Quentin Bates - Chilled to the Bone

He poured the last of his bitter coffee down his throat and was gone, leaving Gunna with a file that she knew, with a sinking feeling, was either going to eat up any chance of a lunch break, or at least half the evening.

“ Hæ , mum.”

“Didn’t expect to see you here, sweetheart,” Gunna said in surprise. “Soffía’s not with you?”

There was something about Gísli’s bearing that instantly set Gunna’s alarm bells ringing. He looked nervous, twisting the keys to his Pajero in his fingers and repeatedly checking his mobile phone.

“Going to sea tomorrow, are you?”

“Postponed. There’s a problem with one of the fuel pumps, so we’re not sailing until the weekend now.”

Gunna reached for the coffee jar.

“Already made some, Mum. It’s in the thermos,” Gísli said quickly.

“What?”

“I made some coffee. I thought you’d be home about now and I wanted a word.”

Gunna sat down at the little breakfast bar that Steini and Gísli between them had built, and poured herself a mug. “What’s the matter, Gísli?”

“Ach … Nothing … Laufey’s not home is she?”

“No, your sister’s at Sigrún’s and she’s babysitting until about eight. Steini’s doing a job in Akranes today and won’t be back until tonight, so we have the place all to ourselves. Now, what’s the matter? Soffía’s all right, isn’t she?”

She poured coffee into another mug and pushed it toward Gísli.

“Well, yeah. Sort of,” he dithered, and Gunna looked at him with the silent tell-me-more expression she used on suspects but had to remind herself not to use on family.

“It’s like this …” Gísli said, fumbling for words. “Soffía … she’s great and I love her to bits …”

“She’s a lovely girl,” Gunna agreed. Her prospective daughter-in-law had been Gísli’s girlfriend for more than a year, and while Gunna had been concerned they were too young to settle down, she was certain that Soffia, with her quick intelligence, sharp humor and red curls, would calm her son down into a responsible young man. The news of Soffía’s pregnancy had been disturbing to start with, but it seemed that the young couple had everything organized. Gísli would take the winter off from the trawler he had been working on and use the time to study for his mate’s certificates, while Soffía was confident that her teacher training could continue uninterrupted.

Gísli gulped. “It’s like this …” he said while Gunna waited with growing concern.

“Soffía’s chucked you out?”

“No. Nothing like that. Well, not yet, at any rate. Fuck … sorry, mum.”

“Gísli! Calm down, will you? Take a deep breath and start from the beginning.”

Gísli stood up and walked around the kitchen, car keys and phone rattling in his fingers. “It’s like this. You know when we told you that you were going to be a …”

“A grandmother. Yes, I remember. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.”

“Look. You weren’t very pleased, were you? Said we could have waited a year or two.”

“I know. I still think you should both have finished college first. But these things happen, and considering I was sixteen when you came along, I’m in no position to preach.”

“The thing is, Mum,” Gísli continued, pausing again and sitting back down on a stool opposite her. “The thing is that you’re going to be a granny twice over.”

There was a long silence and the clock over the stove ticked to fill it. Even the radio burbling in next door’s garage could be heard.

“Twins?” Gunna asked eventually. “Tell me Soffía’s having twins.”

Gísli shook his head in misery. “You know when we went to Vestureyri for Granny Árnína’s funeral last year and you had to stay behind while I went south and Drífa got a lift with me to Reykjavík?”

“Your cousin Drífa?”

“Well, she’s not really my cousin. She’s uncle Svanur’s stepdaughter.”

Gunna thought back to the tall girl with the midnight hair and black clothes, who seemed to have gone from a gawky high-school adolescent to a stunning young university student in the space of a single summer.

“Soffía’s having a baby in April and Drífa’s having one in …?”

“May.”

Gunna stood up and wondered what she could say that she wouldn’t regret later. She stared out of the window at the grey slush on the road outside and the shadow of the distant mountains with moonlight glinting on their white slopes.

“Gísli …”

He sat with his head in his hands. “I’m really sorry, Mum.”

Gunna reached for the kitchen cupboard and pulled out the bottle of cognac that was kept behind the packets of breakfast cereal.

“I think we both might need one of these,” she decided, putting the bottle in front of Gísli and reaching for two shot glasses from the cupboard under the bar.

“You could have woken me up this morning,” Agnes complained. Jóel Ingi checked his phone again and set the alarm for six. “What’s the matter with you anyway? You’ve been like a cat on hot bricks the last few days.”

She sat on her side of the bed and hauled her dress over her head, rolling it into a ball, which she threw clumsily toward the washing basket by the bedroom door, where it hit the wall and landed on the floor instead.

“I’m all right. Just tired.”

He sat on the bed and lay back, trailing fingertips down the vertebrae studding Agnes’s back as she unclipped her bra and sent it flying to land next to the dress. More curves than when they’d met all those years ago, but that’s no bad thing, he thought.

“Shall we …?” Jóel Ingi asked invitingly. “It’s not that late yet.”

“A second ago you were tired.” Agnes dropped her nightdress over her head without turning around. “Just get some sleep, will you?”

It was dark, and the damp chill promised a miserable day, although the drizzle that had replaced the last few weeks of sporadic snowfall had started the long process of melting the hardened ice in the street outside Jóel Ingi’s apartment. He swept the car out of the underground garage and into the street, where the tires juddered on the ridges and troughs left in the packed snow. He swore quietly. Agnes had wanted to buy a 4×4, but he’d told her not to be ridiculous. Apart from the rare visit to the tourist attractions of Gullfoss or Thingvellir with visiting foreign friends requiring a fine summer’s day, they never went further than the airport at Keflavík or the new shopping mall at Korputorg, and the grey Audi was more than good enough for that.

“It never snows in Reykjavík, or hadn’t you noticed?” he had asked with a derisory laugh that Agnes hadn’t failed to remind him of once the unseasonal snow began to fall.

He pushed the car cautiously along the city’s main road. He could have walked easily enough, but today he felt like using the car and there was the chance that he might need it later. The roads were quiet, while the car park at the gym was already half full with 4×4s and a handful of cars.

Jóel Ingi ran for a few kilometers, cycled for six and did some bench presses for the sake of his abdominals, which he felt were starting to get a little too soft for comfort. A shower and an hour later, he plunged from the gym back into the morning darkness, the door swishing shut behind him. As the Audi hummed onto the road and into the wake of a slow-moving truck spreading grit, a tired Renault appeared in the mirror and he wondered if it had followed him from the gym.

He noticed the short-lived rain had turned to occasional flakes of snow spinning in his headlights and that the Renault stayed with him all the way along Sæbraut. He tried to see the driver in the darkness, stepping on the brake at intersections to throw a little light onto the face that had to be there. Eventually he simply told himself to stop being so stupid and that the car probably belonged to some deadbeat in a dead-end job who couldn’t afford anything better. The Renault rolled past him, its nailed tires rattling on the newly scraped road surface, and on along Snorrabraut as he turned off for the ministry. He still hadn’t managed to catch sight of the driver, other than a glimpse of bulky green coat and a baseball cap.