Page 35 of Adrift in Iceland
‘It is. I’ve been away so much, it’s taken me a while to get used to her being an actual grown-up. It’s the longest I’ve been back in years.’
‘I used to work with my brother every day, and I’m still not sure I know him.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway. I’ll text you about tomorrow. Can I pick you up from here?’
‘That’d be great, thank you.’
He leant in and kissed her cheek. ‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’ Astrid watched him walk away. Even that was sexy,and she ached with the need to be held by him. She could imagine the warmth of his woollen sweater softening the firmness of his chest that she knew was hiding underneath. She sighed. That was at least a day away, but if he didn’t kiss her on the lips tomorrow, she’d have to take matters into her own hands.
Once she got back from the shop, she let herself in and found a pile of Snug bags in the hallway. Gudrun didn’t have a key, so someone must have let her in. The door to the ground-floor apartment was open, and a woman came out just as Astrid was heading upstairs.
‘Hæ, you must be Astrid. I’m Solveig, but everyone calls me Sol. Welcome to the building. Your sister asked me to let you know she’s gone to pick up the bed linen.’
‘Thanks for letting her in.’
‘Oh, that’s okay. I love that shop.’ Sol nodded to the Snug bags. ‘I’m in there all the time, so I knew she wasn’t a burglar.’
Astrid laughed. ‘No, she definitely likes giving people stuff more than taking it.’
‘Hope the moving in goes well. Give us a knock if you need anything.’
Astrid took her groceries upstairs and then went back down for the Snug bags, by which time Gudrun was back and knocking on the door.
‘I didn’t think we bought as much as this,’ she said, putting the bags she was carrying down in the hall, before dramatically collapsing onto the bottom of the stairs.
‘Thank you. I would have helped if you’d waited. There’s more there than I realised too.’
‘I picked up a few more things that I thought you might need.’
In light of what she had just said to Sol, Astrid giggled. ‘Thank you. That’s very thoughtful. Move over so I can takethis all upstairs.’
Gudrun recovered quickly, presumably so as not to miss out on Astrid rediscovering what they’d bought yesterday, grabbed the last of the bags and headed upstairs.
Once they’d put the groceries away, cleaned the bathroom — not because it didn’t already look clean, but because Gudrun insisted you couldn’t know it was clean unless you did it yourself — made the bed and unpacked the two cases, they opened a bottle of wine and took their glasses out on the balcony.
‘Here,’ Astrid said, handing Gudrun a cushion and taking one out for herself, as well as a woollen blanket she’d chosen at Snug.
‘This is so nice,’ Gudrun said. ‘Olafur and I have chairs on our porch, but we never think to sit outside.’
‘I didn’t have any outside space in Tromsø, but it wasn’t far from the harbour, so I used to sit down there sometimes.’
‘I can’t believe I never came to visit you.’
‘Well, you’d only just moved back here from Norway when I started working there. You had your hands full starting a new job and getting things back on track with Olafur.’ Astrid felt guilty that she’d never suggested it, but she and Gudrun had never been close back then. ‘And things weren’t the same between us then.’
‘I suppose so. You know what, As? Even if you move away again, I don’t want things to be distant between us. I’ve loved being around each other all the time again.’
‘Me too.’ Astrid shifted along until she was closer to Gudrun and pulled the blanket around both of them. ‘Anyway, we have the whole summer.’
‘I have a feeling you’ll be splitting your time between me and someone else.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Any guy I’m with…’
‘Any guy?’ Gudrun teased.
‘Needs to be lovely and easy-going like Olafur. Willing to hang out with me and my sister, like he is.’
‘Based on this morning, I reckon Leifur might be like that. He’s quiet, but we can bring him out of his shell.’
