The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Pickle, are you all right?’ asks Gjertrud, her kindly weathered face looking up at Cecilie. ‘It’s just Ole asked you three times for the spiced Arctic cloudberry cake, but you seem a little… in the clouds yourself today, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, so much to think about…’ Cecilie replies, as she writes cloudberry onto a pad in a wisp of ink.

  Gjertrud wonders how much can Cecilie possibly have to think about, as she studies the waitress’s face; her eyebrows arch to her temples, framing pale green eyes that usually flash with the iridescent brightness of a dragonfly’s wing – only, today, they are dulled by a film of pondwater. Her blonde hair is pulled into twists of rope, piled at the back of her head, exposing the loveheart shape of her face.

  Gjertrud’s round, purple cheeks flush with the heat of coming indoors when it’s cold outside, and she gazes at Cecilie, and wonders what goes on inside that dreamy brain of hers. She can’t be that busy in her quiet life here in this quiet town. She doesn’t even have children like Gjertrud and Ole’s daughters did by the time they were Cecilie’s age.

  Gjertrud and Ole see Cecilie every afternoon for coffee and cake at the Hjornekafé teashop after their post-lunch walk. They always take the table with four chairs against the far wall, so they can look out of the large expanse of glass onto the small backstreet of the Arctic harbour town. Each window panel has a little etching in the middle, an illustration of the exterior of the quaint corner cafe, the same illustration as the one on the cover of the menus Cecilie hands out. Gjertrud always chooses a seat so she can sit with her back to the wall, to hold court and see everything going on in the Hjornekafé. Ole sits facing his wife, although he can see cafe life back to front in the rectangles of the mirrors on the wall in front of him. Gjertrud and Ole use the vacant wooden chairs next to them to pile their layers of hats, scarves, gloves, jumpers, crampons and duck-down coats onto, while they rest their walking poles in the corner between the wall and the floor-to-ceiling window. Ole always orders a kaffe and the kake of the day, whichever the never-present cafe owner Mette made most recently. Gjertrud always has a pot of tea ‘and nothing else thank you’ – which means she will eat half of Ole’s cake, until he protests so much that she concedes to ordering a slice of her own.

  ‘One kaffe and spiced Arctic cloudberry cake for you, Ole, and your usual pot of tea, Gjertrud?’

  ‘Yes, just a tea thank you, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, have your own cake, woman! You will anyway, after eating half of mine.’ Ole’s grey curls are matted from the woolly hat he recently took off and launched onto the chair next to him. He turns to Cecilie with bemused, irritated eyes as small as currants. ‘One and a half pieces of cake for my wife, every day! If she just ordered her own now, she would have a piece for her and I would have a whole piece for me. Why is this notion so difficult to comprehend heh, Cecilie?’

  Cecilie raises a diplomatic eyebrow and doesn’t say anything.

  ‘I only want a forkful, Ole, why do you have to be such a stingy sausage?’ Gjertrud’s ruddy cheeks rise and she lets out a mischievous chuckle. A bell above the door rings as two young backpackers walk in. Their eyes widen as they see the cakes in the small climate-controlled glass cabinet on the counter and they take off their mittens excitedly.

  Cecilie looks up. Ordinarily she would be pleased to see young tourists walk in; a chance to improve her English, to learn some more modern words and slang. But today she isn’t. She doesn’t see the point. Cecilie no longer feels the desire to learn new ways of saying that something is wicked, ace or sick; or to practise her they’re, there and theirs any more.

  Cecilie nods, as she writes down an order she and fellow staff Henrik and Stine know by heart anyway, although today just Cecilie and Henrik work a sleepy afternoon shift.

  ‘Take a seat, I’ll be right over,’ Cecilie says to the couple at the counter as she tucks her pen behind her ear and it disappears into a cascade of heavy hair. Somehow, Cecilie can tell that these tourists are Canadian, even before she sees the maple leaf sewn onto the North Face daypack on the young man’s back. She wonders what brought them here; where in the world they have been already. Might they have seen his home town too?

  The Hjornekafé manager, Henrik, has already started making the drinks. He exchanges a look with Cecilie, as they usually do when Gjertrud and Ole have their little tussles, only today Cecilie isn’t rolling her eyes and smiling warmly. Today, Cecilie’s face is tense and terse, her eyes dulled, as she makes her way to the cake display cabinet at the end of the counter. The dark and rickety wooden furniture is brightened by the mirrors on the walls in the modest cafe space, and what little is left of the spring daylight streams in through the floor-to-ceiling window façade to the street.

