luna had become an expert at keeping it running. She squatted in front of the dark green range now like a practised hand, opening the fire door and loading it with anthracite from a basket next to the kitchen door.
Going to the small Smeg fridge, she poured two glasses of sparkling Swedish water, for which she’d developed a taste while she was dating Stefan and which Dagmar had started bringing over from Stockholm in her checked luggage. The irony of the fact that, despite having parted with Stefan, she was drinking Swedish water, and religiously removing her shoes when she entered the house, and learning to speak basic Swedish wasn’t lost on Luna, but these gestures had been a point of warmth between her and Dagmar, something she was keen to foster.
Luna went into the front room and placed Dagmar’s glass on the table next to the settee, then tended to the fire, throwing a few bricks of peat onto it before sitting in an armchair next to the hearth. Dagmar acknowledged none of this, but Luna was used to that and took no offence.
Back in February, after she’d completed her first tour of the farm and surrounding area with Malcolm, Luna’s initial, overwhelming temptation on entering her new home was to go straight up to her bedroom, climb under the duvet and go to sleep. Anything to escape the lingering, pervasive sadness that had followed her all the way to Shetland.
Only the thought of Sören’s faith in her and her dread at the prospect of disappointing him had stopped her from becoming a hermit in those early days. She’d learned to make deals with herself, come up with rules for living here, timetables to stick to, things she could and couldn’t do. And largely, it had worked. There had been no public crying jags and few private ones, and the combination of pretending to be other people and strictly limiting the time she spent alone had reaped benefits.
When Luna was little, her father used to sing a song about a woman who had a face she kept in a jar beside the door. That, Luna thought, was what she was like now. Out in public, she smiled and chatted and charmed, but at home melancholy clung to her like peat smoke. Luna fancied the cottage preferred her when she was sad; Dagmar, too, being a naturally taciturn person, seemed to respect her for it. So Luna allowed herself that, her little ration of sadness.
As Dagmar continued typing on her laptop, Luna stared into the fire, trying to empty her mind. She listened to the wind howling outside and the rain beating down against the small leaded window that overlooked Malcolm’s beleaguered vegetable patch, drifting into such a fugue state that when her phone vibrate
d in her jeans pocket, she actually jumped. It was Jem.
‘Hello, you,’ she said, standing and walking toward the kitchen.
‘Hi. How are you?’ came Jem’s voice, sounding as if it were right next door instead of several hundred miles away.
‘Very good, very good,’ Luna said, sitting at the oak table next to the Rayburn. ‘Just got back from this week’s knitting club. It’s all party all the time up here in Shetland,’ she added drily. ‘And you? How’re things going with your big party this weekend?’
A few weeks ago Jem had sent Luna an invitation to the post-launch party for Remainers, which had surprised everyone by becoming the fastest-selling video game in the UK during its first month on the market. They were having the party at Arborage, appropriately enough; a costumed affair where attendees were encouraged to dress up as characters from the game.
‘It’s been pretty frantic, but I think it’s going to be a fun night… that was actually why I was ringing you. You haven’t RSVPd yet.’
Luna bit her lip. She’d assumed Jem sent her the invitation purely as a courtesy. ‘Sorry, I—’ she hesitated. ‘I didn’t think I needed to.’
‘So you’re not coming.’ The disappointment in Jem’s voice was clear.
‘Well, no,’ Luna smiled, as if somehow Jem could see it. ‘It is a long way to come for just one night, Jem.’
‘Not so far that you couldn’t come last weekend, though.’
Luna winced. It was true, she had been in London the previous Friday. ‘But that was just for work meetings,’ she explained. Not strictly true, but she added more honestly, ‘And I was only there for a day.’
‘Yet you found time to go to the West End and watch Kayla.’ Luna flinched again as Jem continued damningly, ‘Not so much as a phone call to me, but you had time to see her play for, what, the second time in three months?’
‘I—’
‘And Nancy. All she has to do is have a fight with Robert and you’re on the first plane to New York.’
Luna struggled to respond, genuinely taken aback. Jem was usually the most even-tempered of all her friends. Where was all this angst coming from?
‘But when I have a party to celebrate this major achievement in my life,’ Jem said, ‘which is a really big deal for me and for Rod, you’re too busy.’
‘It’s not like that, Jem,’ Luna protested. ‘You know how proud I am of you.’
‘Do I?’
‘It’s just, it’s awkward, with the party being at Arborage.’
‘And you having to see Stefan. That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve given him the push and you don’t want to have to face him.’
This was unfair, though Jem didn’t know it. Not for the first time, Luna wished she hadn’t concealed the truth of their break-up from her friend. And Jem wasn’t finished.
‘It’s like you’re punishing me for staying friends with him.’
‘That absolutely isn’t true,’ Luna said adamantly. ‘I want you to be friends with Stefan.’
There was a loaded silence on the other end of the line. Eventually, Jem said tightly, ‘All I know is that this is a really exciting time for me, and I feel like I can’t share it with you. Like you don’t really care.’
Then, to Luna’s amazement, Jem hung up on her.
Luna sat and stared at her phone for a moment, heart thumping dully in her chest. She went to the Belfast sink and filled a kettle with water, putting it on the Rayburn to heat, then paced the kitchen. The door to the front room was open and she suspected that despite her efforts to speak quietly, Dagmar had been listening to her side of this exchange. Dagmar, who knew rather more about Luna’s love life than Luna would have liked…
Chapter Three
A few weeks earlier, when Sören had suggested a face-to-face meeting between himself, Dagmar and Luna in London, Luna’s first thought had been not of Jem, or even Kayla, but of her motorbike. It was the only thing she’d been forced to leave behind at Arborage when she left, and she very much wanted to get it back.
