Page 272 of These Tears

‘Get out!’ I rumble, clicking open the door on his side.

He blinks at me, tongue lolling, entirely unmoved by law, reason or my escalating blood pressure.

‘I’m serious, you oversized carpet-looking wolf-wannabe!’ I plant one hand on the door and point at him with the other. ‘I have thumbs,’ I rumble. ‘I open tins. I am the reason you eat.’

Brute yawns.

Disrespectfully.

In an attempt to rein in the frustration I’ve just redirected at the dog, I borrow the words of a similar beast – albeit one that walks on two legs, owns a pair of blue eyes, and is equally stubborn: I need to own the authority.

‘Fine,’ I mutter, climbing back out and rounding the bonnet.

Leaning in from the other side to grab Brute’s collar, I hesitate several inches from it, but this restlessness in me drives a new kind of urgency into my limbs.

He shuffles to the driver’s seat and turns boneless as soon as I grab the leather band around his neck. All twenty-something kilos of dead weight melt into the seat. His forepaws brace against the steering wheel hard enough to sound the horn and send the hens into a frenzy.

I glare at him. Threats, kidnapping and blizzards? Survived. A dog occupying the driver’s seat?

That may finally finish me off.

Then I remember what Elias did last night when Brute tried the couch.

I tap the seat twice.

Brute’s ears snap up and he springs off the leather as if his limbs have remembered that they belong to a trained animal, not a mutinous rug.

‘Authority,’ I remind myself aloud, glancing with distaste at the trotting budget-wolf when the driver’s door clicks shut beneath my palm.

Menace joins him beside a large trunk, and they dart into a run across the estate.

Even as the engine turns over and the track begins unspooling beneath the tyres, my fingers keep tightening around the steering wheel.

The sensation of loss won’t let go of me all the way to town.

The longer I turn it over in my head, the more I realise – this is the first time Elias and I have been apart this long since circumstances reduced us to one plate, one cup, one bed. We may have known each other for longer than the months I’ve spent here, but the cabin has compressed the last few into something else – lived solely within his reach.

Shaking my head, I promise myself to become more independent now that things have changed. I should own my time better. Get in touch with the Sámediggi and apologise until kingdom come for abandoning the cultural project I’d applied for.

I can already imagine the explanation: sincere apologies for abandoning the grant, followed by the minor administrative detail: a handsome local man abducted me and rearranged my priorities. Repeatedly.

The joke lands between my ears and dies there. It’s easier to make Norway sound filthy and ridiculous than admit I still do not know which parts of it have been my choice.

I need to get a grip on myself. His absence is a perfect time for that.

And I could start with learning something new.

Like fucking knitting.

I find the women by following the laughter, then recognising Inga’s voice among it.

She and her cousins are already gathered in the back room of Mee’s house, where the windows stand open to the mild air and the table has disappeared beneath coffee cups, cake crumbs and the disarray of coloured yarn.

They accept me with a loud exclamation and drag me into their chaos before I manage to take my trainers off.

We’re making Sunna a birthday blanket for her seventieth. Each of us is knitting a long panel that will later be joined into a blanket large enough to cover her bed. Every strip will carry a pattern tied to a memory.

Someone nudges a ball of wool towards me, and twenty minutes later I’m swearing at a dropped stitch while three women find amusement in it. Somehow, I laugh alongside them. Between Inga’s dramas, Mee’s corrections and the cousins arguing over whose panel looks least ridiculous, the hours loosen around me.