The Christmas Lights

by Karen Swan

  ‘That deserves a toast!’ Zac yelled, grabbing the bottle of aquavit in the centre of the table and splashily pouring schnapps into all their glasses. He held his glass aloft. ‘To free spirits!’

  ‘Free spirits!’ they all cried, dispatching their drinks as one.

  Bo, who didn’t have a glass, watched on. How many had they had already?

  ‘Here, you too, baby,’ Zac said, hastily pouring her one too and handing it to her.

  ‘Oh, no, I’m not really . . .’ She felt out of the loop yet again, on the sidelines. Wasn’t it always Zac and Lenny who were front and centre of their brand?

  But Zac’s expression silenced her. They were out with their sponsors, they were celebrating, it was Christmas . . . She took the drink from him and shot it back, trying not to splutter as it burned her throat but unable to refrain from pulling a face.

  ‘It is an acquired taste!’ Trygve laughed, along with the rest.

  ‘So, Bo!’ Lenny called over. ‘Where is Anders, then?’

  ‘He’s visiting a friend. He said he’d collect us at eleven.’

  ‘Yeah, right! Like we’ll be done by then!’ Zac laughed.

  ‘Yeah, right, like he’s got a friend, you mean!’ Lenny guffawed, making Zac smack the table with hilarity.

  Bo prickled at their taunts, but there was no point in upbraiding them; they were both drunk and steadily on their way to becoming plastered. Trollied.

  ‘It’s a two-hour trip back from here,’ she said instead, although she couldn’t see how any of them were going to cope with the trek up from the fjord in this state; not that she liked the idea of a post-midnight ride on the fjord herself. It was black as pitch out there at night and the snow-filled clouds made glimpsing even the moon a rarity, much less the stars or the fabled Aurora – Lenny was taking its sustained absence almost personally. Perhaps Anders would let them all sleep on his floor?

  ‘Well why couldn’t he be sociable and come in for a drink, at least?’ Lenny asked, glassy-eyed.

  ‘Because he’s driving?’ she shrugged. ‘It’s not much fun being sober when everyone else is drinking.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Lenny muttered sarcastically. ‘He’s just not much fun.’

  ‘Who is this Anders?’ Ulla asked, leaning forward on her elbows, a faintly dazed look on her face too, Bo could see. She wondered again how long they had all been in here; the bottle on the table was more than half empty.

  ‘He’s our guide. And a grumpy git with it,’ Lenny said, not holding back. But then he always was a mouthy drunk.

  ‘He looks so familiar to me,’ Anna said, her voice comically sliding up an octave. ‘But I just can’t place him. Sometimes I think it’s on the tip of my tongue – and then it goes again.’ She looked baffled.

  ‘School?’ Anja asked.

  ‘God no,’ Anna scoffed. ‘He’s at least thirty.’

  ‘Hey!’ Trygve protested. He clearly looked to be in his mid-forties.

  ‘Don’t worry, Trygve,’ Ulla laughed. ‘You are still a very handsome man.’

  ‘And now you are patronizing me.’

  ‘Not at all!’ she protested, placing her hand over his. For work colleagues, they seemed very close.

  ‘There is a reason why I have a desk job and they –’ he tossed his gaze towards Zac and Lenny – ‘have a blog criss-crossing the world.’

  Bo flinched. They? Zac and Lenny?

  ‘Aw, but you can’t compare yourself to them. You have brains and they only have brawn,’ Anna said, grabbing Zac’s arm and squeezing the biceps.

  ‘Hey!’ the men all said collectively, seeing the compliment shrouding the insult.

  ‘What?’ she giggled. ‘You know what I mean.’ She shoulder-barged Zac playfully.

  Bo watched them all, feeling as removed from the action as if she was still in the street with Anders.

  ‘So what is next for you guys? Where do the Wanderlusters wander to now?’ Trgyve asked, trying to draw her in. ‘Whose will be the next company you transform?’

  ‘We’ve not confirmed anything with anyone else yet—’

  ‘Although I’m in talks with a number of people,’ Lenny slurred, self-importantly.

  Bo blinked. ‘We try to only do one partnership per season; it gets a bit much for the fans otherwise if they feel like you’re constantly trying to flog stuff to them. But we’re going to stay on here for another couple of weeks after Christmas and do a little more relaxing than we have done so far.’

