Page 16 of A Winter in Wonderland
‘No. I’m excited.’
I nodded, studied the side of his face for a second longer, and then looked out the window myself, as the plane made its way down the runway.
The plane swept off the ground and up towards the clouds, and I realised I’d better get on board with this trip once and for all, because it was official now, I could no longer cling on to my ‘least festive girl in England’ title.
Beside me, American Guy had begun watchingElfon his phone through headphones and chuckling to himself every couple of minutes. Before that, he’d been watching the end ofIt’s A Wonderful Life, which presumably he’d started back on his previous flight. This man was really getting into the spirit of Christmas.
At the fourth chortle in about as many minutes, this time he caught my eye. Looking up from my book, I politely smiled back at him and then, facing my novel again, said quietly through gritted teeth, ‘Haha, yeah, you’re so annoying… ’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said immediately, and removed his headphones. ‘Am I being too loud?’
I looked at him for a moment, frozen.Busted. ‘Oh, what, no, I love your laugh,’ I covered up, in a really smooth way.
‘I think I’m being …annoying?’ His eyes twinkled at me.
‘No! Why would you?No!’ I flustered. I mean, yeah, he was dressed like he’d stepped out of a Gap Christmas advert and was watching back-to-back festive films beside me and laughing at them, then looking at me to see if I was having as much fun. He wouldn’t be at all considered annoying to most people, but to me, he was like nails on a chalkboard.
‘I’m pretty sure you said … ’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘OK. It’s just that I’d just paused the movie, and I thought—’
I’d been caught. I gave him a bashful shrug. ‘I just don’t personally find that moviethatfunny, I’m sorry if I was a dick about it.’
‘You weren’t a dick,’ he laughed. ‘You don’t likeElf?’
‘ … OrIt’s A Wonderful Life.’
‘Wow.’
I shrugged. ‘Sorry again.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll try to keep it down.’
‘No, you really don’t have to. Please, enjoy yourself, I’m just going to look out the window and wish I could crawl out of it.’
American Guy grinned again, meeting my eye, and put his headphones back on over his ears.
A short while later, the plane began its descent to Rovaniemi airport, and as we broke through the clouds my first view of Lapland opened up before me. Snow coveredthe ground as far as I could see, with dark forests poking up into the air. Being late afternoon, the sun was now below the horizon, and had been for a couple of hours, so the whole vista of Lapland was bathed in a steely-blue light over the top of the white.
The plane descended like a feather landing on a duvet. The ground temperature outside was minus thirteen degrees, according to my on-screen flight map, and I squeezed my dad’s coat between my calves, thankful to have it to wrap around me when we exited.
As the plane bump-bumped onto the runway, my arm bump-bumped into American Guy’s arm, and I felt the warmth of his skin reach through his shirt and my jumper to meet mine.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘No problem at all,’ he replied, and just for a second our arms remained together, before he broke away to start collecting his stuff from his seatback pocket.
After the pilot pulled to a stop and made an announcement in Finnish, she said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Lapland. And if you are here to meet Santa Claus today then on behalf of the cabin crew and myself, Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas,’ I wished back, in a whisper. I think I was mainly wishing it to myself.
