Travelling Light Read online

  She punched her jacket and sweater into a pillow, put her head down and closed her eyes. There was a party going on somewhere up the hill, snatches of song and laughter drifting through the trees. As she burrowed deeper into her bag, into her traitorous mind flitted an image of Lars lying beside her, his hands on her body, his mouth, so well remembered, kissing hers.

  Scowling into the darkness, cursing the two men in an Oslo park who had tried to steal her purse, she eventually fell asleep.

  * * *

  The next day was sunny and warm. Although Kristine had not slept well, the blue sky and gentle breeze raised her spirits. She breakfasted on fruit and sweet rolls, then walked the short distance to the town, whose main street had a series of little stalls bright with kites and balloons; the nearby beach was a long curve of clean, pale sand. Time for a swim, she thought, and headed back to the campsite to change.

  Her tent was set apart from the rest under the trees. In front of it, sitting in a dispirited heap on the grass, was a very small boy. He was sobbing quietly to himself, his fist jammed in his mouth, his face streaked with dirt and tears. He had plainly been crying for some time.

  Kristine walked across the grass and knelt beside him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said softly.

  He looked up at her with drowned blue eyes, babbled something in Norwegian, and started wailing in earnest. She brushed a mosquito from his ear, sat down on the grass, and took him in her arms. The language of comfort, she thought wryly, was universal. Rocking him gently, she sang him the lullaby that had never failed to work with Carl, who had had colic as a baby; as he quietened, she dried his tears with the tail of her shirt and played a finger game with him that had captivated all four of her brothers.

  The little boy was no exception. He gave a gurgle of laughter and burbled another incomprehensible phrase. ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying, love,’ Kristine announced. ‘But I would suspect you’re lost. Shall we go and see if we can find your mother?’

  He tugged at her fingers. ‘Om igjen, om igjen,’ he said.

  ‘Om igjen?’ she repeated doubtfully.

  A branch snapped in the trees. As Kristine looked up, a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped into the clearing, pushing aside a pine bough with one hand. ‘He wants you to do it again,’ he said.

  Kristine’s heart gave a great swoop in her breast and the little boy chanted, ‘Om igjen!’

  Lars. Here at her campsite in Mandal, hundreds of kilometres from Oslo, his long body outlined by the green leaves of the trees, his blond hair lit by the sun. To give herself time to think, wondering how long he had been watching her, she played the game again. As the little boy butted his head in her breast, chortling with delight, she held him close and said with a calmness she was far from feeling, ‘Hello, Lars. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you...is he lost?’

  ‘You tell me,’ she said ruefully. ‘I can’t understand a word he says.’

  The sun lancing through the trees dappled her body with a dancing pattern of light and shade; the child was now lying confidingly on her breast, his fingers clutching her shirt. Lars hunkered down beside them, addressing the boy very slowly, a smile softening his grey-blue eyes. His face was only inches from Kristine’s, so close that she caught the tang of his aftershave. He was wearing a loose-fitting shirt and cotton trousers, and looked very sure of himself. The little boy muttered a reply, tears crowding on to his lashes again.

  ‘His name is Leif and he can’t find his mother,’ Lars reported briefly. ‘Did you just find him?’

  ‘Just before you found me,’ she said, raising her chin in challenge.

  His glance flicked over her and withdrew. ‘Let’s check the campsites and the main gate,’ he said. ‘If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the town police.’

  He straightened, helping Kristine to her feet. For a moment his hands lingered on her elbow, his thumb smoothing her flesh. She had forgotten nothing, she thought helplessly; all the magic of his touch had been lying in ambush for her, waiting for his arrival. She jerked back, heard the child whimper in fright, and dropped her lips to his springy blond curls in compunction.

  Lars said roughly, ‘This is one of the furthest sites from the gate—let’s go up the hill.’ He set off ahead of her with long-legged strides.

