‘Do you think so?’ asks Storm. ‘But why?’
Now Frida stands up and takes out another photo album from the same cupboard. She flicks through the pages quickly, stopping at a photo of a young Mia standing outside the old Viking Museum in Oslo. She can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. Beside her is another girl of around the same age, her blond curls hanging into her face, her right arm draped affectionately over Mia’s shoulder, and looking at Mia and laughing.
‘Bianka?’ Storm repeats, still confused. ‘Bianka knew my mother?’
‘Didn’t you know that Bianka and your mother were best friends?’ Frida asks. ‘They were completely inseparable for years. Until Mia met your father she did absolutely everything with Bianka.’
‘Why did I not know that? Why keep it a secret?’ Storm asks.
‘Who knows?’ Einar says, stroking the white beard on his face. ‘Perhaps, for Bianka, it was easier to erase the past when your mother died, or maybe Emil didn’t want you to know he’d married your mother’s best friend. They made a lot of decisions after Mia died that made little sense to us.’
In the photo album there are so many pictures of his mother that he has never seen before, early shots of her and Emil, young and in love. They chat for several hours until it starts to get late, and Storm promises to come back and visit soon. They swap numbers and hug tightly when he leaves. The wind has picked up a little and though it is late, the night is bright with a sleek white sky stretched low above Oslo. He messages his father to say everything is okay at summer camp and then pops his AirPods in and calls Madeleine, who picks up almost immediately.
‘Hey you,’ she says, clearly pleased he’s calling.
‘Hi. I was wondering if we could meet? Like, now?’
‘Umm, yeah, sure. Is everything okay?’ He feels momentarily silly for having called her. Though they’ve bonded quite intensely they don’t yet know each other very well, but he knew instinctively that it was her he wanted to talk to about his mother and Bianka, not one of his friends.
‘I don’t know. I just found out that Bianka knew my mother, and not just knew her – they were best friends. Nobody has ever told me that.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘I know. Can you get away? Meet me at the lake behind the middle school in Vinderen in twenty minutes? I think it’s right around the corner from your uncle’s house.’
*
Madeleine holds her arms out as soon as she sees him approaching through the trees, and he walks into her embrace, tears of bewilderment and confusion blurring his vision. They hold each other very tight for a long time and as his nervous system begins to regulate itself, Storm realizes that the last time he was hugged close like this by a woman other than Madeleine, it was by Mia. Bianka has never hugged him, not once, or shown him any physical affection. He feels it, then, the contours of a memory beginning to take shape inside him; his body remembers being held like this, close, and he holds Madeleine even closer. And Mia, too.
Twenty-Two
Charlotte
The day after the party at Sa Capricciosa mercifully passed in a blur. I lowered the blinds and went from almost an hour in the shower to bed and stayed there until it got dark outside, sleeping and crying with shame and exhaustion. I ignored the intermittent and insistent knocking on the door; I knew it was Bianka and I had no intention of speaking to her. I messaged the girls and said I had a migraine. Late in the evening I went downstairs for a snack; even I can’t go for days with no food at all, and the evening before at the vegan restaurant I’d only had a couple of pieces of steamed cabbage, blaming intolerances to gluten and pulses for not indulging in any of the other food. I listened out for a long while before venturing downstairs. I wanted to make sure I was definitely alone but, as I stood looking into the refrigerator trying to decide between some slices of cucumber and a boiled egg or some chorizo, a voice spoke from the corner of the room.
‘How are you feeling?’ It was Linda, sitting with her feet drawn up beneath her on the sofa, quietly reading a book. ‘Is the migraine any better?’
I nodded, knowing I just wasn’t ready to talk – I still felt so overwhelmed and in need of time to myself. I retreated back upstairs to my room with three chorizo slices and a quarter of a cucumber. No need to go overboard just because I felt a little fragile.
Back in bed, I decided that when I woke up again, I would think of the new day as a fresh start, a brand-new Charlotte, entirely untouched by the seedy and inappropriate lifestyle choices made by that other Charlotte, who’d lived in another time. I’d think of her as a stranger, a woman that was nothing at all to do with me.
The truth is, it works. So many of the things that happen to us in life reach their potency not in the unfolding of the situation itself, but in the meaning we assign to it in hindsight. To some it may seem preposterous or ruthless to insist that we can control everything, but that isn’t the point; the point is to take control of the narrative that is unfolding. I have decided that I will not let anything that has happened on this trip impact or destroy my marriage and my life. It no longer has the power to, because I’ve left it behind in the past and am interested only in looking forward.
Today is a stunning day, the most beautiful so far. I place my feet on the cool marble floor and take several very deep breaths before standing up. Outside, a flock of birds sweeps across the sky in a perfect arrow, pointing west. I wonder how they reach an agreement among themselves, about who takes the lead. Perhaps it’s just obvious to them in ways we cannot understand. I slide the floor-to-ceiling doors open and step outside onto my balcony. From here, I can see that the blinds in Bianka’s bedroom are still down. I consider a swim, a cold lurch from one side of the bay to the other, but I worry that Bianka will spot me from up here and come rushing down, trying to strike up conversation and reconcile. I could ask Anette to come down to Cala Azura with me and act like a human buffer, but she’d know exactly what I was doing and I don’t want to give her that satisfaction just yet. She’ll get the picture soon enough. Besides, Anette can barely walk after her glass-slicing incident. At least it didn’t stop her from having a bit of fun with that gorgeous twenty-something catering boy.
