Page 15 of A Copenhagen Snowmance

Chapter Ten

Anna is awakened by her phone’s persistent ringing.

And a pounding in her head. The gl?gg has a lot to answer for.

Not least her actions of the night before.

Which she lay awake replaying and worrying about for much of the night before finally passing out.

Embarrassment can be very exhausting apparently.

She hadn’t hung about when they got in, making her excuses and beelining for her room, thankfully a floor above him now, rather than on the other side of the wall, having moved her things up.

Having stressed about it most of the night, she’s decided she’ll take Jamie at his word and relax about The Kiss. He seemed OK about it being a drunken thing.

That kiss though… Anna’s fingertips drift to her lips, not for the first time, either, as she recalls the way he nipped at them, and parted them and—

The phone starts ringing. Again. With a groan, Anna reaches for it and with a single eye looks to see who it is. Katrine, her commissioning editor and friend. Strange. She normally texts.

“God morgen,” Anna says, trying to sound bright and as if she’s been up for hours working on an article Katrine’s expecting.

“Anna? Er det dig?” Is it you?

“Of course it’s me, Katrine. You rang my phone.”

“Noooo, is it you? In the news?”

What is she talking about? Both of her eyes are open now. A crack in the curtains tells her it’s snowing again. Seriously? More?

“What do you mean?”

“Check BT-online. It looks like you. Are you in town?”

“Hang on,” Anna says, deliberately not answering that last part. Katrine will string her up if she’s in town and hasn’t let her know.

Anna opens the Copenhagen newspaper’s app on her phone. She’s only kept it on there to cross-check any news she hears about Denmark in the UK press. That’s all. She only checks it now and again. Ish.

As she opens the app, and the lead stories come up, Anna takes a second to compute before having a little choke. Oh nonononono.

For once, the paper is leading with a feel-good story.

The headline reads “Copenhagen Snowmance”.

The rest of the screen is filled with a photo.

The background is the Tivoli arch, lit up with its tiny lights, and its big, shiny Christmas star hanging under it, right over the heads of a couple.

He has his arm wrapped around her waist pulling her in, she has her hand on route from jaw to neck, her foot lifted in the moment.

Their faces aren’t clear as they are firmly fixed to one another in their kiss.

Anna’s eyeballs are popping out of her head and her stomach has slid down to her arse area. This is a nightmare. So much for forgetting it happened, or for staying incognito.

“Anna?” Katrine’s voice comes from the phone.

“Errr,” is all she can manage in response, but Katrine is happy to do the talking. “I saw it this morning when I woke up and I said to Rune, that profile looks like Anna, and she wears a hat just like it. And I keep looking at it and I’m sure it’s you, with your blonde bob. Are you here?”

She has no choice but to be honest. “Sort of, but only fleetingly, sort of fly-in-fly-out, no time to see anyone, and then snowmageddon started and I got stuck, so here I am.”

Thankfully, Katrine takes this at face value and doesn’t hold it against her, at least not at this point. This, it turns out, is because she has far bigger fish to fry. “And who, Anna, is that that your face is stuck to?”

Anna really doesn’t know how to explain this away, either, so can only go with the truth. “He’s the guy who rents my house here. We had too much gl?gg at the kayak parade and in Tivoli, and this happened. It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Anna completely understands why Katrine is sounding sceptical.

After a deep sigh, she confesses to her friend, one of the very few people she has ever told what happened.

“I saw Carl and Maiken and had no escape. And the gl?gg made me think this was a smart way to hide, which in my defence did work, they didn’t spot me…

But this”—she looks back the photo—“rather screws that up a bit.”

“Does Carl read BT?”

“Daily.”

“Yep, you’re screwed,” Katrine says.

“Not what I was wanting to hear.”

“What now?”

“I’ll keep hiding now until I get a flight back out and then I’ll vanish, and it’ll all blow over,” she says, far more confident than she feels.

“The paper is trying to trace you. They want to know who the couple is,” Katrine tells her, then adds, “I wonder if there’s a reward?”

“Trine! If you dob me in, I will never write another word for you.”

“OK, OK, da!” Katrine says with a laugh. “Your secret is safe with me, but good luck. I’m looking at the other media outlets on my laptop and they’re running with it, too. Copenhagen Tourism wants to know who you are.”

