Your loving grandparents,
Frida and Einar
‘What? I don’t understand…’
‘They’re my mother’s parents. I found the letter when I came back after my first trip to London. It’s the first one I’ve ever received.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where have the rest gone? They’ve clearly written before.’
‘That’s the million-dollar question.’
‘What did your dad say?’
‘I didn’t tell him. But I did some digging, fished for information. He told me that they had been in touch for the first few years after my mom died, but then suddenly stopped contacting me. Either he’s lying or Bianka has intercepted their letters.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yep.’
‘You have to go see them.’
‘You think?’
‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’ Madeleine places the letter gently on the table, then takes one of Storm’s hands in both of her own, kissing its palm. Then she places it above her heart and keeps it there for a long while so he can feel the thud of her heart through her light summer blouse.
*
The next morning
The return address had been carefully written on the back of the envelope – Mosseveien 270 F, across town on the waterfront beneath Nordstrand, according to Google. If he cycles now, he’ll be there in half an hour, but he decides to Google Earth the property first to see what it looks like. The cottage sits right on the Oslo Fjord on the lower side of Mosseveien, a major road leading southeast out of the capital. It’s a cute white property in the traditional Swiss style that was popular in Norway at the beginning of the last century, complete with wood carvings and snug verandas. It even has a long jetty that hovers out over the water. It looks idyllic, peaceful. As he zooms in as far as he can, he can just make out a decked terrace that runs around the waterfront and an outdoor kitchen and dining area overlooking the dark-blue water. Storm wonders if his mother spent her early life here, diving off the jetty, swimming with friends to the small islands nearby. He wonders if he’s been before, as a child, but he feels as though he’s looking at the house for the very first time.
He pulls his bike from the garage and checks the tyres; he hasn’t ridden it since last summer but it seems to be okay. He quietly slips out of the driveway and starts peddling toward Smestad, then Majorstuen and downtown, with a million thoughts racing through his head. Perhaps this is a mistake – he has no recollection of ever meeting his grandparents and all of a sudden he just shows up?
He slows down as if to convince himself that he can still turn around and forget about the whole thing. Images of his mother come to him, a montage of the photographs he’s recently come to know. He knows them inside out, every crease, every worn corner where he’s held them – they’re all he has. And meeting his grandparents could open up a whole new world of information about his mother. Who she really was and what she loved. It could be like finally bringing what he knows of her life from monochrome to Technicolor.
After a long while, Storm turns down the cycle lane that runs alongside the beach from Ulvøya to Bekkelaget. The access road to the house is narrow and rocky, making it difficult to cycle, so Storm jumps off his bike and pushes it past row upon row of houses. He stops in front of his grandparents’ property – he instantly recognizes it from the Google Street View images. The house is surrounded by a small white picket fence and a perfectly manicured lawn to the front where a small apple tree throws shade against the window.
Storm swallows hard and looks up at the house: the lights are on and there is an old Volvo in the driveway. He opens the latch on the gate, pulls his bike inside and lays it on the lawn. He watches the house for a few minutes, his feet fixed to the path that leads to the front door. A figure walks past the window and it jolts him back to his senses. He walks toward the house, his heart racing and with no real sense of how this is going to play out. A flurry of emotions starts rising in his chest and he has to fight back the urge to turn and run. He knocks hesitantly on the front door.
The door opens and a grey-haired woman smiles kindly at him, her face blank and friendly. Then she steps forward and takes a closer look at him, her eyes locking on his, and now she does a double take before her hand reaches for her mouth in disbelief. She stumbles toward him and pulls him into her arms, letting out a deep wail as she squeezes him tightly.
‘Storm, is it really you?’ she cries. ‘You came,’ she says as she grabs his shoulders, squeezing them as if to check he isn’t a mirage or a visitor in a dream. She turns and ushers him into the house.
‘Einar, come quickly, Einar… Einar, where are you? Hurry!’ she looks around, searching for her husband. They find him sweeping the terrace at the back of the house. She takes Storm by the hand and leads him through the living room and dining room which opens up onto a terrace where an old man stands bent over a dustpan and brush.
‘Einar,’ she says softly. ‘Look who’s come.’
Einar slowly gets to his feet and looks up at Storm standing awkwardly in front of him. He looks at Frida and back to Storm.
‘Einar,’ says Frida, ‘it’s Storm.’
‘Storm?’ whispers Einar, his eyes clouding over with a sheen of tears, and Storm feels his own eyes blur. ‘Herregud.’ Oh, my God.
Storm swallows the lump in his throat and smiles at his grandfather, who steps forward to ruffle his hair like he’s still three years old. A silence falls between them all as they just stare at each other, Frida still holding Storm’s hand, realizing that she needs to wipe the tears that are rolling down her face but not letting go of his hand clamped in both of hers.
Eventually they go inside and settle down on the sofa in the living room, which has huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water, the light reflecting on the surface of the fjord, giving it a silvery sheen, like a mirror.
‘I’m sorry,’ Storm says. ‘I should have called.’
‘No, you mustn’t apologize,’ Frida says. ‘It’s so lovely to see you. It’s more than we dared hope for, though we have always hoped you would come someday, and here you are. I can’t quite believe it.’
‘I got your letter,’ Storm says, rubbing his hands together nervously. ‘It’s the first one I got.’
‘Oh, dear boy, we wrote to you so many times but we never had a reply. We weren’t sure any of them even reached you. We thought about just turning up, too, of course, but we didn’t want to do anything that might traumatize or upset you,’ Frida says.
‘Yes,’ Einar adds. ‘We must have written monthly for many years and we sent cards and gifts on your birthday and Christmas. We wrote when you were first selected for the Norwegian youth team, when you won at Chamonix and at St Anton. Did you not get any of them…?’
‘No,’ says Storm.
‘We never stopped writing,’ says Frida, fresh tears appearing in her eyes. Einar gets up from the sofa and opens an antique cupboard in the corner of the room, from which he pulls out a large scrapbook, placing it in Storm’s lap. It’s filled with newspaper clippings of Storm’s skiing success, pages upon pages of photographs, tickets stubs where they’ve watched, each one dated with a little note beside each picture detailing his time and position.
‘I didn’t get any of them. I’m so sorry, I had no idea you were trying to contact me. Why would they have stopped me seeing your letters? I don’t understand—’ Storm says through tears.
‘It’s not they, dear boy, it’s her,’ Frida said, a touch of anger in her voice.
