Page 114 of All I Want for Christmas

‘...Coffee?’

She nodded. ‘Sure. It’ll warm me up.’

‘So you are cold,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘Go and stand by the range.’

She did as she was told, watching as he poured water into a Bialetti moka pot.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘...Yes,’ she fibbed.

He looked back over at her. ‘You’re an appalling liar.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’

He made no comment. In his world, it probably was.

She watched as he made the coffee just the way she liked it. He knew that about her now. She didn’t know it about him, though. Everything was one-sided. His terms. His coffee. His homes.

‘Thanks for letting me pop by today. I appreciate it.’

He shrugged.

‘I had no idea Solvtraeer was yours.’

‘And I suppose if you had, you wouldn’t have come?’

She swallowed at the sarcasm. ‘What I mean is – I didn’t know if this house was even still here.’

‘Where would it have gone?’

‘I don’t know. It might have been bulldozed,’ she shrugged. ‘Torn down for some mega glass cube in the noughties.’

He seemed bemused by the thought. ‘We’re not really that sort of family.’

‘No.’ She watched him, understanding that meant the house had always been in their possession. ‘I also had no idea you were a Madsen.’

‘It’s not something I tend to lead with,’ he muttered. ‘Besides, I’m not. I’m a Lorensen. My great-grandmother, Lilja, was the Madsen.’ He glanced over at her, as if checking his words had registered.

‘Lilja was your great-grandmother?’ she echoed. Sheremembered his shocked reaction when Lilja had first been identified. He had looked stunned, in fact. But even when she had learned he was a Madsen, she had presumed he was a distant relative. Madsen Minor.

‘And her daughter, Emme, my grandmother – she was a Madsen too, until she married a Lorensen and had a son, my father. And here we are.’

She was quiet for a moment, absorbing this news. ‘I feel like I should have been told this sooner.’

‘Why? How is it relevant?’

She looked around the room again. ‘I don’t know. I just feel like it is, somehow. Like maybe that’s why you’ve been so...’ But her words trailed away as he set the pot on the gas and turned back to her.

‘So – what? Interested in what you’re doing? It’s my job.’

‘Actually, I was going to say aggressive.’

He looked surprised. ‘You think I’m aggressive?’

‘Professionally, yes. Not...’ She stopped herself, not wanting to stray into what she thought of him personally. ‘But maybe that’s the wrong word.’

‘What’s the right one, then?’ he challenged.

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