Christmas Island Read online

  Christmas Island

  Natalie Normann

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  * * *

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  * * *

  Copyright © Natalie Normann 2020

  * * *

  Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  * * *

  Natalie Normann asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  * * *

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  * * *

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  * * *

  Source ISBN: 9780008362744

  Ebook Edition © November 2020 ISBN: 9780008362720

  Version: 2020-11-06

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Recipe: Aunt Berit’s Christmas Cake

  Recipe: Delfia Cake

  Recipe: Norwegian Wort Cake

  Thank you for reading…

  You will also love…

  About the Author

  Also by Natalie Normann

  One More Chapter...

  About the Publisher

  To my beautiful grandmother Elise, who always made Christmas so special for us. To my always funny grandfather Waldemar, who was the best – and scariest – julenisse ever.

  * * *

  To Maria and Anan for the Christmases now.

  Chapter One

  A huge spruce or fir or whatever it was called stood on the pier, swaying in the wind. It looked as miserable as she felt despite the blinking white fairy lights.

  Holly Greene dragged the suitcase behind her through the slush on the concrete pier. What looked like patches of snow was ice and half-melted sleet. She looked down on her brand new winter boots and realised she would have been better off with wellingtons or even sneakers.

  The lights from the ferry cast a strange, white light onto everything, but didn’t reach very far from where she stood.

  As far as she could see, there were only a few houses near the harbour. She could see lights in their windows. Also all sorts of Christmas lights: hanging stars, wreaths, and even menorahs.

  She looked back at the ferry. It was still there. Perhaps she could return to town, get a nice warm hotel room, preferably with a humongous bathtub, and come back in the morning? It had seemed like a good idea to catch the last ferry. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She already regretted the whole trip, but Jack had been so eager for her to see his new life, she couldn’t refuse. Come meet Ninni and baby Rosie, stay for Christmas, he had said. Please. She had a strong feeling her dad and Jack had conspired to get her away from London, but truth be told, she hadn’t protested much.

  ‘Damn it,’ she muttered.

  Why was it so dark? And bloody wet? This was Norway in December, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t there be snow-covered mountains, wild ski slopes, snowmen with carrots in their round faces and angels in the snow? Instead it rained or snowed or both; it felt like ice barbs against her face. Apart from those few cosy windows, everything else was pitch black.

  And damn Jack for not being here.

  ‘To hell with this,’ she muttered and turned around to see the ferry cast off and sail away. Leaving her to fend for herself. She felt like bloody Robinson Crusoe.

  Time to call for help. Holly stopped to look at her phone. Battery was almost dead and here she was, facing the great dark north all by herself. She couldn’t even call Jack because he was in Spain showing off Rosie to Ninni’s mum.

  Holly took a deep breath. Jack had said all she had to do was take the path past the shop, and walk straight ahead until she came to a rack of mailboxes, go past the rack and Ninni’s house would be on the top of the hill.

  She was going to send him a harsh text. Her hands were shaking from the cold and before she managed to stop it, the mobile slipped out of her fingers and landed in a puddle of slush.

  ‘Oh, blast it,’ she said, almost bursting into tears.

  When she picked up the phone, it gave away one last, green light, before turning completely dark. Holly tried to shake off the water, only to lose the phone again.

  She finally shoved it in the pocket of her new winter parka, before giving the suitcase another pull. The pathway between the houses wasn’t difficult to find. A huge sign on a building revealed the shop. “Joker”, it said. Strange name for a shop, she thought.

  Holly regained hope. She looked at the houses as she passed by.

  They look kind of nice, she thought. Perhaps the lights in the windows were all part of the hygge thing the Danes raved about. Did Norwegians also do that? She had no idea.

  Soon the houses and the pier disappeared behind her. The wind picked up and she discovered that a parka bought at a charity shop was woefully inadequate for proper, shitty weather.

  If I’m going to survive for whatever time I’m here, I need one of those anoraks that Inuits use, the ones made of polar bear fur, she thought. Preferably one with fur inside and outside. Which probably was against the law and constituted animal cruelty, so no. Might be better to get a space suit. They were built for outer space, which was probably as cold as this, she thought.

  The suitcase suddenly stopped and she almost fell forward. She pulled hard at it, and it slipped loose from the wet ground with a loud “glup”.

