Page 11 of A Copenhagen Snowmance

Chapter Seven

When the door opens and closes Anna already has the kettle boiled, tea leaves in the strainer and the oven heating for the aebleskiver.

Small round pancake dumplings, they’re some of her favourite things about Christmas.

Perfect treats for a winter afternoon. She also has every candle in the living room switched on and music playing low, for maximum hygge.

She waits in the kitchen, opening the raspberry jam and some icing sugar to dip the aebleskiver into. She hopes it’ll serve as an apology but knows there’ll be some explaining to do.

Jamie takes his time in the hall, which is little wonder with the number of layers everyone has on. Eventually he appears in the doorway, that stony expression back on his face as he gazes at her. Anna, in response, simply puts both hands on the top of the kitchen counter and gazes back.

He tilts his head at her, asking.

She’s not sure how to begin, not really wanting to at all. Had the tables been turned she would find his behaviour bizarre. He must, too.

“You vanished,” he says. The contrast to Supermarket Jamie is stark. His defences are back up, she can feel it.

“I did. I’m sorry.”

He looks at the countertop and the shopping, which she’s been sorting while waiting for the oven to heat.

“I bought everything in my basket,” she feels the need to say.

“Good job. That would have been one hell of a shoplift.”

He’s making light of it, but it’s clear he’s annoyed. He’s keeping a distance, too, like he can’t work out where he stands, but he could equally be thinking she’s deranged.

“I looked about for ages and then it dawned on me you’d gone.” She’s made him look silly and that makes her feel awful. “I asked the cashier, who said you’d paid and left. And I couldn’t work out why you’d do that, not let me know.”

The steeliness in his eyes has returned and she cannot bear it. It’s like they’re back to square one. No. Worse. He’s been letting his guard down little by little and now he thinks he’s misread her.

“Sit down,” she says, pointing to the bar stool. “I’ll explain.” Then she adds, “Please.” She’s got better at saying please while living in London, the word not existing in Danish.

He does as he’s asked, but she can see he’s uneasy.

“I’m making some aebleskiver.”

He briefly flicks his eyes at the jam and the icing sugar on the two small plates, and the dumplings sitting ready to heat on a baking tray. He nods but waits for her to get to the point.

“It’s a small city. I saw someone I didn’t want to see.

I panicked. I should have come to find you, to tell you I had to leave, but I just had to get away.

I figured I’d call you when I got out onto the street, but I don’t actually have your number.

I couldn’t go back in after that. So, I could only come home and wait.

I am sorry, Jamie. It was rude and wrong.

” The kettle boils and she pours the hot water onto the tea leaves, before popping the aebleskiver into the heat of the oven, with the remaining hot water into a tray beneath for steam.

“They stay fluffier that way,” she explains, just trying to fill the silence, but Jamie doesn’t look like he currently gives a shit about dumpling fluffiness.

He evaluates her explanation.

“Why didn’t you want to see them?”

It’s a fair question, though not one she wants to answer, but she feels she owes him something.

“They’re part of the reason I moved away. I didn’t want to drag up those memories. I don’t want to now.” She tries to be as polite about it as she can, aware that Danes sometimes come across as brusque or rude, but she also wants to be clear about not talking about it.

Jamie’s lips purse in thought and the look makes her hope he can get past this.

Eventually, he reaches out and pushes her telephone across to her over the countertop. “Open your contacts,” he says.

Done, she looks at him, waiting.

He dictates his number, which she dutifully adds.

“Next time, please call and I won’t be standing talking to myself in the fruit aisle.”

“I’m sorry, really.”

He mulls her apology then gives her a nod.

“Just a thought, Anna; you might find facing things rather than running from them more cathartic.”

“I’m not looking for catharsis,” she says, but it comes out slightly snappy. He doesn’t know the score, so she doesn’t appreciate his opining on it.

“Beneficial, then?”

“Nope. Really.” She turns and busies herself cleaning the dusting of icing sugar that’s settled on the opposite counter.

