Page 23 of A Copenhagen Snowmance

Chapter Sixteen

Kongens Nytorv is buzzing. A large square, between the end of Str?get, the world’s longest shopping street and the top of Nyhavn, it’s surrounded by baroque-style embassies, hotels, a theatre and a department store.

Currently, the square is filled with Krinsen, the enormous circular loop of an ice-rink, which Jamie and Anna have already passed a couple of times in their excursions.

It’s milling with skaters and surrounded by Christmas market stalls.

Not being tourists, they’re smart and buy their gl?gg just off the main drag; it’s better and it’s cheaper.

“You need to do a gl?gg guide, Anna. Tourists need to know about spots like this,” he says, having taken a sip.

“Krinsen?” she asks, nodding at the ice-rink. “Pretty sure all tourists will know about that.”

“No, the secret gl?gg sellers, the top tips for not paying quite so much in an expensive city. An article on the website.” Maybe something for next winter, she thinks, then parks it. It’ll take far more in-situ research and she isn’t going to be here to do it.

“Right. Time for selfies,” Jamie says, turning 360 degrees to look about them and taking her with him. He comes to a stop with Hotel D’Angleterre behind them, which has been draped in a curtain of tiny white lights, above a Christmas tree of lights on its front balcony.

“Let’s cause a stir,” he says, that look of mischief back on his face. It’s like she’s seeing the younger Jamie. Of course, this mischief could also simply be him high on cake and chocolate. “Put your hat on,” he says.

“Stop it, MacDonald.”

“Get it on, Lundholm, let’s see if anyone notices.”

Anna is sure someone will.

“It’s good for tourism,” he tries.

“You’re supposed to be against that.”

“Nope, my job is to harness it for the climate cause.”

He sticks his hand into her pocket and finds the hat, which he hamfistedly pulls over her head.

Sure it will look appalling, she slaps his hands away and takes it off again to redo it.

She does this all with an air of annoyance, but there’s something about the idea of a selfie with him that she likes.

Hat donned, she stands in front of him, her back to his chest. Jamie slings one arm around her collarbone and pulls her in, before holding up his phone with the other hand. Anna can see both of their grinning faces in the screen and feels a warmth that isn’t just their close proximity.

A couple of young women nearby have noticed them. Anna can see they’ve made the connection, but it seems best to ignore them.

“One more, smile, Anna,” he says, and she looks up at the phone again and gives it her best.

“Perfect,” he says, without even looking at it.

Anna is about to remove the hat when one of the women comes across. “You’re the Tivoli Couple, aren’t you?”

Jamie says “Yes,” before Anna can come up with something else. At least they didn’t mention the bikini.

The woman turns to her friend. “See? I said it was.” Then back to Anna she asks, “Can we take a picture?”

Having her photo taken with Jamie for a selfie is one thing, but Anna doesn’t feel happy about having her face saved in someone else’s camera.

“Not sure about this, Jamie,” she says quietly. “I don’t want my face plastered everywhere.”

Jamie thinks about it for a second. “I’ve got this.” He takes her gl?gg and places both cups by their feet.

He looks at the woman. “Ready?”

Before Anna knows what’s happening, he swings her around and dips her, so she’s side-on to the hotel and its lights and…

Oh, her lips are connected to his. What with the whirling and the surprise dip, it takes her a moment to get a fix on things, unlike her lips it seems, which are well ahead of her and engaged with Jamie’s, as per earlier.

Some things simply come naturally apparently.

“Tusind tak,” says the woman, and Anna is righted to see three other people have taken a photo of them kissing, too. She ducks her head to shield her face.

“Ashamed to be seen with me?” Jamie asks, reuniting them with their cups before moving them on, towards the lights covering the Magasin du Nord department store. White lights edge every window and the outline of the building.

“Very,” she says.

He gets another selfie of them, more discreet this time, and Anna’s intrigued by him wanting to record this. Unless he plans to send these to Lajla as proof, these are for him.

Heading home, they take a meandering route through Kongens Have, the royal gardens.

