Page 32 of Meet Me Under the Northern Lights

THE ICELAND PHALLOGICAL MUSEUM, REYKJAVIK

It was the next morning and Kat was laughing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is one of the funniest places I’ve ever been.’

‘Yes,’ Chloe responded.

She still wasn’t sure why she had agreed to come to the world’s only penis museum, only that she had hoped Kat would be distracted and not ask questions as to why she was attempting to do a crash course in Icelandic on her phone.

‘What makes someone want to collect these?’ Kat continued. ‘Because perhaps I shouldn’t have been so eager to delete those penis pics I accumulated. I might have been able to call them art and sell them somewhere like this.’

‘Yes,’ Chloe said.

How did you say ‘yes’ in Icelandic again? Já. That was one basic word nailed. But you couldn’t have conversation with one word alone when you were pretending to be somewhere close to fluent.

‘So, which one is your favourite? One of the whales? Or the polar bear?’ Kat asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Chloe!’

‘What?’

‘It was your idea to come here and it’s really weird but oddly entertaining and you aren’t paying attention!’

She looked up at her friend, full scrutiny being paid to her now. It was a mistake not to share this information with her best friend. It couldn’t get any worse by telling her. Kat would only try to help.

‘It’s not the penises,’ Chloe admitted. ‘Although I stand by the idea that this is probably not something to add to the suggested itinerary for Sinclairz Chairs.’

‘Is it still the Michael thing because?—’

‘No,’ Chloe said. ‘It’s the fact the Icelandic language thing is coming back to haunt me.’ She felt her chest tighten. It was like all her hopes and dreams for a slice of the company pie were resting on her rib cage, weighing down.

‘What’s happened?’ Kat asked as they made their way towards the café part of the building. ‘Is this why you were so quiet after dinner last night?’

Chloe sighed, putting a hand to her chest. ‘Michelle has arranged for me to meet someone who she described as something like a trusted advisor of Lincoln Sinclair.’

‘O-K.’

‘And it’s today. It would be now, but I changed the time so I could think… and practice.’

‘Spit it out,’ Kat demanded. ‘Like every person wanted to do when they were faced with the when-they-were-warm penises in this museum!’

‘The trusted advisor is Icelandic!’ Chloe blurted out.

‘And she is expecting me to discuss the celebration event in my fluent Icelandic that I am not fluent in because I lied to Michelle from the very first day I met her, before I met her actually, on email when I attached the CV you made me embellish!’

‘Calm down,’ Kat said as all eyes belonging to the other people in the café turned to them. ‘It’s not as bad as you think.’

‘It is! No, you’re right! It isn’t as bad as I think! It’s worse!’ And she really really didn’t want to be losing control in the middle of a museum of dicks.

‘Breathe, there’s a perfectly simple solution to this,’ Kat said, holding her shoulders.

‘I can pass A-level Icelandic before I meet her?’

‘No, you have someone who speaks Icelandic who can help you. Gunnar.’

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of that. It had been one of her first ideas because she was a natural problem-solver. But she had disregarded it. Because she needed to not rely on someone else to get her out of the hole she had dug that she never in a million years expected to fall into.

She shook her head, pulling a chair out and sitting down at a table. ‘I can’t ask Gunnar for help.’

‘Why not?’ Kat asked, sitting too.

‘Because we’re going out tonight and I’m already nervous about it and all I’ve done since I arrived here is need his help and I’m not that kind of person.’

‘A person who needs help isn’t some kind of second-class citizen. It’s normal.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Chloe said, still head-shaking. ‘It means depending on someone and them knowing that you’re depending on them and…’

‘And?’

What was she going to follow that up with? Her mind was offering her the answer but voicing that wasn’t going to help anyone.

‘And the last person you depended on ran away when the going got tough and announced his virility with someone else in an obnoxious Instagram post.’ It seemed that Kat had filled in the blanks herself.

‘It’s not all about Michael.’ That was true to some extent. It was much more about her not liking her control being taken away, particularly when it was her own fault it was happening.

‘I know,’ Kat said. ‘But it’s because of him you are second-guessing the solution to this issue.

You know asking Gunnar is a great option.

He can speak the Icelandic and you can… pretend you’re ill and can’t speak at all.

It’s the most straightforward way and will absolutely get you out of this predicament without Michelle ever knowing that you don’t know Icelandic or until you feel ready to admit to her that you don’t.

’ She looked directly at Chloe then. ‘Tell me I’m wrong. ’

Kat wasn’t wrong. But it was that sense of having to rely on someone to get her out of a fix. She was Little Miss Self-Sufficient these days. Needed to be.

She sighed. ‘You’re not wrong.’

‘Correct. So, all you need to do is call Gunnar and ask for his help. What’s the worst that could happen?’

‘So many things.’

‘But not death,’ Kat said, matter-of-factly.

‘No,’ Chloe said, sighing. ‘Not death.’

‘Then, you know what to do.’