Bianka watches out of the corner of her eye as her husband hugs Storm. She doesn’t get out of the car for a final goodbye – she decides to spare them all the awkwardness – and settles for a little wave. Emil says nothing as he gets in next to her and watches the van with Storm inside pull away and turn left at the end of the quiet residential road. Their taxi begins to move just as a light rain starts to fall, and only then does Bianka turn around at the last moment to look back at the white wooden house with its shiny black roof and small, well-kept garden dominated by the apple tree, reaching its long, gnarled arms across the lawn.
Emil takes Bianka’s hand, and she lets him hold it, sneaking a sideways glance at her husband. He’s a handsome man but somewhat bland; pleasant enough to look at but easily overlooked or forgotten, she always thought. With age, he’s grown more commanding, and his tall, lanky body, which once made him look gangly, now comes across as fit and athletic. After all these years of marriage, it still sometimes strikes Bianka as improbable that Emil would be the man she’d tie herself to. And yet, here they are. Just the two of them. And the day has finally come – the day they embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
*
Bianka spends the first few weeks driving slowly and carefully up and down the beautiful, serene streets of their new neighbourhood, memorizing their unfamiliar names; Clifton Road, Lauriston Road, Berkley Place, Lingfield Road, Edge Hill… She familiarizes herself with the one-way streets, the big new car, and driving on the left side of the road.
Before moving here, Bianka had been to London a couple of times before, but it was years ago and she’d only done the typical touristy things in central London – shopping on Oxford Street, lunch in Covent Garden, a show in Leicester Square. A few months ago, during the winter, Emil and Bianka had flown over for a quick visit just after the job offer had come, and while she’d thought Wimbledon seemed pleasant enough, the short time had passed in a blur of house viewings and Uber rides and client dinners in fancy restaurants in Mayfair with Emil’s new associates at Norbank.
Now, it doesn’t take her many days to fall in love with Wimbledon Village. It seems to Bianka to be the perfect place – the embodiment of everything anyone could ever want – safe and quaint with a village feel but on the doorstep of one of the world’s most exciting cities. The people look sophisticated and quietly wealthy, not dissimilar to those in the upmarket Oslo suburb they’ve just arrived from, but vastly different from Bianka’s own beginnings. Even at home in Norway, she’d never quite felt like one of them. Might it be different here? She can feel the old Bianka and her boring life in Oslo slither off her like the discarded skin of a snake, and she realizes that all the worry was for nothing; she can do this – start over, make a new life for herself.
The house the company have provided on Dunstall Road is gorgeous, the kind of house anyone would fantasize about living in: vast and half-timbered with red-brick foundations and lovely, rambling gardens bordering Cannizaro Park. If only little Bianka could have seen herself now – living like a queen in London and not even having to work for it. Or slightly older Bianka – the incarnation of herself who had believed she’d never have anything worth having, after everything she’d lost.
She begins to unpack as soon as their belongings arrive from Norway, making the big, part-furnished house feel like a real home, with their smiling faces beaming from photographs placed around the living spaces, their art hung from the walls. She places Storm’s belongings into the smallest of the spare bedrooms downstairs and shuts its door firmly behind her – it’s not like he’ll be spending a lot of time here between school terms and all the international travel he does as one of the most promising Super G stars of the Norwegian national youth team.
Today is a Monday, the first of June, and even at nine in the morning, it’s getting warm. After Emil has left for the office in the City, Bianka sits for a long while on the terrace steps, drinking tea and enjoying the garden. She tries to imagine what the future will hold, how the new life will shape up, but draws a blank. They’ve agreed she doesn’t have to work during the years they’ll spend in London; Emil makes more than enough money for both of them and thinks Bianka ‘deserves to explore what makes her happy’ after over ten years in a job that hardly felt fulfilling. The problem is that Bianka has very little idea what might make her happy, and she already misses the daily routine of getting up and going in to the office, even though she resented it for years while she actually had to do it.
