And that’s how, somehow, I end up having fun.
SEVEN
While the disco’s still raging, Frida and I head back to the cottage. We walk through the wood, the moon lighting up the path and pine needles crunching under our feet. Frida is so happy she almost dances home, and as soon as we get to the cottage, she runs down the path, across the beach and straight into the sea. She paddles around in the shallows. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she says, kicking up water. ‘Look how low the moon is, Kat. It’s almost touching the water!’
I slip off my shoes and walk into the sea. The water is perfect: cool and warm, all at the same time. I close my eyes and tilt my face to the sky. ‘Look, Frida.’ I stretch my arms above my head. ‘I’m moon-bathing!’
‘How about moon-swimming?’ Without waiting for an answer, Frida pulls her dress over her head.
I look out to sea. It’s temptingly still and I’m hot from dancing. ‘Yeah, why not?’ I say, surprising myself.
Frida is about to take off her bra when she notices me still standing there. ‘I suppose you want a swimming costume?’ she says. ‘I’ll grab mine off the washing line and you can change in the sauna.’ Before I can say anything, she runs back up the beach and disappears round the side of the cottage.
Water laps around my legs and on the far side of the island, ‘La Bamba’ is thumping out. My toes feel blissfully cool. I wriggle them in the water and stare at the moon’s reflection. It’s such a hot night. I pull my dress away from my sticky body.
Suddenly, I have a mad urge to dive into the sea. I’m going to do it right now – I’m going skinny dipping! I take off my dress, scrunch it into a ball and throw it on to the beach. Then, hardly believing what I’m doing, I pull off my underwear and send it flying on to the pebbles next to my dress. I stand in the shallow water, totally pantless, moon-bathing.
‘Wow, look at my crazy niece.’ Frida reappears holding her costume and a couple of towels. ‘The moon’s made you go mad.’
I do feel a bit crazy, like I want to make up for wasting most of the festival sulking and feeling sorry for myself. ‘Watch this, Frida,’ I say. ‘I’m going to do the Little Frog dance!’ Then I start singing, ‘Små grodorna, små grodorna!’ at the top of my voice, and I do the dance, jumping up and down in the water and wiggling my hands on my bottom to make a tail. Nanna’s right: the Little Frog dance does make you happy!
Frida joins in on the shore and bounces towards me. ‘Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack!’ we sing, while we squat up and down doing frog jumps.
‘Kou ack ack ack!’ I go … Then I notice Frida has stopped singing and is staring out to sea. ‘What is it?’ I say. But she ignores me, raises her hand and waves. She’s waving at someone behind me!
‘Hej, Leo!’ she calls out.
‘Hej.’ A deep voice, clear and distinct, drifts towards us.
Oh my God. Leo is somewhere on the sea! With lightning speed, my mind runs through the options: run for the cottage and he’ll see my naked jiggling bottom; turn round and he’ll see my naked jiggling boobies and front bottom! I do the only thing I can do: throw myself face down in the sea. I enter the water so hard my body slams into the pebbles. Too late, I realise the shallow water barely covers me.
‘Are you OK, Kat?’ asks Frida. I’m on all fours coughing up sea water.
‘Yeah … Just swimming.’ I crawl away from the shore, desperately hoping the water will get deeper. It’s slow going. I keep crawling until water laps over my bum. Only then do I dare look up. A few metres in front of me is a canoe. A boy is watching me, his paddle resting across his lap.
‘Hej,’ I say, moving forward. ‘I’m Kat.’ And I actually stick my hand out of the water like we’re at a business meeting or something.
Leo reaches over the side of the canoe and shakes my hand. ‘Hej,’ he says, politely keeping his eyes fixed on my face. ‘I’m Leo.’
Is he smiling? It’s hard to tell. Frida wades out towards us. Somehow, she’s managed to put on her costume. This is so unfair! ‘Leo,’ she says, ‘you’ve missed the festival.’
‘I tried to get here in time.’ As he speaks, I crawl deeper into the sea so that I can crouch down, my arms folded tightly across my chest, water up to my chin. ‘I’ve kayaked from Stockholm, wild camping on islands on my way here.’