“Nononono,” Anna chants under her breath. This cannot be happening. If it goes too far Maiken will know she’s here, too. That’s if Carl doesn’t turn to her in bed to show her. Anna has no idea if they live together now, but they looked like a couple last night.

Anna feels a knot tighten in her stomach.

Seeing them had made her panic. The knot in her stomach now isn’t due to missing him.

It’s the hurt of the betrayal giving her another kicking.

Even after eighteen months, it pains her, what they did.

And that she hadn’t spotted it makes her toes curl in humiliation.

It all adds a sheen of sweat to her forehead.

“But coming back to your tenant,” Katrine insists. “Dish it.”

“Nope. Accident, remember,” Anna insists, trying to sound stern.

“That’s the most passionate accident I’ve seen in a long time. It reminds me of that photo of the sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square on VJ Day? You know the one. An iconic moment in time.”

“Stop. It.”

Katrine laughs. “OK, I’ll stop, but now you’ve snuck into the country without letting me know, here’s the deal: the department Julefrokost is coming up and I want you to be there.”

“I’m not leaving the house again, unless it’s to go to the airport,” Anna states, in spite of having missed Christmas lunches last year. Danes love their month of boozy lunches, whether with work, clubs, or friends – any excuse, frankly.

Katrine makes a Pffff sound and says, “Good luck with that. We’re booked for the twenty-first at Sankt Annae, at one o’clock. If you make it back to London then let me know, but if you’re still here, then I’ll see you there.” Katrine can be very bossy sometimes.

Anna mutters an OK, but crosses her fingers she’ll be long gone, away from that photo and any media search.

“Vi ses! Hej, hej,” Katrine says signing off, and hangs up without waiting for Anna’s response. Within seconds a calendar reminder pops up on her screen for the lunch.

Anna drops her hand and phone onto the bed and stares at the ceiling. This is so far removed from her original plan, and she has very little idea of how to get things back on track.

* * *

Heading for the kitchen and a strengthening cup of coffee, Anna’s sure Jamie will be as appalled as she is.

Admittedly, his face isn’t as clear in the photo as hers given the photographer’s angle, but still.

He’s a professional person in the city; he certainly won’t want to have a schmaltzy picture like that doing the rounds.

And it is schmaltzy. There’s an inky sky and fairy lights, a huge, illuminated star hanging over what looks like two oblivious lovers clinched with snow around their feet.

It couldn’t have been set up better and the photographer has framed it so perfectly, they must be a professional.

What a snoop! Sneaking around the streets, taking shots of innocent individuals.

Anna feels a little rage brewing inside her.

Later, she’ll see if she can find the photo credit, hunt them down and blast off a sternly-worded email about privacy and the invasion thereof.

Jamie is at the dining table already engrossed in his work.

He’s on a call, but it sounds like it’s winding up.

Reaching the coffee machine, she raises the jug to him in offer of a refill, to which he gives her a slow nod.

He looks well-slept and alert, not like her, strung out from beating herself up about her actions.

Well, maybe his hair looks a bit dishevelled, but that’s about the sum of it.

“Go’ morgen,” he says, ending the call and pulling AirPods from his ears.

“Hmm,” she humpfs. She’s not sure it is.

Jamie tilts his head for her to expound.

She may as well hit him with it. Placing the coffee jug on one of his journals to protect the table, she points to his open laptop. “May I?”

He spins it towards her with a “Sure.”

“This happened,” she says after hitting the keys and bringing up the site. “Like I said last night, I am very sorry, Jamie.” And she turns the screen back to him.

She waits.

Jamie moves his face nearer the screen.

And then back out again.

And then back to check again.

“Wow.”

“I know, right? Nightmare. I’ve already had someone I know ring me about it. So, my cover is blown.”

“Your cover?” he says, that right brow rising.

“OK, maybe that’s a bit drama llama, but you know what I mean. People know I’m here now. But thankfully it isn’t as clear that it’s you, so I think your reputation should be safe.”

He sits back in his seat, and crosses his arms. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows and Anna can’t help but glance at his forearms, lean and sinewy.

“My reputation?” For some reason this amuses him.

It makes his eyes twinkle, which she vastly prefers to the steely look she is more often on the receiving end of.

“I mean your professional reputation. I don’t know about your … personal reputation.” She feels herself getting flustered and also distracted from her point. “What I mean is, I really hope this won’t be difficult for you at work and with regards to your standing in the sustainability field.”