After less than a half hour she feels bored and decides to walk across the common and pick up dinner from one of the delis in the village. She passes people with dogs straining at their leads; mothers pursuing their little charges across the vibrant green, dewy grass encircling the pond; some school kids from one of the nearby private schools in gym kit, their chatter drowned out by the rumble of regular planes on approach into Heathrow. She smiles to herself that she is suddenly here, in the midst of all of this. She stops to look at the window displays of several of the upmarket boutiques on the high street and notices a group of Norwegian women sat drinking coffee at a café. It feels strange to hear her mother tongue here, as though nothing from her home country could exist here in this new world.
Bianka takes a couple of steps closer so she can overhear what they’re saying. Unfortunately, it is uninteresting, like snatches of other people’s conversations usually are. They’re talking about a fundraiser at school, how to sell more cakes, how difficult can it really be to ensure everything is not only gluten-free but vegan, too, and why can’t the mothers of the senior school step up a little more? Bianka sneaks a glance at them. There are four of them, all groomed and blond and tightly botoxed. They wear variations of the same outfit: skinny jeans, ballerina shoes and floaty white blouses. A passerby might be forgiven for thinking that Bianka is one of them; she looks unmistakably Scandinavian in her colouring and most likely a little out of place in her brand-new London life. And perhaps Bianka will become like these women; ladies who lunch, whose husbands head in to the City every day while the wives spend their money in the suburbs, passing time until afternoons spent ferrying the children from their private schools to horse riding or tennis lessons or theatre club. With both a Norwegian primary school and the larger Scandinavian International School just down the road, Wimbledon is filled to the brim with Scandinavian expats.
She buys dinner from the deli, stops into a couple of designer boutiques, then picks up a chicken halloumi baguette and a coffee to go from Gail’s and walks back home the same way she came. Soon, she’ll hopefully have some friends to sit at the cafés with.
*
In the afternoon she takes a long bath with a glass of white wine, looking up at planes streaking across the sky through the domed skylight in the master bathroom. She reads an interiors magazine, and after, feeling inspired, decides to move the furniture around in the living room. She drags the sofas around so that they face each other rather than stand next to each other in a corner of the room, and places a low marble coffee table in between them, then a bronze vase filled with white roses on top. When she’s finished, she sits down and waits, but as the minutes and hours drag by, she feels increasingly lonely and annoyed. Why hasn’t Emil come home yet? It’s past seven and dinner is long ready, as in heated up. Of course she’s well aware that working hours are longer in London than in Norway, where it is completely normal to leave the office at four on the dot, but she didn’t anticipate just how long the hours would be or how displaced she’d feel.
Relax, she tells herself. You just got here.
At seven thirty Emil walks through the door, looking exhausted but elated. Over an exquisite parmigiana she bought from the Italians on the corner and pretends she’s made, he talks about his day and his various colleagues, none of whom Bianka has yet met. After dinner, they bring the rest of the wine into the living room, Emil settling down close to Bianka on the sofa when she expected he’d sit opposite.
‘It looks amazing, baby,’ says Emil, taking in the new layout of the room. ‘Oh, by the way – I forgot to say – we’ve already been invited to, like, five events. One is this weekend. At my colleague Andreas’s house. I wondered whether you’d heard of his wife, Charlotte Vinge?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Apparently she’s quite a big deal in Norway. The Keto Queen, she calls herself. I think she’s some kind of TV chef. Her show is premiering on Streamstar in the UK in English and they’re throwing a big party.’
‘Wow. Ok, sounds nice.’ Emil picks up the TV remote from the table in front of them and switches on the TV. He goes to YouTube and enters ‘Keto Queen.’ Nothing could have prepared Bianka for what happens next. There she is, back from the dead, leaping to life on the screen, only it isn’t her, of course it isn’t. And yet, there is something so similar about this woman that Bianka feels instantly and deeply affected. Her heart doubles its pace in her chest and she consciously works on keeping her expression neutral. Emil must notice it, too, but how could they possibly acknowledge it? Bianka sneaks a glance at her husband but his expression is seemingly unperturbed. They watch Charlotte Vinge talk about the apparent horrifying effects of consuming carbohydrates as she sears a steak to perfection, her beautiful face breaking into frequent, mesmerizing smiles, deep dimples studding her smooth, tan cheeks, until Bianka can bear it no longer and gently takes the remote control from Emil’s hand and switches the TV off.
