Page 16 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
“What are you doing?” Jamie’s stopped walking to turn and look at her.
Anna peeps out from the doorway she’s hidden in, one of many she’s scurried between to stay out of view.
“Sheltering.”
Jamie looks up towards the glow of the streetlight. “It’s hardly snowing at all. Mere flakes.”
“It accumulates.”
He tilts his head at her. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Then he walks back towards her. “Come out. It’s dark, you have your hat on, your hood up and no one is looking for you.”
Her face tells him she disagrees.
“It’s not far now.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” It comes out whiny. She’s not proud of it.
“No clues.”
“Oh, come on.” She knows they’re heading down Gothersgade, plodding through the path previous feet have made through the snow, but that could still take them to any number of places. Worry and curiosity aside, Anna is enjoying being wrapped up in her big coat and her feet are toasty in her winter boots. It’s a world apart from the state she was in yesterday. And today she’s more willing to look around her, taking in all the apartments above the shops and offices, each of them with candles burning next to poinsettias in the windows and with white fairy lights strung on balcony ironwork.
Jamie relents. “Fine. What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“Date?”
“December thirteenth.”
“Which is…?”
Ah. “Sankt Lucia?” St Lucy’s Day, bringer of lights.
“Points to the lady in the hat.”
“Everyone is wearing hats,” she points out. Jamie is wearing a navy beanie of his own.
“Notthathat, though.”
“True.”
“OK. Points to the lady in the red hat with the white bobble.”
“Are you taking me to church?” There will be processions in churches all over the land, with a young woman, dressed in a white gown, a fir wreath crown on her head with four lit candles. She and a troupe of children, also dressed in white, will process up the aisle, holding candles and singing. A true Scandinavian custom, Anna has always found it very moving in the dark of winter. She’s taken part in plenty, too.
“Nope,” he says. In spite of his passive face, Anna is sure he is enjoying this, the keeping her in the dark.
Piqued, she takes better stock of where they are. “You know, Tivoli is up that way, right?” And quite a way off, she thinks in her head. The iconic pleasure garden has its own annual procession, all amid the thousands of lights that fill the park every Christmas.
He gives her an indignant look. “I might not be a local, but I know where Tivoli is. Not a complete noob.”
Reaching the end of Gothersgade, they cross to skirt the edge of Krinsen, the ice-skating loop at Kongens Nytorv square.
“Are we skating?”
“Nope.” They keep walking, past the many skaters, and the small stalls at its edge. Children laugh on the ice or inthe snow, dressed in their brightly coloured one-piece snowsuits, balaclavas and mittens. This is what Anna loves about snow; the instinctive delight it can bring.
Then the realisation hits her. “Why are we going to Nyhavn?” It’s fine to see it on his jigsaw picture, but she has no desire to be there.
