Page 15 of A Winter in Wonderland
Chapter 7
Remember when I thought I’d be able to run away from Christmas rather than right towards it? Laughing face crying face.
No, it was going to be fine. All I had to do was make it to the end of the season without another traumatic life event and it would be worth it. I was still escaping. I was still going somewhere new. I was still being given somewhere to live and a job. I was grateful.
Did there have to be Christmas trees every ten metres throughout the airport concourse though? Standing there, all uniform and Dalek-like. I get it,’tis the season, blah blah blah.
‘Please can I have a latte with full-fat milk?’ I asked the barista at the Starbucks counter. My first flight to Helsinki would be about three hours long, so if I had a tasty drink now, I could keep the flight for chucking back the mini bottles of booze.
Oh bollocks, I probably shouldn’t actually. I only hada brief stopover before switching to my short flight to Rovaniemi, and one of the company reps would be meeting me the other end. Even I knew showing up to day one smelling of alcohol isn’t the done thing.
‘Would you like regular or Christmas blend?’ the barista asked me with a smile, pointing at the two coffee roast options. She had tinsel around her ponytail.
‘Regular, please.’
‘Sure. And do you want any of our festive flavour shots?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘The gingerbread one is amazing.’
‘I’m good.’
‘And so is the eggnog one?’
I pulled my gritted teeth into a smile. ‘Just a regular latte, to take away, thank you.’
‘Coming right up. What’s your name?’ Peppy Barista asked me.
‘Myla.’
‘I love that name!’ She wrote it on my cup, along with a drawing of a holly leaf, and danced down the queue to the next person.
Oh my god, I am such a grinch. If I couldn’t even get through an interaction with a joyful barista, how would I cope when confronted with an adult pretending to be an elf?
I took my coffee towards one of the Christmas trees and forced myself to stare at it until they called my flight number.
You WILL go into this with a smile. You WILL be merry and bright, or at least not miserable and not a grumpy bitch.
*
My flight to Helsinki was smooth, and instead of slurping alcohol I filled up on way more than my share of peanuts. After a brief wee break, or ‘layover’ as some people call them, I was back on an aircraft again and about to begin the one hour, twenty minute final leg to Rovaniemi.
On the plane, I found my seat, sat down, clipped in, unclipped because I was already boiling in this crazy-big coat of my dad’s, stuffed it into the overhead locker, clipped in again, unclipped to take it out because nobody else around me could fit their suitcases in, stuffed it under my seat where it spilled out under my legs, and clipped myself back in. I had a window seat this time, which was nice, so I should be able to see Finnish Lapland in all its dazzling snow-covered glory when we arrived.
‘Hi,’ said an American voice beside me, and I turned. Before me, leaning to put some headphones and a book down on my neighbouring seat, was a guy around my age. His hair was dishevelled and the colour of roasted chestnuts, with matching dark brown eyelashes that framed slightly bloodshot navy blue eyes, and he had a little light stubble. I guessed this wasn’t his first flight today.
‘Hi,’ I answered, and turned back to the window. I then took another sneaky look at him as he reached up to help shuffle some cases around with a family, and caught a glimpse of his stomach as his crumpled, red plaid flannel shirt lifted a little.
I caught the eye of a woman across the aisle who motioned to licking her lips and I flicked my eyes away, embarrassed, and focused again on the runway beyond the window.
When the plane began to taxi, the man beside me said in a soft voice, his accent straight out of a late-night coffee advert, ‘Here we go! Next stop Lapland!’
‘Yeah,’ I said back, wondering how convincing I sounded, and he flashed me a small grin before looking past me out of the window.
‘Have you been before?’
‘No. You?’
