Page 32 of A Copenhagen Snowmance

Chapter Twenty-Three

The ringing is coming from deep inside her coat pocket, and against the hum of the traffic, it takes Anna a while to realise it’s happening.

She’s spent the last hour in the Hirschsprung Collection, her favourite art museum, trying to distract herself.

Much as she’d dished every morsel of dirt she had on Morten the night before, the run-in is still churning in her gut.

In her mind it validates every notion she has to leave the city, having confirmed the humiliating gossiping her friends and acquaintances have been up to.

Not to mention the word throuple is still ringing in her ears.

But the museum, a collection of Danish Golden Age artworks on Stockholmsgade, has always been to Anna a place of calm and beauty.

Her mother’s face appears on the screen.

Ida may have been a beauty in her time, but she has never been calm.

“Hej, Mor,” she says, sounding lightly surprised.

Ida doesn’t call her often. Aside from her work as a graphic designer she’s always so busy with local events and festivals.

For a woman who never stays long in places, Ida is by no means a hermit.

She does not keep herself to herself. On all sorts of levels.

“How’s London?” she asks. Anna hasn’t kept her abreast of the situation.

Her trip was supposed to be so fleeting, Anna had deemed it inconsequential to her mother.

She’s very inclined to lie, but given recent events, she’s feeling averse to lying in all its forms, even in keeping her mother’s incoming opinions at bay.

“I’m in Copenhagen, actually. Snowed in. Can’t get a ticket out yet.”

“What?!” Ida’s surprise is vastly over-dramatic, but that’s Ida for you. “You just can’t stay away!” It feels like a criticism.

“I haven’t been back for a year and half,” Anna says, annoyed that she’s sounding surly.

“And it was just a short admin trip.” She decides not to mention P?lse.

Her mother would think her too sentimental.

Sentimentality is a poison in Ida’s book.

Along with Nostalgia and Regret. She believes only in looking forward, she’s proud to say.

And mainly in Pleasing Oneself, Anna might also add, but only in her head.

Ida would absolutely insist she’s done a fine job of raising an independent daughter with a broad outlook and strong wanderlust. Ida has never accepted any complaints about her parenting.

Anna knows to steer clear there, as she’s never even made a dent in Ida’s resolve on that.

Self-reflection isn’t one of Ida’s things, either.

“How’s the house?” There’s no snark, per se, but Anna knows Ida was hurt the house wasn’t left to her. But what they all know, particularly Anna’s grandparents, is she would have sold the house immediately.

“It’s good,” Anna says lightly, not wanting to dredge it up. “The tenant is letting me stay, while I’m stuck.”

“Interesting,” her mother says.

“Stop it.”

“What?” Her mother is poor at feigning anything. You can add Subtlety to the list of Ida’s non-attributes. She lauds this proudly as being “an open book”, but Anna thinks she simply has no filters.

“What’s he like?”

“What makes you think it’s a man?” She tries a laughing scoff, but it comes out more like a guilty cough.

“You would already have said. Rather than saying ‘Stop it.’ I know you, Anna and I’m not an idiot, much as you may think so.”

Anna sighs. She won’t win. She knows she won’t. “He’s a Scot. Something big in city sustainability. Nice. Kind, obviously, having let a stranger stay.”

“In her own house,” Ida points out, like it should be a given.

“Which he’s renting and has a contract saying I can’t just turn up at.” Ida doesn’t always entertain legalities, but enough said about that.

Anna wants to ask her why she’s calling, but figures it rude. Luckily, for once some mother–daughter telepathy kicks in.

“I wanted to say, God Jul. I’ve signed up for a silent retreat for the Christmas days.”

Anna quickly thinks through her last calls with Ida to remember precisely where she is currently.

Settling on Skiathos, Anna experiences a twinge of jealousy, given it must be significantly warmer than here.

She seems to remember there being a commune involved, and the twinge vanishes.

Having been subjected to a couple of those in her childhood, they are safely filed under “not for me”.

Anna’s broad-mindedness has more limits than Ida’s.

“Not feeling Christmassy?”

“It’s lovely here,” Ida says wistfully, “but a few days of avoiding people and not having to talk will be a delight.” Anna places a bet inside her head. Ida will be moving on within the next two months. She knows the signs.

“You should come out and visit.”

