The Christmas Lights

by Karen Swan

  He looked over at Bo, expecting to see the hurt wash over her, but she was braced. This, at least, she already knew.

  ‘Len, shut the fuck up!’ Zac shouted as the secrets were spilled like a kicked bucket of milk. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

  ‘What’s wrong with me? None of this is about me! I’m just calling it. I’ve been dragged from pillar to post, having to watch on as you both fuck up the best thing you ever had! It was obvious what was going on between them. If I could see it, why couldn’t you?’

  There was a sudden pause, the question hanging in the air like a chandelier.

  ‘Because you’re obsessed with her, that’s why.’ Anders’ voice was suddenly very close and Bo turned to see he had come down the slope and was now level with them. Silently, as they had shouted and railed, he had brought himself into the frame. He was in shot. ‘The reason you saw all this, and no one else did, is because you watch her all the time. If it’s not your eyes on her, it’s your camera. Always clicking. Always recording.’

  ‘Yeah! Cos it’s my fucking job!’ Lenny spat.

  ‘No.’ The word was simple, clear. ‘You got the job because it enabled you to watch her, it gave you a cover story. It got you close to her.’

  What? Bo felt her heart forget to beat, the blood pooling at her feet as she looked in panic from Anders to Lenny to Zac. Was that true? Was that what he had been doing? All this time? Was he . . . was he Him?

  She remembered all the photographs he had taken of her sleeping, in the bath . . . Inappropriate. Intrusive. All those times she had been unaware he was there, as well as the many, many times when she was. And that vague uneasiness she sometimes felt around him that she couldn’t shake off or understand. ‘Was it just coincidence that day on the beach –’ she whispered. ‘When you got talking to Zac?’

  He glanced across at her but didn’t reply. He was watching Anders watching him, knowing he was a convicted killer, a man who had killed another in trying to protect the woman he loved. He knew full well Anders wasn’t a man to test.

  ‘Mate?’ Zac asked, punching Lenny lightly on the shoulder – it was a brotherly gesture and yet also a warning – demanding his attention, wanting his denial.

  The two men, old friends looked at each other then, the doubt creeping into Zac’s eyes, and Lenny changed. He grew, like a snake shedding its skin and wriggling into a new guise, with fresher colours. Becoming its true self.

  It was all the confirmation Bo needed and a sob escaped her, fright, disbelief and anger marbled into one strangled sound. Lenny was Him. He’d been right there, all this time.

  ‘What?’ Lenny shrugged, seeing the horror set in her features. ‘You’re my family, both of you.’ He looked across at Zac, as if he’d understand it at least. ‘She didn’t want me but when she met you, you made her happy and I saw that. I accepted it. I found a way to make it work.’

  ‘Make what work?’

  ‘For us all to be together.’

  There was a horrified pause.

  ‘What do you mean I didn’t want you?’ Bo whispered.

  Lenny looked back at her again and she felt that visceral retreat through her body she got whenever their eyes met. ‘In Sri Lanka, when I asked you for a drink.’

  ‘. . . But I never met you in Sri Lanka.’

  ‘Sure you did. I was your waiter. I asked if you’d like to go for a drink when I finished my shift. But you said you had some fucking meeting you had to go to with sponsors.’

  Bo looked at him blankly.

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And you don’t even remember. The biggest fucking moment of my life – I felt like I was about to freaking ask you to marry me I was shaking so much, and you don’t even remember it.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course you don’t . . .’

  Bo was trembling now. He was mad. Actually mad.

  ‘Not that you went to any meeting. I followed you that night. You just went back to your room. You had lied to me. Rejected me.’ He shrugged. ‘But at least then I had your room number.’

  Bo swallowed. ‘You worked at the hotel I was staying in?’ she whispered. That was how he had got into her room?

  ‘Quit my job the very same day and just started . . . trailing around after you. It was so easy and I’d been saving up to travel anyway so I decided to just go wherever you did: Java, Sumatra . . . It seemed a simple enough plan and I thought something would happen, another way for us to meet again, only this time when I wasn’t fucking serving you. I figured we just needed to meet as equals. But no.’ He scoffed. ‘No. Fate had other ideas. Six weeks later, you met our man Zac and that was that.’