She was weighing up the possible risk, to be avoided at all costs, that she might run into Stefan whilst retrieving it, when she remembered something useful from her previous job. Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, she pulled up the website for the Association of Historic Homes. And there it was: ‘AHH Annual Conference – 27 March.’ This was a major fixture in the Marchioness’s diary. Luna couldn’t imagine her Ladyship, or indeed Stefan now that he was the heir presumptive, missing it.
Indeed, scrolling through the agenda, she discovered that Stefan was the keynote speaker this year. There was a headshot of him standing next to one of the stone lions outside the portico at Arborage. ‘Arborage House – Reinventing the Lionsbridge Brand’ was the title of his speech. His hair had grown, she noted with a pang. It suited him, his dark blond locks falling over the collar of his shirt. Almost like a lion’s mane.
As Luna swallowed her pain at the sight of him, Dagmar happened past. ‘Ah, the boss’s son,’ she observed, surprising Luna by bending down to study the website.
‘I was, uh—’ Luna stammered. ‘This is an event my former employer is attending. Stefan Lundgren is speaking there. You know him?’
‘Yes,’ Dagmar said, frowning slightly. ‘We have many of the same friends, go to the same places in Stockholm.’
Luna clicked over to her calendar and swiftly changed the subject. ‘I was thinking, our meeting with Sören, could it be on the 27th? Maybe you and I could fly to London, and you could fly home to Stockholm with him when we’re finished. Would that work?’
‘Sure,’ Dagmar said, sitting down next to Luna at the table. ‘That works fine.’
Luna nodded and started closing her laptop.
‘You know,’ Dagmar said quietly, ‘he is not worth your suffering.’
‘I—’ Luna choked, filled with dismay that she had been so transparent, or that somehow her and Stefan’s relationship had become fodder for the rumour mill among his and Dagmar’s mutual friends.
‘Many women in Stockholm have suffered for him,’ Dagmar continued heedlessly. ‘Men like him, they don’t care.’
Luna stood in a hurry, her wooden chair screeching along the flagstone floor. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and quickly left the room.
*
They flew down to London together the following week, she and Dagmar, and met with Sören in his usual coffee shop near the British Museum. Afterward, with time to kill, Luna went to the West End theatre where Kayla was appearing in a revival of Cats to see if there were any ticket cancellations. Having had a shaky preview night in the autumn, the show had been completely revamped, opening to rave reviews and sell-out audiences.
Luna was pleasantly surprised to be able to get a matinee ticket, and even more pleased to find that the production now did justice to Kayla’s starring performance as Grizabella the Glamour Cat.
She texted Kayla later, on her way out of London: Just watched you perform. So incredible! My friend the star!!!
Kayla phoned her almost immediately. ‘Babe! You’re here?’
‘Just for the day.’
‘Why didn’t you come backstage? Where are you? I can come meet you.’
‘No, I’m not staying in town,’ Luna explained hastily. ‘I have to get straight back up north first thing tomorrow. I just thought, since I was here, I’d come see the show again.’
‘Now it isn’t a complete train wreck anymore, you mean,’ Kayla laughed, adding eagerly, ‘And you liked it?’
‘I loved it, Kay. And you know how much I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber, so that must mean it’s good.’
‘Aw, babe, I wish I could see you.’
‘Me too. Maybe next time.’
She stayed at a hotel a few miles away from Arborage, rising at dawn the next day and dressing in her biking gear, travelling by taxi to the entrance of the estate. She’d made advance arrangements with the head of security, so the guard there opened the massive wrought-iron gates and waved her through.
> Sitting in the back seat of the cab, Luna instinctively turned her face away when the house loomed into view. Instead, she looked out onto the passing parkland, where deer were grazing in the distance. She instructed the driver to turn off onto a service road leading to the barn where Arborage’s staff vehicles were kept.
She felt emotional, but in a good way, as she walked into the barn and saw a familiar shape in the corner, covered in a dust cloth. And when she pulled the cloth off and saw her Enduro – Michael, that was what she had secretly named it – she had to resist a sudden urge to hug it.
Luna made herself stop halfway down the drive, lifting the visor on her helmet and turning around to face the house. Arborage was practically glowing in the early morning sunshine, its yellow sandstone exterior punctuated by dark green box topiary. It was going to be a beautiful spring day here on the estate.
Having faced her fear, Luna pulled her visor back down and drove away.
It took her two days to get back to Shetland. Two long days of cold, gruelling motorway driving punctuated by hourly breaks at motorway service stops, an overnight stay near Durham, followed by the overnight ferry, where Luna managed, just, to avoid spewing up this time.
But she had been glad, the minute she drove her bike off the ferry and headed for Malcolm’s farm, that she had gone to the trouble. Even gladder the first time she’d ridden it into the Ollasons’ yard and seen Chris Ollason’s eyes light up. Quietly glad too, when she’d ridden it over to her local pub, the Fisherman’s Rest, for Wednesday quiz night, to see the looks of interest her Gore-Tex suit generated amongst the regulars.
It was like having a silent partner, the bike. Luna knew that Shetland wouldn’t be the same as Nice and Miami, where she’d lived previously; the girls wouldn’t be clamouring to visit her here. She knew, she knew, that it was only a piece of machinery, but having the Enduro with her made her feel better, like having a friend parked outside.
