She sat down, the third person in that chair, as Tilberg got through and spoke a couple of sentences in Swedish. He stayed where he was, as if afraid to come back to the table, but said, “It’ll be a few minutes.”
“Thanks.” Finn took the letter from his pocket and held it out for Tilberg. “For the sake of formality, a letter from the Portmans authorizing me to escort her home.”
“I don’t need to see that.”
“Maybe not, but I’d rather you looked at it—make it the beginning of your new cautious approach to life.”
Tilberg stepped forward and took the letter but then retreated again, leaning back against one of the kitchen counters. Hailey looked at him, stung by the change in him, as if she considered his behavior unreasonable.
“Have you got everything?” She looked back at Finn, nodding. “I’ll explain later, but I have to ask if you have the USB stick with you, the one you and Jonas made?”
She looked vague for a second, the fabricated reasons for her disappearance long consigned to the back of her mind, but the pieces fell into place and a different confusion surfaced.
“Yeah, but why do you need to know that?”
“It’s not important, but it’s too complex to explain now. I’ll explain later, maybe on the plane.”
She looked put out as she said, “We’re flying home right away?”
“What did you have in mind, a trip to the ice hotel?”
Tilberg handed the letter back, and Hailey looked up at him and said, “Can we stay friends?”
“Hailey, how can we be friends? I don’t even know who you are.”
“How can you say that, after the last few days?”
Tilberg shook his head and sighed heavily, not knowing how to get through to her how betrayed he was feeling. Finn should have felt as if he were intruding by being there, yet in fact, he wanted to tell Hailey that it was completely possible to be intimate whilst remaining strangers—it was an act he’d managed for four years.
Finn heard a car pull up. It didn’t sound the horn, but sat outside with the engine running. He stood up and shook Tilberg’s hand. “I’ll let you say your goodbyes.”
Tilberg looked uncomfortable even at the prospect of being left alone with Hailey again, but accepted it as a necessity and said, “Thanks, I mean . . . well, thanks.”
Finn nodded and said to Hailey, “Don’t take too long.”
He picked up her backpack as he moved through the hall, reminded again of the students he’d seen on the train to Geneva. He told the cab driver where they were headed, told him to wait for another person, and they both sat in silence for a few minutes.
Finn sensed some movement in the house and turned. Hailey was coming out alone, looking upset and angry. He expected her to slam the front door behind her, but she didn’t, just as Debbie Portman had confounded his expectations by not slamming the door when she’d stormed out of his apartment at the beginning of all this.
Hailey got in the car and the driver looked at Finn. He nodded and they set off along the street. She sat motionless, without tears as far as he could tell—he didn’t want to stare at her—and the only words she said were, “Where are we going?”
“To my hotel, then to the airport.” He took the opportunity to look at her. Her eyes still looked a little puffy, but they were dry.
She didn’t reply, and Finn was equally happy for silence to resume. The adventure was over, definitely for her, maybe for both of them, and silence seemed the appropriate way to mark it.
Chapter Eighteen
When they reached the hotel he paid the taxi driver and she finally spoke again, a hostile curiosity in her voice as she said, “Are my parents paying your expenses?”
He didn’t like her tone and said, “What’s it to you?”
He got out of the car. The driver got out, too, and retrieved her backpack, standing it on the dry floor of the lobby entrance. Finn walked into the hotel then, leaving Hailey to carry the backpack.
They reached the front desk together, and he asked for his bill and for someone to bring his bag down.
Hailey seemed to understand immediately why he’d done that, and said, “You could’ve gone up for it—it’s not like I’m gonna run away.” He looked at her, bemused, wondering if she saw the irony of what she’d just said. She did, and sounded petulant as she added, “I don’t have anywhere to go, remember—not anymore.”
“Maybe, but I’ve come a long way to risk losing you again.”
“Are my parents paying your expenses?”
“No.”
“Why would you do that?”
“As a friend?”
She raised her eyebrows, so arch an expression that he nearly laughed.
He turned back to the receptionist and said, “I wonder, could you call SAS and see if you can get us two business seats on the eleven o’clock flight to Geneva?”