  The Canadians marvel at the wrought-iron latticework trimming the ceiling, and scrape their chairs back to sit down. The noise of wood dragging on wood tears through Cecilie’s brain but is drowned out by another rotation of So, ro, lilleman.

  Cecilie looks at her watch. It is 3.18 p.m. She silently counts backwards as she raises the thumb and four fingers on her left hand and the thumb and index finger on her right hand. Seven. Always counting back seven. She feels a blow to her abdomen and recedes to take it as she bends down to pick up a tray from under the counter. Cecilie’s not sure if she feels hungry, winded or heartsick, but she stands up with the tray, standing to stay strong. She takes out the spiced Arctic cloudberry cake, made by Mette at her home this morning. Bright orange berries burst with pride atop vanilla cream, layered three times on sponge swathed in playful cloudberry-coloured jam. Flecks of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves pepper the pristine pale crumb. Arctic berries shimmer golden and warm surrounded by spices. The orange hues remind Cecilie of photographs she’s seen in books in the library and on the internet, of a place a world away, where buildings are painted ochre and terracotta; where doorways bask in a shade of sunshine she has never seen for herself. Cecilie carves out a square of cake with a knife and places it on a vintage floral plate that doesn’t go with the black and white cups Henrik is preparing the drinks in. Nothing matches in this hotchpotch corner of the world, but that doesn’t matter. Customers slink in reliably for a quiet slice of cake between hiking to the world’s northernmost cathedral, or summiting the mountain ledge in the Fjellheisen cable car by day, and chasing the Northern Lights at night.

  With heavy feet and a heavy heart, Cecilie plods into the cavernous kitchen out the back to the freezer. She takes out a tub of blackcurrant ice cream and thoughtfully curls a cornelle to accompany the cake. The ice cream at the Hjornekafé is made by Mette’s daughter and Cecilie’s best friend, Grethe, who owns the ice cream parlour on the high street. Ice cream sells surprisingly well in these parts, and Grethe churns the best.

  Henrik, a bookish man with round glasses and floppy brown hair parted in the centre, places the pot of tea, cup of coffee and two glasses of icy tap water next to the cake plate on the tray. Cecilie collects two forks and clinks them down next to the plate, knowing she will be coming back for another slice in a few minutes anyway. She walks around to the front of the counter, gives the Canadian tourists two menus with the small illustration of the Hjornekafé on the front from her shaky hands, and picks up the tray from the counter to take it to Gjertrud and Ole at their end of the cafe.

  As she walks the short distance to the back wall, Cecilie’s mouth dries, her hands shake and the tray feels like the weight of an iceberg as it releases from her pale grip. She looks down and sees it fall in slow motion beneath her to the floor, smashing onto the ground in hot and cold shards. The vintage cake plate smashes, sending flowers flying, splatted and smeared with varying shades and textures of orange and purple and cream, all over Cecilie’s boots. Hot tea and coffee scold Cecilie’s legs in her pale blue jeans as she lets out a little gasp of pain and embarrassment. The Thing That’s Happening Today, that Cecilie is dreading, is actually happening and there’s nothing she can do about it. At that precise moment, eig
ht thousand nine hundred and nine kilometres away, eyes widen and pupils shrink.

  Hector Herrera has woken with a start, to a crash, on the morning of his wedding day.

  Two

  March 2018, Xalapa, Mexico

  ‘What the fuck… What are you doing, Gallegita?’ Hector murmurs as he sits up slowly from under the bedsheet. His wide trapezius rises from solid shoulders as he rubs cinnamon-flecked eyes with his palms, moving sleep out and up into dark brown soft curls that kiss his temples and rest gently above his forehead. When Hector is animated, his eyes are wide, flirtatious and impassioned, but in his resting state they are as thoughtful and earnest as a pleading revolutionary’s. Right now they are in transition, as his fuzzy brain tries to figure out where in the world he is. In the doorway of their bedroom, Hector’s tiny bride-to-be drapes herself against the frame, bottle in one hand, champagne flute in the other, and curses the broken glass fizzing at her bleeding feet.

  ‘Joder!’

