Grown Ups Read online

  WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT GROWN UPS

  ‘Short, droll and highly readable, Grown Ups is a slice of life that rings painfully true’

  ‘I absolutely loved this book’

  ‘I would strongly recommend to anyone who is looking for a holiday read with a punch’

  ‘The pages just flew by’

  ‘This is a fantastically crafted novel’

  ‘Sensitive, emotional, and littered with the kind of tongue in cheek humour that I love’

  ‘Very clever, wonderfully translated’

  ‘The Scandinavian setting was the icing on the cake, it was perfect escapism!’

  ‘A complex, layered story’

  ‘Every word [was] perfectly judged’

  ‘Full of simmering tension’

  ‘A potent little gem of a novel… Outstanding!’

  ‘A really poignant read with humour and drama scattered amongst the pages’

  ‘An excellent examination of family dynamics… I loved this’

  ‘Perfectly formed’

  ‘A well written and expertly translated slice of modern life. Would thoroughly recommend’

  ‘Painfully honest, and dark with a hint of humour. Grown Ups tells it like it is’

  ‘Well-written, thoughtful and original’

  ‘A book that drew me in from the first pages’

  ‘It’s funny, elegant and unexpectedly dark. A brilliant little book that I know I will return to’

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Grown Ups

  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

  Topics for Discussion

  About the Authors

  Available and Coming Soon from Pushkin Press

  Copyright

  GROWN UPS

  Chapter 1

  Other people’s children, always, everywhere. It’s always worse on the bus, when I’m trapped with them. My back is sweaty and I’m feeling irritable. The sun streams through the dirty windows, the bus has been full since we left Drammen, and more people pile on in Kopstad and Tønsberg and Fokserød, they’re forced to stand in the aisle, swaying as they hold on tight, in spite of the supposed guarantee of a seat for every passenger. In the seat behind me, a father sits with his child, a boy of about three, maybe, he’s watching videos on an iPad with the sound turned up, garish children’s animations. The music is loud and tinny, the father tries to turn the volume down every so often but the boy howls crossly and turns it back up again.

  I feel queasy after trying to read my book, and the battery on my phone is almost dead, so I can’t listen to a podcast either, all I can hear are the plinky-plonks of the metallic-sounding melodies. As we approach the Telemark tunnel, I can no longer hold my tongue and turn to face the father, he’s a young hipster sort with a beard and a stupid little man bun. I flash him a wide smile and ask if he could turn the sound down just slightly, please. I can hear the snappiness in my tone, he can tell that part of me is relishing this, but they can’t sit there on a full express bus in July with the sound blaring like that, they just can’t.

  ‘Uh, sure,’ the hipster dad says, then rubs his neck. ‘I mean, is it bothering you?’

  He speaks with a broad Stavanger accent.

  ‘It’s a bit loud,’ I reply, still smiling.

  He snatches the iPad from his child’s hands with a surly look on his face and the boy starts wailing at the top of his lungs, surprised and furious. The old couple sitting in front of me turn around and flash me a dismayed expression, not the child and his father, but me.

  ‘That’s what happens when you won’t let me turn the sound down,’ his father says. ‘It’s bothering the lady, so you can’t watch anymore.’

  The bus turns into the petrol station, where it’s scheduled to stop for a comfort break and coffee stop, and the boy lies prostrate across the seats, wailing, as I pick up my bag and hurry down the aisle leaving the sound of crying behind me.

  Kristoffer and Olea are waiting at Vinterkjær. Marthe isn’t with them. Kristoffer is so tall, Olea so short. She’s due to start school in the autumn, I think she looks far too little for that, slim and delicate.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ Kristoffer says. He gives me a long hug, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing me tight.

  ‘You too,’ I say. ‘Look how long your hair is now, Olea,’ I say, tugging gently on her ponytail.

  ‘Olea learnt to swim yesterday,’ Kristoffer says.

