Her resistance to the idea was waning with every trip she took there. She loved Oslo and Bergen, and she could imagine herself living there. If Mats had been staying in Oslo, maybe it would have been an easier decision. Fitting into his life there would have been easier; the city was where the work was, where the good internet was, and where there was a version of Mats who fitted with the life she was building for herself. She loved all the versions of Mats, but there was no getting away from the fact that life on the island was a stark contrast to Oslo.
The idea of a life without Mats was beginning to seem impossible. It was hard to reconcile the new version of her life and her flourishing career with the woman who had fallen in love with him. The woman who wanted to commit to a person and to her job. And the confidence she was finding through her recent success was helping her to believe that perhaps she could be the woman who had it all.
There was already an email waiting for her from the Norwegian tourist board with a link to an online meeting on Tuesday and more detail about what they were after. That meant preparing a pitch, and if Mats was here, it was going to be hard to fit that in but it had to be her priority. All of these opportunities were going to take her closer to her goal of building a successful agency and perhaps ultimately could bring her the security she needed to feel ready to make a move to Norway, if that’s what she decided.
After she emailed Clemmie accepting the freelance contract, she settled down to work.
26
Mats hoped that this weekend with Lotta would allay some of his fears that their long-distance relationship wasn’t going to go the distance. If he hadn’t been busy himself, packing up his apartment, fielding questions from the estate agent and keeping a close eye on his dwindling bank balance, he might have felt worse about the fact that he and Lotta had barely spoken over the past two weeks. He knew she needed space. She hadn’t said that to him, but he could feel her pulling away from him, and instinctively he knew that trying to bring her closer wouldn’t help. She had something to prove to herself, and if he let that run its course, he hoped it would lead her back to him. So he’d let her be the one to call him, to text first, and had tried not to seem as if he needed her.
When he saw her waiting along the rail outside the arrivals door at the airport with a big smile on her face, he felt as if he’d been imagining everything. Spending two weeks apart from the person you loved would do that, especially if things were a little up in the air as they were at the moment.
Lotta was beaming as she waited for him to round the end of the railing and come to her. He took her in his arms and buried his face in her hair.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he said.
‘Look at you,’ she said, grinning. ‘You’re all weathered and relaxed looking.
He laughed. ‘Is weathered a compliment?’
‘Yes, it suits you.’ She leant up and kissed him, and he wondered what he’d been worried about.
‘So how have things been?’ he asked once they were on the Tube heading to Lotta’s.
‘Good. Really busy. Snug want to keep me on a retainer for their social media which is great and I’ve had a couple of enquiries from potential new clients.’
‘That’s wonderful! Congratulations!’ He squeezed her hand and loved seeing the pride in her face. ‘So they were pleased with the Oslo campaign?’
‘Really pleased. I presented to all the store managers, and there was such a positive response to the way we’re planning to roll it out to them. It’s pretty exciting.’
‘I’m so happy that things are working out for you, Lotta.’ After what she’d told him about her ex-fiancé, he understood how much this meant to her.
‘And how’s the island? Have you got any pictures?’
He pulled his phone out and showed her the progress on the farmhouse. ‘It’s almost back to being watertight and as soon as it is we can start on the inside.’
‘It feels as if it’s happening really quickly now.’
‘I know. Lars managed to get more people on site to really push getting the construction done while the weather’s still good. It’s been expensive, but we should be able to open at the start of next year.’ It was more than expensive; it had completely wiped him out, but he was too far along the road to turn back now.
‘Really? And the money stuff is okay?’
He nodded. It was awful to lie to her, but it would take the shine off the weekend to get into all of that now. ‘It’s terrible timing to open in January, weather-wise, but it will mean we can have a soft launch, which is a good thing.’ It had surprised him how much progress had been made, but there was still a lot todo once the building itself was completed. ‘It’ll take some time to get the kitchens installed, and there’s a lot to do on the interiors before we can get started on decorating, but we’re definitely on schedule. We’re going to start recruiting for key roles, like head chef and hotel manager, so that they can be involved with the rest of the recruitment. Anders is coming over next week to help me get started with that.’
‘I can’t wait to meet him and Becca. Are they going to stay at Ida’s?’
‘Yes, although Anders will be going back and forth to Iceland. He has an amazing manager who runs things when he’s not there, but he doesn’t like to be away for too long, especially over the summer when it’s their busy season.’
‘I get that.’
He wanted to ask when she thought she might visit, but again, he was reluctant to bring up anything that could disrupt things between them too early in the weekend.
‘You haven’t shown me any pictures of the cabin.’
The cabin. Not our cabin anymore.
‘Like I said, I want it to be a surprise.’ What difference did one word make?Our cabin, the cabin…