  Bo felt she might throw up. He had been trailing her, country to country? It was worse than she’d even imagined.

  He slid his jaw to the side, looking at Zac with appraising eyes. ‘God, I fucking hated you at first, man; I hated on you for a long time. I used to fantasize about what I’d do to you if I got you alone. I saw you eyeing up those other chicks every time her back was turned. You didn’t know you were born, landing a girl like her . . .’ His eyes glittered with repressed rage, his mouth drawn into a mean line. ‘But then the weirdest damn thing went and happened: you noticed me, you finally noticed me and dragged me into that volleyball game that day. And when you turned your attention onto me, I saw what she saw. I couldn’t hate you. I wanted to, but fuck! I think I even fell for you myself.’ He gave a hollow laugh, the sound ringing through the ice tunnel. ‘And that was when I had the idea. It was like this sudden epiphany: it could be the three of us. Not quite the way I wanted it –’

  His eyes skimmed over Bo, raking up and down her like greedy fingers, and she gave a horrified sob as a memory suddenly burst through – not of him serving her in a waiter’s uniform in Sri Lanka but the actual touch of him: his searching hands upon her cold skin, his hungry breath on her neck, as she had huddled deliriously against him by the waterfall that day. Everything had been so confused as the snow whirled around them dizzyingly, her drifting in and out of consciousness as he kept talking to her all the while, his hands roaming under her clothes in the name of sharing body heat.

  He saw her disgust and stepped closer, as though reading her fear as desire. ‘No, it wasn’t what I wanted but it was the next best thing – at least for the short term. It would do until I could get you to see what he was really like. We would become a family and I would keep us all together. I would let him get away with cheating on you, I would even cover for him; I would protect you from his lies and keep from you what he really was like and how little he truly loved you, until I had proved to you beyond doubt how much better I could look after you. That I was the better man.’ He beat his chest with his fist. ‘I did all that for you Bo, because you deserved more than someone like him. I kept you safe from his cheating ways.’ He gave a snort of contempt, shaking his head slightly. ‘Only it turns out, it wasn’t his lies I should have been watching out for. He isn’t the one who ruined it all. You are. You’ve destroyed us.’

  A tear slid down her cheek as she saw what a lie, a twisted fantasy, this life they had all shared together had really been. And, yes, she had ruined it: she had fallen in love with someone else; she had said ‘no’ to him and ‘no’ to Zac; worst of all, she had said ‘no’ in front of ten million people, blowing up the brand for good – there would be no coming back from it now. They were all out of a job.

  ‘You’re sick, Lenny, you need help,’ Bo whispered, stepping back.

  She didn’t see the punch coming and nor did he, as he flew backwards, his back slamming against the ice walls and sending him sprawling to the ground. Blood gushed onto the snow, seeping and spreading into its pristine purity – staining it and changing it forever, as he had done to them. They all stared, dispassionate. Calm. Disgusted.

  ‘You – you broke my nose!’ Lenny gasped, cupping his hands to his face as the blood poured.

  ‘Yeah,’ Zac murmured, shaking out his hand. ‘Consider yourself lucky.’

  Chapter Twenty-E
ight

  Hjelle, 27 miles away, 30 September 1936, two weeks later

  Signy sat on the bed, their voices muffled behind the door. They were the grown-ups now, but she was still the child. Even after what she had done, she was the baby. Little Signy Reiten.

  The men’s voices were calm, Mons still talking with a slight lisp – his facial fractures would take a long time to heal but she wasn’t sure his guilt ever would. Margit had told him over and over that he had nothing to feel guilty for, that she was fine; but it was Signy who still shared a bed with her here, Signy who was startled awake every night by her sister thrashing and flailing as she fought Rag in her dreams.

  Signy thought it odd that she didn’t have nightmares about him too and she wondered if she would ever dream again at all. Her nights were simply black oblivion. She didn’t see his face or reimagine the sound of his skull caving against the whetstone. She simply closed her eyes – and fell.

