‘I have my ways. It’s unfortunate that when I knock on a door like any other visitor, people aren’t inclined to let me in.’ He paused, then said. ‘We both know why I’m here.’
Agla nodded. She was completely aware of why, but she had expected that the reminder would be channelled through Jóhann. The last thing she had expected was that Ingimar would come straight to her.
‘Your timing is spookily accurate,’ she said. ‘I was just this minute taking a look at how things stand.’
Ingimar smiled. He had a benevolent smile, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and his face turned serious. Without a smile, he looked far from benevolent.
‘I can imagine things look grim,’ he said.
Agla agreed. ‘Times are hard right now,’ she said, ‘as everyone knows. So patience is the key.’
‘That’s it: patience.’ Ingimar smiled again.
Agla squirmed in her seat. The possibilities were flashing through her mind, as she tried to work out at lightning speed what the worst outcome could be and searched desperately for some kind of strategy.
‘Couldn’t we say that, with the situation as it is, there is no other option but to be patient?’ she replied.
Ingimar shrugged his shoulders. ‘You could say that,’ he said. Then he leaned forwards in the chair, an intense look on his face. ‘You’re good at covering it up, Agla, but you know as well as I do that even if you three were to sell everything you have, it wouldn’t cover the debt. All the stocks, the tangles of debt, everything you have is junk. And it’ll be a long time before it’ll be anything other than junk. Am I right?’ As he dropped the question, he nodded as if agreeing with himself.
There was no point in arguing. Of course he could see what the situation was – Ingimar was no fool. He was probably as far from being a fool as any man could be.
‘And although you’re pretty sharp,’ he continued, ‘you’ll need some kind of miracle to get these assets to produce any dividends.’
Agla didn’t reply. He was right. She understood that, and now he knew that she did.
‘But now you’re free of the prosecutor,’ he said, holding Agla’s gaze, ‘I have a proposal for you to reduce the debt, maybe even to become free of it.’
Agla didn’t reply. Instead, she stood up, went to the kitchen and fetched two bottles of beer. She took her time opening them, then went back to the living room, handed one to Ingimar and sat back on the sofa with the other.
‘Let’s hear it,’ she said.
9
Sonja did not say a word to Adam until they landed in Washington to catch their connecting flight. They walked through the airport in silence and boarded the Icelandic jet without saying a word to each other – not even when they went to a clothes shop at the airport to buy socks and trainers for Tómas. Adam occasionally muttered a few words to the boy. But he seemed to be gradually piecing together that the terror of that morning’s road trip had been his father’s doing: he stuck close to Sonja, holding her hand tightly and pulling away every time Adam tried to touch his head or speak to him. Once they were seated in the aircraft, he needed the toilet, and while he squeezed past his mother in the middle seat, he waited until his father had got up from his seat by the aisle.
‘Be quick, sweetheart,’ Adam said as Tómas stepped into the gangway, but as he spoke, Tómas spun around and aimed a kick at his father.
‘I hate you!’ he yelled. His clear voice carried through the cabin and the passengers who were busy forcing their hand baggage into the overhead lockers fell silent. Tómas rushed forwards and disappeared into the toilet, and Sonja watched Adam’s face as his eyes followed his son. For a moment a look of deep hurt flashed across his features, before he leaned down, rubbed his shin and took his seat next to Sonja. She watched him fiddle with the screen in front of him as if nothing had happened, and wondered just how he had become so hard.
At one time, not all that long ago, they had been a young couple with baby Tómas, Adam was working at a brand-new job at the bank, and Sonja was looking after the home, making every effort to prepare wholesome, home-cooked meals for the family, and sophisticated dinners for when Adam invited colleagues home. They had laughed so much together – at each other and at Tómas, who had seemed sweeter by the day. And they had worked on their house in Akranes, the one they had bought just before Tómas was born, because prices there were low enough for them to be able to afford a large detached place. As she thought back, it was difficult to pinpoint exactly when things had begun to change. It had been a few years before the financial crash, just after Adam had joined the bank’s management team, but Sonja was still not convinced that it was entirely due to his work.
Adam had been a jovial type, capable of bursts of laughter so infectious that everyone within earshot would also start to laugh with him; and he had had a habit of wrapping her in his arms and kissing the top of her head, which gave her a warm, secure feeling. But now he had become hard, although the anger that Sonja had always known burned inside him might well be quick to explode. It was as if his cold, hard shell had become thicker, but was simply a mantle of cooled lava over a volcanic fissure below. The gentleness and joy that he had shown before were both gone; and there was little doubt that she had played a part in that.
‘How did you find us?’ she asked.
Adam turned to her and grinned. ‘Teddy the dog,’ he said. ‘Tómas sent me a Facebook message through the boy in the next trailer to you to ask how Teddy was.’
Sonja sighed. Of course, it hadn’t been enough to ban Tómas from using the internet. He had been able to go online next door at Duncan’s place. She should never have shown him how to use Facebook, but she had missed him so deeply, she had not been able to resist the poorly spelled, one-line messages he had sent her while he was at Adam’s house.