  ‘What was that?’ Hector says, no longer alarmed but puzzled by the smash as he reclines against the bare wall behind him. The rough spikes of the whitewashed plaster press into his shoulders, taking the focus off the thumping in his head.

  ‘Not “was”. What “is” that, baby,’ Pilar purrs mysteriously as she flicks broken glass off the arches of her feet. ‘No use crying over spilt cava – we can share this one,’ she says, shaking the remaining flute in her hand. Pilar steps over the debris on the terracotta tiles and wipes her sticky toes on the foot of the sheet, smearing Freixenet and blood onto their marital bed. Careful not to spill any more drops, Pilar edges up the mattress and curls her legs around herself primly as she sits facing Hector.

  ‘I didn’t think we owned champagne glasses,’ Hector says, taking the flute from Pilar’s proffered hand.

  ‘Something borrowed,’ she winks. Pilar’s hooded Moorish eyes, a constant reminder for Hector of her Old World blood, aren’t usually this playful, but this morning she is giddy. She takes a cigarette from the red and white Delicados packet on the bedside table and lights it with her free hand.

  ‘Baby, you’re a schoolteacher, you’d lose your job!’

  ‘Something borrowed!’ she repeats, irritably, then laughs as she blows the first cloud of smoke into Hector’s face. His eyes narrow in discomfort. He feels too rough to have a drag, and so shields himself by raising the glass to his lips and taking a sip of tepid cava. ‘I’ll take them back!’ Pilar snaps, when she sees Hector isn’t laughing. ‘Well, I’ll take this one back anyway.’ Her defensiveness softens with a husky laugh as she pulls the glass away from Hector and tops it up from the bottle resting on the bed between her thighs.

  Hector lifts the cigarette balancing dangerously between her thin lips and concedes to take a puff before resting it on the overflowing ashtray on the bedside table. He slips his hand inside her white-satin dressing gown and strokes her shoulder, his eyes less flirtatious than usual.

  ‘You didn’t steal them from Lazaro’s, did you?’

  Pilar tuts and changes the subject. ‘Wanna surprise?’ she asks with a mischievous smile.

  The robe drowns Pilar’s slight frame and her black backcombed hair looks three-days tousled, even though she just spent half an hour doing it while she watched her lover sleep. Pilar loves watching Hector sleep. When he sleeps, his long lashes sweep down over earthy brown cheeks, kissed with a pink hue from the heat he works up while he’s dreaming. His small straight nose that looks like it was carved from clay is perfect and still, and his usually loud mouth is poetically plump and sealed in silence while he breathes rhythmically. Everything is peaceful and harmonious when Hector Herrera is in one of two states: sleeping or sketching in his notepad. There are no exuberant gestures or loud laughter, just serenity. His silence calms Pilar’s rage, and with a haughty nose she gazes down at him and wonders how she ended up with a man as beautiful as Hector.

  ‘More surprises? I’m still traumatised by that crash.’

  ‘That was an accident, baby. I planned this one,’ she says with a naughty wink as she sips more cava from the glass.

  Hector pulls Pilar in closer, waking his dry mouth to place a kiss on hers. His Cupid’s bow lips are small but full and Pilar imagines the same mouth when she pictures their son in a far-ahead future. Hector tastes the cava on Pilar’s tongue and it takes away the stale remnants of vodka and excess on his. She slips her robe off her shoulder.

  ‘Look!’

  Hector gazes at Pilar’s chest. Past the dents above her left breast he sees a blue heart with his name etched across a ribbon in a swirly script. It is too big for such a small space. Hector’s eyes widen and he is lost for words among the famine of her sternum.

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘A blue heart? For our wedding?’

  ‘Yes. You make me sad,’ Pilar says matter-of-factly. ‘I thought it could be my “something blue”. I thought you’d like it. You don’t think it’s cool?’

  Now Hector understands why Pilar had been so unusually coquettish for the past few days. He thought she might be saving herself for their wedding night, or might feel uncomfortable that her parents and sisters were in town when she wanted to give off the aura of a virginal bride, despite the fact she was straddling him in a bar in front of thirty friends last night after her three prudish sisters had returned to their hotel to get some sleep before the big day.

  ‘You didn’t want me to see it,’ Hector says, piecing together the jigsaw puzzle around her heart, distracting her from his dislike.