  The child was heavy. Kristine took her time, admiring the lean grace of Lars’s movements and the way the breeze ruffled his hair, wishing she had the strength of character not to notice either one. He was stopping at each tent, many of which were deserted, asking the few people he found about the little boy. No one claimed him. But at the gate the attendant had been alerted about a missing child. ‘Two streets over and down a block,’ Lars reported. ‘The mother called half an hour ago.’

  ‘She must be so worried,’ Kristine said, shifting Leif’s weight to her other arm. ‘Carl ran away once and it took me two hours to find him...the longest two hours of my life.’

  ‘Let me take him—he’s heavy for you.’

  Heavy as her brothers had been heavy; and no one to help her with the burden. ‘I can manage,’ she said.

  Lars leaned over and extracted the boy from her arms. ‘I know you can. No reason that you should, though.’

  Leif gave her a sleepy smile, said, ‘Igjen,’ and closed his eyes again. His lashes curved on his cheek in a way that entranced her—she who wanted nothing to do with small boys.

  Unaware how vividly her features expressed her see-sawing emotions, she snapped, ‘Which way do we go?’

  ‘Across the street.’

  His car was parked in the shade of a tree near the entrance to the campsite. They were halfway down the street the attendant had named when a little girl on a bicycle braked beside them, gave Lars a gap-toothed grin and a staccato message, and took off down the street. ‘His cousin,’ Lars explained. ‘She’s gone to tell his mother.’

  Within minutes a woman in a pretty flowered dress was running towards them, her face distraught. When she saw the child in Lars’s arms, she started laughing and crying at the same time. Lars passed Leif over. Leif woke up, saw his mother, put his pudgy arms around her neck in a stranglehold, and began bellowing at the top of his lungs. As the woman hugged him to her, pouring out her thanks, Lars explained it was Kristine who had found him, and in a flurry of gratitude and disclaimers they parted company.

  Lars said, ‘Come on, I’ll buy you an ice-cream.’

  ‘I was going for a swim.’

  ‘We can do both.’

  ‘We?’ she retorted snappishly.

  ‘Or you and I—a foot apart on the sidewalk.’

  He was smiling at her in a way that melted her hostility as ice-cream would melt in the sun. ‘You look different,’ she said.

  ‘I feel different.’

  ‘Does your grandmother know you’re here?’

  ‘Indeed she does. After I discovered she’d been to see you, we had what Bestemor would call a difference of opinion and what I would call a fight. One of the things I told her was that I would never marry Sigrid.’

  ‘Is that why you look different?’

  ‘I look different because I let you leave Oslo much too easily and I’ve enjoyed tracking you down. What kind of ice-cream do you like?’

  Kristine was not yet ready to capitulate. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I have a good friend who just happens to be a police commissioner. Harald described your car to me, and the rest was easy—simply a matter of tracing it. Not many Fiats as old as yours still on the road.’

  ‘You wait until I see Harald!’

  ‘He seemed quite pleased to hear from me,’ Lars said ingenuously.

  ‘Huh!’ said Kristine.

  ‘Not as pleased as you are, though.’

  ‘Lars, nothing’s changed.’

  ‘Yes, it has. I now know my own mind, for one thing.’

  ‘I’ve known mine all along,’ she retorted.

  ‘Then I’ll have to do my best to change it, won’t
I?’ he said placidly. ‘There’s the ice-cream booth—what would you like?’

  ‘I want a triple cone with chocolate fudge, mint and butter pecan,’ she announced. ‘Then I’m going swimming.’

  ‘You’ll sink.’

  ‘You let me worry about that.’

  ‘I’ll have to come to your rescue. Again.’

  The glint in his eye was irresistible, and she was certainly pleased to see him. The sun was shining, Leif was restored to his mother, and she was going swimming in the North Sea with a man who was handsomer than any Viking. ‘I want peanuts on top of the ice-cream cone,’ she added.

  ‘Whatever your heart desires.’

  ‘Not a statement I shall respond to,’ she said with a grandeur worthy of Marta Bronstad.