The thought of a hot twentysomething drags my mind back to Max, and the way he was with us in bed – hungry, patient, appreciative. I immediately wrench my mind away from the man child and remind myself of my new day, new Charlotte strategy. I think about Andreas instead, handsome in his three-piece suit at Madeleine’s confirmation this spring, how our eyes met across the round flower-laden table during the speeches, and how I’d noticed that day that other women’s eyes also naturally sought out my husband.
I lie back down in the bed, leaving the sliding doors open so that a fresh breeze enters the room. I try to call Andreas, first once and then again, but it goes to voicemail. It’s Thursday, I think; yes, it must be, because we are going home on Saturday. Only two more days and then my life will be sweet, orderly, normal, and incredibly privileged again, though not quite the same as before. I’ve learned my lesson on this trip and I intend to nurture it – the realization that I am beyond lucky.
A message from Anette flashes on WhatsApp on my phone, still in my hand from trying to call Andreas.
Hey, the three of us are downstairs and have made breakfast. Hope you’ve had a proper chance to rest and feel up for joining us.
I don’t especially want to sit down for a drawn-out chatty breakfast with the girls right now; I’d prefer the cool solitude of the sea, but I wouldn’t dream of letting on that I might be feeling a little off.
*
Breakfast consists of what seems to be a mountain of carbohydrates. I simply can’t understand where they came from: baguette, French toast, croissants, pain au chocolat, even cereal. It goes without saying that I don’t keep any such things in my home, so one of my companions must have popped out early to one of the village bakeries. Someone has flipped a couple of eggs around in a frying pan for me, and I half-heartedly eat these, or at least a couple of parts of them.
I make a huge effort to seem like my normal controlled self, and though I’m in no doubt that this will come easier with a bit more time, I won’t lie – I find it a little taxing to be in the company of others just now, trying to keep up with tongue-in-cheek conversations. Every time someone asks me something, I simultaneously pop a sliver of egg white in my mouth and chew dramatically so I don’t have to answer, or at the very least get away with a headshake no or a nodded yes.
Throughout, I feel Bianka’s eyes on me. I don’t meet her gaze a single time, but I almost want to, to gauge whether it’s intense and suggestive as it usually is, or chillier now since our big blow-up. The atmosphere between us feels undeniably strange now, and I wish Bianka had never come here with us, that it was just Anette, Linda, and me as usual, that we could spend the last couple of days in our comfortable, familiar rhythm of complete relaxation.
Just before noon we head down to Cala Azura. Perhaps it would have been easier to ride the Vespas south to one of the beach clubs where we could settle in on comfortable beds, waiters hovering around us like bees, but it is our tradition to spend at least one full day at Cala Azura. We carry collapsible chairs and mattresses and cooler bags filled with cold cuts and cheese and wine down the meandering, narrow path to the sea in the increasing heat. I pretend to fumble with something in one of the bags when we get there so the others naturally take their places while I’m preoccupied. Anette is in the middle so I have to choose between placing my mattress next to Linda on the one side or Bianka on the other, the side closest to me. To draw the moment out and seem less weird, I walk down to the surf and take a couple of pictures of the bay with my phone; that way, when I come back up to our spot, I am equidistant from both Bianka and Linda, making it more neutral where I choose to sit. I choose Linda, of course, and casually throw my mattress onto the pebbles. I feel Bianka’s gaze on me but I pull a book about food starch I’ve been meaning to read from my bag and flick it open, shutting the chatter of the others out.
We swim and sunbathe and drift in and out of conversation.
‘It’s too hot. I think I’m going to head back up to the house,’ says Linda after we’ve finished.
‘Yeah,’ says Anette. ‘I’d like a proper nap before we go out this evening, too, so I’ll come back up. Ibiza better watch out – first night back out without that ugly bandage.’
‘I guess tonight is the last night we’ll go for dinner and drinks,’ I say. ‘Our flight is at the crack of dawn on Saturday so maybe it’s a good idea to have a quiet night in tomorrow.’
‘And maybe that catering boy could return with his meat,’ says Bianka, making everyone laugh, even me. Our eyes meet for a brief moment and I feel it again, the energy between us. I didn’t imagine it, that’s for sure, but it belongs in the past and not in the present or the future. Now, it scares me as much as it used to thrill me. I look away and out to sea, where a jet ski is speeding in a straight line, heading north. I can make out the outlines of two people on the back of it, and am reminded of all the Vespa rides up and down the dusty, rolling hills, my arms closing around Bianka’s waist, her hair fluttering into my face.
‘I’m going to stay down here a while longer,’ says Bianka. ‘Who knows if I’ll get to go to Ibiza again, so I’d better maximize my tan. What about you, Charlotte?’ She winks at me and I smile coolly back, aware of Anette and Linda’s eyes travelling from Bianka to me and back again. It feels like an overt dig, and a way of putting me on the spot in front of my friends; asking whether she will be included in the future. I know she wants to be met with a gushing response about how of course she’ll be invited back, we must make this a yearly occurrence, the four of us, how unbelievably fun it has been.
‘I’m heading back up, too,’ I say. ‘I want to sort through some stuff before this evening and a nap sounds like a really great idea.’
