Page 28 of Meet Me Under the Northern Lights

‘This view,’ Kat said, phone snapping more photos. ‘It’s incredible. And I feel like we should all be whispering here. It’s like the land that time forgot.’

‘It’s grounding,’ Chloe answered. ‘Definitely.’

‘Aww, Chlo,’ Kat said, sliding an arm around Chloe’s shoulders. ‘How are you feeling now?’

How was she feeling after silently weeping her eyes out on the coach trying to keep a fixed I’m-focussed-on-the-tour-guide’s-highly-interesting-ancedotes-and-historical-info expression on her face for the past hour? Exhausted. Demotivated. Inadequate. So she said…

‘I’m OK.’ She added a nod.

‘OK,’ Kat said. ‘I know that’s not true but, you know, that’s why I’m here, that’s why I came.’

‘I know,’ Chloe said. ‘But, you didn’t have to do that.’

In fact, hearing the news when she got back to England after what would hopefully be a successful trip here researching the Sinclairz Chairs event, in the comfort of her own place, with her own time and space to process, would have been a whole lot better.

But she knew Kat had acted with the very best of intentions.

‘Chlo, I didn’t want you to see that. You know, just be on Instagram one day innocently sending me reels about being kidnapped by hot men in leather and then bam there’s all this fire and a baby belly in a bikini and pink smoke.’

‘It’s a girl,’ Chloe stated like it made any difference whatsoever.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kat said quickly. ‘Because it’s bound to have Michael’s chin, yes?’

‘I don’t?—’

‘And it will inherit Michael’s passion for Liverpool football club and no one wants that, Chlo.’

‘I guess, but?—’

‘I mean, you’ve had a lucky escape with all this, honestly,’ Kat rattled on. ‘And he ate Wotsits like a savage. Licking his fingers, all that orange dust everywhere and?—’

‘OK, I get it,’ Chloe interrupted. ‘Let’s just enjoy the peace of this place.’

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, grounding her boots into the cold, frosted ground and looking out over the lake.

None of this was really about Michael or Michael’s girlfriend or Michael and his girlfriend’s baby.

It was about her. She was the one who could never bear a child.

She was the odd one out. Although, statistically, she was one of every eight women in the UK struggling with some kind of fertility issue.

It didn’t make it any easier to know it was a significant problem.

Nothing had changed. She opened her eyes, looked out at the ice mounds.

Michael was always going to move on. Michael had always had some kind of timer going on his life with set benchmarks to hit.

Marriage wasn’t important to him, but children were something he had talked about almost from the moment they had started dating.

He was just following his path. And that’s what she needed to do.

That’s what she had been doing. Was she really going to let some kind of social media showing-off announcement from her ex undermine everything she had worked so hard to achieve?

She had her work. She was here in Iceland on the cusp of getting the promotion of all promotions.

Everything was good. No, everything was great. And she needed to embrace it.

‘I think Gunnar asked me out,’ Chloe said, breaking the silence.

‘What?’ Kat exclaimed.

She nodded. ‘Except I didn’t really know what to say and then you came back from the waterfall.’

Kat inhaled, putting her hands to her face. ‘Did I bloody ruin it? Why didn’t you push me back into the water?’

Chloe smiled. ‘I would never do that.’

‘If I’d have known I would have pushed myself back into the water. So, you managed to say “yes”, right? Before your annoying friend turned up and gate-crashed.’

‘No.’

‘What? You said “no”?’

‘No. And now?—’

‘You said “and now”? I hope you didn’t follow that up with “the end is near”.’

‘I should have said something,’ Chloe said.

‘You should have said yes. That is absolutely the only response.’

Chloe shuddered and she knew it wasn’t from the cold. It was from feeling that somehow, next to this glacier, Michael’s baby news felt like the tip of her personal iceberg, the push she needed to discover what could be beyond the wreckage of that old relationship…

‘Should I… say something to him?’ Chloe wanted to know. ‘Suggest something?’

‘Yes!’ Kat said. ‘Where’s that itinerary you’ve been curating that could fix Sinclairz Chairs up for a whole fortnight here instead of a couple of days?’

Kat began patting her down like she might be carrying actual ancient scrolls of parchment rather than most of it being on her notes app.

‘Stop,’ she said in a whisper. ‘But I was thinking, something casual, just a coffee or?—’

‘Oh, no, no, no, absolutely not. You have to have an activity!’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because there is nothing less casual than a “casual” cup of coffee,’ Kat continued. ‘Think about all the “casual” coffee dates you’ve been on and tell me I’m wrong.’

Chloe really hadn’t got that much experience but she didn’t need to recall at all as Kat was already ploughing on…

‘You need a date with substance. You don’t even need to call it a date but there definitely needs to be activity.

Otherwise you’re there stirring sugar you don’t want into an Americano you also don’t want, wondering what small talk is going to see you through until you get to the end of the date and the will-we-won’t-we kissing crunch down. ’

Now there was so much spinning through Chloe’s mind she was beginning to wonder why she had mentioned it or whether it was really a good idea to go from hearing Michael’s news to jumping into a new situation…

‘Itinerary!’ Kat demanded. ‘Where is it?’ She wiggled her fingers like she was about to turn into Mr Tickle from Mr Men .

‘It’s on my notes app.’

‘Good,’ Kat said. ‘So share it with me and I will have a suggested evening’s activity shaped up in no time.’

It didn’t seem like Chloe had given herself any other choice.