He nodded, already imagining Lotta on the island. At the moment, he was trying not to think about Lotta at the house meeting Ida. He’d never taken anyone home before. Mostly because he couldn’t imagine them being part of that life, and they wouldn’t have wanted to be. Until now, it had always been best for everybody to keep things separate. Ida would have a field day.
After dinner, Mats had one more thing he wanted to show Lotta. He’d heard about it from Ingrid, who always knew about the latest cool trends, and it was what he’d built their evening around.
‘We can catch a tram just down there so we don’t have to walk back, but shall we walk our food off around here before we do that?’ He wanted it to be a surprise and felt stupid suggesting they might need to walk their food off as if they’d eaten a ten-course dinner, but what other reason was there to go into the woods at this time of night?
Luckily, Lotta was happy to go along with it.
‘I’m not ready for the end yet,’ she said, looking up at him, her blue eyes shining and sincere.
They held hands, and he led the way along the path he thought was right, seeing a slight glow through the trees up ahead, which told him it was. Lotta hadn’t noticed, and she was busy telling him about how much she’d enjoyed the Folk Museum.
Once they were closer, it was hard not to notice that something was glowing in the trees. It looked otherworldly the way the trees were glowing purple, which then changed slowly to orange.
‘What is that?’
‘Something cool,’ he said. ‘Magical.’ It really did look magical. They got closer and found a small clearing in the trees where strings of lights were hanging vertically from an invisible net overhead. You could walk between the lights and they changed colour not in tandem with each other but in phases, with one section changing before the rest, creating a gradual wave across the clearing. Sometimes they were all sorts of colours with no pattern, sometimes there was an order to them, and the whole time a gentle sound was playing, like wind chimes.
‘This is amazing!’ said Lotta, walking between the lights.
Mats had to agree. He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Lotta, watching the lights, wondering whether life could get any better than this.
She came over to him and took his hand, positioning him so that she could stand on an upturned log, giving her the perfect boost to her height so that she could loop her arms around his neck.
‘Thank you for tonight. Every single part of it has been amazing,’ she said.
‘You’re amazing,’ he said so softly that he wasn’t sure if she would hear.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she kissed him before pulling him into a hug and resting her chin on his shoulder.
‘Can we do it again tomorrow night?’
11
Lotta had been so looking forward to meeting the makers she’d identified, and when she’d contacted them, they’d all sounded keen to meet and hear about the project. The reality had been very different. The textile artist had ruled out a collaboration straight away, saying that her creative process couldn’t be forced to use inspiration that was presented to her, dismissing the idea of a visit to the Folk Museum to see if anything sparked. The woodworker didn’t exactly say he wasn’t interested in making anything different from what he did already, but that was how it felt to Lotta. And the glassblower was happy to work with her but didn’t understand how the collaboration with the Folk Museum would work, however many ways Lotta tried to explain it. The woman suggested that she’d make some one-off pieces for Lotta, who could then decide what the inspiration was for them.
All day she’d been excited about seeing Mats again, but now she felt she had no time to spare. She needed to do some more research and try to get more meetings in this week. Tomorrow, if she could. It felt like the whole thing was falling apart. So when the reception desk called up to say Mats was there waiting, and she wasn’t ready, it felt like the perfect storm of a day.
‘Can you ask him to come up, please?’
She looked at her phone. They were supposed to meet twenty minutes ago, and there were a couple of missed calls from him.She hadn’t even noticed her phone ringing in her state of panic. And now he was on his way up here, and she wasn’t ready at all.
There was a knock at the door while she was reapplying her mascara, and she answered with the wand in her hand.
‘Come in, I’m so sorry I’m not ready,’ she said, disappearing into the bathroom.
‘Is everything all right?’ Mats asked, probably seeing the mess of notes and her laptop open on the bed.
‘It’s not been the best day,’ said Lotta, coming out of the bathroom and twisting her hair into a messy bun, most of which fell straight out again.
Mats looked at her with concern in his eyes, and before she could stop it, a tear ran down her cheek.
‘Kjære,’he said, pulling her to him and cradling her head to his chest.
Lotta felt the floodgates open and cried against his chest for a minute or so, hating herself for it, but powerless to stop it. She never usually got overwhelmed by work like this.
‘I’m sorry.’ She pulled back from him and went into the bathroom to grab some tissues. When she went back in, he’d taken his coat off and was sitting on the bottom of the bed, holding a hand out to her.
‘Tell me what happened.’