Jamie doesn’t say anything, and she feels not that he’s judging her, but trying to get a read on her. She doesn’t mind that so much. Something makes her want him to get it right, another something fears him doing so. Either way, it intrigues her.

The oven beeps and she removes the baking tray, to fill a bowl with the hot pancakey dumplingy goodness.

He picks up the mugs and both plates and heads towards the stairs.

“There’s a jigsaw that needs progressing,” he says, and jerks his head for her to follow.

She takes it her olive branch has been accepted.

But if she follows, then she doesn’t know where the conversation will go, and that’s uncomfortable.

On the other hand, she doesn’t want to walk away from him.

At the very least she’s still mid-apology with the aebleskiver; she can’t just grab her plate and bugger off to her room, although part of her is tempted.

More to the point, doing so will give him more ammo in his pseudo-psychology that she runs from things. So.

Anna picks up the bowl and teapot and follows.

* * *

Jamie dips one of the dumplings first into the jam and then into the icing sugar before taking a bite.

They sit at either end of the sofa, his faux candles lit in the windowsill and on the shelves opposite them, the tartan throw over her lap, Snow Patrol playing low on the speaker pod.

She watches him as he chews, getting the flavours; first of the sugar and raspberry jam, but then the subtler flavours of the pancake batter with the added hint of cardamom and lemon zest. It’s a flavour she hasn’t realised how much she’s missed.

A true flavour of her childhood, when Mormor made them for her and Morfar, turning the half-cooked batter in the funny seven-holed frying pan.

After Mormor died, they’d bought them ready-made from the shop to remind them of her, and because neither of them could turn the dumplings properly in the pan.

Giving up after a couple of attempts, they’d decided shop-bought would do.

The taste brings Anna right back to the memories.

“Delicious,” she hears him murmur. He shoves another one in his mouth. Shoving is perfectly acceptable etiquette when it comes to aebleskiver.

“Perfect for a winter day, right? Hot and sweet. Nom.” She shoves one in her own mouth, savouring it, then licks the remaining icing sugar off her fingertips.

When she looks up, he’s watching her. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

“Have I got icing sugar on my face?” she asks, self-conscious, and paws at her cheek.

His nose twitches for a second, then he says, “Mmm-hmm, but you got it.” He sits up straight then to look at the coffee table.

“Right. It’s not often I have a jigsaw partner, so here are the rules.

One: no looking at the picture, which you already know.

Two: first person to correctly place five pieces, wins. ”

“Competitive jigsawing?”

“Aye,” he says, and she realises he’s already scanning the pieces. Cheat!

Anna is, and always has been, competitive and shifts forward to get in the game. “What’s the prize?”

“Glory and bragging rights.” He doesn’t look at her, but she’s dismayed to see him pick up a piece and click it into place.

“Lame,” she states. Bragging rights between two people is pointless.

Jamie pauses and does now look at her. She deliberately shifts her eyes to the pieces, wishing she can find something quick. The manifesting must work, as she finds the next part of a boat’s mast.

“That’s fighting talk. OK, increased stakes. Winner chooses dinner and decides what we do this evening.”

“Can’t be outside,” she negotiates, manically looking for another piece.

“No restrictions, Lundholm. You either want stakes or you don’t.” Damn him. “Come on, ya feartie. It’ll be properly dark soon, anyway.”

Her eyes flick to the window. It’s true, the light has faded, the candles giving off more of a glow. Then Anna finds the next two pieces of the mast. Only two bits to go. Confidence surges through her and so she finds herself actually agreeing.

The words are just out of her mouth when Jamie places a piece onto the mast – her mast! Rude! – and then a piece of half a porthole, swiftly followed by a second to complete it. Within fifteen seconds she’s gone from winning to losing. He only needs one and she needs two.

There follows a period of deeply invested concentration, their silence loud with the determination to find the next piece.

“Yes!” she shouts and fixes a piece of a green-painted house.

