Page 66 of Meet Me Under the Northern Lights

KAT’S HOME, WINCHESTER, UK

‘Chloe! You’re shivering! Come in! Quickly! Mum! Get the kettle on!’

Apparently, even though she had spent so much time in Iceland, Chloe was not accustomed to the absolute soul-soaking rain of the UK or the amount of time you had to hang around outside in it for public transport connections.

She had been quickly sodden from the moment she left the airport and it had continued on trains, buses and taxis until she arrived here at Kat’s home, with no warning whatsoever, feeling bewildered and completely out-of-sorts.

‘I’m… sorry,’ Chloe said through chattering teeth. ‘I should have called but thinking was hurting so I just… acted.’

‘Oh shit, you’re talking in riddles. What’s happened?’ Kat asked, unzipping Chloe’s coat and taking it from her and then reaching coats down from her rail in the hallway and beginning to layer them up onto her friend.

‘I… don’t know. I got on the plane, but before I got on the plane, things with Gunnar just went wrong and I feel so stupid and I don’t want to feel stupid I want to feel like I felt when things weren’t going wrong with him and I have preparation to do for the Sinclairz Chairs meeting and I can’t focus and?—’

‘OK, I’ve heard more than enough and there is only one cure for this. Mum! Forget the tea! Get the large bottle of Baileys out and three glasses. The big ones!’

* * *

‘So, let me get this straight,’ Kat’s mother, Rula said.

‘He has a son. And a woman he lives with. But she’s not the mother of the son, or the grandmother, and she broke her ankle.

But she didn’t break her ankle falling from the roof of the school where she had kidnapped someone.

And the son-who-isn’t-the-son was being bullied because he was rescued from a volcano.

’ She looked at her half-empty glass of Baileys.

‘Am I drunk, Katherine? Because this sounds like a film.’

‘Don’t forget about the sex in a secluded thermal lagoon,’ Kat said, topping up Chloe’s glass with the creamy alcohol.

‘I didn’t tell your mum that!’ Chloe shrieked.

‘And that I would have been even more interested in. Do you know, I once had sex in an igloo,’ Rula announced.

‘Argh! Stop! La la la la la la!’ Kat said, slapping her hands over her ears.

‘It wasn’t with your father.’

‘Is that supposed to make it better or worse because I don’t know!’ Kat exclaimed.

‘I think the core take away from all this is that you like this guy a lot but you don’t know what to do with that feeling. Am I right, Katherine?’ Rula said, curling her feet up underneath her on the sofa.

‘You are right,’ Kat said, nodding. ‘Chloe, you’re being cautious and I understand why but sometimes you have to let it all out.’

‘Like when you’ve had a monstrous Christmas dinner and you undo your jeans and just let everything, you know, hang,’ Rula added.

‘But,’ Chloe said, beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol. ‘He’s being cautious too. More than me. And this morning at the airport it felt a bit like he wanted to…’ She swallowed, not really wanting to finish her sentence. ‘End things.’

‘No!’ Kat exclaimed. ‘No, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been that. I mean, why introduce you to Magnús? That’s not something you do lightly.’

‘Unless,’ Rula said, pointing a fiery red fingernail into the air, ‘he’s thinking, now you’ve got your big company partnership opportunity, that you’re going to forget all about him and the short time you’ve had in Iceland.’

Was that what Gunnar thought? Chloe let her mind wander to the conversations they had had since she’d told him the news about Michelle making her offer.

She had told him she wasn’t sure about accepting, that she was wondering whether it really was the right move.

But she hadn’t made clear that that decision didn’t affect the way she felt about him.

Whatever she chose professionally wasn’t going to impact on how she currently felt personally.

She wanted to see where things went with Gunnar, navigate the distance situation whether she was Michelle’s partner or not.

Was he thinking she was making a choice between him and her career and she had opted for her career?

Did he think the two things couldn’t co-exist?

She gasped then. ‘He thinks I’m doing the same thing Kirstin did!’

‘What?’ Kat said.

‘Yes, I will echo that. What? And who is Kirstin? Was she the kidnapped person or the girl who bullied the not-really-his-son?’ Rula asked.

‘I have to go,’ Chloe said, scrabbling up from the chair.

‘Go where?’ Kat asked. ‘You’ve only just got here.’

‘To the airport. Where’s my coat?’

‘What? Are you crazy? It’s close to midnight now and I was going to get Katherine to whizz up a little cheeseboard and some pickled onions,’ Rula said.

‘Your coat is still drying, on the chair.’

Chloe was already heading to pluck it off and began collating everything she had brought with her.

Was she crazy? Or was the crazier thing that she had even got on the plane in the first place?

She’d been so focussed on the getting back to the UK to deal with Sinclairz Chairs she hadn’t thought about reassuring Gunnar, and all he had seen was another woman walking out of his life after meeting Magnús.

‘You don’t have to fly back there tonight,’ Kat said. ‘Just call him.’

‘No,’ Chloe said. ‘That’s not enough.’

‘But what about the Sinclairz Chairs pitch?’

‘I know exactly what I’m going to do about that. But, right now, the only thing I need to do is get back to Iceland.’