9. Teddy

T he little runt, I'd named her Fifi. Maybe I'd done that because I was a total twat, or…maybe because I needed something. Then Fifi started coming up to me and screeching whenever she was hungry, clawing at my socks and batting her kitty eyelashes at me, so of course she ended up sleeping in my bed too because she was a baby and needed nighttime feeds. Which was so, sooo very wrong. The cats had never been allowed upstairs, but my dad wasn't here anymore to tell me off. Cats were cats. Sometimes they sat on the stairs. When the sun came through the window on the landing, it made a perfect warm spot on the floor.

Fifi also liked the warmth of my chest against her soft fur. She loved her feeds snuggled against me.

Cat Mum had relented and finally come inside to feed her other kittens like the good girl she was. I'd tried to give Fifi back to her, but she'd hissed, and I'd got the message. Okay, Mum. We're all good.

Cat Dad. I got it. I truly did, but that didn't mean I could let go of everything else. I smiled politely at my two hired farmhands, who were waiting in their truck on the forecourt. They'd worked with me before, and I liked them, hard-working, honest blokes who brought their own tools and lunches complete with battered flasks of coffee to match mine. Despite their contracts, they preferred to start early and work through their breaks, keep going until we lost the light again and had to give in to nature .

It was cold today, and the darkness didn't help. Autumn was truly sweeping in, and before long, the ground would freeze, making our work harder. I never used to dread manual labour, the hard graft that would make my body ache. I'd wake up the next morning and gently stretch myself out, put my limbs back in their rightful places and carry on, but I was feeling it this morning. We'd worked on the ditches all day yesterday, getting the rubbish out of the way so the water could flow freely come spring. New Life. All that thaw water trickling down. Light. I missed the sun. We hadn't seen it for days—we'd been working deep in the forest, under the canopy of trees for the past week—but today should be an easy job, just clearing the ditches alongside fields full of saplings, those tiny trees that would one day fill the horizon with green.

"Boss," one of them said in English. I was sure he spoke perfect Swedish, having been around these parts for years, but what did I know? Some of our regular farmworkers travelled extensively, a few months on the Norwegian side, up north, down south, on the ferry back to mainland Europe for a few months before they rocked up here again in their clapped-out truck, the boot full of tools, ready to help me get my shit in order.

I got out my iPad and pulled up the map, GPS coordinates neatly pinned from yesterday where we'd finished off, a clear red line where I needed the ditches done today. Easy instructions. Job done. I knew they would, because life out here was just like that.

Instructions issued, a couple of grunts and nods, and off they went. I would join them later, but first, I needed to take Cat Mum to the vet's and get her neutered. No more kitty babies for her, but first I needed to find her because cats were sneaky critters, and while I'd blocked up the cat flap to keep the kittens inside, the adult cats still managed to sneak in and out.

Mostly out.

FML. I'd spent an hour this morning walking around outside, banging the metal feed bowls and shaking bags of dry treats, but Cat Mum was still hiding like the pro she obviously was, and I felt like a right prat, especially since the chainsaw trainers were here for the week, getting this year's students licensed, ready for winter.

Chainsaw licences were a necessity out here, as was up-to-date safety gear and frequent inspections. My heart jolted at the reminder. That was something else I had to deal with today. This guy walking towards me, all kitted out in oranges and rip-resistant fabrics and with a shit-eating grin on his face, was the chainsaw safety inspector, trainer and…someone I'd hooked up with. Once or twice.

"Ted," he barked.

I nodded.

He handed me some paperwork and winked.

Perhaps a few months ago, I would have winked back. Today, that small gesture made the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end.

"Staying up at the guesthouse for the week," he said, matter of fact, like I wouldn't know what he was hinting at by telling me.

"Nice. I hear it's been renovated now."

Bloody Flo and her gossip, but I wasn't taking his bait. My body was screaming with the need to flee. I didn't understand why. Well. I did because…

Fuck.

"Not this time," I said quietly.

"Met someone?" he asked.

Maybe I nodded. Maybe I avoided the obvious answer because I hadn't actually met anyone, but at the same time, I didn't know what to say. How to…

"You don't have to explain. Happy for you, mate," he said and walked off, leaving me squirming.

There was no way I was hooking up with anyone. My heart was still too fragile, too bruised from something that should have been a few hours of mindless nostalgia and instead had completely floored me.

Right on time, there was Cat Mum, sitting on the bonnet of my truck like the entitled brat she was. She may have been smart, but I was smarter and quicker for once. Grabbing her by her neck, I shoved her under my coat so I could get her calm enough to be manhandled into the travelling cage at the back of the boot .

