‘No.’ Lotta took her sister’s phone and looked more carefully at the account. ‘It does look kind of amateur, but he’s already got a few hundred followers.’
‘You need to talk to him, Lots. If he’s your man, you can’t not talk about big stuff like this. You should be able to talk to each other about anything, right?’
‘If that’s true, why didn’t he even mention this to me?’
Freya fixed her with a look. ‘Did you mention to him that you’ve been working on it for him? I know you wanted it to be a surprise, but I know what you’re like when you’re caught up with work, Lots. You have a tendency to be single-minded. Don’t launch at him with accusations unless you’re sure he’s really to blame.’
Annoyingly, Freya was right.
‘If anything, this should be a catalyst for you getting your arse into gear and moving to Norway. If you were in the same place, this wouldn’t have happened.’
‘I don’t know how you can be so sure about that,’ Lotta said, defensively, earning a triumphant grin from Freya. ’Maybe it’s too late now he’s got these other people involved?’
Freya gave an exasperated sigh. ‘It isn’t too late. For god’s sake, if you go to him and say you want to do it, he’s hardly going to say no.’
‘What I’ve done is better than this. And I can come up with a better name than Rooyah,’ she said.
‘That’s the spirit. Call him.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes. Or you’ll be moping around wondering what’s going on and it’ll ruin my weekend.’ Freya pulled a bag of tortilla chips and a tray of Mexican dips out of the shopping bag. ‘Go on, I’ll get started on these.’
Lotta walked to the next tree and sat cross-legged on the grass underneath. She had no idea how to start this conversation, but she knew Freya was right.
She stared at Mats’ name on her phone screen. It was Mats. She could talk to him about this. She pressed the call button. As soon as the call connected, she got his voicemail in Norwegian, asking her to leave a message. Perhaps he was on another call. She waited a few minutes, watching Freya lying on her side, dipping tortilla chips and eating them as if she was in an eating challenge. If it wasn’t for her sister being here, she’d still be stewing about this instead of calling Mats to sort it out.
She tried the call again and the same thing happened. With an exasperated sigh, she stood up and went back over to Freya.
‘Do you want to go to Bergen?’
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’ Suddenly, it didn’t seem like any distance. She needed to talk to him. Right now. This whole situation was ridiculous. She loved Mats, and she knew he loved her. What was the point of being apart?
Maybe in the beginning she’d worried that he might undermine everything she was working for, like Curtis had, but she knew better than that now. Mats liked a plan, and even if that seemed likely to turn into a pet peeve of hers not too long from now, at least she would always know where she stood with him. There were no surprises.
‘Come on, Lots. Sit down.’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. I’ve sat around for long enough. What am I doing? If we were together, in the same place, thiswouldn’t have happened. This distance leaves too much room for misunderstanding. Yes, I’m pissed off about this stupid Instagram account but I need to talk to him about everything. I can’t wait until next weekend.’
Freya brushed her hands together to get the tortilla dust off her fingers. ‘Can I really come?’
‘Do you have your passport?’
‘Yes! I always bring it to London with me, I don’t know why.’
Lotta picked her phone up to look for flights. ‘We can get a flight at seven in the morning.’
‘Oh my god. Jo’s going to be so jealous when she finds out! The one weekend she doesn’t come!’
28
The past few days had seen the hotel project go from the reality escape Mats loved, ticking along in the background while he pottered around on the island, to something entirely different. Now, it was a fast-paced, high-intensity building site where everything required a decision from him and worse, he had run out of money.
Knut was an absolute godsend. He knew the project as well as Mats did and was fielding as much of this stuff as he could, but there were still things he deferred to Mats on if a change was needed or a choice had to be made. And there was a lot of that. They were dealing with an old building, and it had held a few surprises that had, of course, cost more money.
Mats hadn’t been staying overnight on the island, mainly because at the end of every day he was exhausted, needed to get away from the place to truly relax, and direly needed a hot shower. Also, Emil had been staying with Ida while Fredrik was in Oslo and Mats knew that although his sister loved her nephew, it was exhausting taking care of a six-year-old when you weren’t used to it, so he made sure he got back to the house for dinner every evening to help.