  Holly looked around, realising she stood in complete darkness. She caught her breath. Once, when she was little, Danny had pushed her into a cupboard and slammed the door. The darkness had seemed so vast, so huge, that she had been sure she would never see lights again.

  The only thing that worked was singing, so she started singing ‘Jingle Bells’. It seemed appropriate.

  Jingle bells. Jingle bells. Jingle all the way.

  Above her head, she spotted a few stars through the clouds. Somehow that helped.

  The problem was, she couldn’t see more than a few inches ahead of her. What if this was the end o
f the island, if there even was such a thing, and what if she took another step, only to plunge into the ocean? Her next thought was how on earth it could be so dark at seven in the evening? It was insane.

  Holly dug into her pocket to find the phone. Even it’s pathetic torch would be better than this darkness. She pressed the buttons and hoped for a miracle. Not even a shimmer of light from the screen.

  ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,’ she belted out, trying to keep the shaking under control.

  When she drew her breath for another verse, she became aware of a weird sound behind her. A growling sound. And she dropped the phone for the third time. It made a squelching noise as it hit the ground. Holly forgot all about the sound she had heard.

  ‘Oh, damn this. Why the hell did I come here to the middle of nowhere?’

  She bent down, trying to find the slim, black phone case in the dark. It’s probably ruined anyway, she thought. The slush was freezing cold and she kept picking up stones, but no phone.

  ‘Where are you, wretched thing,’ she muttered to herself.

  The growling got closer and she froze. The search was forgotten. What the hell was that?

  Holly turned around, trying to determine where the sound came from or even what it was.

  The sound continued and then she saw them. A pair of glowing eyes in the dark. What kind of animal did that? Holly couldn’t remember if they had wolves in Norway. Did they? Or perhaps it was some kind of giant lynx? She had no idea if a lynx would attack people.

  She stood, feeling a bit safer standing.

  The growling grew louder and the eyes came closer. Werewolves? Oh, crap. Vampires!

  Holly stood completely still, unable to move, unable to breathe. Perhaps I can stand like this until morning, she thought.

  After a while the cold seeped through the soles of her fancy winter boots. Bloody useless they are, she thought.

  I have the choice of either freezing to death or being eaten by a wild predator or some kind of mythical beast. And to think I could have been in my warm flat in London, enjoying a glass of wine and some mind-numbing Christmas movie on the telly, talking to Jocelyn and having a grand time. Thanks, Jack, she thought.

  Instead she was about to die because her brother convinced her that a trip to a bloody island in the middle of the North Sea would do her all sorts of good.

  Or actually, it was all Brian’s fault for behaving like an utter bastard in the middle of the hospital.

  ‘Hopefully I will die quickly and painlessly,’ she mumbled, swallowing the fear. That way I don’t have live through the humiliation and frustration I’m experiencing right now. The thought cheered her up a little.

  Another sound broke through the panic. It sounded like rustling. Wolves, she thought, were-bloody-wolves. Or trolls. Trolls were a thing in Norway, she knew that much. I’m going to die in complete darkness.

  She would so haunt them all after she was eaten.

  Chapter Two

  Holly couldn’t get her eyes away from the glowing orbs. They seemed to grow bigger by the second. And the damn creature was still growling.

  The other sound came again and then the hellbeast jumped behind her and Holly lost it. She screamed.

  A voice cut through the panic.

  ‘Stå i ro,’ he yelled.

  Holly hiccupped and forced herself to breathe. She had no idea what the words meant. All she understood was that there was a giant beast of some sort leaning against her legs and a screaming man in front of her.

  His voice was so brash, so angry, she forgot to panic. Holly drew her breath.

  ‘Who… who are you? Are you real?’

  The man came so close she could see his face. A full beard hid most of his features. His head was covered in a woolly bobble hat and his eyes were stern. But she could see he had short hair and surprisingly brown eyes. Also, he towered over her. A proper Viking. The thought almost made her smile.

  He changed languages and spoke English. ‘Are you mad? What are you doing out here?’

  ‘Out where?’ Holly knew that if she hadn’t been so scared, she would have run. But she could still not see what kind of creature was behind her. ‘I came from the harbour. I’m trying to find my brother’s house.’

  ‘You’re on the wrong side of the island, woman. How did you get here?’