She should have also known that Tómas would not be able to resist contacting his father. She should have paid more attention to him when he cried into the night, missing the dog so much. She simply hadn’t realised how attached he had become to the animal, having only just got the dog. They should have moved on sooner, too. Staying in once place too long had been a bad idea.
‘What’s next?’ she whispered.
‘Amsterdam next week, and London the week after.’
‘Two weeks in a row?’ Sonja’s mind whirled. There wasn’t much time to prepare and previously there had been no more than two trips a month.
‘No problem for you. There’s always your customs guy.’
Adam ripped open the sachet containing the earphones and put them on, making it clear that this conversation was over.
Tómas returned, Adam stood up to let him past, and he climbed over Sonja to the window seat. Sonja waved down one of the stewardesses and asked for earphones for him and a blanket for her. The air-conditioning was a little too cool for someone wearing shorts.
10
Agla felt that she had only just closed her eyes when she heard the phone ringing. She cursed herself for not having switched it off and glanced at the clock; it was almost six in the morning. Ingimar had stayed until around two and afterwards she had lain awake, thinking over his proposal, but without reaching any conclusion. She reached for the phone. An unfamiliar number had appeared on the screen. It had to be some journalist – another one. For a second the thought had crossed her mind – or more accurately, her heart – that it might be Sonja, but that hope was quickly extinguished. Sonja had stopped calling a long time ago, and, quite apart from that, she would never call this early in the morning unless it was an emergency. Agla sat up in bed, her heart pounding. Perhaps it was Sonja, and she was in trouble.
She answered the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Agla…’ It was Sonja’s voice, but it sounded thin and tearful, as if she were wracked with sobs.
‘Sonja? Is that you?’
There was no answer, but she could hear the background noise: the bustle of a crowd, and the echo of some kind of alarm bell.
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‘Sonja, my love, what’s the matter? Is something wrong?’
Agla was on her feet and went over to the window, as if that would give her a stronger phone signal, to be sure not to lose this first contact from Sonja in such a long time.
‘No, it’s all right.’ She heard Sonja clear her throat and sniff. ‘I was wondering if you could pick me up from the airport. Something went wrong and my baggage is missing. And I don’t have any money and the bus driver won’t give me any credit—’
Agla interrupted. ‘I’m coming, Sonja. Half an hour. Wait for me. I’m coming.’
She wasn’t interested in explanations. It was enough that Sonja was waiting for her.
The shower was cold, but she stepped into it anyway. She just needed a quick wash that would wake her up. It worked, and as she towelled herself off, she felt more alert than she had been for a long time. Before the financial crash she had sometimes started her days like this – with the shock of an ice-cold shower. Back then she had needed to be up at six to keep up with her workload and to be able to weigh things up before the bank opened for business. That had been when she relished waking up in the mornings.
She snatched some underwear from a drawer; she had long given up folding it so there was the usual tangle, but she managed to find pants and a bra in almost the same colour, and socks instead of tights saved a moment or two. She opened the wardrobe where the choice was thinner than it had been. The pile of clothes waiting to go for dry cleaning was now a big one, but she hadn’t had the energy to deal with it, so that left a few suits and a couple of odd jackets. Without too much time to think, she picked a Chanel trouser suit and a cream silk blouse. They were over the top for collecting someone from the airport this early in the morning, but she didn’t want to look scruffy the first time Sonja saw her after such a long absence.
Precisely eighteen minutes after Sonja’s call, Agla was in her car. She used the stops at red lights to apply her foundation. Her hair was almost acceptable and the perfume she sprayed over herself was Sonja’s favourite. Fortunately, there was virtually no traffic, so she was quickly past the string of roundabouts around Hafnarfjörður, and at the traffic lights by the sports hall she used the waiting time to apply the finishing touches. As the urban sprawl and the aluminium factory were left behind, she put her foot down so hard that she was pressed back into the seat as if she were about to take off.
The Lexus was responsive and the road was dry, so the frost had left no ice on its surface. She’d be there in no time. Once the car was at 130kph she switched to cruise control so she could take her foot off the accelerator, holding the wheel steady with her knee so she could apply a little more mascara. That would have to do, although a touch of eyeliner would have helped. But the important thing was to be quick to get to Sonja, to show her that she was ready, that she was there for her.
Approaching the airport, she felt a knot of nerves in her belly. What should she say? How should she try to come across? They hadn’t parted well last time. Sonja had said it was all over between them, but now she was calling and asking for her help in between sobs. What did that mean? Was it because she wanted to see her? Or was it because there was nobody else she could turn to?
At the airport car park gate she picked up a lipstick and as she put it to her lips, she noticed that her hands were shaking. The car had barely come to a halt when she picked Sonja out, shivering against the terminal wall; in shorts.
11
Agla’s car had hardly stopped outside the terminal building before Sonja wrenched open the door and was inside.
‘Thanks for coming to get me,’ she said as she slammed the door shut behind her. Her words sounded dry and awkward to Agla, under such odd circumstances: the phone call punctuated by sobs earlier, and the way she was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt while the temperature outside was below zero.
‘You waited outside like that?’ Agla asked in astonishment. Those weren’t the first words she had wanted to say, but somehow the question popped out of her mouth.
