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He was going anyway. She may as well accept it, and work with what was inevitable. Flora transferred Mette into his arms for a moment while she wriggled out of her own coat, wrapping it around the little girl so that his was no longer needed.
‘If you must go, put your coat on, it’ll protect your arms. And put a pair of boots on as well.’
He looked down at his feet, seeming to realise for the first time that he was only wearing a pair of socks. ‘Okay. You’re right. You’ll take Mette inside?’
She was shivering, her pyjamas giving no protection against the wind. But she wasn’t moving until she saw that Aksel was safe. ‘If you must go, go now. Before the fire gets any worse. And no heroics, Aksel. Back off if it looks to be getting worse.’
He nodded. Giving Kari a curt command, he strode back up the path, opening the door to his cottage.
Kari was on the alert now, sniffing the air and looking around. Aksel had clearly ordered the dog to protect them, and she was taking her task seriously. Flora hugged Mette close, pulling her coat down around the child’s feet.
‘Papa’s just going to put out the fire. He won’t be a minute.’ She said the words as if it was nothing. Maybe it was nothing to Aksel, but right now it seemed a great deal to her.
She watched as Aksel’s dark figure approached the fire. A plume of shadows emitted from the fire extinguisher and the flames died almost immediately. He disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with a bucket, tipping its contents over the ashes to make sure that the fire was well and truly out.
Okay. Everything was okay, and now all she wanted to do was to get warm. By the time Aksel reappeared her teeth were chattering.
‘Everything all right?’
‘No.’ He took his coat off and wrapped it around her. ‘You’re freezing.’
‘The fire’s out, though...’ He was hurrying her towards her own front door, his arm around her shoulders.
‘Yes. I made sure of it.’ Aksel pushed the door open and glorious warmth surrounded her suddenly. ‘Come and sit down.’
He was gentle and attentive, but his eyes were dead. Whatever he felt was locked behind an impervious barrier.
‘Stay with Mette and I’ll make a hot drink.’ Flora was trying to stop shivering.
‘No, I’ll do that. You sit and get warm.’ He picked up the woollen blanket that was folded across the back of the sofa and waited until Flora had sat down, then tucked it around her and Mette. Then he disappeared into the kitchen.
He came back with two cups of tea, and Flora drank hers while he went upstairs to the bathroom to wash his hands and face. When he came back and sat down, Mette crawled across the sofa, snuggling against him and yawning. Flora waited for the little girl to fall asleep before she asked the inevitable question.
‘What happened?’
‘I was asleep upstairs. Kari and Mette were downstairs, and Kari herded Mette out into the hallway and shut the door. Then she came to wake me up.’ He held out his hand, and Kari ambled over to him. He fondled the dog’s ears and she laid her head in his lap.
‘You taught her to do that?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t even know that Mette was out of bed.’
‘What was she doing downstairs?’
‘From the looks of it, she’d gone downstairs and lit a candle in the grate. It must have fallen over onto the hearth rug...’ His voice cracked and broke with emotion.
‘Where did she get the matches from?’ Aksel had clearly already tried and convicted himself, without even listening to the case for the defence.
‘They were in one of the high cupboards in the kitchen. I didn’t think she could get to them, but when I went back inside I saw that she’d dragged a chair across the room. She must have climbed up on it, then got up onto the counter top and into the cupboard.’
It was quite an achievement for a six-year-old with poor sight. ‘What made her so determined to light a candle in the middle of the night?’ Flora’s hand flew to her mouth. She knew the answer.
‘When I packed her things, I forgot her electric candle. So I lit a real one for her. It’s all my...’ He fell silent as Flora flapped her hand urgently at him.
‘Don’t. You’re not to say it. It’s not your fault.’
‘That’s not borne out by the facts.’ His face was blank, as if he’d accepted his guilt without any question.
Flora took a breath. Whatever she said now had to be convincing. ‘Look, Aksel, I talk to a lot of parents in the course of my work. The one thing that everyone agrees on is that you can’t watch your children twenty-four hours a day. It isn’t possible. But you’ve come up with a good second-best, and you trained Kari to watch over her.’