‘Wonderful!’ says Frida, her face filled with admiration for his adventure, and then she starts to question him, in detail, about his trip while I keep myself wrapped up in a small ball.
‘Some islands were deserted,’ he says. ‘I caught fish, cooked them over fires.’ Although I try not to stare, it’s hard not to look at this person I’ve heard so much about. Even in the moonlight I can tell he’s tanned and his hair is tangled with sea water, but he’s no Scandi God. In fact, I can’t believe how ordinary he looks. Except his arms. He’s got impressive arms, which isn’t really surprising because he’s just canoed over fifty miles to get here.
‘How long did it take?’ asks Frida, dropping into the sea and elegantly floating on her back.
‘About a week.’ He glances down at me and I nod as though I’m considering this very seriously.
Then, out of nowhere, Frida says, ‘Leo, it would be great if you could take Kat out on the sea.’ There’s a moment’s silence. I can hardly bear to look at him. In the moonlight, his face is half hidden in shadows and hard to read, but I’m sure I see a frown flash across his face. ‘She’d love to go, wouldn’t you, Kat?’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘I guess Leo is tired so –’
‘I’m fine,’ says Leo. ‘I can take you.’
‘Great!’ says Frida. ‘Tomorrow morning?’ Oh, God. This is beyond embarrassing. I bet she wants the cottage to herself so she can be reunited with Beardy-beady.
‘Um, OK,’ he says.
What else can he say? If there were enough water, I’d bury my head in it. ‘Honestly, you don’t have to –’
‘Tomorrow is the best time to go,’ he says, interrupting me. ‘I’m going to try to catch the end of the festival.’ He starts to paddle away, his canoe moving swiftly across the bay. ‘Bye, Frida,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘See you tomorrow, Kat.’
We watch as his canoe cuts across the path of golden moonlight. ‘So,’ says Frida, rolling on to her front and smiling, ‘you’ve met Leo.’
After I’ve dried off, removed my make-up and brushed my teeth, I realise I’m still blushing. I sit on my bed in my sauna (aka the attic) and find my hedgehog paper. What was worse: Leo seeing my special Frog Dance, or Frida forcing him to take me out for the day? I desperately want to text my friends: their jokes would make me feel so much better. I decide to get rid of the shame of what’s just happened by writing a letter, but just to Betty and Bea: Pearl doesn’t keep secrets.
Dear Beatty
So, I have met the famous Leo, Lord of Stråla, God of the Scandi men, and I thought you would like to hear the news …
DISAPPOINTING!
Leo is:
Small (actually I have only seen him sitting in a canoe and he could have had long legs tucked away in there, but he appeared small)
Boring – he is totes into bees, flowers, tides and birds
Brown haired (again, not 100% on this as the moon was my only light source, but defo got a brown vibe off him – no offence, Bea)
In possession of an average face (I couldn’t see much of it because of the night, but if it had been cutesome, surely I’d have noticed??)
6.5 out of 10
Positives:
Ripped arms
That is all I can tell you, but I’m sure to bump into him soon as we are all essentially living together on Stråla. It’s like Big Brother. My evil Auntie Frida made him agree to take me CANOEING tomorrow, but I’m not going because when she suggested it, he looked like he’d rather sniff one of Pinky’s poos (when she’s been eating salmon Sheba). Do you remember when Pinky did a poo on my blazer? Remember the smell? Freeze your face. That is what Leo looked like when Frida asked hi
m to take me canoeing.
Tomorrow, I’m going to get up early and hide somewhere on Stråla for the day to avoid canoeing humiliation.
OK. There is one other piece of news. I was butt naked when I met Leo. It’s hard to explain how this came about, but trust me, it happened. Except for Mum, Dad, Britta and Frida, I think he may be the only person in the world who has ever seen me naked.*
I so badly need one of you here with me so I can pretend I don’t care about the naked thing.
REALLY wish you were here.
xxxxKat.
*Bea, that time you walked in on me in the Topshop changing room doesn’t count because I was wearing a bra. Betty, just to explain, my pants came off with the fake leather trousers I was trying on. They were obscenely tight.
I put the letter in the envelope, seal it and write on Bea’s address. Then I leave it on the kitchen table.
I lie in bed trying not to think about Leo watching me do naked squats.
