Chilled to the Bone Read Online Free PDF Page A

feeling safer inside the cocoon of late afternoon traffic heading for the suburbs and listening to the wheels judder on the uneven road surface with its coat of gravel, thankful for the thick weather, which she wore like a disguise.
    She shopped in Krónan, filling her trolley with as much as she could, including two heavy pork joints that the family wouldn’t normally be able to afford, one for the weekend and one for the freezer for Pétur’s birthday. She chose the checkout with the youngest cashier, a gawky youth who looked as if he should still be in school, with glasses and a fuzz of soft teenage beard on his cheeks. He looked stressed and tired, and seemed unlikely to look too closely at a credit card, Hekla decided.
    He sneezed as she approached with the laden trolley.
    “Bless you,” she said cheerfully.
    The young man blinked behind his thick glasses. “Thanks,” he said, sniffing and swiping Hekla’s purchases rapidly past the till as she tried to keep up, stowing things into bags.
    “That’s seventy-one-thousand-six-hundred-and-eighty,” the young man said as if the number were a single word, sniffing again and kneading the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb as Hekla handed a card across as if it were her own while she continued stowing tins and boxes into bags.
    “Sorry, it’s been rejected,” the young man said. There was an almost audible sigh of irritation from the queue for the till.
    “What? It should be fine. I was paid yesterday and there’s plenty in there. Can you try it again?”
    He swiped it again and the queue, muffled in coats and hatsagainst the New Year chill outdoors and steaming gently in the supermarket’s heat, shuffled its feet with palpable impatience until the young man shook his head.
    “Sorry.”
    “What?” Hekla said in anguish. “Hell, that useless bank must have been messing me about again. I promise there’s more than enough in there to cover it. Could you try again, or charge it manually? Please?”
    The young man shrugged and rubbed the card hard on his sleeve before swiping it through the machine a third time as the queue continued to fidget and sigh audibly.
    “Shit,” the young man muttered with a glance at the impatient line of shoppers behind Hekla and the lengthening queues for every till in the shop, which snaked their way into the spaces between the aisles. He reached beneath the counter, came up with old-fashioned card-swipe machine and quickly made an imprint of the number.
    “Sign, please,” he said as Hekla treated him to the most dazzling smile she could manage and the queue let out a collective sigh of relief. She threaded the trolley quickly through the throng and out into the darkness.
    S HE WAS A tired woman with wisps of greying hair that floated around her face. She swept them back, and when she saw him the lines around her mouth became dimples and the fatigue vanished as a grin swept across her face. A second later Baddó’s face was crushed into her shoulder and she hugged him with an unexpected ferocity.
    “It’s still a surprise to see you here,” she sighed, hugging him close a second time. “It’s so good to have you back after such a long time.”
    “I’m not sure yet if it’s good to be back,” he said uncertainly, his nose sending him warning signals as he sneezed violently. He could feel his eyes start to sting and water.
    “What’s the matter?” María asked.
    “Nothing,” Baddó said, shaking his head and sneezing a second time. “Where have you been?”
    “Of course. Hell, I’m really sorry, it slipped my mind,” she said as Baddó splashed his face with cold water from the kitchen tap. “I stopped to see old Nina on the way home and her cat was all over me. I’d forgotten they make you sneeze.”
    “It’s all right, María,” Baddó said, the sneezing fit over as she hung up her coat. “I’m wondering, how long do you think you can put up with me?”
    “You know you can stay here as long as