  Olea grins, revealing a gap where four top teeth had once been.

  ‘I swam without Daddy holding onto me,’ she says.

  ‘Wow,’ I say, ‘did you really? That’s brilliant.’

  ‘Marthe took a picture,’ Olea says. ‘You can see it when we get back.’

  ‘I’m guessing that Marthe was lounging around by the water’s edge,’ I say, putting my bag in the boot of the car.

  ‘Yes,’ Olea says, looking delighted in the back seat. ‘She was being really, really lazy.’

  ‘We don’t say things like that, Olea,’ Kristoffer says, starting the engine. ‘You know that.’

  I turn to look at Olea and wink, whispering to her:

  ‘Marthe is a bit lazy.’

  Kristoffer clears his throat.

  ‘I’m allowed to say it,’ I say. ‘I’ve got special permission to make jokes about that sort of thing.’

  It’s so tempting, it does Marthe good to be given a kick up the bum every now and then, and it’s so nice to wink at Olea, to make her giggle and watch as her eyes grow wide with glee at how funny I am. We drive along the coastal road, and I tell Kristoffer about the hipster dad and the boy with the iPad at full blast.

  ‘And people got annoyed with me,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t the one making the racket. The boy’s dad was really grumpy about it.’

  Kristoffer has a familiar scent, it’s the cabin, paint, salt water, body.

  ‘It’s not always easy to calm them down, you know,’ he says.

  ‘But you didn’t let three-year-old Olea sit on a packed bus with an iPad at full volume,’ I say.

  ‘Well, no,’ Kristoffer replies. ‘But people get so annoyed at children, they don’t know what it’s like. You have to let kids be kids.’

  Kristoffer is always saying things like that, let kids be kids, it’s important to listen to your body, things like that.

  ‘But there’s a difference between crying and having the volume turned right up,’ I say.

  I realise I’m trying too hard; I’m exposing myself now, revealing that this is something I don’t understand, and Kristoffer shrugs and flashes a smile.

  ‘Having the volume turned right up on a full bus,’ I repeat.

  ‘Breathe into your belly, Ida,’ he says, patting my thigh.

  I open my mouth to speak, but I stop myself, he’ll never get it anyway. I can tell Marthe, she tends to agree with me about things like this, it annoys her when Olea makes a racket. There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell her too, not as soon as we arrive, but tonight, after we’ve both had a few glasses of wine and Kristoffer is out of the way, when he’s off putting Olea to bed, then I’ll tell her.

  Chapter 2

  I was in gothenburg two weeks ago, I took the train th
ere alone, stayed in a hotel and walked a few blocks to a fertility clinic the next morning. It looked like any other doctor’s office, only more pleasant, brighter, with yucca plants in large pots and tranquil-looking images of mothers and babies or eggs and birds on the walls. The doctor’s name was Ljungstedt, and from his office there was a full view of the gym across the street. I found myself staring directly at people running on the treadmill and lifting weights. He pronounced my name the Swedish way, not like Ee-dah, but more like Ooh-dah, the first syllable lingering at the back of his throat as he tapped away at his computer keyboard without looking at me. He went through the process quickly, at what point in my cycle I’d start hormone treatment, how they’d remove the eggs, the fact that today he’d just be running a few blood tests and carrying out a gynaecological examination.

  ‘Oh yes, freezing one’s eggs has become ever so popular,’ he said, as if he were selling me something, even though I was already there.

  ‘So I gather,’ I replied with a chuckle.

  Everything felt open, the summer holidays were just around the corner, it was lovely and warm in Gothenburg and I’d reserved a table somewhere to savour a nice lunch with some expensive white wine, to toast the fact I’d be spending my savings on having my eggs removed and banked, on opening an egg account.

  ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity,’ he said. ‘If you don’t have a boyfriend or don’t want children quite yet.’

  ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of going ahead with things after the holidays.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll have a boyfriend in a few years from now, you could use them when you’re forty-two or forty-three,’ he said, tapping away on his keyboard. ‘That would be wonderful.’

