Chapter Three
Unexpectedly, Mats was enjoying the journey from Sweden to Scotland. It wasn’t a massive stride across the planet, but there were no direct flights. To make things easy on Alvin and Astrid, they were overnighting in an Amsterdam hotel, ready to continue on Saturday. Maybe Andreas would have chartered a flight – or maybe he had his own plane? – but that was a bit rich for Mats’ blood.
Josefin had taken the children to bed after burgers and fries, so now he and his mother were relaxing over their wine while around them in the lounge bar was the chink of glasses and the hum of voices. ‘This is restful.’ He raised his glass to toast her. ‘It’s not often that it’s just the two of us, unless we’re at the office or one of the production plants.’ Those caverns of ice, fish and stainless steel seemed far away already.
She returned his salute, the bar lights reflecting from the lenses of her spectacles as she settled deeper intoher upholstered chair. ‘It’s good to finally step off the treadmill.’
He absorbed the comment. Grete had worked tirelessly at his dad’s side for decades. Erik was a workaholic, rarely seeing the need to recharge his batteries, but it seemed Grete was tiring of it. It was a change that was understandable, but out of character.
Casually, he probed, ‘Was Dad OK when you left?’ He wiped a condensation ring from the light wood tabletop that was in keeping with the beige and blue décor in the bar. They spoke in Swedish, though her native Norwegian was perfectly comprehensible to him. She’d been married to a Swedish man and lived in Sweden for so long that she used more Swedish words than the average Norwegian.
She pulled a rueful face. ‘He’s wounded because I told him that if he never retires, he’ll go to the next world directly from his desk.’ She took several sips of wine.
‘Oh,’ he said, inadequately, trying to imagine that conversation and whether Erik had been startled by his usually supportive wife’s blunt observation.
Perhaps the wine had loosened her tongue as Grete went on. ‘We used to talk about travelling in our retirement, but it’s never happened.’ She twirled her wine glass by its stem. ‘We’re so lucky. We own a mansion on a wonderful island and yet we hardly visit it. Your pappa and I spent a couple of weeks there in summer this year and the rest of you went elsewhere.’
His brows rose. ‘I didn’t take a holiday. I was getting myself sorted out after getting divorced.’
‘It must have been harder than it looked, then – a service moving you into that nice apartment you’ve rented.’ She smiled to show she was teasing.
Drily, he returned, ‘The upheaval was emotional. Youhaven’t been through a divorce.’ An urge hit him to check she wasn’t considering one. But what if she said yes? No matter his forty-six years, he really didn’t want his parents to split up. ‘But for me there was relief as much as sadness and disbelief,’ he admitted. ‘It’s nice not to have to consider anyone but Alvin and Astrid. Inger’s a bit of a princess.’
Grete looked troubled. ‘I wish she hadn’t gone away for so long. The children don’t understand. I’m afraid she’ll regret going dotty for Andreas eventually. He’s cocooned by inherited wealth, spending much of his life in indolence, whereas working for Larsson Fiskeri, earning everything you have, has made you a strong, balanced person. Same for Jonas and Maja.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Your father began with a fish stall and grew it into a successful organisation. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that he seems incapable of leaving it.’
Mats frowned, thinking of his dad, ruddy-faced, a shock of brindled hair, an enormous, booming, ‘Har, har,har’ of a laugh, often at his own unsophisticated sense of humour. Mats hadn’t had any trouble choosing between the family firm and his children, but what if Erik had one day to choose between the company he’d nurtured and the wife who’d been with him every step of the way?
Would he get his priorities right?
Next day, they disembarked at Inverness Airport in the early afternoon. Astrid clutched a toy mermaid and Josefin’s hand. Alvin was tired of planes and rode in Mats’ arms. His hair, still the thistledown of babyhood, tickled Mats’ chin.
Ezzie Wynter met them outside the arrivals gate, impeccable in her dark coat over her suit and impressing Mats by giving the children wide smiles and saying, ‘It’ssuch a pleasure to see you back in Scotland,’ even before shaking hands with Grete, him and Josefin.
‘Hello.’ Astrid smiled sunnily, her fair hair waving about her head.
‘Hallå,’ Alvin echoed, after unplugging his thumb from his mouth.
‘We’re going to speak English a lot while we’re here, aren’t we?’ Mats reminded him gently, and Alvin obligingly amended it to, ‘Hello.’
Ezzie stacked their luggage on a trolley then steered it through the bright airport and out to the pick-up zone where the big grey Volvo that his parents kept at the hall waited. It was an overcast, windy day, and her blonde hair flew around her head as she pitted her slender frame against the vagaries of the trolley.
‘I can do that,’ he began uncomfortably, but Ezz just smiled, and as Alvin was now dozing in his arms, he couldn’t press the point.
However, when they reached the Volvo, Ezz halted, expression dismayed as she looked from the suitcases to the luggage box – which was clearly out of her reach.
‘No problem.’ He let Grete and Josefin get the children into their car seats then he slid the suitcases into the capacious box while Ezzie looked mortified. ‘It’s no problem,’ he repeated, hoping she’d be a bit less uptight about her duties.
Grete took the front passenger seat, Mats and Alvin settled in the middle row and Josefin and Astrid in the rear. Ezzie hurried to the driver’s seat. Alvin had briefly roused but dropped off again. As Astrid and Josefin were engrossed in a game involving the colours of cars, Mats texted Inger to reassure her that the children were safe then watched the countryside around the airport and thewaters of Rosemarkie Bay. He checked emails until Alvin woke up and wanted entertaining for the remainder of the two-and-a-half-hour trip. Together they gazed out at beautiful scenery, where the road wound first between agricultural fields and then narrowed to carry them through craggy hills that, in winter, were little more than pine and rocks. Still stretches of water like Loch Luichart boasted a few sailing boats for them to talk about, even on a raw winter day.
As they neared the end of the journey he said to the children, ‘Watch out for the bridge. It takes us right over the sea and onto the Isle of Skye.’
Moments later Ezzie pointed through the windscreen at the graceful arches that gave way to an impressive arc against the blue-grey sky. ‘We’ll be going over in a moment.’ She drove competently through the busy little town of Kyle of Lochalsh, then swept left to take the bridge.
‘Boats,’ Astrid shouted as the Volvo climbed, while Alvin gleefully waved to vessels approaching the bridge from both directions, foaming the steely grey sea into white wakes. They crested the bridge and drove onto the Isle of Skye, passing the white houses of Kyleakin on their left and soon heading over the moor to the Sleat Peninsula.
Twenty minutes more then Grete called, ‘Here we are,’ from the front seat as they bumped over a stone bridge and up the drive to Rothach Hall. Winter had bared the branches of the deciduous trees dotted among pine and spruce, but otherwise it looked exactly as it did last time he’d been here, the summer before last. He’d forgotten how much grassy parkland lay either side of the drive, studded with stands of trees, before the formal area. There, the hedges and conifers of the knot garden were so neatly trimmed that they looked like sculptures. The walls of thewalled garden rose up to the left and the south lawns to the right before, finally, they drew up before the curved steps to the grand double doors of a gracious grey-stone building with tall windows and a turret.
Ezz said, ‘Welcome back to Rothach Hall.’
