Just before another crushing wave of humiliation washed over her, Magnús led the way through the shop and into his café.
His silence felt like a promise. He wasn’t going to pry either. Just like Jowan, he understood she was holding on to her sorry story out of self-preservation. If she told it out loud – the awful truth about Ben and Eve, and all the rest of it – she’d be surrendering the last little fragment of pride she had left, and in front of strangers too.
If she explained herself she’d lose her mystery, the only thing she had to her advantage, the one thing that stopped the sympathetic looks or well-meaning but painful comments and the insensitive questions, and she’d had enough of those growing up without her mum. She wouldn’t stand for any more.
‘So, what’s on the menu?’ She knew her voice was shaky with emotion. Forcing her hands into her pockets helped.Get it together, she scolded herself.
‘Jólakakaand… something like a cappuccino. There’s no machine,’ he told her, busily washing his hands in the little sink behind the café counter where, inside a glass dome, sat a golden loaf cake studded with fruit. ‘Or you can have tea?’
She pointed to the cafetière now in his hands and found she was glad to see he was filling it up for the two of them.
‘The Icelandic Christmas cake is a family recipe,’ he added, as Alex pulled up a high seat at the counter.
‘Whose recipe?’
‘My mother’s, and Amma’s before her. I mean, my grandmother’s.’
Alex accepted a big slice of cake and watched as Magnús heated some milk then frothed it with a noisy little electric device that looked a bit like a screwdriver. He stayed on the other side of the counter until she asked him to join her. ‘You can’t stay on your feet all day, sit.’
He poured out their drinks then did as he was told.
‘So how do we do this?’ he asked eventually.
‘Do what?’ Her eyes widened in panic.
‘Have a conversation without you telling me anything about what happened to you this morning or who you are?’
So he did get it. Alex’s heart swelled with the relief, but there was embarrassment too. Clove Lore people were picking up on how prickly and sensitive she was. That wasn’t an altogether nice feeling.
‘We could talk about the storm,’ she put in quickly. ‘Jowan said this morning’s gales are only a storm front and we’ll have a better day tomorrow, and then the second storm they’re forecasting might miss us altogether, move back out to sea or something.’
‘Or we might get absolutely battered by the second storm for Christmas? I heard that too, on the radio.’
Alex fell silent again as she tried to picture where she might find herself on Christmas Day. It was a blank. She knew where she didn’t want to be, that was for sure: alone in her little house in Port Kernou.
She broke a corner off the cake and tasted it. The sweetness brought her round and she realised Magnús was drinking his coffee, not even trying to fill the silence in the café.
‘Mmm!You’re a good baker,’ she said.
‘Only good? In Reykjavík myJólakakais famous.’
‘Oh wow, really?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘This was my third attempt. I burned the others.’
‘You were joking?’
‘I was.’
‘You don’t smile when you tell jokes?’
‘Iamsmiling,’ he told her, his mouth forced into a straight line, but his eyes shining wickedly.
‘Yeah, hate to tell you this, but you’re really not.’
‘Well, I’m incandescent on the inside.’
They both smiled now and everything felt a little easier.
