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  THE DISTANCE

  Zoë Folbigg

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About The Distance

  Under the midnight sun of Arctic Norway, Cecilie Wiig goes online and stumbles across Hector Herrera in a band fan forum. They start chatting and soon realise they might be more than kindred spirits. But there are two big problems: Hector lives 8,909km away in Mexico. And he's about to get married.

  Can Cecilie, who's anchored to two jobs she loves in the library and a cafe full of colourful characters in the town in which she grew up, overcome the hurdles of having fallen for someone she's never met? Will Hector escape his turbulent past and the temptations of his hectic hedonistic life and make a leap of faith to change the path he’s on?

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About The Distance

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About Zoë Folbigg

  Also by Zoë Folbigg

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  To Mark, Felix and Max

  My heart beats to your names

  One

  March 2018, Tromsø, Norway

  So, ro, lilleman, nå er dagen over… Sleep tight, little one, now the day is over… Cecilie can’t stop the blasted lullaby from spinning around her head, twinkling like a hanging mobile doing revolutions above a sleeping baby. Alle mus i alle land, ligger nå og sover… The song is rotating calmly and methodically in Cecilie’s brain, distracting her from the couple sitting in front of her as they wait for her to take their order. It is also distancing her from The Thing That’s Happening Today that she’s been dreading for weeks, hoping someone will put a stop to it or change their mind.

  The lullaby must have been swirling in Cecilie’s head since she sang it in a quiet corner of the library this morning; to mothers with grey crescent moons clinging to their lower lashlines; to fathers, over the moon to be enjoying their parental leave in a much more relaxed way than they think their partners did. Mothers and fathers and gurglers, all joined in with Cecilie to sing nursery rhymes in the basement of the library, but now those songs and the sweet and happy voices are taunting her.

  So, ro, lilleman…

  Cecilie thinks of the large print above the fireplace in the living room at home. The room is an elegant haven of greys, browns and whites, dominated by a long, wooden dining table that stands out against the modern touches of the alternate grey and sable plastic Vitra chairs around it. It’s a table where everyone is welcome for heart-to-hearts and hygge at Christmas, although most of the time Cecilie eats breakfast there alone. She likes the grey chairs best and always chooses to sit on one of those while she eats her soda bread smeared with honey and stares out of the window, to the vast and sparse garden beyond. On the white wall above the fireplace hangs a print of a static Alexander Calder mobile that her mother Karin picked up on a trip to London.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Cecilie?’ she exclaimed, her blue eyes lighting up against the silver of her bobbed hair, as Cecilie’s brother and his boyfriend lifted the black matt frame onto the mantelpiece with a heave.

  ‘Wonderful,’ concurred Morten, the partner of Cecilie’s twin brother Espen, as he pushed his glasses up his little snub nose. ‘The beauty and intelligence is astounding,’ he added. ‘I just wish I could see it in motion.’

  Karin nodded with vigour; Espen had already left the room.

  Cecilie looked at the print dreamily, her pale green eyes gazing up at the black Vertical Fern, while it didn’t oscillate as it had in the gallery, or might have done in a breeze. Still, Cecilie imagined herself, fluttering up to the largest of its black fronds to see what it would look like to gaze down at her mother and Morten’s faces from above. Cecilie had a knack for drifting out of position on a whim or a daydream, and seeing the world from above.

  Karin, a pragmatist and a politician, found it hard to understand her otherworldly daughter.

  ‘Cecilie?’ Karin had urged.

  Cecilie crinkled her nose and snapped back into the room with a blink.

  ‘It’s wonderful, Mamma,’ she agreed, although she couldn’t fathom why her mother had bought an inanimate print of something that ought to be in gentle movement. It seemed so unlike her. Karin Wiig was the least static person Cecilie knew.

  ‘Well yes,’ confirmed Karin with authority. ‘They were just so stunning, you really ought to go to London and see them in motion before the exhibition ends,’ she said with a wave of her hand, although everyone knew she was really only talking to Morten. Even if Espen had still been in the room to hear, he was too wrapped up in his life at the i-Scand hotel on the harbour to bother with the inconvenience of a weekend break, and Cecilie had never travelled to a latitude below Oslo, which was something a diplomat and an adventurer like Karin couldn’t understand.

  ‘Why is your sister so happy to stay in one place?’ she once asked Espen in despair.

  ‘Perhaps Cecilie’s daydreams take her to better places than a flight ever could, Mamma,’ Espen had replied.

  So, ro, lilleman…

  The flash of the frond in her mind awakens Cecilie and she wriggles her inert feet inside her black Dr Martens boots. The lullaby evaporates and disappears, and Cecilie is back with the couple sitting in front of her, at their usual table.

  ‘Pickle, are you all right?’ asks Gjertrud, her kindly weathered face looking up at Cecilie. ‘It’s just Ole asked you three times for the spiced Arctic cloudberry cake, but you seem a little… in the clouds yourself today, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, so much to think about…’ Cecilie replies, as she writes cloudberry onto a pad in a wisp of ink.

