Page 21 of A Winter in Wonderland
Chapter 10
Back in my room at the end of the evening, I realised the hotel had done a turn-down service that I hadn’t been expecting when I’d left my underwear and toiletries scattered all over the floor when I’d been yanking thermals from the depths of my rucksack.
Part of the service appeared to have been to prop a plush Santa on my pillow, as if I hadn’t seen enough of him that evening, and feeling a tad claustrophobic (Claus-trophobic, ha), I picked up the Santa and stuffed him deep under the bed, and then changed into my thick PJs and fell onto the mattress.
During the night, my brain struggled to absorb the polar twilight concept. I was well aware of the theory of how it would be dark from about four p.m. to nine a.m. here in Lapland in mid-November, but for some reason the reality had me waking up every hour and looking out the window to see that yes, it was still dark out. Perhaps it was just nerves.
At five thirty a.m., I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep, so slipped out of my hotel room dressed in my dad’s coat and several layers, and padded down the silent corridor and past the reception. Waving at the concierge, I heaved open the door of the lodge and stepped out into the cold air.
Holy moly, I pulled my coat tighter around myself, tugging the sleeves down over my gloves to avoid any unnecessary exposure. I walked the path of the hotel to the back, where a wide expanse of snow-covered field led towards a pine forest. There was a snow-dusted dock that sat above a pond, or maybe a small lake – I couldn’t tell under the cover of ice and twilight and small pools of illumination from the lamps dotted about the hotel’s exterior.
But I could see that someone had beaten me to it, and when I saw who it was, I had to laugh. ‘You again,’ I said into the quiet, not meaning anything bad by it.
Josh, standing on the dock, turned in surprise, and then laughed at seeing me. ‘Are you following me?’
‘Definitely. I just can’t keep away from you,’ I joked. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘You can’t sleep either?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘New job nerves, I think. You?’
‘Jet lag.’
‘Ah.’
‘I thought that after three, no, four flights, changing in New York and then London, then Helsinki, before reaching Lapland, I’d be dead to the world, but after I’d, say … two hours of sleep I just woke up again. Wide awake.’
‘That sucks,’ I said, and looked across at what I couldsee of the dark view, a secret winter wonderland stretched before me. I could be on another planet; I’d never woken up to a scene like this in my life. ‘Does it snow a lot, back in Seattle? It looks cold there on TV.’
‘Yeah, Washington State doesn’t have the warm ambience of, like, California, but I love it. We get some snow, though it’s nothing compared to this. You know, I fell over on my way back here.’
I chuckled. ‘You did?’
‘Yep. Stepped on what I thought was a solid verge, and my foot sunk two feet. The rest of my jet-lagged body toppled over in surprise, and I face-planted a big mound of snow.’
‘That’s one way to make sure you’re awake.’
We were silent for a moment, looking out at the view, until I blew breath upwards onto my nose in an attempt to warm it up.
‘Do you want to go inside?’ Josh asked, and I met his eyes and tried not to laugh inappropriately because he was hardly asking anything saucy, I was just feeling awkward.
Controlling myself, I said, ‘Yeah, I think I might. Perhaps this will look just as nice from within a warm room, looking out of a window.’
‘With a coffee?’ Josh looked hopeful.
‘The lobby had a coffee machine for guests to use, if you want … ?’
‘Yes.’ Josh seemed genuinely enthusiastic – he was such an elf. ‘Yes, let’s go. Unless, of course, you think I’d be too annoying?’
‘Shut up.’ I gave him a soft thwack with my thick gloves.
Back in the warm of the hotel, Josh and I fiddled with the coffee machine until two steaming cups had churned out, and helped ourselves to a few foil-wrappedlusikkaleivät, or ‘spoon cookies’.
We took them to a couple of lounge chairs beside the floor-to-ceiling windows to watch, well, not really to watch the sun comeupbut to watch the colours begin to change from dark-dark to cornflower-blue-dark.
As I bit into the sugary little blob with a layer of tangy jam in the middle, Josh told me a bit about his life in Seattle, about how he lived in a studio apartment in an area of town with a lot of art, music and coffee. How he was an only child and his mum lived with his grandfather across the bay.
‘Are you close with your mum?’ I asked.
