Page 12 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop

There were two things I remembered Mum and Pabbi strongly agreeing on which had heavily influenced my childhood.

The first was that Pia and I had to be fully bilingual – not just able to speak Icelandic fluently but to read and write it too.

The second thing was that, despite living in England and recognising English traditions, we also needed to embrace Icelandic traditions, especially at Christmas.

As well as Jólabókaflóe , Icelanders recognised the thirteen Yule Lads – jólasveinar in Icelandic – instead of one Father Christmas.

The first mischievous Yule Lad arrived on 12 December, triggering the start of thirteen days of Christmas running through to Christmas Eve, during which time children left their shoes by the window hoping that the Yule Lad arriving that night would place a gift inside if they’d been good as opposed to a rotten potato for being naughty.

Pia and I loved the Yule Lads. What child wouldn’t love thirteen days of gifts, plus Jólabókaflóe , and then the English tradition of putting our stockings out for Father Christmas to arrive at some point in the early hours of Christmas morning?

Embracing the traditions of both cultures absolutely worked for us!

If only Mum and Pabbi had been in agreement on more than that, especially when it came to my sister.

What they each considered to be best for Pia was frequently debated.

Loudly. As though my sister and I couldn’t hear just because we were upstairs in bed.

Pabbi wanted us to move to Húsavík, saying the air was cleaner in Iceland.

Mum claimed it was too cold for Pia and she was too weak to travel anymore.

Neither of them ever asked Pia what she wanted.

If they had, they’d have discovered that she longed to live in a hot country, spending her days floating lazily around a pool on an inflatable dragon or unicorn and getting lost in her books.

In the months following my sister’s death, Nanna was the one who comforted me.

I don’t know what I’d have done without her because Mum and Pabbi were too distracted with blaming each other, too busy instigating their divorce, too occupied with dividing up their belongings and putting our family home on the market to notice that they had an eleven-year-old son who was falling apart.

It was the evening before I was due to start at secondary school when Mum finally seemed to remember that she had another child.

I was filling my new pencil case with the back-to-school stationery which Nanna had bought me from Bay Books when Mum knocked on my bedroom door and entered without invitation.

She wandered over to the window and looked out into the street.

I waited for her to speak and, when she didn’t, I resumed my task.

‘Are you looking forward to going up to big school tomorrow?’ she asked eventually without turning to face me.

‘Not really.’

‘Your nanna said you’ve got everything you need.’

‘She took me shopping,’ I said, wondering if she’d even registered my response to her original question.

‘I’m going away for a while.’

My stomach dropped to my feet and I felt sick. Pabbi had already left me and now Mum was leaving too. Did neither of them care about me anymore? What was I supposed to do without them?

‘When?’ I’d had to force the word out over the lump in my throat and it came out so quiet, I wasn’t sure she’d even heard it.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, just as I was poised to ask again.

Silence as she continued to stare out of the window.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked when I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

She finally turned to face me. ‘Eastern Europe. Photography assignment. I need to…’ Her voice caught and she cleared her throat but didn’t finish the sentence.

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘I’m not sure. You’ll be okay.’

It felt as though that should be a question but her flat tone of voice made it sound more like a statement so I didn’t say anything.

Nothing about my life at that moment was okay.

The sister I loved more than anyone else in the world was dead, my parents were getting divorced, my pabbi had returned to Iceland and had only spoken to me once across the summer holidays, my mum lived in the same house as me but might as well have been living on the moon given how little she had to do with me, and I was about to start at senior school where I already knew I wasn’t going to fit in.

But I couldn’t share that with her because I didn’t believe she was capable of saying or doing anything to make things all right, even if only for one evening.

I didn’t believe she cared about me and her announcement that she was packing up her camera equipment and leaving confirmed that.

My already broken heart took another beating.

‘You will come back?’ I asked hesitantly, fearful that the answer might be no.

‘Of course.’

‘And you’ll stay then? We’ll get our own house?’

