Page 4 of Entwined in Norway

He nodded. ‘Can I do the stirring? And can I pull the middle out of the bread?’

‘Yes, and yes.’

Ida made the dough and they took half each. She showed Emil how to knead, and she suggested they swap dough every few minutes, telling him he was doing a better job than her. While he was engrossed in kneading, she chatted to him, asking how school was and checking in with him that everything was okay. Her brother was doing a great job of raising his son, but she knew he worried Emil was going to be damaged somehow because his mother wasn’t around. Ida liked to think she could help fill that void.

‘Me and Pappa are going to see Mamma.’

‘That’s exciting.’ It was the first she’d heard of this but then, these trips had been planned before and then cancelled at the last minute by Kristi. Although Ida knew Fredrik wouldn’t have got Emil’s hopes up unless he was as sure as he could be it was going to happen.

‘We’re going on a plane and I’m going to take one of my drawings for her.’

‘She’ll love that. Lucky Mamma.’

If anything, Emil seemed to take it in his stride that his mother lived in a different country to him most of the time. Fredrik did what he could to keep them all in touch with FaceTime calls, and it seemed to work.

‘Let’s leave the bread to rise for a while, and we’ll make the soup.’

Once they’d made the soup, Emil lost interest and Ida let him go into the lounge to play his game. She punched the air out of the bread dough and shaped it into large boules before leaving it to rise again.

She sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop. All the hotel’s systems could be accessed remotely, so she logged in to see if anything had happened since she left. Oddly, the occupancy rate for tomorrow night was a hundred per cent. That was never the case because of the room Ida had been staying in. Did that mean someone had booked it? Another quick search and she could see that a man called Erik Anderson was booked in for a week. A week? What was he going to do on the island for an entire week? Most people found it too inconvenient as a base for exploring, so they knew their customers were looking for a retreat from everything for a few days. No one had ever stayed for a week.

Ida looked into the booking correspondence and saw that Emilie had explained exactly how small the room was, and he’d responded to say he didn’t mind. So it was nice to see the occupancy at an all-time high, but it meant she’d be commuting to and from the island for at least the next week.

As she put the bread in the oven with a shallow tray of water in the bottom to create the steam she needed to make the bread crusty, Ida heard the front door open and her brother, Mats and his partner, Lotta came into the kitchen.

‘You’re baking bread?’ Lotta asked.

‘Me and Emil have been baking bread. We’re having it hollowed out with soup inside.’

‘That sounds messy.’

‘It probably will be.’

Mats went straight in to see Emil and was already sitting next to him with a controller in his hand.

‘Have you seen we’re at full occupancy tomorrow night?’ Ida said, leaning on the doorway between the kitchen and the lounge.

‘How did that happen?’ Mats said, not taking his eyes off the screen. ‘I thought you didn’t want to book out that single room?’

‘Emilie offered it to someone who doesn’t mind that it’s small, and I’d moved my stuff out just in case, so there we are.’

‘That’s a milestone we ought to celebrate,’ said Lotta. ‘Full occupancy within a few weeks is amazing for a new hotel.’

‘You’re going to be commuting then?’ Mats said.

‘You could stay in our cabin, if you like,’ said Lotta.

Ida couldn’t help harrumphing. ‘As if I’d stay there knowing what you two get up to.’

‘What do they get up to, Auntie Ida?’ Emil piped up.

‘You know, fishing and stuff,’ Mats said, winking at Lotta, who was grinning at him.

Ida rolled her eyes. Sometimes it was hard having to watch her brother mooning over Lotta. She loved Lotta, and she and Mats were great together, but in the absence of a love life of her own, it sometimes grated.

After dinner, which as Lotta had predicted was quite a messy affair, Mats took Emil upstairs to bed and read him a story while Ida and Lotta cleared up, then they headed out onto the terrace with a bottle of wine and four glasses, anticipating Fredrik would join them at some point.

‘We went to look at a house today,’ Lotta said, her gaze staying fixed over the fjord.