She sighed. ‘It was the beginning of the end for me and my dad, but I guess it’s the reason my brother and I are so close. We’ve been through a lot.’
‘Which is why you found coming home so hard,’ Harrison said. ‘And there I was telling you to go and see your dad, as if you’d just had some petty argument.’
Charlotte turned in his arms, folding herself against him, her cheek to his chest.
‘I’m so pleased you did, because you were right. If something had happened to him and I hadn’t seen him, I would never have forgiven myself. It’s the same reason I went to my mother’s funeral.’
‘You never saw her again? After she left?’
‘I never saw her again,’ Charlotte said. ‘We found out that she’d fallen in love with a man, we don’t even know where they met, and she just disappeared from our lives. It was as if losing her baby was too much to bear, and maybe it was just easier to walk away from all of us than face loss, day after day. And even now, when I try to tell myself that she must have had mental health problems that were never treated, it doesn’t help the little girl who lost her mum. In a way, it would have been easier if she’d died, because at least then I’d have been able to grieve her. We would all have been able to, instead of feeling as if she’d never loved us in the first place.’
Harrison kissed the top of her head and held her in his arms, and she almost felt as if she’d been saving her story to share with him. Because here was a man who understood true loss, who knew what it was like to lose someone he truly loved.
‘When I lost Elly, my entire life was turned upside down. I didn’t know who I was without her—it had been Harrison and Elly for so long that it had become my whole identity,’ Harrison said, his voice low. ‘Time does help, but it doesn’t heal. Not really. Sometimes I still get so angry that she was taken from me, that she didn’t get longer to just walk this earth and see the world.’
Charlotte leaned back in his arms and looked up at him. ‘If you change your mind about this, about us being?—’
‘No,’ he said, his voice husky as his hands splayed at her waist, holding her in place. ‘You’re one of the only things I’ve been sure about in two years. I don’t regret anything that’s happened between us.’
She glanced up at his mouth, feeling that pull towards him, that energy that seemed to ignite between them. ‘Good,’ she said, standing on tiptoe and grazing her lips against his.
This time when they kissed, it was softer, less urgent than before, and Charlotte looped her arms around his neck.
‘No secrets,’ he whispered, as he broke off their kiss and gently pulled her down to the ground beside him. ‘You can tell me anything.’
‘No secrets,’ she whispered back, dropping her head to his shoulder.
But as she sat, staring out at the fjord, content in Harrison’s company, her mind was suddenly drawn to the secrets Amalie had been keeping, and she reminded herself that she needed to call her grandmother to find out if Amalie had told her any more of her story. Especially as she sat on the banks of the fjord, the water lapping nearby—perhaps in the exact same spot that Amalie had once sat with her beloved Oskar.
21
To say that the trip to Sognefjord had been special was an understatement, and as Charlotte walked through the hotel, she found herself wondering if she was tracing the same steps that Amalie had so many decades before. The last time Charlotte had gone to see her with her grandmother, Amalie had almost seemed hopeful, and Charlotte couldn’t imagine what came next in her story and how it all fell apart. Because she’d racked her brain—there had to be heartbreak coming in Amalie’s story, and she wasn’t sure whether she was ready to hear it. Or if Amalie would even be ready to tell it.
‘Hey,’ Harrison said when she rounded the corner and almost bumped into him. ‘I was just coming to find you.’
‘Lucky me,’ she said, smiling when he bent to kiss her. And it wasn’t a cheek-kiss either; it was a warm brush against the lips kind of kiss that she felt all the way to her toes.
‘I’ve managed to rent us kayaks, and they’re even packing us a picnic lunch,’ he said, his hand sliding against hers as he led her down the hall.
‘What about the others?’ she asked. ‘They don’t want to join us?’
Harrison frowned. ‘On our romantic kayak? They can organise their own excursion!’
She laughed, liking the easy manner they’d developed with each other. Somehow, it felt as if she’d known Harrison for so much longer than she had. Even if it was only a summer romance, even if he left and returned to London and she never saw him again, she knew in her heart that she’d never forget him.
‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘You look sad.’
‘Oh, sorry, it’s nothing. I was just thinking.’
‘Thinking about…?’
She grimaced. ‘Honestly, I was just thinking about how much I’ll miss you when you leave. It’s weird how quickly we’ve fallen into something special.’ Charlotte groaned. ‘That came out all wrong. It’s just, I feel like we’ve known each other for so much longer than we have.’
He pulled her closer and they walked through to have breakfast, seeing Louisa and Luke waving to them and heading over to join them.
‘Morning,’ they both said.
‘Morning,’ Charlotte replied. ‘Isn’t it just so beautiful here?’ The large window in the restaurant was like a frame around a postcard-perfect image, and even though she’d seen the fjord before, her memory hadn’t done it justice.