She cocked her head to one side, looking puzzled.

‘You said moving in with Nanna was only temporary,’ I prompted.

‘You don’t like it here?’

‘I do, but…’ I wasn’t sure how to expand on that without sounding disloyal towards Nanna.

I’d always been exceptionally close to her but I hadn’t expected her to have to replace Mum.

Nanna had become my everything since Pia died and, while I would forever be grateful for that, what I really wanted was my mum.

And my pabbi. And I wanted my sister so badly.

Mum’s gaze turned towards my wardrobe where my uniform was hanging on the outside.

‘You’re going to look so smart tomorrow, Lars. A blazer. So grown up. We’ll need a photo of you in the morning.’ She pulled her long blonde hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a bobble from around her wrist. ‘I’d best finish my packing.’

She stood there for a moment, staring at me.

Her hands twitched by her side and she took a pace closer to me.

I thought she was going to hug me – something she’d always done to Pia but which I couldn’t remember her doing to me for so long – but she slipped her hands into the pockets of her combat trousers instead.

‘Listen to your teachers and be good for your nanna,’ she said, her voice sounding strained. And then she left and closed my bedroom door behind her.

When I rose the following morning, Mum was already gone.

Nanna was the one who took the photo of me in my new uniform.

Nanna was the one who made me a packed lunch, who welcomed me home, who asked about my first day.

She was the one who checked my homework, attended parents’ evenings, bought me my first shaving kit, took me to Iceland when Pabbi remarried and a thousand other things that my parents should have done.

Meanwhile Mum received critical acclaim as a street photographer, having shifted her interest from landscapes.

I found it strange at first that she’d retained her married name but she’d already had some early recognition as Jay Jóhannsson – the Jay being short for Jayne and giving potential for gender anonymity in a career dominated by men.

Another thing I found strange was that she was so fascinated by people in her compositions when she showed no interest in them in real life.

Or perhaps it was just strangers who held the appeal because she certainly didn’t seem to care about her family, which was what made the discovery that she’d created an album devoted to my sister all the more surprising.

‘Did you find any more photo albums in her room?’ Nanna asked as I placed the album back in the bag. I translated that as did you find an album devoted to you? I wouldn’t have expected there to be one, though, as this was clearly about capturing my sister’s short life.

‘Just this one. There could have been loose photos in the box files I packed but I didn’t want to rifle through all her stuff.’

‘Did I ever tell you how surprised I was when your mum announced she was getting married and that she and Ragnar wanted children?’ Nanna said. ‘She always seemed content in her own company – bit of a loner – but she threw herself into the role of wife and mother and she was so happy.’

My expression evidently conveyed my doubts as Nanna rose and reached out her hand towards me. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

I took her hand and, like a small boy, followed her into her bedroom where we stopped beside a framed collage.

‘I’ve not seen this before,’ I said.

‘It was one of the organised activities last week. These lovely women came in with assorted frames and helped us showcase our favourite photos. Look at Jayne and Ragnar on their wedding day and with you when you were a baby and a toddler. You can’t fake smiles that big.’

I studied the photos and she was right. Those early photos depicted a happy family of which I had no recollection.

‘When Pia came along far too early, that happiness was replaced by fear. Would she survive the first twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? A week? A month? Your little sister was a fighter but every milestone she reached was replaced by another and neither of your parents knew how to deal with it. Who would? They couldn’t control what was happening to Pia so they both focused on the things they could control.

Ragnar became obsessed with returning to Iceland.

It even got to the point where he wouldn’t…

’ She gasped as though she’d revealed something she hadn’t meant to.

‘Go on,’ I said gently. ‘You might as well tell me or I’ll imagine something worse.’

‘He refused to speak to Jayne in English. It wound her up because they’d made a promise to each other around conversing in both languages and she felt he’d let her down.’

Nanna wiped a speck of dust from the glass before continuing. ‘The thing Jayne could control was photography but that also went to the extreme. She lived her life through a lens rather than facing reality.’