  ‘How do you think I got here? By bus? I walked. Why is it so bloody dark everywhere?’

  He looked as annoyed as she felt.

  ‘It’s late evening. You’re on an island. There are no street lights out here. Give me your hand,’ he said.

  Holly hesitated. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you are standing on the edge of a cliff and if you step backwards, even a bit, you’re going to fall into the sea,’ he said.

  Holly couldn’t feel her feet, much less take a step. ‘I can’t move,’ she whispered.

  He looked like he was about to roll his eyes, but he didn’t. Instead he held out his own hand and grabbed her, none too gently, and pulled her towards him.

  Holly gasped when she fell against his chest. She realised she was safe, and then all the fear and stupid panic welled up and she erupted.

  ‘What are you doing, you idiot? You scared me half to death. You bastard!’ she yelled. ‘There isn’t even an edge, is there?’

  He held her, despite her wriggling to get away from him, and turned her around with one easy movement. ‘Look,’ he said and turned on a powerful torch.

  Holly swallowed. There really was an edge there, and the drop seemed to go on forever.

  ‘Oh, dear god,’ she said.

  Then she looked down and almost screamed again. A giant black cat stared up at her, its eyes glowing in the torch light.

  ‘This is Frøy. He won’t bite. He won’t bite you, I mean,’ the man said.

  Holly wasn’t convinced. ‘Is… is he some kind of lynx?’

  ‘Have you ever seen a lynx?’

  ‘No, not really. Never a Norwegian lynx, anyway,’ Holly said, trying to find her bearings.

  ‘Frøy is mostly a Norwegian Forest Cat. He’s also the one who saved your life,’ the man said. ‘He heard you sing and followed the sound.’

  Holly looked at the cat who now sat on the ground, the tale around his legs, looking like a huge, fluffy, black cloud. How on earth did I think he was a werewolf? she thought.

  ‘Where do you live?’ the man asked outright.

  ‘London,’ she said.

  He gave her an exasperated look and pointed at the ground.

  ‘No, where do you live here, on the island?’

  By now Holly realised she was shivering from the cold and most likely also shock. ‘I was on my way to Ninni Torps’s house. She’s my brother’s partner,’ she said. ‘I thought it was close to the pier, but it was all dark and there was no signs to follow and I got lost.’

  ‘The harbour is all the way on the other side of the island. How long did you walk for?’

  ‘The boat or ferry or whatever it’s called, docked at six-thirty, I think, and I’ve walked since then.’

  ‘And it’s now almost eight o’clock. Didn’t you notice that you were lost?’

  Holly couldn’t take it anymore. Eight o’clock? That didn’t make sense. And being berated by some bearded stranger was too much. ‘If you could please show me where Ninni’s house is, I’ll find my own way, thank you very much,’ she said in her most sarcastic voice.

  He seemed totally unaffected. ‘Sorry, can’t do it. I don’t know anyone here.’

  ‘You don’t know anyone? How is that possible? It’s a damn island!’

  Holly remembered Jack saying that everyone on the island had been there for ages, generations even, and they all knew each other.

  ‘It’s possible because there is this thing called renting a house for a limited period of time,’ he said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

  Holly glared at him. ‘So, what am I supposed to do? Stand here until the sun comes up?’

  ‘Which, i
f we had been further north, would have meant you would be waiting until spring,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘If you prefer to remain here, daylight will commence in about fourteen hours. Best of luck and good night.’

  He turned to leave and Holly couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘Are you really leaving me here, in the bloody dark?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’ He did stop, she noticed.

  Holly swallowed a few choice words. ‘No, not really. I really don’t want to fall off that cliff, thank you.’

  ‘Then you have no other choice than to follow me.’

  ‘I… I need to find my phone. I dropped it when your cat growled. Could you please use that torch to help me find it?’

  He seemed to hesitate, then turned the torch to the ground.

  Holly heaved a sigh of relief when she spotted the phone. It was most likely beyond repair, but still. Maybe it was salvable if she could put it in a bowl of rice or something.

  ‘Take it with you. I’m leaving now.’ The man didn’t look well pleased when he turned around and started walking away from her.

  What was his problem? Holly thought.

  ‘You know, my brother said that the islanders are really nice people,’ she said, trying to keep up the pace and still dragging the suitcase behind her.