They stop at a street vendor to buy more sugar-roasted almonds, but really, it’s the smell that seduces them as they’re both still stuffed from their cakes.

Walking in amiable silence for the first part, they smile at the range of snowmen and the snow angels in the park’s blanket of snow.

Anna secretly replays today’s kissing in her head.

She has, it must be said, very much enjoyed it, in spite of it being fake.

It occurs to her that she has perhaps been suffering from lack of physical contact in the last long while.

The times she and Jamie have touched? She’s been aware of all of them.

When he chucked her chin in the cemetery, she felt an incredible pull to lean into it.

When he held her hands in La Glace, she didn’t want him to let them go.

She can only conclude that her skin is craving touch.

It might be something to consider once she’s back in London; the dating apps maybe, to find someone.

Not a relationship, absolutely not, not again, but something casual, to meet that need.

Either way, she’s grateful Jamie’s reminded her she can still feel this. “Airdrop me those selfies at some point, yes?”

“Of course,” he says, and she can’t tell if he’s pleased by the request.

“That kiss at D’Angleterre?” she asks. “Lajla wasn’t around. Or are you hoping to go viral again and she’ll see it?”

“That hadn’t really occurred to me, to be honest. It was more that the woman wanted a pic, and you didn’t want your face in it, and as we’ve already established, kisses mean we can hide our faces, so everyone’s happy.”

“That’s important to you, isn’t it?” Anna says, thinking about it. “You like to make things work for people, to fix situations.”

“Erm… I dunno. I don’t feel I’m succeeding in my job where that’s concerned.”

“My God, Jamie. Managing climate change is more than a one-man task, don’t you think? Cut yourself some slack.”

“OK, fair enough. So, yeah, I like people to be happy, sometimes that needs some arranging, or fixing, or small pushes in certain directions. I like to facilitate that. When it works it’s satisfying.”

It brings to mind his suggesting she talk to Carl and Maiken.

“You do see, though, that not all things can be fixed, right?” she asks, carefully.

“I like a challenge,” he says with bravado, clearly in too good a mood for her to bait him with this. “Sometimes people just need to give things a try, even if they think they don’t want to.”

She’s not going to change his mind in this mood, she can see that. She’s about to let it drop when he then says, “Tell me why you chose to run from things.”

Bugged, Anna pauses to look at the Kongens Have café, closed now, the snow-topped tables and chairs empty. It buzzes with people in the summer. Right now, however, there’s only a couple of robins hopping around.

“Why do you keep saying I run from things?”

“Don’t you?”

“Not in the way I see it.”

“Ahh … a difference of perspective.”

“Precisely,” she says firmly.

Jamie simply presses his lips together and nods in a “well, you could put it like that if you really want to, but the rest of the world might not agree” kind of way. Rude.

Anna tries to stand taller than she is.

“Jamie, if you’re being burned by a fire, do you, a) stay put, or b) move away?”

“Obviously I would move away.”

“There,” she says, victorious.

“I might however return to douse the fire,” he says, “and stay around to examine how the fire got lit and find the answers. I might discuss with people what led to it, what can be salvaged, what lessons can be learned?”

Anna’s face pulls together, indignant, which makes him smirk. “Not the perspective you wanted?”

She starts walking again. “So maybe that was the wrong example. If someone punches you in the face, in front of all your friends and they all laugh at you, do you hang around?”

Jamie’s brow rises at that.

“OK,” Anna adjusts, “I’ll admit such a person would have to be very tall to do that to you, but imagine the pain and then the humiliation.

That. Do you hang around to see what you can learn?

No, you move aside, sensibly, to check your bruises, and administer some self-care, and try to forget about the person who punched you unexpectedly and without reason. ”

“So, no lessons to be learned?”

Anna laughs wryly. “Of course. Don’t trust anyone ever again. Not with your heart, at least.”

Jamie’s smile drops at that. “That’s really what you’ve taken from this? To never venture your heart again?”

“Well, duh,” Anna says. “I’m not a complete idiot. You get burned once, you don’t stand near the fire again.” She’s back to the fire thing.