“Sure.” She only ever books last-minute when going to see her mother after having once bought a ticket ahead only to have her mother move to an entirely different country before she could use it.

“Mor, can I ask you something?” Anna suddenly says, grasping an opportunity.

“My father. Did he not want to know me at all?” After Jamie’s confession, her thinking has drifted to her own dad.

It’s pure curiosity, not yearning. Unlike Jamie, whose circumstances were far more tragic, she doesn’t feel she’s missing part of her life.

She feels perhaps she should, but she simply doesn’t.

Not remotely in the same way as she misses her morfar.

“Why on earth are you asking me that?” Ida asks, sounding utterly baffled.

“I was just talking to someone about growing up without a parent, and it dawned on me, that oddly, I didn’t really have any opinion on it. I suppose it’s because we haven’t talked about why he’s not in my life.”

“This is unhelpful, raking up the past, isn’t it?” Ida suggests, not angrily. More like a therapist might, although she’s entirely unqualified for such things.

“I don’t know if it’s unhelpful yet. You’re the only one who knows.”

“And I might die one day, right?” There. The over-dramatic.

“I didn’t say that. But as you mention it… How else would I find out?”

“Well,” Ida says, “there’s really nothing much to find out. I don’t have more details than you already have. I fell pregnant in Ibiza.” And there she stops. Like that explains everything.

“And?” Anna prompts. She’s passing a bench and, realising this is going to take some concentration herding Ida to the information pen, takes a seat.

“And what? That’s it.” Again, Ida sounds bewildered by the questioning. Had Anna not known her she’d be astounded by her obtuseness.

“Mor! One doesn’t just fall pregnant when visiting Ibiza. That kind of phenomenon would be documented. There must have been someone else involved. That’s what I’m asking.”

“Well, of course. We had that chat when you were ten.”

Yes. Yes, they had. And the way Ida had explained it to her had probably left mental scars, liberated Dane as she was or not.

“So, who was he?” she tries very, very hard not to grit it out.

Again, Ida sighs deeply. “It just wasn’t that kind of time, Anna.

We didn’t really give names and details.

It was a party, a good one. All very free and fun.

Consensual, of course,” Ida suddenly adds, lest Anna should think anything untoward.

“And afterwards, everyone went on their way. I wouldn’t have recognised them in the street. ”

Anna closes her eyes at the word them.

“There was more than one?” Anna says.

Ida tsks her. “Don’t you be judgemental, Anna. Like I said, it was a good party. And. It. Was. Consensual.” Anna is being schooled. She bites her tongue, though.

“So, no follow-up at all when you knew you were pregnant?” she asks weakly.

Ida laughs at the ridiculousness. “Where would you have had me start?” She’s not malicious.

Just perhaps utterly thoughtless about how this might sound to Anna’s or indeed another human’s ears.

“I was happy! I was going to share my life with you. You would be my travel companion.” The excitement is still there in Ida’s voice, and Anna knows it’s genuine.

Every photo in her grandparents’ home was either of a smiling pregnant Ida or Ida and Anna hugging, with their identical face-wide smiles.

Her mother might be eccentric, but she is genuine in her love for her daughter.

Given how similar they look, Anna has often wondered what genetics she actually has inherited from her father, whoever he is.

All she has currently is her enjoyment of running, as Ida wouldn’t be seen dead in trainers.

“Anna, it wasn’t always easy being single with a baby and then a toddler in all those countries, but people are mainly kind, and we did well and had a good life together.

I missed you terribly when you decided to stay with Vivi and Mads. ”

She had. Anna knows she had, but for once Anna had put her own needs first. She’d got that from Ida, too. For all of Ida’s happiness of finding herself pregnant, Anna knows she wouldn’t have continued the pregnancy if the opposite had been true.

“Do you think your life would have been better with a father in ours?” Ida asks. It’s not a loaded question.

Anna takes a moment. Ida would have hated being tied to someone, that much she’s sure of. “No? Not better necessarily,” she sounds out, trying to pull her thoughts together. “Just different, I suppose, and I don’t know what that would look like.” She finally gives up. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Ida states. “Not even you staying behind, much as I missed you. Because it told me I’d brought up a woman who could make her own choices. And that’s enough for me.” Anna is surprised how warm she feels at her mother’s obvious pride.