He grinned. ‘Knut is newly single.’
‘I’m not going to date someone who shows everyone his arse on a daily basis,’ she said. ‘And he’s not even a builder. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s the middle of winter, that man never tucks his shirt into his trousers. No one needs to see that.’
Mats laughed. He’d guessed Ida would react like that. The same way she reacted to every suggestion, whoever made it and whoever it was about. Obviously not always using the builder’s bum excuse.
‘Well, if I can find someone, there’s definitely someone for you.’
‘Oh please. You’re a catch. Rich, good-looking apparently, and crying out to be tied down by a good woman. What have I got to offer? I’m living in my parents’ house alone most of the time and I never meet anyone because all my work is virtual.’
It crossed Mats’ mind to point out that she didn’t need to be living in this house. If Ida was ready to let go, it would be the catalyst they all needed to start thinking about selling the place.
‘Where would you live in an ideal world?’
Ida had drunk enough wine to soften her prickles and she leant her elbow on the table and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe Tromsø, somewhere further north. Somewhere…’
‘Colder? More remote?’
She laughed. ‘I was going to say somewhere where nobody knows me. Somewhere where I could reinvent myself.’
‘Copycat.’
‘This is a reinvention for you?’ Her eyes glistened as she poked fun at him. He loved this side of Ida but no one got to see it very often.
‘Yes. Building on the island, well, helping to, brings a whole new meaning to it all. It feels like I’m really doing it with my bare hands.’
‘I know we were all dead against you keeping the island but I can see how happy you are. Although, is that because of the island or because of Lotta?’
‘It’s Lotta for sure.’
Lotta had insisted he shouldn’t come back to Oslo to meet her, but then she messaged him asking if he’d like to be her plus one for a party to launch the Oslo campaign. It was on Thursday night before her colleague Clemmie headed back to London on Friday and Lotta would head to Bergen.
He said yes, excited about getting a glimpse into her world. It had been hard staying away, knowing she was staying at his apartment, but he respected her request, which he knew was based on the fact she’d be with Clemmie almost all the time. He was starting to realise that she needed space when she was busy with work and he didn’t want to interrupt her flow. But being invited to the party told him Lotta was still thinking about him and that made him feel better.
He made plans to fly to Oslo on Thursday and spent the days before concentrating on getting as much of the cabin extension done as he could. It wasn’t finished, not by a long way, but the walls of the new part were finished and the floor was down. The only thing missing was windows and the new roof that would be fitted, and he needed to cut a hole in the existing wall of the cabin to join it all together.
The cabin extension had made him think hard about how to make the next phase of the project work. It was all very well to plan on renovating all the cabins in the woods — there were around twenty — but none of them could have indoor plumbing in the way the main house did. The most straightforward option to avoid having to empty the septic tank too often would be for each of the cabins to have a Cinderella toilet. The Larsen familyowned a holiday cabin in Voss, a town famous for winter sports, and that had one. They were commonly used in off-grid cabins and incinerated the waste effectively. Showers would have to be provided in a shower block, which wasn’t perhaps the luxury feel he was going for, but he could get Becca on the case to make the best of it. The island already had electricity thanks to his grandfather investing in an undersea connection from the mainland in the seventies, so they could generate hot water for a shower block and eventually have electricity running to all the cabins. Only the wastewater was an issue.
The toilet for their cabin, which he was now using as a guinea pig for the rest of them, had arrived the day before. Since there was no electricity running to their cabin yet, he’d opted for the version that ran on LPG — liquid gas — thinking he could upgrade it later on. The next time Lotta came to the island, he wanted her to see that he had indeed made her an ensuite.
He took the boat back to Ida’s and locked the boathouse, then went into the house and showered before packing his bag and heading to the airport. It felt strange going back to Oslo knowing that Lotta was there waiting for him, but his job wasn’t. For so long it had been the only reason for him to be in Oslo, and heading back knowing that wasn’t the case anymore was strange. He was glad he’d listened to Lotta and spent the past two weeks in Loddefjord because he hadn’t thought about work much at all. But leaving Bergen to go back to Oslo was so ingrained in him, it brought back how he had felt on that last day, although he didn’t feel as sad about it anymore.
Hanne had messaged him to check he was okay and to let him know that Halvorsen & Bryne had announced the takeover. The word was that the London meeting Mats had attended instead of Ole was the clincher and that as soon as they’d won that business, the takeover bid began. And somehow, although Mats had no idea how, Ole had got a new job elsewhere and usedthat to negotiate his position with the acquiring bank, behind everyone’s backs. He was a pariah, Hanne said. A very rich one.
It made Mats feel better knowing that his dismissal that day had been down to Ole, ultimately, rather than any larger-scale disloyalty from the bank itself. And he still had to keep reminding himself that the outcome of it all was no different to what he’d wanted anyway, albeit it had happened more quickly than he’d have liked.
So he sat on the train from Oslo airport into the city centre, having not flown business class for the first time in a long time, feeling pretty contented. He couldn’t wait to see Lotta and take her out for the evening.
21
Lotta heard the door to the apartment open. She was in the middle of getting ready, in her bra and pants, busy straightening her hair in the bedroom.
‘In here!’ she called, putting the straighteners down carefully and heading out into the hall where Mats was hanging his coat up.
He had a stupid grin on his face the moment she came into view, and she fell into his arms.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he said, taking her cheeks in his hands and kissing her.
‘I’ve missed you more. It’s been weird here without you.’