Jamie shakes his head, wraps an arm around her shoulder and propels her along. “Lundholm, that is so sad. You should still stand by the fire. It warms you.”

“No thanks. I’ll wear an extra jumper instead,” she says, distracted by that arm. They aren’t on show, so he needn’t. Not that she minds, actually.

“Not as exciting,” he says.

“It can be plenty exciting,” she insists. “I’ve removed myself from the danger and now I can navigate the world without fear of further pain.”

“Lonely.”

“No. I have friends.” Suddenly Anna feels the need to convince him.

She doesn’t want him thinking of her as a saddo loner.

Not that it really matters as she’ll be out of his life soon enough, but she’d still rather he didn’t think of her that way for some reason.

“Jamie, I grew up in the same way. As soon as my mother became uncomfortable for whatever reason somewhere, we upped and left. She … we saw it as a freedom. We just packed up and found somewhere new and exciting.”

Now, if Anna is being truly honest about this, then this description would be quite off centre.

She had not, in fact, seen it as a freedom, more an annoyance every time Ida suddenly announced they were off.

But the fact was that they could up and leave, which is what she’s trying to get across to him now.

Nor was everywhere Ida took her exciting.

Some places were godawful and she’d been pleased when they moved on again – but again, they had, and had exercised, the option to move on.

That was a privilege. And Ida could become uncomfortable at many things; a disagreeable neighbour, unreliable plumbing, a shoplifting accusation on the one occasion (Ida, not Anna), but often, in fact mostly, it was down to a man.

Ida was quite free with those, too. In hindsight Anna had to admit Ida had both good taste and good fortune; the men she’d got to know had all been decent.

To both of them. And yet, every time, when it felt like there was a chance they might settle into something more permanent, Ida suddenly felt the need to see somewhere else, to spread her wings again, saying, “Pack your bags, Anna, the world is calling.” Anna wished many times that it wouldn’t.

Couldn’t the world just leave a message, and they’d get back to it later?

When she looks at it like that, she sees a disjointed childhood tied to the churlish whims of a flighty mother – and she’s surprised it took her as long as it did to summon the courage to ask her grandparents if she could stay with them. But then hindsight is a bitch, isn’t it?

“And it didn’t bother you?”

“No,” she lies. “Like I said, it was exciting. New places, new people.”

“For a little kid? Sounds like it would have been a nightmare placing roots.”

“No, I had roots here with my grandparents, who we visited regularly. And it made me really good at making friends quickly. And when I needed more permanent schooling, I stayed put in Copenhagen.”

“Which you didn’t leave again when you could.” Anna opens her mouth to contest this, given she literally lives in another country now, but he holds up a hand. “Until now. You didn’t carry on these exciting travels as soon as you were out of school.”

“I moved to Jutland for uni.”

“Doesn’t count, it’s still Denmark and you came back.”

“My grandparents were really old, so they liked the help.” Morfar was absolutely the sprightliest old man you could imagine, and Mormor would still cycle everywhere even in spite of the cancer.

But Jamie does not need to know this. He doesn’t need to know how she savoured living in their home, with a room of her own, year on year on year.

How she could accumulate things she got to keep, too.

Sure, she knows how to travel light, it runs in her blood or at least in her synapses, but she likes to have small tokens around her and collectables, all things her mother’s always scoffed at, and on more than one occasion “accidentally” disposed of.

Thinking about it makes Anna’s eyebrows draw together. Which Jamie notices. He stops them and places a light finger on the crease between the brows.

“One day, Anna, you might acknowledge that it may not have been quite as idyllic as you’re choosing to remember it. If you do, then you should know I’ll be happy to listen to you tell me about it as it is, in a way that doesn’t make you frown or wear a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes.”

She feels her jaw drop. He’s calling her out on her fibbing, and she is outraged. The un-gentlemanliness of it is astonishing, and yet he does it with such grace she almost – almost – feels the compulsion to do what he suggests.

“It’s exactly as I’m saying,” she grinds out.

Jamie starts walking again, heading in the direction of home. “Sure, you tell yourself that,” he casts back at her. “But you can’t kid a kidder.”