  ‘Actually, babe, Lenny and I were discussing this earlier,’ Zac said. ‘We’re up for moving on. Going to find the sun again. Whaddya think?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve managed to put a hold on a trip to the Exumas for Christmas and New Year. Fly out Christmas Eve, land Christmas morning, be swimming with the pigs by Christmas lunch,’ Lenny grinned, looking over at Anja and Ulla.

  ‘But . . .’ Bo stammered. ‘We’ve only been here two weeks. We’re booked to stay for the month.’ And that was to say nothing of her dislike of spending Christmas in hot climates. It was her one condition – they always had to have mountains for Zac, Cokes for breakfast for Lenny and be somewhere cold for Christmas for her.

  ‘Yeah, but we can leave earlier if we want; we’re all paid up so Anders and his grandmother won’t care if we split early; frankly I think they’d be delighted to see the back of us,’ Zac shrugged. ‘And we’ve only got a couple more days’ shooting for these guys and we’re free to drift wherever the wind takes us.’

  ‘Or a Boeing 787 anyway,’ Lenny winked.

  Ulla and Anja laughed again. Not Anna though; she appeared to be largely ignoring him.

  Zac refilled everyone’s glasses and Bo felt her stomach dive. She didn’t want to get drunk.

  ‘But what about Christmas here?’ she asked him as he handed her the shot glass anyway. ‘We’ve got the tree, the decorations—’

  ‘Fuck! Don’t mention the tree!’ Lenny wailed dramatically as Zac reached over Anna and laughingly punched him on the arm.

  ‘Don’t mention the tree,’ Zac said in his best don’t-mess warning voice, pointing at everyone and making their hosts all look at one another in amused bewilderment, before shaking with laughter.

  ‘. . . What about the tree?’ Ulla asked, hands held out enquiringly.

  ‘Nooo!’ Lenny wailed, dropping his head on the table and banging it with his fist.

  Everyone laughed at their histrionics.

  ‘Fine, I’ll tell you about the tree,’ Zac said, playing to his crowd. ‘But only after we’ve dispatched these.’ And raising his glass, he waited for everyone else to do the same.

  On the count of three, they necked the drinks, Bo several beats later than everyone else. She didn’t want to drink it, just like she didn’t want to be in this bar, just like she didn’t want to leave this country. But it seemed that what she wanted wasn’t important. Apparently, she had become a bit part in her own life.

  By eleven o’clock, everyone was looking significantly less pretty. Zac was slumped, Anja was asleep, Lenny was morose, and Ulla and Trygve were dancing together in the aisle. Bo was trying to get Anna to stop crying.

  ‘. . . mustn’t give up,’ Bo said tiredly, feeling drunk and emotional herself. She had sung ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ three times now and was beginning to lose her voice. ‘It’ll happen for you.’

  ‘But I see you and Zac and I don’t thin—’ she hiccupped. ‘I don’t think it’ll happen—’

  A cheer from the corner of the room made them both look up. Two men were squaring off against each other, shoulders and elbows pulled back, chests out as they walked in slow circles, eyeball-to-eyeball. They looked like cockerels about to fight.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Bo frowned as suddenly the music cut out too. Silence popped, and then a low rumble of voices began to jibe, swelling into a jeer, and was then replaced by – of all things – violin music. ‘Jeez! Are they going to bow each other to death?’

  ‘It is the fiddle, th
e Hardanger fiddle. Very famous for the Halling,’ Anna sighed dismissively, wanting to get back to her problematic love life.

  But Bo had stood up. ‘The what?’ she winced, watching as the crowd pushed back now, giving the men space. Unable to tear her eyes away, she wandered over to where Ulla and Trygve were standing. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘A dance-off,’ Ulla shouted, looking excited. ‘You have heard of the Halling, right? A traditional Norwegian folk dance? Argentina has the salsa; Italy has the tarantella; we have the Halling,’ she shrugged.

  ‘This is a dance-off?’ Bo laughed, watching as the men began to move in step. Run-DMC it was not.

  ‘Wait till you see!’ Ulla grinned. ‘It is a virtuoso display of power and strength.’

  ‘Well, I guess I’d better capture it, then,’ Bo said, surprising herself with a hiccup – she wasn’t immune to the effects of five schnapps herself – as she got out her phone and automatically began recording.