  I tried to picture this boyfriend, imagining a tall man with a beard standing there in the office with me in a few years from now. I couldn’t picture his facial expressions, but I imagined him putting his arm around me in the lift on the way out, we’re going to be parents, Ida. One day, I thought as I lay there in the gynaecology chair, one day things have to work out, one day, after a long line of married and otherwise committed and uninterested and uninteresting men, things have to work out, just lying there made me believe both man and child might materialise, just the fact that I was there and actually doing it was a promise that there was more to come, one day.

  The doctor and I looked at my uterus on the ultrasound screen, he asked what I did for a living and I told him I was an architect.

  ‘You must draw some lovely houses,’ he said.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a pretty big company, most of our work is focused on public buildings and that kind of thing, town planning.’ I stopped myself, I was meandering into a lengthy explanation of who designed what, but it felt pointless as I lay there, legs spread, apparatus inside me. As I was on my way out the door to have blood tests done, still slimy and cold inside from the ultrasound jelly he’d used, he said that we’d speak again in two weeks’ time, once the results were in, and that we’d make a plan about when to begin, when everything would begin.

  Chapter 3

  I check my phone, no missed calls from any Swedish numbers. Kristoffer takes the bends at high speed, I feel slightly queasy and try to avert my gaze from a half-full bottle of Fanta and an empty crisp packet lying at my feet. He’s grown stouter, his cheeks rounder, I wonder if he and Olea sit in the car and secretly make their way through snacks and soft drinks together when Marthe isn’t around. His arms are tanned. Marthe told me they had a few nice days to begin with, they’d ventured out to the little islands and had been swimming several times, but it’s been changeable since then, so I’ve packed both my swimsuit and my woollen jumper.

  ‘When are Mum and Stein coming?’ I ask.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It’ll be nice to have an evening to ourselves tonight. Marthe’s not quite herself.’

  ‘Oh joy,’ I reply.

  ‘You know how it is,’ Kristoffer says, scratching at his beard. ‘Hormones.’

  He says it in a way that suggests I understand, you know how it is; he knows perfectly well that I’ve got no idea what it’s like, but still I nod, sure, I get it.

  ‘Poor Marthe,’ I say, crossing my arms so my fingertips reach my sweaty armpits. I try to work out if I smell.

  They’ve been trying for three years straight, ever since they got together. Marthe has had two miscarriages. She can’t keep it to herself, I know as much as she does about the whole thing, when she’s got her period, when she’s ovulating. It’s all we talk about whenever we’re together, whenever we see Mum, Marthe talking and crying, telling us she can’t take it anymore, that she doesn’t just want to be a stepmother, but nobody says stepmother anymore, Marthe, Mum says, stroking her back, you’re part of a big bonus family, that’s what they call it these days, bonus family, Marthe repeats, where’s my bonus, it’ll work itself out eventually, I say, stroking her back too, Mum and I both telling her it’ll work itself out eventually, the same thing every time, but when exactly, Marthe shouts.

  Occasionally I chat to my colleagues over lunch about my younger sister stressing out about becoming pregnant, I tell them that I don’t know how she does it, there must be other things to spend your days thinking about, instead of just endlessly trying to make it happen.

  When we pull up outside the cabin, I sit up in my seat.

  ‘Have you two been painting?’ I ask.

  ‘Yep,’ Kristoffer says. ‘Well, mostly me, to be honest. It looks nice, right?’

  ‘It does,’ I reply. ‘Really nice.’

  They’ve painted the cabin white. It’s always been yellow, the yellow cabin, it’s what I’ve always told people, we’re the ones with the yellow cabin. Now it looks like every other cabin around here, ordinary.