They’re level. The aebleskiver have been forgotten.

And then she sees it: a white, low triangle of a quayside restaurant sunbrella, which she snatches up with a whoop, wishing now that she’d kept the bragging rights, too, as she’s going to win.

She presses it next to a similar triangle.

Only it doesn’t click into place. She tries again, but still, it won’t.

“Oh dear, Anna,” Jamie says, “what a shame,” as he slowly and decisively moves her hand aside to deftly click a very similar and correct piece into the space.

He lets out a very satisfied and over-exaggerated groan of pleasure, while Anna’s gaze is stuck on her hand where he’d touched it, and the feel of his skin that remains.

Apparently oblivious to this, Jamie neatly dips another aebleskive and pops it smugly in his mouth. “Bad luck.”

She wants to tell him speaking with his mouth full is very ill-mannered, but she’s still swayed by how close she was, and how she now might have to go outside.

Dejected, she self-soothes by horsing another four dumplings on the trot.

It’s very hard to be a gracious loser right now, but she eventually manages a mumbled, “Well done.”

She holds the bowl out to him to snag the last one, which he does. She regrets her generosity. She’d hoped he’d decline. But then he pulls the aebleskive apart and gives her half.

“So,” he says, sitting back again, “tell me where you’ve travelled to.” Jamie is opening the conversation, Anna notes. This is new. And this she is happy to talk about.

“It’s a bit of a list. By the time I was sixteen I’d lived in ten different countries, often more than once though never in the same place, mainly within Europe except for a stint in Thailand.

You can imagine how consistent my schooling was.

Then I came back here to live with my grandparents with a view to getting the education under control.

After uni I took an extra journalism qualification in Aarhus and became a travel writer.

The subsequent list is a lot longer.” She’s relaxed into the sofa now, belly full of pancake and jam.

Bliss. “I had said I curate tours too, hadn’t I? ” she asks, not sure.

“Twice already. And I checked.”

“What?”

“I googled you,” he says, unabashed.

Her eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh, come on,” he says, “I might take in bedraggled strangers, but I check their details on my phone before I invite them to stay. I watch crime shows. I’m not a complete idiot.”

“There I was, worrying you were a serial killer, and you mocked me.” What really narks Anna is she hadn’t thought to google him at all before accepting. What a muppet. One handsome face and all her survival instincts go out of the window.

“And being a travel specialist told you I was a safe and good human?” she asks, wanting his efforts to be as flimsy as hers.

“No, I was just starting a trail for the police to follow if I go missing.” The possibility in the “go” is not lost on Anna. Good. Seems she still has an ounce of agency left in this.

“So where have you travelled to, Jamie?”

This starts a game of Travel Snap, as he reels off places he’s visited and she matches them, both chipping in what they’d loved and hated.

“And you said you travel on business?” she asks.

“A little. Conferences, etc. It’s mainly Copenhagen-based, though.”

What Anna particularly loves when travelling, is the flux of people; the coming and the going.

Stations where people get on trains as you alight, or airports with planes landing as you take off.

And she loves being part of that moving energy.

And, presumably Jamie has too, in his extensive travelling, yet here he is, having … well, stopped.

“But one day, you’ll be back out there, right?” She wants him to be having the joy of travel, the thing that had them both buzzing moments ago as they swapped stories and shared memories of the places they’d been.

His face seems to cloud, and then he stands and picks up their plates and mugs.

“I’ve got no plans to leave. It’s my home now. Or at least I’m working on it.”

Again, there’s something in the way he says it that reinforces her thought that there’s more to this. Something central to his being here, when, given his history, she can see he’s a traveller at heart. Like her.

Whatever it is, it’s not something he intends to share with her.

“Right,” he says, descending the stairs. “Dinner’s out. Winner’s prerogative. The shopping can wait ’til tomorrow. Get your coat on, Anna.”

Her jaw drops. Serial killer or not. The man is cruel.