  Gjertrud wonders how much can Cecilie possibly have to think about, as she studies the waitress’s face; her eyebrows arch to her temples, framing pale green eyes that usually fl
ash with the iridescent brightness of a dragonfly’s wing – only, today, they are dulled by a film of pondwater. Her blonde hair is pulled into twists of rope, piled at the back of her head, exposing the loveheart shape of her face.

  Gjertrud’s round, purple cheeks flush with the heat of coming indoors when it’s cold outside, and she gazes at Cecilie, and wonders what goes on inside that dreamy brain of hers. She can’t be that busy in her quiet life here in this quiet town. She doesn’t even have children like Gjertrud and Ole’s daughters did by the time they were Cecilie’s age.

  Gjertrud and Ole see Cecilie every afternoon for coffee and cake at the Hjornekafé teashop after their post-lunch walk. They always take the table with four chairs against the far wall, so they can look out of the large expanse of glass onto the small backstreet of the Arctic harbour town. Each window panel has a little etching in the middle, an illustration of the exterior of the quaint corner cafe, the same illustration as the one on the cover of the menus Cecilie hands out. Gjertrud always chooses a seat so she can sit with her back to the wall, to hold court and see everything going on in the Hjornekafé. Ole sits facing his wife, although he can see cafe life back to front in the rectangles of the mirrors on the wall in front of him. Gjertrud and Ole use the vacant wooden chairs next to them to pile their layers of hats, scarves, gloves, jumpers, crampons and duck-down coats onto, while they rest their walking poles in the corner between the wall and the floor-to-ceiling window. Ole always orders a kaffe and the kake of the day, whichever the never-present cafe owner Mette made most recently. Gjertrud always has a pot of tea ‘and nothing else thank you’ – which means she will eat half of Ole’s cake, until he protests so much that she concedes to ordering a slice of her own.

  ‘One kaffe and spiced Arctic cloudberry cake for you, Ole, and your usual pot of tea, Gjertrud?’

  ‘Yes, just a tea thank you, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, have your own cake, woman! You will anyway, after eating half of mine.’ Ole’s grey curls are matted from the woolly hat he recently took off and launched onto the chair next to him. He turns to Cecilie with bemused, irritated eyes as small as currants. ‘One and a half pieces of cake for my wife, every day! If she just ordered her own now, she would have a piece for her and I would have a whole piece for me. Why is this notion so difficult to comprehend heh, Cecilie?’

  Cecilie raises a diplomatic eyebrow and doesn’t say anything.

  ‘I only want a forkful, Ole, why do you have to be such a stingy sausage?’ Gjertrud’s ruddy cheeks rise and she lets out a mischievous chuckle. A bell above the door rings as two young backpackers walk in. Their eyes widen as they see the cakes in the small climate-controlled glass cabinet on the counter and they take off their mittens excitedly.

  Cecilie looks up. Ordinarily she would be pleased to see young tourists walk in; a chance to improve her English, to learn some more modern words and slang. But today she isn’t. She doesn’t see the point. Cecilie no longer feels the desire to learn new ways of saying that something is wicked, ace or sick; or to practise her they’re, there and theirs any more.

  Cecilie nods, as she writes down an order she and fellow staff Henrik and Stine know by heart anyway, although today just Cecilie and Henrik work a sleepy afternoon shift.

  ‘Take a seat, I’ll be right over,’ Cecilie says to the couple at the counter as she tucks her pen behind her ear and it disappears into a cascade of heavy hair. Somehow, Cecilie can tell that these tourists are Canadian, even before she sees the maple leaf sewn onto the North Face daypack on the young man’s back. She wonders what brought them here; where in the world they have been already. Might they have seen his home town too?

  The Hjornekafé manager, Henrik, has already started making the drinks. He exchanges a look with Cecilie, as they usually do when Gjertrud and Ole have their little tussles, only today Cecilie isn’t rolling her eyes and smiling warmly. Today, Cecilie’s face is tense and terse, her eyes dulled, as she makes her way to the cake display cabinet at the end of the counter. The dark and rickety wooden furniture is brightened by the mirrors on the walls in the modest cafe space, and what little is left of the spring daylight streams in through the floor-to-ceiling window façade to the street.

  The Canadians marvel at the wrought-iron latticework trimming the ceiling, and scrape their chairs back to sit down. The noise of wood dragging on wood tears through Cecilie’s brain but is drowned out by another rotation of So, ro, lilleman.