Jamie thinks about this. “I am pretty sure this won’t negatively affect my reputation at work, Anna. In fact, it might just elevate it. And my ego, for that matter.”

Strangely, he does not seem as shocked, appalled, or outraged as Anna is. Far from it.

He keeps looking at the image, angling his head to look at it from various angles.

“It’s a great shot.”

“Jamie!” Impulsively, she slaps him on the shoulder. Wow, solid.

“What? It is. I bet Tivoli is delighted.”

Had it been anyone else in the shot than her, Anna would agree with him, it’s a perfect advert for the park. But it is her, so that’s not happening.

“Do you think I can get the paper to take it down?” she asks, taking a seat opposite him. She picks up a box of matches and lights the advent candle for him.

“Unlikely. And probably too late. This’ll be all over the place by now.”

Opening his phone, he swipes about before holding the smaller screen up to her face.

“Instagram. The VisitCopenhagen account. And there it is again, with the same ‘Copenhagen Snowmance’ caption. And beneath it ‘Hvem er de?’ Who are they?”

“Oh, no.” Anna groans, putting her palm to her forehead. “Nooooo. They can’t make a quest out of it.”

“Like I said, too late,” says Jamie.

“Not helping.” She sinks further into the chair, dejected, and surrounds her mug with her hands for the comfort of the warmth.

“Don’t worry about it. Not on my part anyway.”

“You really don’t mind?” she asks quietly.

“Nope. And as for you, if you have your way, you’ll be back in England as soon as the snow thaws and you can forget about it.”

That’s true, but in the meantime, there’s things Jamie doesn’t understand.

“Here’s the thing, Jamie. I have an ex.” It makes sense now to give him the topline, so he’s prepared. “We lived here together. I threw him out when he had an affair and he hasn’t seen me since, because I left. But now he might know I’m back, he might turn up.”

Jamie’s face turns stony in an instant. “Was he violent towards you?”

“No,” Anna says quickly. “No. Nothing like that and I don’t expect him to be, either. But he is the kind who wants to discuss things to the nth degree, even though there’s nothing to be said and I really, really don’t want to.”

Jamie’s face relaxes a little, but not much. He gives her a concerned look, but says carefully, “And you don’t think it might be a useful thing to have this conversation where he apologises to you, and you get to tell him what a shit he’s been, because that might make you feel better?”

“No thanks.”

“Anna.”

“Really,” she says quite primly. “I don’t need any of that.”

“What, closure? That widely regarded thing most therapists will guide you towards, if the TV shows are anything to go by?”

“Yeah, no. I’m happier walking away. After what he did, he doesn’t deserve my time, attention or forgiveness, if that’s what he’s looking for.”

“I was more thinking about you, actually. Being able to draw a line under it—”

“I have! The line is drawn,” she cuts in.

“—having addressed it and being able to make peace with it,” he continues.

“Who says I haven’t made peace with it?”

“Just at a guess – and as I’ve admitted, I’m no therapist – but hiding in a house and stressing about being in the paper is not a sign of being at peace with your path.”

Anna busies herself with staring into her mug.

“Back to the kiss, though,” he suddenly says in an alarming segue. “It’s had me thinking.”

Anna’s face is instantly hot with shame.

Given he now knows about Carl, she’s better off confessing all.

“Jamie. Here’s another thing; I was avoiding Carl.

That’s why I kissed you. He was walking towards me, and I had nowhere to hide.

Which was stupid, I know. But here’s the even stupider thing; given the photo, it’s had the reverse effect.

” She waves her hand at the laptop screen.

“Again, I’m sorry, it was shocking behaviour on my part. My thinking was iffy.”

Something shoots across Jamie’s face, but she can’t read it and it’s gone within a second. “So, it wasn’t that you were unstoppably attracted to me?” he says, deadpan.

Anna doesn’t know quite what to say.

“I… Er… Look, Jamie…” she starts, flustered.

Jamie’s mouth pulls up to one side. “I’m messing with you. We covered that last night, right? Gl?gg and Tivoli magic, etc., etc.?”

Anna, wide-eyed and out of sorts, just nods slowly, then asks, “Am I forgiven? For using you as a shield?”

He fixes her gaze and she forces herself to keep the contact, deserving everything she gets. “Aye,” he gives her.

Anna lets out a slow breath.

Jamie leans towards her, those toned forearms flat on the table between them, his hands clasped. “And on that foundation, I have a proposal for you.”