Page 25 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop
There was a moment’s silence, presumably while he let that sink in.
‘You’re serious?’ he asked eventually.
‘Deadly serious. We’re looking for someone who has good customer service experience, which you have in spades, but what all our staff have in common is a passion for books. None of the other candidates came close to you in that regard so we’d love it if you could join us.’
‘Really? Yes, please! You’ve just made my day! I promise you won’t regret this.’
‘Welcome to the team. Are you still all right to start at half ten on Monday?’ I’d need to spend some one-to-one time with him first thing so I wanted to wait until Cassie had arrived for the start of her shift.
‘Yes. I’ll be there.’
‘Great. I’ll send you the contract by email as soon as I can – definitely by this evening – and just drop me an email or ring me if you have any questions.’
‘I’ll see you on Monday, then. Thanks for giving me a second chance. Bye.’
He disconnected the call before I could say anything else.Thanks for giving me a second chance.I hoped I wouldn’t regret it but something in my gut told me I wouldn’t. And something in my heart stirred too.
14
LARS
On Sunday afternoon, I loaded my vacuum cleaner into the boot of my car along with a caddy of cleaning items. Stepping back inside 17 Fountain Street for the last ever time, I took a deep breath. The sale wasn’t scheduled for completion until Thursday but, as I was starting at Bay Books on Monday, it made sense to officially move into The Lodge before then. Mick had moved the contents of my bedroom and office over to Hutton Wicklow on Friday, I’d spent yesterday unpacking the essentials, and today’s task had been a last clean of Nanna’s house.
I thought it would be emotional checking the rooms for a final time but I felt strangely detached. With all her belongings gone, it didn’t feel like Nanna’s house anymore. Taking the stairs to the top floor two at a time, I checked my bedroom and office, closed the windows in both and felt that same sense of detachment, that it wasn’t my home anymore either.
So many major changes had happened in recent months, I could barely catch my breath. Work-wise, I now had a short-term plan which I was excited about but I still had no idea what the long-term one was and, unusually for me – the person who liked organisation and structure – that felt okay.
‘Þetta reddast,’ I said, smiling to myself. Loosely translated asit’ll work out all rightorit’ll fix itself, it was more than just an Icelandic phrase. It was a philosophy or a mindset deeply embedded in a culture at the mercy of Mother Nature where volcanic eruptions changed the landscape and destroyed homes, and where dark days made way for round-the-clock light. Pabbi used to say it all the time but, as Pia’s health worsened, I heard him say it less and less. Personally, I loved the phrase and adopted that mindset where I could but there were some things that couldn’t be fixed and would never be okay. Perhapsþetta reddastin those situations was more about a recognition that our feelings would be all right in the end even if the situation itself never could be; that gradual acceptance after something tragic.
I’d arranged to visit Nanna so, after placing the keys in an envelope with a note and dropping them through the letterbox at the estate agent’s, I drove to Bay View.
‘Thanks for doing that final clean,’ Nanna said. ‘I know some wouldn’t bother but I can’t bear the thought of passing on a messy house.’
‘I can assure you it’s dust free and sparkling.’
Over drinks, we chatted about my progress with unpacking and what Nanna had been up to over the past couple of days.
‘Freyja rang yesterday,’ she said. ‘We had a lovely chat. She mentioned she hadn’t spoken to you for a while.’
‘I missed a call from her earlier in the week and I haven’t had a chance to ring back.’
‘I did tell her you were a bit swamped with the move.’
‘Thanks. I’d hate for her to think I was ignoring her.’
Pabbi had met Freyja four years after returning to Iceland and they married three years after that. I was eighteen at the time and had just finished my A levels so Nanna and I went to Iceland for the wedding and spent a few extra days there. I had no issue with him meeting someone new and had always got along brilliantly with my stepmum. It was just my pabbi with whom I had the difficult relationship.
Pabbi had initially invited me to live with him in Iceland, but Mum wouldn’t hear of it, which was rich considering she disappeared on her travels just a few months later. I visited for a week the following summer but, after eighteen months apart, I felt like a stranger around him. I stayed again the summer after that when I was thirteen and it was worse so, with my teenage hormones raging, I unleashed all my anger and pent-up frustration on him. I told him I hated him for abandoning me, for not loving Mum enough to stay together, for ruining my life.
Contact had been limited since then and I suspect it would have been non-existent if it wasn’t for him meeting Freyja and her acting as mediator. She’d pulled out all the stops to get to know me and, later, to ensure I had a relationship with my half-sister Kára, who was now fourteen, and my half-brother Ari, now twelve.
I was still thinking about Freyja when I arrived back at The Lodge an hour or so later and decided to give her a call.
‘Halló,’ she said, quickly answering the FaceTime call, a big smile on her face. ‘Kára, Ari, sayhallóto your brother…’
All three of them spoke English fluently but liked to practise it on me so our conversations were often conducted in English on their side and Icelandic on mine as it was my only chance to speak the language.
Kára took the phone first and told me about a recent school trip to Reykjavík. She’d only just finished when Ari grabbed the phone from her to tell me he’d been picked for the handball team. He returned the phone to Freyja who asked about my new home and what I’d been doing with myself since the business sale completed.