  Kristoffer takes my bag. I tell him I can carry it myself, I’m not like Marthe, who wants Kristoffer to help her with every little thing, but Kristoffer says it’s fine and takes it anyway. Olea runs ahead of us, over the gravel and up the garden path, stone slabs flanking the hedge. She runs everywhere, as if some great amusement always awaits her somewhere up ahead. When I was younger, the hedge was a thick, dense cedar, but Mum replaced it with mock orange a few years ago, she’d wanted something a bit more delicate.

  Marthe walks out onto the steps, she looks tired and rubs her face. I smirk.

  ‘Have you been to collect Aunt Ida, eh?’ she asks, ruffling Olea’s hair. Olea steps back, wriggling free from Marthe’s grasp and running away. Marthe knows that I don’t like to be called Aunt Ida, but she says it anyway. I picture the illustrations from Elsa Beskow’s children’s stories, the Swedish classics about Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender, imagine something shrivelled up, creaky.

  We hug.

  ‘Hi,’ Marthe says.

  ‘Hey, old friend,’ I say. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  Marthe smells nice, familiar, it’s almost as if it is my own scent I’m smelling. Her hair is lighter in colour, it doesn’t look completely natural, and it’s been cut in a style I remember being fashionable a few years ago.

  ‘This is nice,’ I say, lifting it up as I run my fingers through it.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Marthe asks. ‘I think the colour is a bit too light.’

  ‘Not at all, you look pretty,’ I tell her.

  People think I’m prettier than Marthe, they always have, and Marthe has a complex about her nose and her boobs, so she perks up when I tell her she’s pretty. She’s easy to please, you just have to drop in a few compliments.

  Kristoffer follows Olea around behind the cabin, Marthe and I go inside. The door creaks slightly, it has the same familiar scent, summers long past, old woodwork.

  ‘Ready for the big day?’ she asks as I haul my bag into the tiny bedroom, the one I always sleep in.

  ‘Yes and no,’ I reply. ‘Definitely ready for some wine, at least.’

  ‘Do we have to say anything?’ Marthe asks, sitting on my bed. ‘Give a speech or anything?’
>
  ‘Doubt it,’ I say. ‘But I’ve prepared something, just in case.’

  ‘Super-daughter,’ Marthe says with a smile, the corners of her mouth drooping downwards slightly. ‘I haven’t had the energy to tackle that particular task.’

  I take off my shoes, my feet are sweaty. I feel a pang when she calls me super-daughter, it shouldn’t feel that way, she’s just jealous.

  ‘But I don’t know if I should say anything to her and Stein,’ I tell her. ‘She won’t be expecting it, surely? Should I be talking for both of us?’

  ‘A toast to Mum and Frankenstein,’ Marthe says, raising her hand as if holding a glass.

  ‘Stein’s nice, Marthe,’ I reply, laughing.

  Marthe chuckles.

  ‘To Mum and Einstein,’ I say.

  We’re celebrating Mum’s sixty-fifth birthday tomorrow evening, Marthe and Kristoffer and Olea and me and Mum and Stein, we’re all going to eat prawns and drink wine. Mum said it could double up as a celebration for my fortieth too, I told her that wasn’t necessary, it’s three months too late for it anyway. I didn’t do much to celebrate on the day, just went out with a few friends, we had a three-course dinner and a few glasses of wine and that was that, most of them had to get home to their kids. When Mum turned forty at some point back in the Nineties, she received a card that said, ‘Life begins at forty!’ I remember it to this day, it was decorated with rockets and shooting stars. Mum liked it and found it amusing, she kept coming back to that phrase all year, life begins at forty! she would say, and her friends would raise a glass. I remember them as ladies of a certain age, women with dry lipstick and school-age children, and when they got together, they would call it a girls’ night. When I turned forty, I felt the same as I always had, I had no sense that this would be when life began. On my birthday, a friend told me that I looked good, as if it were some kind of consolation; immediately after she had said how nice it must be to be alone, because it allowed one to really get to know oneself, and I remember thinking to myself that it might be nice to get to know someone else, too.