Bloody cats. Perhaps Flo was right. I should stop feeding them and let them get on with life. There were certainly enough rodents here for them to feast on in the summer. In the winter…

Winter was when this farm really took off, when I'd be on my feet all day, my head ready to explode from sorting out our orders for trees. All of them had to be the right height, felled from the correct field. My dad had always handled everything like the professional he'd been, and last year, I'd been too frazzled to actually enjoy it, living in a constant panic with my dad struggling to breathe in the living room while I seemed to breathe far too much out here.

They weren't good memories.

Winter was also when the students took up selling trees on the forecourt to raise funds for the college. I took my cut, of course, but they earned big money from home baking and coffee and homespun arts and crafts. On those winter weekends, we'd run a proper market here. People travelled from all over the county to buy their trees from us. My dad used to dress up as Santa and hand out small gifts to the visiting kids. He'd ordered baked goods from local bakeries back then; now we made do with whatever our students could whisk up.

It was still mostly Christmas trees, but without the whole song and dance of the old days. I wasn't like that. Couldn't even think about it without getting sad.

I drove up the hill and headed into town with Cat Mum screeching in the cage at the back. I needed to pick up feed and grab my food shop on the way home but needed to make it back in time to catch the chainsaw team and sign their goddamn paperwork and check up on the ditch clearance—the list was never-ending.

I hadn't had a day off in weeks, and it was starting to show. I was tired. So goddamn tired.

It was dark when I left, and the sparse hours of daylight were fading as I headed home, the whole world bathed in a grey, misty dusk.

I didn't like driving in the dark, never had. I found the bright lights of oncoming traffic too distracting. The flickering headlights too bright, the dark wet asphalt too loud against the tyres. Perhaps because it was out here on these dark roads where my mum had lost control of her car. Nobody's fault. Nobody could have foreseen what happened. She'd just driven off to do her yoga course or whatever it had been and never come home again.

I remembered very little from those times, being fed information through whispered snippets overheard from adults around me. I hadn't understood what had happened, but it turned into nightmares and a terrifying fear of losing my dad too.

I was older now. An adult, but the dark and the roads, they still gave me chills. Like Mum's spirit was still out here haunting me. Dad had said she would always be here to protect me. I doubted she'd hung around, because why should she? She was buried at the graveyard in her hometown, hours away from here, a place we'd never visited, because Dad had said it didn't matter. She wouldn't have wanted us to mourn her, leave flowers in a place she'd never loved.

She'd loved this place, I remembered that. Small memories of laughter and flowers and sunshine fluttered through my mind. Her skin against my cheek. The way she'd loved me, like Dad had— I'd wanted his ashes here, but, well, Swedish laws were laws, so Dad's ashes were scattered in the local memorial gardens by the church he'd never been part of.

I cringed at myself and my weirdness. Too many thoughts. I cranked up the radio and turned the car down the gravel road to home. Dark. Slippery. Too narrow. Sometimes dangerous.

I took it easy down the hill. Violet really needed to keep on top of these branches and get her road markings in place. That was another job on my list, too, before the ground froze over—to set up the tall orange sticks that would tell us where the road had been before the snow moved in and covered everything in a muffled blanket and tricked our eyes. It was easy to have an accident out here.

Dad had been as paranoid about driving as I was. Scars on your soul indeed.

The familiar light of Violet's yard brought a different sheen to the dusk as I took the gentle corner and set off down the last stretch.

I glanced up, wishful thinking of seeing him standing there in those green overalls he'd used to wear back then. Weekends driving past here with Dad, looking to see if he was there. I'd never understood why, apart from that I'd always liked looking at him. I'd been a teenage boy, and he had been beautiful, and then…mine for an hour of insanity. Twice over. Mine.

He wasn't of course, having buggered off back to the other side of the Atlantic—his home—and this here was my home. The spotlights over the college sheds showing off the groups of students still hanging around, a few cars in the car park, the distant sounds of chainsaws as people were told how to safely use pieces of motorised equipment. One second of lost concentration could mean the loss of a limb. I'd sat through those courses more times than I wanted to think about. Perhaps I should join in and refresh myself.

Or perhaps I should go sit in my kitchen and ponder my future, figure out how to actually paint the walls. Buy myself some furniture. Clear out my own room.

Swedish Death Cleaning had done its job for my dad, far too well. There wasn't much clutter left in my life to clear out. Just me, my thoughts, and a small feral kitten that climbed up on my lap.