  Cecilie looks at her watch. It is 3.18 p.m. She silently counts backwards as she raises the thumb and four fingers on her left hand and the thumb and index finger on her right hand. Seven. Always counting back seven. She feels a blow to her abdomen and recedes to take it as she bends down to pick up a tray from under the counter. Cecilie’s not sure if she feels hungry, winded or heartsick, but she stands up with the tray, standing to stay strong. She takes out the spiced Arctic cloudberry cake, made by Mette at her home this morning. Bright orange berries burst with pride atop vanilla cream, layered three times on sponge swathed in playful cloudberry-coloured jam. Flecks of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves pepper the pristine pale crumb. Arctic berries shimmer golden and warm surrounded by spices. The orange hues remind Cecilie of photographs she’s seen in books in the library and on the internet, of a place a world away, where buildings are painted ochre and terracotta; where doorways bask in a shade of sunshine she has never seen for herself. Cecilie carves out a square of cake with a knife and places it on a vintage floral plate that doesn’t go with the black and white cups Henrik is preparing the drinks in. Nothing matches in this hotchpotch corner of the world, but that doesn’t matter. Customers slink in reliably for a quiet slice of cake between hiking to the world’s northernmost cathedral, or summiting the mountain ledge in the Fjellheisen cable car by day, and chasing the Northern Lights at night.

  With heavy feet and a heavy heart, Cecilie plods into the cavernous kitchen out the back to the freezer. She takes out a tub of blackcurrant ice cream and thoughtfully curls a cornelle to accompany the cake. The ice cream at the Hjornekafé is made by Mette’s daughter and Cecilie’s best friend, Grethe, who owns the ice cream parlour on the high street. Ice cream sells surprisingly well in these parts, and Grethe churns the best.

  Henrik, a bookish man with round glasses and floppy brown hair parted in the centre, places the pot of tea, cup of coffee and two glasses of icy tap water next to the cake plate on the tray. Cecilie collects two forks and clinks them down next to the plate, knowing she will be coming back for another slice in a few minutes anyway. She walks around to the front of the counter, gives the Canadian tourists two menus with the small illustration of the Hjornekafé on the front from her shaky hands, and picks up the tray from the counter to take it to Gjertrud and Ole at their end of the cafe.

  As she walks the short distance to the back wall, Cecilie’s mouth dries, her hands shake and the tray feels like the weight of an iceberg as it releases from her pale grip. She looks down and sees it fall in slow motion beneath her to the floor, smashing onto the ground in hot and cold shards. The vintage cake plate smashes, sending flowers flying, splatted and smeared with varying shades and textures of orange and purple and cream, all over Cecilie’s boots. Hot tea and coffee scold Cecilie’s legs in her pale blue jeans as she lets out a little gasp of pain and embarrassment. The Thing That’s Happening Today, that Cecilie is dreading, is actually happening and there’s nothing she can do about it. At that precise moment, eight thousand nine hundred and nine kilometres away, eyes widen and pupils shrink.

  Hector Herrera has woken with a start, to a crash, on the morning of his wedding day.

  Two

  March 2018, Xalapa, Mexico

  ‘What the fuck… What are you doing, Gallegita?’ Hector murmurs as he sits up slowly from under the bedsheet. His wide trapezius rises from solid shoulders as he rubs cinnamon-flecked eyes with his palms, moving sleep out and up into dark brown soft curls that kiss his temples and rest gently above his forehead. When Hector
is animated, his eyes are wide, flirtatious and impassioned, but in his resting state they are as thoughtful and earnest as a pleading revolutionary’s. Right now they are in transition, as his fuzzy brain tries to figure out where in the world he is. In the doorway of their bedroom, Hector’s tiny bride-to-be drapes herself against the frame, bottle in one hand, champagne flute in the other, and curses the broken glass fizzing at her bleeding feet.

  ‘Joder!’

  ‘What was that?’ Hector says, no longer alarmed but puzzled by the smash as he reclines against the bare wall behind him. The rough spikes of the whitewashed plaster press into his shoulders, taking the focus off the thumping in his head.

  ‘Not “was”. What “is” that, baby,’ Pilar purrs mysteriously as she flicks broken glass off the arches of her feet. ‘No use crying over spilt cava – we can share this one,’ she says, shaking the remaining flute in her hand. Pilar steps over the debris on the terracotta tiles and wipes her sticky toes on the foot of the sheet, smearing Freixenet and blood onto their marital bed. Careful not to spill any more drops, Pilar edges up the mattress and curls her legs around herself primly as she sits facing Hector.

  ‘I didn’t think we owned champagne glasses,’ Hector says, taking the flute from Pilar’s proffered hand.

  ‘Something borrowed,’ she winks. Pilar’s hooded Moorish eyes, a constant reminder for Hector of her Old World blood, aren’t usually this playful, but this morning she is giddy. She takes a cigarette from the red and white Delicados packet on the bedside table and lights it with her free hand.

  ‘Baby, you’re a schoolteacher, you’d lose your job!’

  ‘Something borrowed!’ she repeats, irritably, then laughs as she blows the first cloud of smoke into Hector’s face. His eyes narrow in discomfort. He feels too rough to have a drag, and so shields himself by raising the glass to his lips and taking a sip of tepid cava. ‘I’ll take them back!’ Pilar snaps, when she sees Hector isn’t laughing. ‘Well, I’ll take this one back anyway.’ Her defensiveness softens with a husky laugh as she pulls the glass away from Hector and tops it up from the bottle resting on the bed between her thighs.