Page 39 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Ida was quite free with those, too. In hindsight Anna had to admit Ida had both good taste and good fortune; the men she’d got to know had all been decent. To both of them. And yet, every time, when it felt like there was a chance they might settle into something more permanent, Ida suddenly felt the need to see somewhere else, to spread her wings again, saying, “Pack your bags, Anna, the world is calling.” Anna wished many times that it wouldn’t. Couldn’t the world just leave a message, and they’d get back to it later?
When she looks at it like that, she sees a disjointed childhood tied to the churlish whims of a flighty mother– and she’s surprised it took her as long as it did to summon the courage to ask her grandparents if she could stay with them. But then hindsight is a bitch, isn’t it?
“And it didn’t bother you?”
“No,” she lies. “Like I said, it was exciting. New places, new people.”
“For a little kid? Sounds like it would have been a nightmare placing roots.”
“No, I had roots here with my grandparents, who we visited regularly. And it made me really good at making friends quickly. And when I needed more permanent schooling, I stayed put in Copenhagen.”
“Which you didn’t leave again when you could.” Anna opens her mouth to contest this, given she literally lives in another country now, but he holds up a hand. “Until now. You didn’t carry on these exciting travels as soon as you were out of school.”
“I moved to Jutland for uni.”
“Doesn’t count, it’s still Denmark and you came back.”
“My grandparents were really old, so they liked the help.” Morfar was absolutely the sprightliest old man you could imagine, and Mormor would still cycle everywhere even in spite of the cancer. But Jamie does not need to know this. He doesn’t need to know how she savoured living in their home, with a room of her own, year on year on year. How she could accumulate things she got to keep, too. Sure, she knows how to travel light, it runs in her blood or at least in her synapses, but she likes to have small tokens around her and collectables, all things her mother’s always scoffed at, and on more than one occasion “accidentally” disposed of.
Thinking about it makes Anna’s eyebrows draw together. Which Jamie notices. He stops them and places a light finger on the crease between the brows.
“One day, Anna, you might acknowledge that it may not have been quite as idyllic as you’re choosing to remember it. If you do, then you should know I’ll be happy to listen to you tell me about it as it is, in a way that doesn’t make you frown or wear a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes.”
She feels her jaw drop. He’s calling her out on her fibbing, and she is outraged. The un-gentlemanliness of it is astonishing, and yet he does it with such grace she almost–almost– feels the compulsion to do what he suggests.
“It’s exactly as I’m saying,” she grinds out.
Jamie starts walking again, heading in the direction of home. “Sure, you tell yourself that,” he casts back at her. “But you can’t kid a kidder.”
ChapterSeventeen
Anna’s still pondering Jamie’s words as they near Eckersbergsgade. He’s been kidding her? How? Which bits? All of it? The serial killer bit? She really doesn’t think so, but women can never really know, can they? The walk has been quiet, perhaps both thinking about each other’s words. She feels out of sorts but isn’t sure why. And he hasn’t replaced his arm around her shoulder. Now they walk separately, hands in pockets.
“Shall I get a bottle ofgløggfor home?” he asks. Home. She supposes it is home to both of them but in different ways. Something about that, teamed with the way they are walking, makes her feel… melancholic? What is that about?
She casts him a sideways glance as she says she’d rather have tea. His profile is determined as he faces the direction of the house, but she scans the rest of him; his unruly hair that could really do with a hat on it, and the knitted scarf wound around his neck. Her eyes pause at his nape, currently covered by multiple thick layers and she has a raging desire to slide her fingers in and over the skin. Anna gives herself a mental slap. Jamie is her tenant, not someone she should be having lusty ideas about. This day has been a flurry of emotions, she must be exhausted and hence unruly in her thoughts.
He might feel her gazing, as his face flicks to her.
“Look, I didn’t mean to upset you. With what I said before,” he says, but not fully contrite. More appeasing. “Everyone’s entitled to live as they see fit, you and your mother included. If moving whenever you like works for you then… as you wish.”
He stops there, but Anna feels he was about to add more.
“But?” she supplies.
“I guess I don’t understand it,” he says, somewhat unwillingly. He wants to be honest with her, apparently. “I don’t talk about it much, but I suppose it might inform my thinking and judgements. My mother left my dad and I, when I was young. I never got to ask her why or have any kind of explanation that made sense to me or allowed me to make things better or prevent her going. So, I think I was judging you when I said you run away. I might still think it’s better to face things, and fix them, or at least try to, but if you feel it’s better for you to remove yourself, then I guess I should see that that might be valid for you.”
“Not quite an acceptance there,” Anna notes.
“I can’t say I get it, but I can admit to why I don’t get it. Does that make sense?”
“Sure.” It sloughs off any umbrage she’s been carrying. She imagines now a young boy without his mother and with a lonely dad, and it makes sense that he wants some kind of closure for Anna when he’s had none, and why he can’t see that it might not matter to her.
She saw a Charlie Brown cartoon once where Linus says there’s no problem too big or complex that it couldn’t be run away from, and while she’ll stick by her guns that she isn’t running, she’d always understood the message: You can always move on. However, she suspects Jamie would suggest the cartoon was saying you can always bury your head in the sand. Tom-ay-to tom-ah-to.
“Did you ever find out where your mother went?”
Jamie pulls his mouth together, deliberating. Does he trust her? That’s what it looks like to Anna. Turns out he does and Anna feels a glow, but only for a fraction of a second, because he says, “When I said she left us, what I should have said was she took her own life.” He moves into their front yard without waiting for her reaction.
