Page 47 of Adrift in Iceland
Astrid smiled at him. ‘You’ll be able to improve on that now you’re working a normal day.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping.’ Without meaning to, in front of her parents, he couldn’t stop looking at her. She was gazingacross the small coffee table at him, and silence descended, although neither of them noticed.
‘Well, it’s time we were going,’ Astrid’s mother said, standing up. Astrid’s father hurriedly finished half a glass of wine before standing up too, looking surprised.
‘You don’t have to go, Mamma.’
‘No, we don’t want to be too late. Your sister will think we’re having too much fun without her. Thank you for having us. I’m so happy you’ve got this place and can settle properly while you’re here.’
Leifur stood up, feeling a little awkward that he was seeing her parents out. It really spelled out that he was staying the night. But then he reminded himself that he was a thirty-six-year-old man and didn’t need to worry about what her parents thought.
‘Lovely to see you both again,’ he said, standing at Astrid’s side.
‘You too, Leifur. I hope we’ll see you again soon.’
Astrid’s father said nothing, but shook Leifur’s hand strongly, as if there was some meaning behind it. Leifur met his eyes and nodded. For some reason, it felt like the right thing to do.
‘They really like you,’ Astrid said, leaning against the back of the door after her parents had gone.
‘I liked them. But I like you more.’
‘Good.’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and he lifted her so that he could carry her through to the bedroom, marvelling at how much his life had changed in just one day.
20
THE DAYS LEADING up to the tours beginning for real settled into a routine of spending the mornings onBrimfaxi, early afternoons in the office answering emails from customers and then by late afternoon the rest of the day was their own. Since staying the night at her apartment for the first time, Leifur had stayed every night apart from the one when he went to his mother’s for dinner.
‘You’re welcome to come,’ he said. ‘She’d love to meet you properly, and she’ll be thrilled we’re seeing each other.’
‘Maybe next time?’ She had a feeling Peta had already known that something was going on between them, and she thought it might be good for them to talk alone. Knowing how worried Peta must have been about Leifur over the past few months, she wasn’t sure about Peta’s reaction if Leifur told his mother that their relationship was planned to be short-lived, just for the summer.
It felt huge to Astrid to have committed to the tours for the entire summer, potentially missing out on some golden opportunity that might present itself. But now that she and Leifur were together, she was pleased that she had this time to take a breather from her real life. She couldn’t contemplate staying in Reykjavik on a tour boat for the rest of her career,because although she loved working on the sea and seeing the whales, it was a tiny fragment of what else was out there to discover and that’s what she didn’t want to leave behind.
The following day was going to be the first full day, with three fully-booked tours. Astrid could see the tension in Leifur as they prepared the boat. Not that there was much to do because they’d checked and double-checked everything a dozen times. The only difference between the trial run and their plans for the real thing was that Jonas had introduced them to Eva, a university student from Reykjavik who was studying marine biology in Canada and was home for the summer. She was going to run the galley and be in charge of the guests when they were on board, leaving Astrid free to concentrate on the whale-watching side of things. Leifur had been reluctant to have another person on the boat, and Astrid had to remind him he’d felt like that about her and that it was important to give Eva a chance.
‘She’s the friendly, sunny kind of person who will be perfect for looking after the guests. And I want to help her out. This will be great experience for her if she wants to join a research trip on a boat one day.’
Leifur couldn’t do anything but agree. He was a creature of habit, and he didn’t like change. Astrid knew that adding Eva to their tiny crew felt monumentous to him after two weeks of it being just the two of them. It was all the years living with the structure and repetitiveness of working on a fishing boat. And although the boat tours felt like the definition of repetitive to Astrid, it was nowhere near what Leifur was used to. All the checking was him trying to feel at ease with every small part of what they were doing.
‘Come on, let’s go for a walk,’ she suggested. The sun was shining, although it was a blustery day, and a bracing walk along the seafront to the lighthouse at Grótta might be just the thing to blow Leifur’s anxiety away.
‘I think we should go to the office and check in.’
‘No.’ She was as diligent with her work as he was, but she also recognised the importance of taking time out to decompress. ‘We’ll only be a couple of hours, then if you want to go to the office we still can.’
Astrid led the way. It had been years since she’d ventured along the peninsula that led to the lighthouse, but almost as soon as the harbour was behind them, she remembered the feeling it gave you of leaving the city behind. There were more houses along the coast road than there had been the last time she’d walked along. They were getting ever larger, more sprawling and a long way from the typical Icelandic houses closer to the centre of town.
‘The coast here is so different from Hafnarfjörður,’ said Leifur.
‘No lava fields.’
‘No, although I like the moss and lichen on the rocks by my house.’
‘Will you take me to your house sometime?’ She asked with the certainty that he would say yes. She felt as if nothing was off limits between them now.
‘Of course. I would have before, but your flat is much nicer. My place is dark in comparison.’
‘I bet it’s cosy,’ said Astrid, slipping her hand into his.