  Everybody began clapping in time, the men dancing opposite one another in a languid prowl, before suddenly pulling out some moves – dropping to their heels before springing up again like Russian dancers, beginning to leap and spin. The effect was slightly ruined by their being in suits, but she panned around the room, capturing the cheering crowd too, the lights on the water outside . . . It was another Norwegian party, albeit very different from the one she’d gone to with Anders.

  She twisted to include Ulla and laughed in surprise to find Ulla doing exactly the same to her. Bo peeked out from behind her screen and playfully stuck out her tongue, Ulla did likewise, before they both turned back, laughing, to the dancers. The action was hitting a crescendo now. Someone had found a felt trilby in the cloakroom and was – bizarrely – hanging it off the end of a broom handle.

  ‘Uh, what?’ Bo asked, the screen shaking with her giggles. ‘What’s with the hat?’

  ‘Hi.’

  The voice in her ear was low. Sober. She whipped round.

  ‘Hey!’ She couldn’t quite temper the happiness in her voice to see him.

  Anders blinked back at her, taking in her drunkenness, before looking over to the action. ‘So I see things are getting messy.’

  ‘So messy,’ Bo grinned, tipping her head behind her towards the others who were reclining in various states of consciousness. She was doing the best of the lot of them.

  ‘Hmm,’ Anders said, turning back with an arched eyebrow, just as one of the dancers did a high kick-flick and sent the hat flying off the broom. It spun through the air and Anders instinctively shot his hand out, catching it like it was a ball.

  A huge cheer went up as he handed it back, and the hat was replaced on the stick. Bo cheered too, for she had caught it all on film! It would look great!

  ‘They’re doing it again?’ she asked as the second man began to circle it too.

  ‘Only one can win,’ Ulla said. ‘They are like stags, clashing antlers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Hey, I’m Ulla Hansen,’ Ulla said, smiling up at Anders and holding out the wrong hand to shake (she was still recording with her other one). ‘I’m part of the Ridge Riders team.’

  ‘Anders,’ he said, shaking it but not introducing himself further – not that he needed to.

  ‘Oh, you’re Anders,’ she said, intrigue in her voice. ‘Now, I keep hearing about you.’

  Anders didn’t reply.

  Ulla’s eyes narrowed as she took a better look, openly scrutinizing him. ‘Yeah, come to think of it – you do look familiar, Anna’s right.’

  ‘I had never met her before last week,’ he said tersely.

  A huge cheer – the biggest yet – lifted the roof as the hat was kicked flying into the air again. But this time Anders made no attempt to catch it and it sailed past him. Bo glimpsed one of the men on the dancefloor holding the back of his trousers and guessed that they had split during his acrobatics.

  ‘We need to go,’ Anders said abruptly, looking straight at Bo. ‘Either you all come with me now or I leave without you. You are very welcome to stay up here if you wish.’

  ‘No, it’s fine, of course we’ll come,’ she said, taken aback by a brusqueness that was unusual even by his standards.

  He turned to leave and Bo went to stop recording. The dancing had stopped anyway, the music no longer playing—

  ‘Oh, holy shit!’ Ulla gasped, almost shrieked. ‘You’re Anders Jemtegard! The guy that was in the papers. There was that massive court case.’ Her eyes widened, another expression coming into them as the alcohol-induced excitement dulled. ‘. . . You killed that guy!’

  The entire bar fell silent.

  What? Bo’s jaw dropped open as she looked desperately from Ulla to Anders. No. That couldn’t be true.

  But one look at his face – furious, shocked, devastated – and she knew that it was.

  ‘You killed someone?’ she whispered, aghast.

  Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for his reply, the attention that had been on the dancers now suddenly focused entirely upon them. But Anders didn’t look back, not at a single person. Instead he stared only at her, making no move to reply. But she saw words – explanations, excuses – running behind his eyes and suddenly it all made sense: his aversion to company, the unnatural stillness, the sense of containment about him. He was keeping his violence boxed in.

  She took a step back, just as he did the same. And then he turned, pushing through the crowds that had begun to creep closer like he was an exotic breed in a zoo, everyone wanting to get a better look, to see, to hear . . .

  Bo gave a horrified sob, the sound raw and wretched as she watched him leave, people jumping back from him as though afraid.

