Chilled to the Bone by Quentin Bates Page A

andGísli between them had built, and poured herself a mug. “What’s the matter, Gísli?”
    “Ach … Nothing … Laufey’s not home is she?”
    “No, your sister’s at Sigrún’s and she’s babysitting until about eight. Steini’s doing a job in Akranes today and won’t be back until tonight, so we have the place all to ourselves. Now, what’s the matter? Soffía’s all right, isn’t she?”
    She poured coffee into another mug and pushed it toward Gísli.
    “Well, yeah. Sort of,” he dithered, and Gunna looked at him with the silent tell-me-more expression she used on suspects but had to remind herself not to use on family.
    “It’s like this …” Gísli said, fumbling for words. “Soffía … she’s great and I love her to bits …”
    “She’s a lovely girl,” Gunna agreed. Her prospective daughter-in-law had been Gísli’s girlfriend for more than a year, and while Gunna had been concerned they were too young to settle down, she was certain that Soffia, with her quick intelligence, sharp humor and red curls, would calm her son down into a responsible young man. The news of Soffía’s pregnancy had been disturbing to start with, but it seemed that the young couple had everything organized. Gísli would take the winter off from the trawler he had been working on and use the time to study for his mate’s certificates, while Soffía was confident that her teacher training could continue uninterrupted.
    Gísli gulped. “It’s like this …” he said while Gunna waited with growing concern.
    “Soffía’s chucked you out?”
    “No. Nothing like that. Well, not yet, at any rate. Fuck … sorry, mum.”
    “Gísli! Calm down, will you? Take a deep breath and start from the beginning.”
    Gísli stood up and walked around the kitchen, car keys andphone rattling in his fingers. “It’s like this. You know when we told you that you were going to be a …”
    “A grandmother. Yes, I remember. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.”
    “Look. You weren’t very pleased, were you? Said we could have waited a year or two.”
    “I know. I still think you should both have finished college first. But these things happen, and considering I was sixteen when you came along, I’m in no position to preach.”
    “The thing is, Mum,” Gísli continued, pausing again and sitting back down on a stool opposite her. “The thing is that you’re going to be a granny twice over.”
    There was a long silence and the clock over the stove ticked to fill it. Even the radio burbling in next door’s garage could be heard.
    “Twins?” Gunna asked eventually. “Tell me Soffía’s having twins.”
    Gísli shook his head in misery. “You know when we went to Vestureyri for Granny Árnína’s funeral last year and you had to stay behind while I went south and Drífa got a lift with me to Reykjavík?”
    “Your cousin Drífa?”
    “Well, she’s not really my cousin. She’s uncle Svanur’s stepdaughter.”
    Gunna thought back to the tall girl with the midnight hair and black clothes, who seemed to have gone from a gawky high-school adolescent to a stunning young university student in the space of a single summer.
    “Soffía’s having a baby in April and Drífa’s having one in …?”
    “May.”
    Gunna stood up and wondered what she could say that she wouldn’t regret later. She stared out of the window at the grey slush on the road outside and the shadow of the distant mountains with moonlight glinting on their white slopes.
    “Gísli …”
    He sat with his head in his hands. “I’m really sorry, Mum.”
    Gunna reached for the kitchen cupboard and pulled out the bottle of cognac that was kept behind the packets of breakfast cereal.
    “I think we both might need one of these,” she decided, putting the bottle in front of Gísli and reaching for two shot glasses from the cupboard under the bar.
    “Y OU COULD HAVE woken me up this morning,” Agnes complained. Jóel Ingi checked