All I can think about is Leo watching me do naked squats.
Still blushing, I drift off to sleep.
Naked squats. Naked squats.
Naked.
Squats.
EIGHT
The next morning I creep out of the cottage with everything I need to occupy me on the beach for a few hours (bottle of water, towel and my wrinkled copy of Grazia), but as I’m shutting the cabin door, I hear a telltale splashing noise. With a sinking heart, I turn round. Leo is paddling across our bay, but this time he’s in a canoe with two seats.
‘Ready?’ he calls out.
‘Seriously?’ I say. I can’t help sounding annoyed. ‘It’s not even eight.’
‘It’s a long paddle and the sun’s going to be hot.’
‘I guess.’ I try to think on my feet. I can’t get out of this now, but I am so not ready: I’m wearing flip-flops, my trackie bum-bums over my bikini and my make-up is minimal. It’s what I’d do for Sunday lunch at Grandma’s. I’m Grandma-ready, not boy-ready!
Leo guides the canoe to the edge of our jetty and I go over to meet him. Daylight reveals that his hair is indeed brown and so are his eyes. I decide my six and a half was accurate and congratulate myself on my ability to rate boys in the dark. ‘You’ve got a new canoe,’ I say, because he’s fiddling around with ropes and ignoring me.
‘Kayak,’ he says, climbing out and throwing a life jacket towards me. ‘It’s a tandem kayak.’ OK. He isn’t that short. I got that wrong. He starts to rearrange some bags he’s got strapped to the back of the kayak, then, finally, he glances up at me and frowns. ‘You need something that covers your shoulders,’ he says. ‘The sun can really burn on the sea.’
I spin round and go back into the cabin and up to my room. It’s obvious that Leo doesn’t want to take me out: he can barely look at me. Why did he even bother turning up? I pull on a shirt, then I curl my eyelashes and put on mascara. I glance out of the window. Leo is standing, arms folded, at the end of the jetty, staring out to sea. A bit of lipgloss and some perfume make me almost boy-ready. Leo might not want to take me kayaking, but I still want him to know he’s snubbing a total fox.
When I get back to the jetty, he gives me a crash course in paddling. Then he tightens my life jacket (we have to stand weirdly close to do this), puts my bag in a watertight sack and holds the kayak steady while I climb in. He manages to do all this without making eye contact once.
He gets in behind me, pushes us away from the jetty, and we’re off! In circles … Then we hit the jetty … Then we do two more circles and I drop my paddle and scream … Then we hit the jetty again. ‘Sit still,’ says Leo. ‘If you hold your paddle across your lap, I’ll get us clear of the bay.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, blushing. I hate Frida. I totally hate her.
‘OK,’ he says, once we’re on the open sea. ‘You can start paddling. We’re heading for Vilda.’
At first, my paddle keeps shooting out of the sea, showering us with water, or I miss the sea entirely and the kayak rocks crazily from side to side. While I make a series of sounds (ow … woah … ah … urgh), Leo paddles us steadily forward.
It takes us a long time to go a very short distance, and sometimes we go backwards, but finally I get the hang of it and Vilda seems to be getting bigger. I know I’m doing OK because Leo, who has been this lurking silent presence behind me, suddenly says ‘Good,’ and I’m really pleased. How annoying.
As we wobble our way towards the island, I start to feel self-conscious about Leo staring at my back. It’s a bit too close to what happened last night and, without being able to see his face, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s loving being out on the water with me, bathed in the golden rays of the morning sun, but I just can’t shake the feeling that he’d rather not have Frog-Dance-bum-girl dumped on him for the day. Eventually, I have to break the silence. ‘Frida told me that you’ve been staying on Stråla for years,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ he says, clearly and politely.
‘Are you in a cabin?’
‘No.’
‘The youth hostel?’
‘No.’
‘Hotel?’
‘A tent.’ Silence (except for the splash of our paddles). Then Leo says, ‘It’s a nice tent.’
‘Oh my God, I hate camping,’ I say. ‘My dad takes me and my sister – Mum won’t go because of the toilets – and I have to sit around in a field feeling cold and playing Candy Crush on my phone. Dad tries to get us all to play cricket, but, as if? There are only three of us.’ Silence. ‘So, what do you like doing when you’re not canoeing –’
‘Kayaking.’