‘No, I tried to figure out how long you would be, then waited in the toilets so people wouldn’t stare. You said half an hour, so I reckoned it would be forty-five minutes.’
‘And you didn’t have a coat or anything…?’ Agla asked, but Sonja stared straight ahead. There was a hard quality about her that Agla had not seen before. ‘Where’s Tómas?’ she continued.
‘With his father,’ Sonja whispered, and curled into a ball in the passenger seat. Her mouth hung open and she shivered, but no sound came from her.
‘Sonja, my love,’ Agla said, pulling her into her arms.
Sonja offered no resistance but slipped into her embrace, putting her head on Agla’s chest where she gave a weak, hoarse moan.
‘What happened, my sweet?’ Agla whispered into Sonja’s tousled hair, an arm curled around her, feeling how cold she was. ‘What happened?’
Shaken by sobs, Sonja lay in Agla’s arms for a moment, before she pulled free and sat up straight. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, wiping her face.
‘What—?’ Agla was about to protest.
‘Drive,’ Sonja interrupted.
Agla slid the car into drive and pulled away carefully, certain that Sonja was about to collapse again. She was ready to take her into her arms once more, half hoping that there would be more tears that would need soothing away. But now Sonja sat still and kept staring ahead, and the unsettling hardness had returned to her face.
They were still silent when the car turned onto Reykjanesbraut leading towards the city. Sonja had reached forwards, turned up the heater and switched on the heated seat, but her gaze was still focused on the distance ahead of her.
‘I want to ask you one thing,’ she said, finally breaking the silence.
‘Anything you want,’ Agla said, relieved that something had been said.
‘Please don’t ask me anything. Don’t ask me what happened or why I’ve turned up in Iceland dressed like this, and all that. Just please don’t ask me about it.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ Agla agreed. ‘I won’t ask any questions.’
She sent Sonja a smile and then kept her eyes on the road ahead, her imagination taking over. The reasons for Sonja not being willing to explain what had happened to her meant that it had to be because of another woman. She must have been in a relationship with a woman who had thrown Sonja out, leaving her in shorts and a T-shirt, standing in the frost outside Keflavík airport. It had to be something along those lines. Agla felt the bile rise in her throat at the thought of Sonja with someone else and bit her tongue to keep back the avalanche of questions and accusations she wanted to unleash. Sonja had specified that she shouldn’t ask, and if that was what was needed for her to be allowed out of the doghouse, then it was as well to do as she was told.
She could feel Sonja shivering next to her, so she reached for the heater control and turned it up even higher. ‘You’re still cold?’ she said, placing a hand on Sonja’s bare leg, as if she was checking to find out how cold it was.
To her surprise, Sonja placed her own hand on top of Agla’s, keeping it on her leg. The palm that rested on the back of her hand was as cold as ice, but Agla could feel the heat start to rise from Sonja’s leg, and the electricity, the sparks that never failed to fly when they touched, began to fizz and send little bolts of lightning into her heart.
She slowed down to eighty and the cruise control kept the speed there. She was going to drive as slowly as she could into town so this would last as long as possible.
12
‘Tell me about it!’ Sonja’s neighbour said as she inspected her from top to toe. ‘These airlines are always losing people’s luggage.’ She rummaged in a drawer and finally pulled out a bunch of keys. ‘And did you have to travel into town dressed like that, you poor thing – in this cold snap?’
‘I got a lift,’ Sonja replied. ‘In a warm car.’
‘Thank God for that,’ the neighbour said, holding out the keys almost relu
ctantly, as if she wanted to prolong the moment. Agla had done the same in the car outside – tried to hold onto her, hoping for explanations. Sonja reached out, plucked the keys from her neighbour’s hand, smiled and turned on her heel. She could feel the woman’s gaze on the back of her neck and could almost hear the questions that were already forming inside her head. Lost luggage probably wasn’t quite a watertight enough explanation for her sudden and half-dressed reappearance.
Her concerns over the neighbour’s opinion of her quickly evaporated as she opened the door to the apartment and the smell hit her in the face. They had left in such a hurry two months ago that she had not cleaned up first – she hadn’t even taken out the garbage. She held her breath, walked straight through the apartment and opened the doors to the balcony to let fresh air into the place. She took deep breaths of the outside air, then hurried to the kitchen, took the garbage bag from the cupboard under the sink, and tied it smartly closed without wondering what was in there that had collected such a heavy layer of mould. When people went on holiday – a real holiday – they thought of things like that … what they were going to come back to. But she hadn’t really considered returning. That had been her plan C, or even plan D. In fact, plan D was never a plan, just ignominious defeat; crash-landing into the old reality, with no cash saved up and mouldy garbage waiting for her.
She found a packet of joss sticks in the kitchen drawer, lit one and took it with her to the bathroom. She turned on the hot tap and water roared into the bathtub. The incense hid some of the sulphur smell of the hot water but couldn’t quite compete. This smell, originating deep down in the island’s geothermal underbelly, was something that she would get used to in a couple of days. It was strange that after only a short time away she could smell it again, and then stopped noticing it just as quickly when she got home.
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