  They wandered around the stalls, Kristine managing to get some of all three flavours of ice-cream on her shirt, and then went back to the campsite so that she could change into her swimsuit. Then they walked to the beach, Kristine wearing a long T-shirt over her flowered bikini, Lars with his trunks under his clothes.

  They crossed the pale, hot sand and put their towels down. Lars unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the sand, then stepped out of his trousers. Kristine wrenched her eyes away and hauled her shirt over her head. She hoped the North Sea was cold. Her hormones were not just stirred up; they were running rampant.

  Lars said casually, ‘It’s quite acceptable to go topless on this beach.’

  She had already noticed that. ‘Not me,’ she said warmly.

  Briefly his eyes rested on her small, firm breasts in their bikini-top. ‘Too bad,’ he remarked with an exaggerated leer.

  ‘Lars, what are you doing here?’ Kristine said breathlessly, and knew the question was nonsensical as soon as it was out.

  ‘Having fun.’

  ‘I’m glad one of us is.’

  He was openly laughing at her. ‘It would be nicer if both of us were.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me!’

  ‘I’m not doing anything to you—I’m not even touching you.’ He gave her body a comprehensive survey. ‘For which I deserve a medal.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  He suddenly dropped his bantering manner. ‘It wasn’t funny at all on Saturday night when I realised I was never going to see you again. I drank too much aquavit and woke up on Sunday morning with a well-deserved hangover—that wasn’t very funny either. I don’t know what I’m doing here, Kristine—I only know that being with you feels right. And I’m damned if I’m allowing you to tell me otherwise.’

  After which inclusive speech he ran down the sloping sand, splashed into the sea and plunged head first into the waves. More slowly Kristine followed him. Dipping her toe in, she decided the North Sea was certainly cold. Lars had surfaced, his hair plastered to his skull, his eyes very blue against the water. ‘The temperature of the ocean and the Scandinavian lack of passion are in direct relation,’ he yelled.

  Laughing, she ran to meet him, the water impeding her. She shrieked as a wave slapped at her waist. Then she too dived in, swimming underwater until his torso wavered in her vision. She burst up into the air and gasped, ‘Where did you learn to speak such good English?’

  ‘London, New York and Brisbane.’

  Her eyes narrowed. But before she could ask anything else he said, ‘You don’t tread water in the Norwegian Sea, Kristine—you swim. It’s called survival.’

  She splashed him with the flat of her hand, he lunged towards her, and she slid sleekly under the sea again. She was a good swimmer because two of her brothers had been on the school swimming team and she had always loved the water. But she had never had as much fun in the pool as she had in the next fifteen minutes while she and Lars played a rough game of tag; nor was she at all sure that the water temperature could kill passion as he had claimed.

  Of one accord they ran up the beach for their towels. Kristine dried her face and scrubbed at her arms, which were covered with goose-bumps, and heard Lars say, ‘Has anyone told you yet today how beautiful you are?’

  She glanced over at him. Water was trickling down his deep chest, droplets caught in his body hair. She swallowed. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘And you ask what I’m doing here?’ He rubbed his shoulders with his towel, holding her gaze with his. ‘Somebody has to tell you these things, and I’d much prefer it to be me.’

  Her hands stilled. He had been taking in every detail of her body, from the slender length of her legs and the curve of her hips to the shadowed valley between her breasts; and for a moment all his passionate longing for her body was there for her to see, naked in his eyes.

  Then he gave an exclamation of disgust and flung himself face down on his towel on the sand, burying his face in the crook of his elbow. Kristine spread her towel next to his and sat down, finally able to observe him without herself being observed.

  His legs were long and strongly muscled. His spine was a concave curve at his waist, rising to the taut buttocks under his brief swimming-trunks. She said sharply, ‘What’s that scar on your back?’

  ‘Plane crash.’

  ‘Where?’ she persisted.

  ‘Malaysia.’

  She said with a careful lack of emphasis, ‘Just how long have you been living with your grandmother? And where were you before that?’

  ‘Two months. Brazil. She had a minor stroke and I needed a break—so I came to help her sort out her affairs.’

