“Fifteen minutes. I’m on the way.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
Gunna put her foot down a little harder. At the turnoff, she coasted the Range Rover down the brand-new slip road to the roundabout underneath it that she was sure would become an impassable snow trap if the south- west were ever to see snow on the scale that she had grown up with in the west of Iceland, and accelerated as the road south opened up before her.
The black lava fields that from a distance appeared devoid of life were starting to sprout the first green lichens of spring, which was bursting out of its winter dormancy now that the temperature was rising. She checked carefully before swinging the heavy car across the road to overtake a slow-moving truck laden with tubs of fish on its way south, and quickly wound down the window to extend a hand and wave to the driver, one of Haddi’s relatives, taking freshly landed fish to a processing plant in Grindav’k. The truck’s lights flashed briefly in acknowledgement before it disappeared behind a bend in the road.
Gunna brought the car to a halt in a flurry of gravel outside Sigrun’s house and pocketed phone and keys before jumping down and striding straight round to the back door.
“H?! Anyone live here?” she called out, opening the kitchen door and looking inside. A row of bulging bin liners greeted her.
“Sigrun? You in?” she shouted, slipping off her shoes and padding into the house.
A stifled sob told her where to look. In the bedroom, Sigrun sat on the end of the bed surrounded by piles of clothes.
“Hey, what’s up?” Gunna asked.
“Sod him. I’ve had enough,” Sigrun said through a voice choked with frustration. “Bloody men, nothing but trouble.”
Gunna sat down next to her and surveyed the stacks of shirts, jeans, jackets and socks. “What’s gone wrong?”
“Bloody Jorundur. He went to Norway with that bunch from where he used to work. He’s been there a week. Just a bloody, sodding, bastard week, that’s all. I got a text this afternoon saying he’s not coming home, he’s staying in Norway and would I send his stuff.”
“He’s not on the piss again, is he?”
“If only that was all,” Sigrun said despairingly. “The bastard. I called him half a dozen times but he’s not answering his phone. So I gave up and called his sister, asked what the hell’s happening, and she finally told me. Jorundur’s been seeing a woman over in Keflavik, and she’s gone to Norway with him. His sister finally admitted it. She’s not that bright and it didn’t take long to get the truth out of her.”
“?i, Runa. I’m so sorry …” Gunna began.
“Don’t be. I’m best rid of the bastard.”
She sat clear-eyed on the edge of the bed and surveyed the contents of the wardrobes, feet extended in front of her and rocking back and forth.
“You know, I always knew this would happen, always. I always knew deep inside that he’d let me down sooner or later. Eventually I wouldn’t be what he wanted any more and he’d be gone. Why didn’t I admit it to myself? Have I been in denial all these years, or what?”
“What have you done with Jens?” Gunna asked, feeling foolish.
“I asked Laufey to go to the shop for me and she took him as well. Couldn’t face going out right now, especially now that all the old bags down there will have heard the news,” she said bitterly. “Unless they knew it before I did. Did you know, Gunna? Did you?” Sigrun asked, turning to face her.
“No, I didn’t. I had my suspicions that things weren’t right. But no, I didn’t know about his other woman.”
“Sure?” Sigrun asked. “I need to be certain at least one person wasn’t in on it. Jorundur even told his sister, and that’s as good as putting an announcement on the radio.”
“I had no idea,” Gunna assured her. “You know I’ve always had reservations about the man, but I never thought he’d do this.”
“All right then,” Sigrun allowed grudgingly, her shoulders sagging.
“So what are you going to do with all this lot?” Gunna asked, waving a hand at the stacks of clothes.
“I told his sister to come and collect it.”
“Is she on the way, then?”
Sigrun stood up with a tough expression on her face that Gunna had not seen for years. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m going to bag it all up and she can collect it from either the front step or the dump.”
When Laufey returned with Jens crying in his pushchair and shopping bags hung from both handles, she found them enthusiastically stuffing clothes into black bin liners as the heap on the floor diminished and the wardrobes looked increasingly bare.
“That’s a lot of clothes,” Laufey observed doubtfully, holding Jens’s hand as he took faltering steps into the room. Sigrun swept him up in her arms.
“Your daddy’s an unfaithful lying bastard, little man,” she crooned to the little boy, who grinned and gurgled back. “And if he comes back, I’m going to cut his balls off with a blunt kitchen knife and then Auntie Gunna can lock him up in a smelly cellar on stale bread and water for ever and ever.”
“HOW’S YOUR FRIEND?” Steini asked softly, looking up from the book in his hands.
“Ach, she’s all right. Well, she’s not, but she will be in a day or two.”
Steini lifted his feet off the sofa and Gunna shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She hobbled over and dropped herself down next to him. He leaned over for a kiss, sandwiching the book uncomfortably between them.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“Sigrun’s husband, Jorundur, has been out of work since the crash. Then he got an offer through some blokes he’d worked with before, some big construction job in Norway, a tunnel or something. So he went to Norway to check it out and hopefully do a couple of weeks’ work. But what he didn’t tell anybody was that there’s a woman he’s been having it off with on the sly since Christmas, and she went with him.”
“Ah, the perils of middle age,” Steini said with a rueful nod. “Pleased to be past all that.”
“Get away with you. Anyway, he’s decided to stay there with his new woman, and the first Sigrun knew of it was when he texted her asking her to send his stuff to Norway.”
“That’s a considerate, sensitive way to behave. Have a good day, apart from that?”
“Not bad. Lots I can’t tell you. But it’s been non-stop excitement since I left the house this morning. You’d never believe how many really unpleasant, bad people there are out there, even in a quiet little place like Iceland.”
“Really?”
“Really. Keep your doors locked at night.”
Steini leaned forward and tipped the last of a bottle of white wine into a glass, then passed the glass to Gunna. She took a sip and wrinkled her nose at the slightly acidic aroma.
“Where did this come from?”
“Don’t ask.” He grinned.
“Oh, right. I’m starving. Are you hungry?”
Steini stroked the moustache that made him look a decade older than he really was.
“If there’s food on offer, I suppose I could be persuaded,” he said with a slow smile.
Gunna hauled herself to her feet and started to unbutton her blouse.
“Good. There should be some garlic bread in the freezer that you can microwave, some pasta salad left over from yesterday, and a few lamb chops in the fridge. If you put them under the grill now, they’ll be done by the time I’m out of the shower.”
“JON, I DIDN’T expect to see you today,” Agusta said with eyebrows arched in surprise.
“Sorry, Mum. Thought I’d told you last week that I’d be over this weekend,” Jon replied. Rain dripped from