‘… when you’re not kayaking?’
‘I like running, sailing, nature, football … and the sea. I love the sea.’ He pauses, then says, ‘What are your hobbies?’
‘I like doing loads of stuff,’ I say, then I realise shopping for the ultimate pair of boots, making your friends laugh by imitating your teachers, and watching kitten films on YouTube probably don’t count as ‘hobbies’. ‘I play the guitar,’ I say, ‘and I dance, but generally I hate sport and I can take or leave nature … Stars are nice.’ Our paddles splash through the sea. ‘Clearly, we’ve got loads in common, Leo.’
After a moment, he laughs. ‘That’s funny,’ he says. ‘Sorry, sometimes I’m slow at translating. I like listening to the guitar, and you think stars are OK, so maybe we aren’t that different.’ This makes me smile. However, despite the discovery of these two amazing shared interests, we still paddle in silence the rest of the way to Vilda.
‘What do we do now?’ I ask. We’re standing on a small beach, the kayak pulled high out of the water. In front of us is nothing but sea. We can’t even see Stråla. Just in case there’s reception, I turn on my phone. Nothing, not even one pathetic little bar. I drop it in my bag.
Leo shrugs. ‘Explore?’ Neither of us move. It reminds me of when Mum and Dad would visit friends and dump me and Britta in the garden with some strange children and tell us to go and play. Awks.
‘What about our stuff?’ I ask. Maybe we could just paddle back to the cabin. We’ll have been away for nearly an hour.
‘We’re on an island in the middle of nowhere. Essentially, this is our island for the day.’
‘Our island,’ I repeat. This feels a tiny bit exciting.
‘Come on. I’ll show you around.’ And Leo is off, scrambling over some rocks and up a bank. He looks back at me standing on the beach. ‘We’re going up there.’ He points to the highest bit of the island. It’s a hill. Not a mountain, just a hill, but still … With a groan, I dump my bag in the kayak and follow him. ‘Watch out for adders!’ he shouts as he disappears into the trees.
I’m limping by the time I get to the top. Leo’s standing on a ledge of rock taking in the view. On my way up, I slipped and somehow got my foot stuck between two boulders. Leo had to pull me out, but one of my flip-flops wouldn’t budge and we had to leave it behind. It’s hard climbing with only one flip-flop. It was pretty hard climbing wi
th two.
I stand next to him on the ledge and turn in a circle. I can see the entire island. It’s like a miniature world with bays, pools, rocks and hills. Leo touches my arm. ‘White-tailed eagle,’ he says. I look at his hand resting on me.
‘What?’
‘Look.’ He points at a cliff on our left. ‘By that patch of thrift, just under the sea asters?’
‘Double what?’
‘By the white flowers, just under the yellow daisies.’
‘Got it! Oh my God, it’s massive! It’s bigger than my cat … It could eat my cat!’ We sit down on the rock and let our legs dangle over the edge.
‘A female was spotted in Greenland that had a wingspan of two and a half metres.’
‘Big?’ I ask.
‘Big,’ says Leo, laughing. ‘Look. It’s about to fly.’ Together we watch as the eagle launches off the cliff and swoops down over the sea.
‘Whoa … those are huge wings.’
‘The biggest you’re ever likely to see.’ The closer it gets to the water the more its muscly legs stick out. Its talons stretch wide like it wants to grab something.
‘Uh-oh,’ I say. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Are we about to witness a murder?’
‘Hopefully.’ But the eagle’s claws dip into the sea and come up empty. It skims over the surface of the water then rises. As it flies back over us, I can see every feather, a brown fluffy tummy and a hooked yellow beak.
‘Do you like it?’ asks Leo.
I nod and stare as it flies beyond the cliff. It might be the most amazing creature I have ever seen, and I own a bald cat. In front of me is the sea. Nothing but the sea. The sun is fierce and the water sparkles with a million flashing diamonds. ‘Are we really the only people here?’ I ask. Leo nods, and for a moment our eyes meet. He is almost smiling. I notice that his hair isn’t really brown. In places it’s bleached by the sun, almost as blond as mine.
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