  Perhaps it would be different for Margit tonight, though. Mons would sleep beside her then and Signy – well, where would she be by then?

  The door opened and Mons looked in, just about able to smile. ‘Come out, Signy.’

  She rose and walked into the main room, Margit looking radiant in her borrowed dress. It was a little too big – they had all lost weight in recent weeks – but it was white, and she had a simple net veil pushed back, a posy of flowers in her hands just like the one he had given her at Midsummer’s.

  But as ever, it was to Nils that Signy’s eyes strayed. He was wearing his uncle’s suit, his blonde hair combed for once, and he was looking anxious, as though he might yet lose the mercurial woman he wanted for his bride. Sofie was sitting on a chair, her gaze on the floor as it so often was now; her dark hair still gleamed and the perfectly symmetrical arrangement of features still pleased, but something – a light – had gone out in her; the rose had lost its bloom. Her dress was a drop-waisted style that did little to flatter her figure, but it hid the bump that was fast becoming noticeable and Signy noted that she would have needed to be married quickly even without everything that had come after that dreadful night. Without a ring to accessorize that bump, her reputation and future would have been marked.

  But Sofie was lucky as well as beautiful. She needed a father to legitimize this baby, she needed a husband to support them, and Nils loved her. In spite of his profound dismay on learning of her condition, he had rallied. Or perhaps he had known and understood that it was only the fact of the baby that would make her his and that was why he loved the child already. Sofie didn’t know what she had won, only what she had lost. She cried and she railed, she threw things and screamed, but Nils wasn’t deterred. He loved her enough for the both of them.

  ‘Signy, we have decided that you will stay with us,’ Mons said, his voice dragging her attention off Nils. ‘Although Sofie feels she will need help with the baby, she will be fine. She will manage. Women do it all the time.’ He looked across at Sofie reassuringly but she kept her gaze down, bitterness and resentment setting her bones that the care of this baby should fall to her.

  ‘I need you with me,’ Margit said, coming over and clasping her by the hands. ‘I know it’s selfish of me, taking you to the city; you’re such a country mouse, it’s where you belong. But I need to keep you close; we’re all the family we have now and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t bear to be even a mile from you, much less fifty.’

  A sob escaped Signy as she flung her arms around her sister’s waist. ‘I couldn’t bear it either,’ she cried, relief making her knees shake. The double wedding today was hard enough to bear but she would rather never see Nils again than have to live as a little sister with him and his wife, for life was grinding onwards – the endless deaths and funerals of the past few weeks making way for the new cycle of marriages and birth. They all needed to rebuild, to continue putting one foot in front of the other. Nils had bought a small shelf farm on Geraingerfjorden for his little family, Mons had found a job with a horologist in Alesund, and when the priest pronounced their two couples ‘man and wife’ this afternoon, they would be parted at last. For always.

  ‘Our home is your home and you will live with us for as long as you want,’ Margit said, clutching her tightly. ‘All your life if that is what you wish.’

  ‘Or at least until you are married,’ Mons chuckled, looking a little nervous.

  But Signy knew she would never marry. Margit was all she had left in the world. She had lost her parents, her brother and now, today, she was losing the only man she would ever love. She knew that fact in her bones as she stared at him from her sister’s embrace as if for the last time. It was as indisputable as the sun in the sky. ‘Deeds grow into Destiny’, that was what her father had always said, and fate had played a cruel hand here – trapping Sofie who so desperately wanted to escape the life she was born to, whilst setting Signy free in the very fullest sense, for she would be always alone now, she would never belong to another.

  A life for a life. It was the price she had to pay.

  * * *

  The landing skids touched the ground, the helicopter tipping slightly forwards, then backwards, settling lightly like a bee on a flower. Zac threw open the door and jumped down, pulling the rucksacks out behind him before reaching up his arm. Anna, closest to him, took it and jumped, landing awkwardly, and with her hands over her head, ran in a ducked position out of the downdraft.

  ‘Bo!’ Zac shouted up to her, his arm raised again.

