Page 44 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Mondays were always busy days for Anna and Carl. They tended to front-load the week, so things could wind down towards the weekend, where they could spend time together around the house or away with friends. Anna carefully closed the front door this Monday morning, having spent her Sunday painting it cherry red. The oil-based paint had required her full attention, which was perfect as she needed something to take her mind off missing Pølse. It had been a week since she’d taken him to the vet for the last time and his absence in the house was palpable, which was impressive for a grumpy cat who saw it as his sole purpose in life to lie in a sunspot.
Her Monday job list consisted of a smear test, shopping and picking up Pølse’s ashes, before spending the rest of the day at her keyboard, working. Conversely, Carl had virtual meetings all morning, and further live meetings around the city in the afternoon, leaving her peace and quiet to work in. Just one of the many ways they dovetailed beautifully. He saw her off, kissing her at the door, in just his boxers. They were nearing their six-year anniversary, and she had a surprise for him. Tonight, she thought, I’ll tell him tonight.
Three streets away, she realised she’d forgotten her purse on the kitchen counter. She needed her health insurance card for the smear test. If she got a wiggle on, she’d have just enough time to double back.
Turning into Eckersbergsgade, she saw a figure walking into her front yard. At first, she thought she’d judged it wrong, but no, there were a couple of planters outside the fence and the figure definitely walked between them. Anna paused, instinct telling her to hang back. Something was odd about this. Unless she was very much mistaken, the figure had been Maiken. Anna knew that dress, long, billowy and apple-green, and Maiken’s red hair was striking. But Maikenknewshe wasn’t home this morning. They’d literally just been texting about the joys of smear tests. Wracking her brain as to why her best friend would be dropping in and not at work herself, Anna walked slowly to the house and her shiny front door. Sliding the key in the lock and opening the front door was conducted with cat-like stealth, for reasons she couldn’t, orwouldn’tput a name to. Same for the uncharacteristic light-footedness she had crossing the hall to the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t go further. No need.
Maiken’s dress, pooled on the second step, her underwear on the fifth and ninth, and his boxers at the top were an initial indicator of what was afoot. The moans from the bedroom were a confirmation. She could hear them groaning each other’s names, so that nixed any chance it was random strangers who’d broken in for a shag. She had almost hoped.
What was the etiquette for such a situation? Anna stood immobile, trying to fathom it out. Walk in on them? No. There were things in life you could never unsee, and she knew in her gut this was one to swerve. And besides, shedidn’t think her legs would agree to go up the stairs. They were barely holding her up.
Another shout of Maiken’s name from above snapped her stunned brain into something more like consciousness.Her best friend.Had anyone suggested it, Anna would have laughed in their face. And Carl. She trusted him, with everything. Anger started welling in her, starting in her belly and surging up through her like magma. She wasn’t going to burst in and cause a scene– after the initial “Gotcha!” she couldn’t imagine anyone, by which right now she exclusively meant herself, coming out of it with any salvageable dignity. She needed time to work out how to approach this properly. She’d do her chores and when she came back, she’d have more of a clue what to do.
In the meantime, she wanted them both to know she knew. Let them sweat, let them recognise their guilt. Shelifted the dress between her thumb and forefinger. She’d been with Maiken when she’d bought it, told her how great it looked. Now it disgusted her. She hung it on a coat peg, so they’d know she’d been there. Turning to look up the stairs again, her eye caught on gold lying on the second step, previously hidden by the dress. Maiken’s locket and chain. He must have lifted it over her head, before divesting her of the rest of her things, as they stumbled up the stairs; kissing, no doubt, groping each other, fantasising on how to use the next hours while Anna collected her dead cat’s ashes. That anger magma whooshed to her head, and reaching for the locket, the rest was a bit of a red mist…
* * *
“Anna?”
Down in the cellar, she shouts a hello from the now unlocked store room. It is filled to the gills with all sorts; boxes, her bike, far more garden tools than the minimal back yard warrants, more boxes, skates hanging by their laces from a hook, the flattened boxes hermorfarhad been obsessed with keeping “just in case”, which she’d never binned,just in case. The entire far wall is racked out with practical shelves, with yet more boxes, of Christmas decorations, which hermormorhad packed by colour, allowing for a different palate range each year in a three-year rotation, although one box is marked “All Years” and contains the staples; the real candles and their holders for the tree, the Christmas-tree stand, the star, and strings of Danish flags.
Next to these are stacks of jigsaw boxes. Anna looks at them now and wonders why she hadn’t donated them somewhere, but in the years after Morfar died there had been very little of his she’d wanted to discard (apart from the interior design, obviously), always coming up with a reason to hang onto them for now. And rightly so, she tells herself, as now might be one of those “just in case” times, when she and Jamie need a new jigsaw. She runs her fingertip down the stack, perusing the little images on the side. There’s a particular one she’s looking for, one of the first she’d bought her grandfather, one she considers particularly fiendish. It’s at the bottom of the middle stack and she whips it out before tucking it under her arm.
All of this, is to pointedly distract herself from the locket, currently swabbed in kitchen roll, next to the lit advent candle on the kitchen counter. Does it count as thieving if you don’t keep, give away or sell the thing you take? Does it? Google might have the answer.
She hears Jamie moving around upstairs, and it occurs to her to hide it. Bounding up the stairs, she’s too late.
They pause at first, getting a measure of each other and them remembering they are trying not to be awkward. Anna holds up the box, with a “New jigsaw,” and Jamie simultaneously holds up a bag, with a “Pastries.” And then there’s a silence, neither knowing what to do next and neither of them willing to approach eye contact. Anna’s brain, however, is playing through an alternate universe, where he’s walked in, said hello, waved his pastries at her (not a euphemism), and strode across the room to embrace her with a proper, extensive, hello kiss. She feels her face heat as she realises what she’s doing.
“Tea?” she asks, and spins towards the kettle. She wants to look at him, and yet she can’t because her thoughts will go rogue. She wants him to look at her, and also not, because she doesn’t want him to be disappointed in what he sees. Why does this have to be so hard? Why can’t things go back to how they were?
“What’s that?” he asks.
“What’s what?” But she knows.
Glancing back, she sees him pointing to the kitchen roll shroud. “Something for me? A gift?”
“’Fraid not,” she says with a sigh. “Quite the opposite. It’s something I’ve taken. Not from you,” she hastens to add.
Alerted to her dismayed tone, Jamie gives her an enquiring head tilt. “Want to talk about it?”
“No,” she says, like a teen.
“Needto talk about it?” he tries again.
“Probably.” She really doesn’t know what to do about it.
Jamie sits on the barstool. “Spill.” This sounds more like him. This is Jamie in business mode and being something he knows better how to navigate, his guard comes down.
“Remember when Carl came round?”
Jamie gives an unimpressed grunt.
“He said something just before he left about a locket?”
“Aye. Suggested you’d taken it.”
“He did. And I vehemently denied having done so?”
