Page 24 of Entwined in Norway

She slowly reached hers to meet it but then snatched it away when the waiter arrived to take their order.

They’d been too busy talking to look at the menu, and Erik was lost when it came to fish, anyway.

‘What are you having?’ he asked Ida.

‘I think we should have the catch of the day. It’s always the freshest.’ She asked the waiter what the fish was, and he announced, Kveite. Halibut.

Erik had no idea if he would like halibut, but he trusted Ida, so happily went along with it as well as her suggestion of which wine would be a good choice.

‘You know your wine,’ he said, impressed.

‘My father loved choosing a wine to go with the food. I try to do that when I cook at home, but most of the time it’s wasted on the rest of the family. Apart from Mats, they’re happy to guzzle anything.’

‘You’re lucky to be so close with your siblings.’

She nodded. ‘I’m really lucky. And I have a wonderful nephew, Emil. He is seven and very entertaining.’

The wine arrived and the waiter poured for them.

‘Cheers, Ida,’ Erik said, holding his glass out. ‘Thanks for coming out with me.’

‘Skål. Here is to successful researching. Of family and spruce.’

‘Skål.’

The food was nothing short of the best fish Erik had ever tasted. Ida looked thrilled when he rolled his eyes in delight at the first mouthful. He couldn’t get it in his mouth fast enough, whereas Ida was delicately dissecting her own fish with a lot more care, savouring it in a way Erik never did with any kind of food. Food was fuel for him, and it was rare he ate anything that he wished he’d taken more time to appreciate. This was one of those times.

After dinner, after he had to wrestle with Ida to pay the bill for them both, they strolled along the harbour side. It was a beautiful evening, slightly cloudy but not raining. They had an hour to kill before the last boat back to the island.

As they left the restaurant, Ida had automatically hooked her hand into the crook of his arm. He loved it. It felt like a step towards something, as if they’d grown together somehow since leaving the island earlier that evening.

‘What would you like to do?’ she asked him.

‘I read somewhere that there’s a train you can take up the mountain. Is it too late to do that?’

‘No, we have enough time, and it stays open later in the summer.’

She led them up a street lined with shops, their fronts shaded by an avenue of leafy trees. The road was paved with cobblestones and at the top was a white stuccoed building with Fløibanen in bold capital letters over a wide archway.

‘This looks exciting.’

‘It’s pretty cool,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been up here. We used to come a lot when we were kids. There’s a play park at the top.’

Ida bought tickets for them from the machine and they sat to wait for the next train in the cave-like waiting area at the bottom of the funicular tracks.

‘What do you do nowadays for fun?’

‘There’s not much time between work and family things to take care of. The hotel manager job is probably bigger than I thought it would be and I know it’s because it’s a new business but it’s been strange working this much after a few years of working part-time.’

‘I get that. A change of pace either way is tricky. I find myself with far too much time on my hands now. I know I need to move on, find a new vibe, but I don’t really know what that is yet.’

The look on Ida’s face told him she understood exactly how he felt. She didn’t need to say anything for him to know that she had just started a similar search for her place in the world.

‘That must be hard.’

A lump appeared in his throat from nowhere. He nodded and reached for her hand. It was the same as when her hand had touched his arm earlier that evening. Electricity.

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