  ‘What the actual fuck?’ Zac demanded, staggering over to them, his eyes almost rolling around in his head independently of one another. ‘Did I hear that right? He killed someone?’

  Ulla nodded as the music started up again louder than ever, and the bar staff tried to get the party atmosphere back on track. But no one was listening to the music now; they were all huddled in horrified-delighted groups, trying to be heard over the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. ‘. . . can’t believe it’s him!’

  Anna was there too now. ‘. . . knew I . . . cognized hi—!’ she said triumphantly – as though this was a good thing.

  ‘What did he do?’ Zac demanded.

  ‘. . . killed this guy . . . with his girlfriend . . . locked up . . .’

  Bo felt the room spin as she remembered the sudden stop of activity on his Instagram account, leaving his life in Oslo to come back here . . . It all made perfect sense. He had killed a man and gone to prison for it, losing his girlfriend, a woman he couldn’t quite give up – keeping her clothes in a drawer, her picture by his bed, but that haunting portrait too lifelike, too painful to keep close.

  She remembered the warmth of his hand on hers just a few hours earlier, the concern in her eyes. She had felt safe with him, drawn to him in ways she couldn’t understand. But her instincts about him had been wrong, her faith misplaced. The others had been right about him all along. What the hell did she know?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘ImeanitBo! Dondothis!’ Zac was jabbing a finger towards her, swaying as he did so, his words an unbroken slur. A single breath of wind would knock him over, he was so drunk.

  ‘Where the fuck you going anyway?’ Lenny sneered, seeing how she stood with her arm up, the orange light of the taxi getting closer. ‘It’ll be dawn before you get back there tonight!’

  Bo’s eyes slid sideways towards him, seeing how he stumbled over his own feet whilst standing still – but she didn’t reply. She couldn’t deal with this – them – right now. She was in a flat spin. Lenny always had been a mean drunk and Trygve and Ulla had already left, together, but Anja and Anna were watching from a polite distance outside the bar. The night breeze was freezing by the water and they were all shivering. The party was well and truly over.

  ‘Lessjustgeddahotel,’ Zac beseeched h
er, half hunched over as though he wanted to sleep in the street, standing up.

  ‘You’re welcome to come back with me,’ she said, as the taxi drew up alongside her. She could scarcely think straight. She knew there were easier options: booking into a hotel was far easier than driving through the fjords in the dead of night but easy wasn’t the priority right now. She couldn’t stay here. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. The world seemed to have collapsed in on itself. She had to . . . move. Go. Escape.

  ‘Isstoofuckingfar,’ Zac hollered, waving his arms up and down furiously. ‘Lessjustgeddahotel!’

  ‘No. I can’t stay here, I told you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you why.’ It had been the final straw to her evening, seeing that Ulla had live-streamed the video, tagging up the location as clearly as a grid reference.

  ‘Because Ulla fucking put that we’re in Alesund?’ he cried, throwing his arms out so wide he almost lost his own balance. ‘So wha? Who cares? No one cares, that’s who. I can promise you that out of 9.9 million people, not one of them cares that we are here.’

  Bo blinked at him. It wasn’t true. One of them did. The dangerous one.

  ‘You’re paranoid, Bo,’ Lenny drawled. ‘You’re nuts.’

  ‘Are you coming with me or not?’ she asked Zac calmly, ignoring Lenny as she opened the door. It was bad enough dealing with one of them this drunk, much less two.

  ‘Fuck, no, I’m not. And nor are you. I forbid it,’ he spat. ‘Get over here now. Stop pissing about.’

  Bo stared at him in disbelief. She looked at him stabbing the air at her, Lenny’s sneer of contempt as she took flight. They thought she was ridiculous, pathetic, hysterical – and maybe it was true; but neither of them knew about the battle she had been trying to deal with alone; they didn’t know that the man who had chased her once before and invaded her room, was on her tail again. And now, standing there in the rain, watching them both sway and rail and curse, she didn’t know how to tell them. Or even what good it would do if she did. They’d tell her to ‘ignore’ him, block him; that he was just a sad, harmless dweeb with nothing better to do with his time than pick on her. But she felt . . . no, she somehow knew this was more than that. It was real, a living breathing thing. She felt watched. Surveilled. Trailed. Hunted.