  So Kristine’s assumption that Lars had been waiting around for his inheritance couldn’t have been more wrong. ‘How old are you, Lars?’

  ‘Thirty-one.’

  Kristine had a host of other questions, but somehow the sunlit beach did not seem to be the place to ask them. Earlier she had told Lars she knew her own mind where he was concerned. The problem was nothing to do with her mind, she thought drily; it was her body that kept betraying her. She reached in her bag for her suntan lotion, warmed some in her palm, and then, greatly daring, knelt at his side and began smoothing it over his back.

  His shoulders tensed at her touch. His skin was damp and cool from the sea. She worked her fingertips into his muscles, sliding her hands down the arch of his ribs and up to his elbows; and all the while she knew she was playing with fire. When she finally stopped, putting the cap back on the lotion and sitting back on her heels, Lars twisted to face her, pulled her down beside him, and kissed her with a passionate hunger she more than matched.

  Against her lips he murmured, ‘It’s permissible to go topless on the beach...but making love is frowned upon.’

  Dizzy with longing, Kristine whispered, ‘Boring old Scandinavians.’

  His second kiss in its inventiveness and generosity was anything but boring. And her unabashedly sensual response taught her as much about herself as about Lars. ‘We’ve got to stop,’ she muttered. ‘We’ll end up in the clink...which won’t impress your friend the commissioner.’

  ‘Or my grandmother.’ As he eased his body away from hers, she kept her arms rigidly at her sides so that she wouldn’t grab hold of him, and her gaze at the level of his breastbone so that she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. Lars said tersely, ‘Roll over and I’ll put some lotion on you—you’re so fair-skinned you could burn easily.’

  More playing with fire, she thought, and did as he asked. The slide of his hands down her ribcage was hypnotic, bathing her in heat, and she did not protest when he undid the strap of her bra, knowing he was learning the texture and lineaments of her body even as she had learned his. With every fibre of her being she ached to be joined to him, to experience all she was ignorant of; and for the first time in her life understood the power of her own sexuality.

  Eventually he stopped, stretching out alongside her, one arm resting heavy across her back. Slowly the tumult in Kristine’s body subsided; and as it did so she became aware of other concerns. Sand scratching her breast. The simple desire for a glass of water. And a cold, clear voice in her brain, a rational voice usurping the storm of emotion Lars had aroused.


  You’ve never made love because you’ve always been afraid you’d get pregnant and end up like your mother, it said. But you would have made love with Lars on the beach and not given a thought to any of the consequences. You don’t love him. You aren’t going to marry him. How can you risk getting pregnant by him? Are you out of your mind?

  That was exactly what she had been, she thought unhappily. Out of her mind and into her body in a way totally new to her. Nor was she at all sure, rational voice or no, if Lars were to kiss her in a place other than a public beach, that she could withstand him. She wanted him in a way that made nonsense of reason.

  Even in the midst of her unhappiness she knew her options were limited. She could have an affair with Lars, for pregnancy could be prevented. Or she could get in her car and do her best to lose him again. And this time stay lost.

  From the rhythm of his breathing she could tell that he had fallen asleep. She raised her head, noticing how his lashes lay on his cheek much as Leif’s had, wondering what he had been doing in Brisbane and Brazil and Malaysia. It was a strong face, she thought, and a used face; whatever he had done had not left him unmarked.

  The more time she spent with him, the harder it would be to walk away. Or, in her case, drive.

  She fumbled for the straps of her bikini and did them up, and as she did so Lars’s eyes opened. He said huskily, his face open to her in a way that weakened her very bones, ‘Ever since I met you, I’ve imagined waking up with you at my side.’

  What could she possibly say to that? Her eyes fell. She picked at the hem of her towel, knowing she had to get away, wondering how on earth she could outwit him. He said forcefully, ‘You’re not ashamed of anything we’ve done together, are you, Kristine?’

  ‘No,’ she said truthfully, ‘I’m not ashamed.’ Just terrified, she thought. My whole life, all twenty-three years of it, is telling me to run, when all I want to do is stay...