  Bo looked over at Anders, sitting in the pilot’s seat in front of her. His head was angled back slightly, like a cab driver waiting for his passenger’s instructions. He was wearing his ear defenders, his face set in the closed look he had worn the first time they met.

  He had landed at the heliport for Alesund airport and she felt the panic rear up in her again that this was actually happening. She was really leaving him? It felt diabolical, against nature, against every instinct – and yet a chain of events had been set into motion and she couldn’t seem to find a way to stop it now.

  She wanted to reach out and touch him one last time, she wanted to feel his hand over hers, but it was impossible. Zac was right there, watching and waiting, and even though he knew about them, he didn’t really know. He had no idea of the scale of what they had become.

  ‘Takk,’ she said in a quiet voice, her words carrying straight to him over the PA system. It was a small and inadequate word, but then what words could suffice? Not ‘goodbye’. Not ‘I’ll miss you’. Not ‘I’m sorry’. Nothing could fill this vacuum they were creating, this gaping hole in both their lives.

  She saw the ball pulse in his jaw, emotions raging in him too. He gave the smallest nod, for what good were thanks to him? But it was the only word of his language available to her. Her Norwegian didn’t extend much past this, apart from Brod. And Ost. And they had no context here beyond the memories to which they were now attached, that twenty-four-hour period in which the two of them had submitted fully, already but a dream.

  ‘Jeg elsker deg,’ he said back, his voice low and close in her ear. She didn’t know what it meant but she heard the tenderness in it.

  ‘Bo!’ Zac shouted again.

  She looked down at him, having forgotten he was standing there, braced against the punishing downdrafts, his arm still reaching out and up to her. She slipped the earphones off and let his hand grab hers, and in the next moment she was outside too.

  ‘Thanks man – I guess!’ Zac shouted with a hapless shrug. What else could he say? It hadn’t been a conventional encounter between them but he could afford to be magnanimous in the end; he had got the girl.

  Bo didn’t want to move away from the chopper, she wanted to stay there, to see Anders’ face for one minute more, to let her gaze tangle with his for the last time, but the G-force was impossible to withstand, the noise an imperative to run, forcing her over to where Anna now stood. By the time she turned back, her hair flailing and whipping wildly, Zac was crouched and running over too, the hel
icopter already pulling up from the ground, Anders indistinguishable behind the reflection of the glass. She watched in teary silence as he rose up, up. Away. Putting air between them. Space. Soon it would be another city. And then another country. Another continent. And they would all go back to the lives they had carelessly dropped a few weeks earlier. They were all back on the right paths again. Regardless of how much it hurt.

  Bo stood in the gift shop at the tiny airport, browsing blindly, her head turning every few seconds to check the departures screen outside. It was flashing green with ‘boarding’ for the flight to Oslo. She did another scan of the gate but it was deserted – Lenny hadn’t made it back in time after all. She and Zac had agreed to delay boarding until the last minute, just to be sure. They wouldn’t get on any plane he was on.

  They had left him in the crevasse with the ropes and climbing equipment, Zac returning to the farm with her, Anna and Anders in the helicopter for a quick turnaround back at the farm before they made this dash for the airport. But still, there was a chance he might make it. Climbing down the other side of Mount Åkernes would have brought him not far from Stranda and if he hitch-hiked his way into town – which was an hour closer, up the road from Gerainger – he could still get a taxi to here. She wouldn’t put it past him. None of them would put anything past him now.

  How long had he stayed there after they’d left? Bo kept imagining the scene that would await the scientists when they returned to work after the Christmas break – blood stains, a bottle of Dom and some reindeer hides halfway along a chasm. What would they think had happened there? They could never guess the truth – a fake wedding proposal, live-streamed globally and ending in a fist-fight.

  No one had spoken on the helicopter flight back to the farm, all of them in shock, all out of words: Zac stunned; Anna ashamed; Bo horrified; Anders stoic, doing what had to be done. When they had reached the farm, he had watched in silence from his grandmother’s cabin – Signy rocking agitatedly in her chair at the window beside him – as she and Zac had packed quickly, Bo rushing to make sure everything was left as beautifully as they had found it; Zac talking, explaining, pleading.