‘Interesting niche to build a career in, isn’t it?’ says Emil, and Bianka watches him carefully as he speaks. He really does seem completely unaffected by Charlotte Vinge. A part of her wants to allow the tears that threaten to burst free from deep inside her loose, and ask her husband whether he sees what she sees – the impossible – she’s back. But she decides to say nothing, all the better if he doesn’t notice what she sees. She feels herself nod.
‘She was a newly qualified doctor, Andreas said. And decided to start this Keto Queen thing instead. Apparently makes a killing.’ Emil chuckles.
‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ says Bianka, and in this moment, the new life in London, the new start, and the new Bianka, take on a new meaning altogether.
Two
Charlotte
The lawns roll out from the wraparound teak terrace, vibrant green and lush after the recent rains, and a large marquee has been erected to the side of the pool. The lawn on the other side of the pool has been made into a dance floor, especially commissioned for events like this. A little over the top perhaps, but I won’t have it said that Charlotte Vinge doesn’t know how to host a party, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, after all. I watch as the enormous screen is stretched across the terrace at the back of the house, and positioned at a perfect angle for the crowd to see from where they’ll stand in the garden. I picture my face filling the screen, following the Streamstar UK logo. I smile to myself and swallow back a lump of nerves in my throat. No time for that.
The caterers busy themselves setting up the food stands and unloading the crates of champagne, plunging the bottles into ice buckets behind the bar inside the vast, domed marquee. There’s sashimi and carpaccio and oysters and huge slabs of Gruyère and Roquefort, all keto, of course, though I’m not going to make a point of it. I don’t need to; everybody knows that carbohydrates aren’t served at this house.
I step off the terrace and onto the striped lawn, which Andreas insisted on cutting himself this morning. I must admit he did it well, though I wasn’t at all sure he’d be able to as I watched him from the terrace, pretending to answer emails on my phone, fighting the urge to scream that it didn’t look straight enough or that he’d missed a spot.
Andreas has sidled up behind me and slips his arms around my waist, pulling me into a close hug. I’m a little surprised, he’s not exactly the cuddling kind.
‘Hey babe. So, tell me, what are you freaking out over right now?’
‘I’m not freaking out.’
‘Charlotte, I know you. I can read your stress levels purely from the set of your jaw. You’re looking pretty stern.’
He grabs my chin and pinches it lightly before kissing my cheek and I laugh in spite of myself.
‘Well, it’s hot today, there’s sashimi and oysters, they could be left at the wrong temperature and become dangerous, they could cause food poisoning, who knows how much experience these guys have ensuring the correct amount of ice, I’ve never used them before, though they were recommended by Silje Evensen—’
‘Charlotte. Seriously. You need a drink. Here, come with me.’ Andreas pulls me across the lawn to the marquee, where a couple of waiters who look around the same age as my thirteen-year-old are placing champagne glasses on a starched white tablecloth in a crooked line.
‘Can you please make me an Arctic Kiss?’ I ask but am met with blank stares. ‘It’s the signature cocktail of this party, so perhaps it would be good if you knew how. There, look over there on the drinks blackboard.’ I point at the cute French-inspired blackboard where I’ve listed the drinks on offer in careful calligraphy. My friends always wonder how I have time for all this stuff, but really, it’s simple – I make time. Besides, you can sleep when you’re dead. One of the waiters nods and sets about making my drink. One part vodka, two parts Dom Perignon, a dash of fresh lemon juice, hardly rocket science. I roll my eyes dramatically at Andreas, who chuckles infuriatingly.
‘Remember what I said. Have a few drinks, just relax. This is meant to be fun. This is your moment, Charlotte.’
‘Relax? The entire Scandinavian community of London and half of the UK’s top TV people are about to descend on my garden and you’re telling me to relax?’
‘Charlotte, we’ve talked about this. These people are all coming because of you, and your amazing achievements. Remember that. You know most of them anyway; they’re your friends. Think of them as individuals, just one friend after another. No reason to get all worked up over having your girlfriends over and getting smashed on champagne on a beautiful summer day.’
‘I just want it all to be perfect.’
