“Well, at least I’ll be going back to London, that’s a good start.” Rachel joked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Yes, it is,” Jonas smiled. “Let’s drink to that. Skál!” He tapped his bottle against hers. “I am empty. Do you want another?”
“This one’s on me,” she said, getting up. “Do you want the same again?”
The second beer was their last, then Jonas walked her back to the hotel along the seafront, past the Harpa which was lit up again in its shimmering greens and purples. She enjoyed his company, he was funny and charming in a very down to earth way. Not trying to impress her, just being friendly. Spending the evening with him and hearing him talk so frankly about his relationship had made Rachel wonder what being apart from Adam would do to theirs in the end. Would absence make their hearts grow fonder as she had hoped or had she put herself in the position of being out of sight, out of mind? She couldn’t help but think maybe she was like Hilde and had been open to the idea of being apart for a while, hoping to strengthen things while she left someone behind who wasn’t into the idea at all.
12
WITH THE SHOP fit on hold, Rachel decided that she could afford to have a lazy Sunday. She woke up about 9 am and ordered breakfast in bed with two pots of tea so that she could have cup-after-cup. She propped her MacBook on the bed next to her and started to watch back-to-back episodes of Friends. Bliss.
Her phone rang. It was her mother. Taking a deep breath, she answered, with half an eye still on her New York buddies.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Hello, Rachel! How are you, love? What time is it in Iceland?”
“Um, I don’t know, I think it’s the same time as it is there?”
“Well, it’s quarter past ten here. Anyway, I was talking to Cynthia at WI and she said that there is a wonderful wool shop in Reykjavik.” Here we go…
“Yep, I popped in there, I know where that is. Do you want me to get you something?”
“What were you doing in there? You haven’t started knitting have you?” she said incredulously.
“It was just an accident, I - ” but her mother was in full flow and she cut Rachel off before she had the chance to explain her apparently strange behaviour.
“I don’t want you to go to any trouble but Cynthia and I were looking at an Icelandic sweater pattern on the web and I’ve got a list of what we both want. The Icelandic wool is very good value, Rachel.”
“Oh, okay, yes that’s fine. Can you email your list to me?”
“I’ll get Dad to do it for me. Now, when you go into the shop, can you have a look at the pinks because there is a rose pink and a dusky pink and it’s very hard to tell exactly what they look like on the web. I want the one which goes the best with the cloud blue, so I’ll leave it to you to decide, love.” Brilliant, as if she would have any clue.
“Alright Mum, I’ll go and see if it’s open later if you get Dad to send the list. Do you want me to post it or can you wait for me to bring it home?”
“It’ll cost a fortune to post! We’re not in any rush, Rachel, just pack it in your case.” Hmm, two jumpers’ worth of wool would probably fill her case but she could always give it to Adam to take back. She suggested that to her mum.
“Oh, Adam’s coming to visit, is he?” She couldn’t have sounded more disbelieving. “Can he manage to get the time off?”
“Yes, Mum. He’s coming next weekend. I’ll get him to post it when he gets back.”
“Don’t put him to any trouble, Rachel, I know how busy he is,” she said, in the uptight, disapproving voice that she saved especially for Adam.
“He won’t mind, Mum.”
He would mind but Rachel would just force him to do it. It would win him some brownie points with her mum at least.
It turned out that there were only so many episodes of Friends that she could manage to watch in one go and by midday, when her phone pinged with the email from her dad, she’d had enough of festering in bed so she ventured out on a wool run.
She didn’t know whether any of the shops would be open on a Sunday but almost everything was, including the little wool shop on Skólavörðustígur.
Her mum’s email was a list of numbers, names and quantities and when she picked up a random ball of wool to see if she could make out the system, she didn’t know where to start. She must have looked like she was out of her depth, studying her phone and the ball of wool in a state of confusion because the lady from the other day when she had called in about the hats asked her if she needed any help. Rachel explained about the list from her mum and she didn’t seem to think it was odd at all, just took the phone and started pulling out balls of wool and making a pile of them on the counter. Even a rookie wool chooser like Rachel could see that the pink on the list was too bright so she swapped it for a different, softer pink.
Slightly doubting her maths, Rachel tried to work out how much it was going to cost and thought it worked out at about £1.50 a ball. Having once bought yarn from John Lewis, with plenty of input from the sales assistant, for her mum to knit her a jumper, she knew that that was pretty cheap. No wonder her mum and Cynthia were so keen.
She wandered over to the window display and counted the colours in the hat. There were six which meant it would cost less than ten pounds to knit. How much it would cost in stress and frustration was another matter but she was tempted to have a go; at least it would give her something to do in the evenings.
“Is that hat really easy to knit?” she asked, doubtfully.
