Free The House by the Fjord by Rosalind Laker Page B

for sale and she had made a raspberry-flavoured one, which she put outside her apartment on top of a cupboard on the landing to cool, knowing that it would set quicker there in the unheated area than in her warm apartment. A little later when she was on her way out to visit Molly, she found it had frozen to solid ice, giving her an indication just how cold it could be indoors as well as out when there was no stove to keep everything warm.
    Karl Haug had been posted elsewhere and so Anna did not see him more than a couple of times after the night she wished to forget. His gaze had lingered on her and they had spoken, but he had made no attempt to restart what had happened between them.
    Another purchase Anna made was a spark . This was a simple form of transport that everyone seemed to possess, for these were everywhere. It consisted of a simple wooden chair fastened on to two metal runners, which extended behind it, and it was on these that one scooted along the icy roads while holding on to the top of the chair, with sometimes either a passenger or purchases on the seat. Anna had come on her spark on the evening she and Molly had decided to go to the airfield cinema to see the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera .
    â€˜You sit and I’ll scoot,’ Anna said as they were about to set off. Molly was wearing an ancient fur coat that her mother had sent her. She would not wear it in daylight, having once caught a glimpse of a customer in an Oslo shop mirror and thought what a terrible sight the woman presented in a ginger fur coat and a woolly hat, until she had realized with dismay that it was a reflection of herself.
    The runways, illumined by the airfields lights, gave a wonderful surface for a good pace as they swept along between the high banks of cleared snow on either side. They had covered quite a distance when an unexpected happening took place. Two young airmen, bundled up like polar bears in their thick jackets and fur hats, who had spotted them from a distance, came darting forward with a whoop of triumph.
    â€˜Want some help?’ one joked as he and his companion leapt one behind the other on to the runners with Anna, and promptly increased the pace of the spark to a tremendous speed. Molly uttered a piercing shriek, which was drowned by the airmen’s noisy cheering, and Anna clung desperately to the back of the passenger-chair, her cries to slow down unheeded. The runway was skimming away under them until suddenly there was a deafening crack as one of the metal runners snapped. The next moment all four of them were sent flying on to the runway.
    Anna felt like a spinning top as she slid across the icy surface. As she sat up, she was relieved to see that nobody was injured. Molly, who was sitting with her legs stuck out in front of her, her fur coat split from shoulder to hem, was laughing helplessly at the stark expressions of the two airmen as they recognized her as the wife of one of their senior officers. It was obvious they had mistaken her and Anna for two civilian girls from the kitchens, homeward bound on the spark .
    Molly cut short their apologies as they helped her up, Anna already on her feet. ‘Just find us another spark ,’ Molly said in Norwegian, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, ‘and then I’ll forget I ever saw you.’
    They bolted off to do her bidding and returned very soon afterwards on another spark at almost the same speed. They saluted smartly as Anna and Molly set off again, both of the young men still awed by what they had done. Afterwards, on a leisurely homeward run, Molly declared she had laughed far more at them than at the Marx brothers.
    It was at this time of freezing temperatures that Anna saw the Northern Lights for the first time. They were pale and wispy, but they were there, brushing long fingers of feathery light over the whole night sky in a way that was both beautiful and strange. She gazed at them in wonder. Then, when it became still