Page 45 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
“You did.”
Her lips purse together, not wanting to say it, but they lose the battle. “Funny thing. This morning, I found the locket.”
“Where?” he asks, surprised. “In your room?”
“In a pot in the yard.”
“By the bench?”
“Yep.”
“Weird. Who’d put it there? Do you have magpies here? They steal shiny stuff.” She can’t work out whether he’s being kind, giving her an out.
“I’m the magpie,” Anna says glumly. “I put it there.”
“Why?”
Good question. “Because that’s how unhinged I was by him cheating. Because I was angry. Because I was being spiteful. Because I was in a haze of rage. And then in the tornado of throwing Carl out, packing up and my life imploding, I sort of forgot about it, blocked it out of my head, I suppose, and the locket really shows the state I was in, as I really only just remembered it and what had happened and I looked to see if it could be real, and Oh, yes, it absolutely was, and now I have officially stolen something and am a common thief.” She puffs out then turns to raise her eyes to him. “Do you think less of me?” For some reason it matters to her.
Jamie takes a moment to think about it. Harsh, but probably due. “If I’m learning anything as I get older,” he finally replies, “it’s to try not to judge. We all do mad things when we’re emotional. Look at me; I moved to another country. That I love it here is a stroke of luck. But your moment of madness is fixable.” He catches her eyes widening. “I mean, if you want to. I’m assuming you can give it back? You haven’t actually explained who it belongs to.”
It’s probably time to share more of her story with him.
“It belongs to the woman Carl was having the affair with. Her name is Maiken. I found it here when I discovered what they were doing, I swept it up because Iknew how much it meant to her. I dumped it in the pot as I left, not wanting to actually have it on me.”
“Did you know her, then?”
“Oh, yes,” Anna says with a mirthless laugh. “She was my best friend from school. We were like sisters.”
If he’s shocked, he hides it well.
“That’s a pretty shit discovery,” he says, which Anna feels is kind when he could completely have gone with “Bloody hell, your soulmate and your best mate! Double whammy! Sucks to be you.” Which is pretty much what her inner critic was telling her for the first months she’d been away. She’d torn herself apart, both with heartbreak and scorn for not having spotted it, seen some signs, or walked in on them before, and above all else for being such a trusting idiot. She’s better now, though. Better and never making that mistake again. Some cuts run too deep.
“I remember her calling and leaving messages, but I blocked her. I didn’t want her apologies or explanations or anything and like I said, I’d forgotten about the locket almost immediately. She could just as well have been calling about that.”
“And your ex?”
“Same. Blocked.”
“You can’t block him from his home, though?”
“The house is mine. Always was. I walked around town in a haze for some hours, then came back expecting him to have cancelled his meetings so he could grovel, but he wasn’t here. He’d stuck with his timetable and gone to work. I didn’t know if he was just putting his work above us or hiding from the fallout. I saw red, redder than the already red and called a locksmith. The locks were changed by the end of the afternoon and all his clothes were in two suitcases standing in the front yard waiting for him, along with some boxes of his things. The rest I sent on to his office when I left. Meanwhile I ignored his pounding on the door and his calls. I think the neighbours might have called the police at one point, he’d got so noisy.”
“You really didn’t talk to him?” She knows this will be important to Jamie; it is after all what he’s trying to do with Lajla. But Anna doesn’t have anything to defend herself on this, so she doesn’t even try.
“Nope. While he shouted for the next many days, I was stuffing my things into the spare room and booking a flight out of the country.”
Jamie pauses to drink some of her coffee, deliberating. Anna follows suit, wondering whether he’ll ever answer her question of whether he thinks less of her with a straight yes or no. “Can you imagine every time you see a friend, you keep thinking, ‘Did you know? Would you have said?’ and then every time you go anywhere in the city you think, ‘Did they come here together?’ The laughs I’d had with them in these places, with Carl romantically and with Maiken as a best friend– were they also going there and having those laughs together? It drives you nuts. So, I packed up and left. I could lick my wounds in private and start something new elsewhere, where nobody knew me and my life hadn’t just been trashed.”
The energy courses through her as she tells it– it feels good to get it out. She’s only ever given Katrine the topline of what had happened, she’d never talked about the paranoia it had brought into her head. All of which, at thetime, had neatly served to plaster over any memory of lifting a necklace and disposing of it on the way out of the door.
“But now I need to work out how to get rid of it.”
“By which you mean return it, yes?” His eyebrow is cocked. So much for not judging…
“Of course,” she reluctantly agrees. “But without her ever knowing it was me. Obviously.”
“So, no apology?”
