Still, at least the coffee tasted good, with a drop of milk. Having picked up the caffeine habit at university, Una couldn’t get through the day without it.
‘I don’t know, Sara,’ she said, trying to smile at her best friend, who was sitting across the table from her. There wasn’t much to smile about these days. Una’s pay as a supply teacher at a small school in the neighbouring town of Kópavogur was barely enough to cover her bills and she was never sure from one month to the next whether she would get enough work. Despite her strict economizing, it was always an effort to make her wages stretch until the next pay day. She was resigned to eating the cheapest fish on offer at least three times a week. Every time she found herself struggling to make ends meet towards the end of the month, she regretted not having finished her medical degree, though, if she were honest, she wouldn’t have been any happier if she had. It had taken her three gruelling years to admit to herself that she’d only enrolled in medicine because it was what her father had wanted; she’d been trying to make his dream come true instead of pursuing her own. She could never have worked as a doctor – she just wasn’t suited to the job; she had no passion for it. Three years of her life … She’d passed all her exams, done well even, but it wasn’t enough. The spark wasn’t there.
‘Why not? Come on, Una – you’re always moaning about having to struggle to get by. You love teaching. And you’re the adventurous type.’ Sara was bursting with optimism, as usual. She’d brought Morgunbladid round to Una’s that Saturday morning with the sole purpose of showing her the advert, aware that Una couldn’t afford a subscription to the paper herself. They were planning to meet up at Sara’s place that evening to watch the live broadcast of a concert in aid of starving children in Africa. Una couldn’t wait: it was rare for Iceland’s sole, state-run TV channel to offer anything that entertaining. And she loved music; loved dancing, going out and having fun – given half a chance, she thought wistfully.
‘But it’s so far away,’ she protested. ‘On the opposite side of the country. You couldn’t get any further from Reykjavík if you tried.’ She looked back at the job advert. ‘Skálar? I’ve never even heard of the place.’
‘It’s a tiny village. A hamlet, really. Right at the end of the Langanes Peninsula. Look, they say they need a teacher for a very small class. There’s free accommodation thrown in. You could save up all your pay, pretty much.’ After a pause Sara added: ‘I saw a report about the village on TV earlier this year. Only ten people live there.’
‘What? Ten! Are you joking?’
‘No. That’s why the TV company sent a reporter there – because it’s the smallest village in the country, or something like that. It stuck in my mind: only ten inhabitants, according to the latest census. The reporter seemed to think it was funny. I assume that means there can’t be more than a couple of kids to teach.’
Una hadn’t taken her friend’s suggestion seriously at first, but maybe it wasn’t such a mad idea after all; maybe it was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. It had never crossed her mind to move to the countryside. She was a Reykjavík girl through and through, having grown up on a post-war housing estate in the suburbs, in a little house that her doctor father had built more or less with his own two hands. She’d had a good childhood there, until the event that had shattered her life.
Until then, she’d been happy, if her memories were anything to go by; playing with her friends on the unpaved roads of the estate in the light summer evenings, watching the new houses springing up all around. Now she stopped to think about it, growing up in that self-contained community had been a bit like living in a village, if not a village of only ten souls. Her images of those vanished days were bathed in a soft glow of nostalgia; a time that could never be revisited.
She and her mother had moved away, and strangers lived in their house now: Una didn’t care who they were – she had no intention of ever going back. But the thought of the tiny community at Skálar struck a sudden chord with her, as if it might offer a way of recapturing the happiness of her childhood. She so badly needed a change of scene.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to apply,’ she said at last, without really meaning to. She had a sudden vision of making a new start. Of living by the sea, in the heart of nature. ‘If it’s on the Langanes Peninsula, I’m guessing it’s by the sea?’
‘Of course it is. The place is entirely dependent on the fishing. It sounds rather charming, don’t you think? Living in such a remote spot, without actually being alone.’
A village of ten souls, where everyone knew each other – everyone except her, Una corrected herself. There was a sense in which she’d still be alone, wasn’t there? She’d be an outsider. But perhaps this was what she had been yearning for: solitude without loneliness. A chance to drag herself out of this rut and escape the rat race in the city, where her wages mostly went on paying off her mortgage. Where she had no money to socialize, no man in her life, and the only friend she still had any real contact with was Sara.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Sara. We’d never see each other, or hardly ever.’
‘Don’t
