Page 6 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
“Two years, give or take.” She stays quiet, hoping he’ll elaborate and surprisingly he does. “I lived in Nordhavn first, but I wanted more room nearer work and somewhere central. This place was a dream.”
She can’t help smiling at that. A sense of joy that this house, which she’s grown up in, is something he values. It’s pride and it surprises her, given the last time she was here she was fuelled by a need to be anywhere but here, its walls tainted by what she’d found, the secrets they’d kept.
“Where’s work?” she asks, then realises she’s asking all the questions and interrogating him. “I’m a travel specialist,” she offers in exchange, moving along the corridor, passing two bedrooms, to the second flight of stairs. “I write for travel blogs and I devise city tours.Hence the living away.” True, but not quite true. It doesn’t matter, she’ll be out of his life soon enough, back to London. The third step gives a loud squeak. “Ha!” she exclaims and instinctively looks back at him. There’s a ghost of a smile on his mouth, but it fades as soon as he sees her notice. All the same, Anna doesn’t give away how moved she is to hear the squeak again.
“Do you travel much?” she asks. It’s a question she asks everyone she meets, always keen to hear about new places or suggest some.
“I used to.”
“You make it sound like you’ve outgrown it,” she says with a laugh. That can’t be a thing.
“No, just priorities change. And I live ‘abroad’ now. There’s still lots to be discovered, so I’m not feeling the wanderlust so much. If I do leave, it’s either to see my dad on Skye or on business.”
Priorities change.She can’t argue with that. Only his seem to be the opposite of hers, which are to be away from here.
“Which was it today?” she asks, keen to get him talking more, to relax, to perhaps not be so grumpy with her.
It takes him a moment to remember that they’d met at the airport. “One of those.” Right.
As they reach the top floor, she sees the open den space, once herhyggekrog, and a door with a padlock on it beyond.
This secluded snug is her favourite room. It homes her low coffee table, a flea-market find in Frederiksberg, where she’d spent many weekends, pottering around the stalls, picking small pre-loved bits with which to decorate. Under it is a soft grey rug and around it are a small sofa and an armchair, each with cushions, and a standing lamp. There are wooden shelves at the wall, which she remembers clearing, but are now covered with novels, photos, knick-knacks, beach finds, and more rechargeable candles. On the table is a work-in-progress jigsaw. Still very much the cosy nook she remembers.
“I used to do jigsaws here with my grandfather. Always the hard ones. Only,hiscoffee table was very ugly, dark brown wood with brown ceramic tiles on the top. Very 1970s.” She’d happily sold that to someone who’d valued the style more than her.
“The seventies was a strong decade in Denmark.”
“You’re a style enthusiast?” He still hasn’t shared what he does with her.
“No, but I have eyes.” It makes her laugh. His mouth doesn’t crack a smile, but he’s more willing to talk, it seems. “I see the difference between the designer styling of every single office and younger people’s décor and then their parents’. People take pity on me as a single Scotsman here in the city. My colleagues invite me to their family parties, so I get to see their time-warp family homes. Not all, but the majority.”
“They do?”
“I’m their novelty Scottish friend who owns a kilt. That’s the deal; party with drink and food in exchange for my wearing it. Sometimes it’s playing my bagpipes.”
“Really?!”
“No. Don’t be daft. Not all Scots play the pipes.”
She doesn’t know how to react to that, whether he’s taking the mickey as a joke, or to admonish her for stereotyping. This is hard.
She turns her attention instead back to the nook and a closer look at the shelves. The books are interspersed with small Scottish highland cows, photos of rugged landscapes and seascapes, plus a couple of bottles of whisky. All very tasteful. Home for him, but still in keeping with the white walls she’d scrupulously painted when she’d taken over from her grandfather. She doesn’t tell Jamie this house had been exactly the time warp he’s mentioned. A brown corduroy sofa and mustard yellow curtains. The ceramics had been brown and orange and she hadn’t missed them one bit since she’d passed them on to the charity shop. She missed her grandparents. Constantly. But their styling? Not so much.
He clears his throat behind her, and she realises she’s been blatantly assessing his home, which considering she was uninvited, is highly rude.
“You’ve made it veryhyggeligt,” she says, hoping the commendation makes up for her manners. “I have the same Kay Bojesen monkey and bird in my apartment,” she adds, pointing to the designer wooden ornaments on the shelf. “And my Hoptimist is yellow,” she says, noting the iconic dome-headed spring figure, his a wooden one, which is supposed to instil optimism and good mood when bounced. She resists the urge to suggest he bounce it more often.
“You left me with a blank canvas, and the modern Danish furniture is quite easy to blend with,” he says with a shrug. “A few accents here and there and a father who likes to photograph his surroundings and is proud of our tartan.” He nods at the soft tartan throw on this sofa.
“Sounds like a keeper,” she says, to which he gives her a simple noncommittal, “Aye.”
Anna heads for the door at the end of the landing, pulling the keyring from her pocket.
The padlock which hangs on the door is shiny and new. Considering the state she’d been in when she’d screwed it into the doorframe, Anna doesn’t think she did too bad a job of it, although hermorfarwould have disagreed, but he was a perfectionist with his handiwork. Not that he would ever have thought to screw into the doorframe in the first place:A doorframe built in 1889 should be respected, Anna!–she’d heard that plenty of times when she slammed a door as a teen.
The U-bar pings out with ease and a satisfying click as she unlocks it. Anna suddenly feels self-conscious, given Jamie’s standing right behind her. There could be dirty clothes in there. But that isn’t her usual way. And she’d be surprised if she’d left any food in there– that isn’t her way, either; but those had been dark and unhinged times, fuelled purely by the notion to pack up and leave. And while she still stands by that decision as being the right one, she does accept her thinking had perhaps been on the more deranged side of organised. She’s better now. Much better. She hopes Jamie can see that when he sees what’s on the other side of the door, or she might be out on her ear.
ChapterFive
