The Last Boat Home Read Online Free

he asked.
    ‘Not a chance.’
    ‘Sure you do,’ he said. ‘I’ll go slow this time. I promise I will. So are you coming?’
    Else hesitated, but swung her leg over the seat. She shrieked when Lars twisted the handlebars and the moped shot forward. The wind was fresh on her bare arms and she wrapped them around his waist, tight enough to feel his stomach beat with his breath against her wrists. She buried her face into his neck, aware of her breasts crushed flat against his back. He smelled of cigarettes and of summer.
    Stones clattered in the wheels of the moped as it whizzed around the car park. It circled behind the depot building and lapped the mobile kitchen twice.
    ‘Hold on!’ called Lars and tipped into a turn. He squeezed the brakes and swore as the moped toppled over. Else heard the screech of tripping tyres before her shins scraped the ground. She rolled into a puddle and groaned at the sting in her legs.
    ‘Else?’ said Lars.
    Her eyes pricked at the corners. She sat up and prodded the bloodied skin below one kneecap.
    ‘Are you crying?’ Lars asked.
    ‘No,’ she said.
    ‘Are you broken?’
    ‘You promised you’d go slow.’
    ‘Should I call an ambulance?’ Lars helped her to her feet and she dusted off her shorts. The rest of the boys came running.
    ‘Are you hurt?’ asked Petter.
    Else hobbled to the toilets. Once she had closed the door behind her, she turned on the tap and washed the muck and grit from her leg. She cleaned her knee with a wad of the paper that had been left on the cistern in a tidy pile, flushing it away before splashing water on her cheeks. When she opened the door, Lars was sitting on the bottom step. He jumped up and she limped down the stairs.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
    ‘Are you?’ she said.
    ‘Just a couple of broken arms and two ruined legs.’
    Lars lifted his hands to her shoulders and pulled her close. While greasy mists from the mobile kitchen settled over them like clingfilm, Else blinked at his grin. His lips gathered in a pucker before gluing shut her mouth. Hard, soft. Wet, rough. Her stomach seethed; bubbles danced along her throat. Between her ears. She was all fizz. It felt like laughing.
    That afternoon, Pastor Seip was coming for dinner and Else had instructions from her mother not to be late. While Lars carried on racing against the other boys, she checked her watch, noting uneasily that she had just missed another ferry. She tried to catch his eye, but he was absorbed by the business of winning. It couldn’t hurt to wait a few minutes more. Else sat on the bench between Petter and Rune and looked on as Lars took his fourth victory of the day. She picked a chip from a paper plate in her lap and a dollop of ketchup dribbled onto her T-shirt.
    When she could no longer avoid it, she got to her feet.
    ‘I’ll walk you down, if you want,’ Petter said.
    Else smiled, but shook her head. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she saidand started for the road. She had almost reached the end of the lot when Lars’s moped drew up beside her.
    ‘Are you leaving?’
    ‘The ferry goes in five minutes,’ she said.
    ‘Want another ride first?’
    ‘I can’t. Pastor Seip is coming for dinner.’
    Lars crossed his eyes and a snort of laughter shot up her nose like soda pop.
    ‘See you at church tomorrow, then,’ he said and spun away to rejoin the races.
    Else gritted her teeth against the soreness of her knee and trudged down the hill, easing into a jog at the top of Torggata. She overtook one white timber building after another towards the harbour, where the water winked under the sun. The ferry was already docked at the Longpier. A handful of passengers had finished boarding the boat by the time Else hopped onto its deck and claimed a solitary spot at its stern.
    The captain pushed off from land and steered them up the fjord, away from the Skagerrak and the cluster of islands that protected the port from the sea where, three hundred years earlier, merchant