  ‘I was saving myself for you too,’ she says, taking another drag of the cigarette from the ceramic ashtray. ‘Imagine how great I will taste tonight, mi amor.’

  The bell on the cathedral clock chimes twice, meaning it is half past the hour. Hector must get up.

  Pilar hands the glass back to Hector to finish the warm dregs as she swigs the remnants from the black bottle and puts it on the bedside table. She winces from the hit of bubbles and alcohol and gives Hector a quick double clap to move him along. ‘Right, let’s get moving,’ she commands, as Hector stretches his body into his yawn. ‘I’m so excited, baby,’ she adds with wide eyes.

  Hector, usually the giddy one, always the life and soul, the person people gravitate towards, is finding it hard to galvanise himself this particular morning. He doesn’t feel excited right now. He just feels sad.

  Acknowledgements

  Firstly, I’d like to thank my readers – not only for reading this book – but also to everyone who’s been on any of my book journeys with me. I appreciate every review, every kind message and every little line on Instagram to say my novels have resonated with you. It’s an honour that I get to follow my dream of writing, and that my stories touch lives beyond my kitchen table. I wouldn’t have achieved that without the dream team who get my books out into the world:

  Thank you to super-agent and everyone’s best best woman, Rebecca Ritchie. I still marvel at how often we are on the same page, which is handy in this industry! I am so grateful to you for your faith and your brilliance. Huge thanks too to my editor Hannah Smith, who is so spot-on and sharp – her passion for great stories only matched by her enthusiasm for musical theatre – thank you for always being right. Vicky Joss (a great Catherine Parr to Hannah’s Anne Boleyn – I so want to join in their Six The Musical singalongs…) is a whizz with a marketing strategy, a blog tour and a gif. And thank you Nikky Ward, Becky Clarke, Christian Duck, Rachel Hart, Daniel Groenewald, Laura Palmer and Nicolas Cheetham – Aria/Head of Zeus heavyweights to whom I am so grateful.

  Thank you Olivia and Tory at Midas for your magical touch last year; to Leah Jacobs-Gordon for your beautiful cover design; to copy editors and proof readers Annabel Walker and Dushi Horti. And also to my personal first-reader friends: Guro Eide, as ever you are a goddess, and Kathleen Whyman – I’m so excited for your publishing journey too. Ian Critchley: thank you for the ongoing chats over coffee and hot chocolate. And the U2 song puns. You are the Swe
etest Thing (etc).

  Big shout out to James Beck, aka Lovely James, aka Jim Beck in the book you have just read: poor James won a prize in an auction raising money for Bliss, the charity for premature and sick babies, to have his name in my next book… just after I had written two novels where the main character (Train Man) was called James. Sorry! Thanks for bearing with me and waiting for The Night We Met. And special thanks to Bliss fundraiser and fixer Anna Black who got in touch with me about the auction. Anna is so awesome, we soon quickstepped from author/reader emails to marathon running buddies, personal trainer and now friends. You are a pocket powerhouse in Sweaty Betty.

  Harriet Jones – you're a hero. Thank you for the fashion retail vernacular and the use of Rockahula Towers when I needed urgent weekend writing space. You saved my bacon!

  Thank you, Kate Williams. Who knew in April 2018, on a long walk through Milan with our menfolk, that the city would inspire a novel?! Thank you for that and the subsequent research chats about International School life. To Michelle Margherita, tesora mia, thank you for inspiration in the Alps; thank you Paige Toon for your wisdom (on publishing and puppy training) and to Tony Carelli for help with Italian swearwords: you are a filthy man.

  This is a sadder story than I’ve written before: inspired by the loss of family and friends who died before their time. Doc and his kind, tolerant and beautiful mind. Melanie Barlow – a wonderful mother to her gorgeous children William and Francesca, and wife to Chris. And Neil Mercer, a strong and smouldering soul, whose spark went out too soon. The fragility of life is something I never take for granted, which is why I’m grateful for every healthy day with my family:

  My parents, Judi Billing; Don and Gerlinde Smith; Gill and Derrick Folbigg. My army of siblings who made lockdown quizzes so… competitive! You’re the best. And my world: my husband, IT support guy and best friend, Mark, and our boys Felix and Max. I am grateful for every day the sun rises with you; every time you come dive bombing into our bed at 7am; every laugh and cuddle. To be in a bubble with you is a bliss I cherish every day.