Page 73 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Anna’s jaw hits the floor. What cracks in the relationship?
She’s outraged.
“Our relationship was sound. It was good.” To seal this, she grabs the first of her two scones from the top tier, slices it in half and piles whipped cream onto it followed by the jam. There’s lemon curd on offer, too, but it doesn’t interest her, though she does lament Brexit having banjaxed clotted-cream deliveries to the country. Such a loss.
Maiken waits for her to sink her teeth into the scone and let out the light moan that is its due.
“Come on, Anna. You know that’s not true. If you two were solid, Carl would never have looked at me, and I would never have gone near him.”
Anna’s mouth is full, but she can shake her head, as this is so preposterous to her.
“I get that this isn’t what you want to hear, but if you look at it honestly, you took him for granted, Anna.”
Anna really doesn’t get this. They were a couple, they’d been together for years. They lived together. Solid.
“You wouldn’t marry him,” Maiken states. “How many times did you tell me he’d asked youagain, with a little laugh. Like it was a joke.” Maiken picks a ham-and-cheese finger sandwich and polishes it off in a matter of seconds, before sipping her tea.
“Itwasa joke!” Anna says. “It was a running gag. He would ask and I would say no. He knew my stance on marriage. I didn’t need it or want it. We lived together.”
“Well clearly you missed the signs. He wasn’t joking anymore, and he was asking, and you kept refusing him. And in the end, he took you at your word and the relationship was no longer the shiny thing you still seem to think it was.” There is a distinct feel of admonishment here.
“Bullshit,” Anna says, but her tone isn’t as staunch as it might be.
“I don’t think you want to hear it. Anyone could see it.”
She’s bewildered by this. If it’s true– and she has very large doubts about Maiken’s reliability– thenshehad no idea. Carl had known from the start she didn’t want to get married. She never wanted to be tied to someone to that extent. Living with Carl was because she chose to and because she loved him, not because shehadto, or was tied to him by some paperwork. She’d taken heart in the fact he was there by choice and love, too. Or so she’d thought. If hewas unhappy enough to jump on her best friend, then surely, he would have said something. Carl could be verbose enough when it suited him.
“This might be how you choose to let yourself off the hook for being a shit friend, Maiken, but it’s bullshit. And if Carl told you we had problems, then it was to get your sympathy, and you fell for it.”
Maiken chooses to ignore her in favour of perusing the cakes, opting for a confection with berry mousse and thin sponge. Anna was about to take the same but holds back. She doesn’t want to be seen as mirroring.
“Tell yourself what you like.” Maiken eats half of it in one swoop. She takes her sweet time chewing and then swallows, which she follows with a long sip of her tea. “But ask yourself this,” she says, “if what you had was so strong and so right, then why didn’t you stay and fight for him?”
Anna cannot for the life of her think of something to say. But that’s fine, as Maiken isn’t done.
“You ran away. You showed him you didn’t think he was worth it.”
Now Anna explodes. “And I was right. He had an affair with my best friend, and you had an affair with my partner. Neither of you were worth it. You betrayed me.”
Maiken’s face turns a little pink at that. The occupants of several tables are looking at them now. “I might regret how it came about,” she says, her voice lower, which forces Anna to lean in, “but I don’t regret where we are now, Carl and I. He’s far more assured in the relationship with me than he was with you.” She stops for a second and then spills out, “We’re getting married in the spring. You may as well know. We told his family over Christmas.”
Anna should feel devastated, just as she should probably get up now and walk out, but she doesn’t, because the overriding feeling she has to this news, is numbness. And also, there’s a second scone with her name on it and short of stuffing it in her pocket, she’s not going anywhere without it.
They have a stalemate then, because Maiken has dropped her bombshell, and if Anna isn’t offering congratulations, which she absolutely isn’t about to do, what do you say to news like that? Instead, Anna fills her plate with her half of the remaining food. It gives her something to focus on, while she ignores Maiken.
“Nothing to say?” Maiken asks.
Anna simply shakes her head, as she studiously slices, creams and jams her second scone.
“I suppose you have Jamie now, so it doesn’t matter.”
Which is true, she supposes. If it were true, but Anna decides she isn’t going to let truth get in the way right now. It serves her better,protectsher better, for Maiken and Carl to believe Jamie and she are for real.
“You’re right,” she says, looking up. “Carl doesn’t matter to me. He showed his true colours and you’ll never be one-hundred-per-cent sure he won’t do the same to you, when he becomes bored. As for you, you picked him over me, so you weren’t the sister I thought you were. You threwme under the bus. I don’t know how you look at yourself in the mirror each day. But perhaps every time you do, you’ll remember you’re the kind of woman who stabs other women in the back.”
A flit of something crosses Maiken’s face, and if Anna were to put money on it, she’d say Maiken has most definitely had this thought about Carl. Howwillshe ever really trust him? Something about that pleases Anna and she feels it’s a suitable punishment, never-ending as long as they both shall live.
A feeling of discomfort hits her. Is she really someone who delights in the insecurity of others? Yes, apparently, she is, but she recognises it isn’t a great attribute. Maybe she’ll do some self-reflection when she’s safely back in London, unlikely ever to lay eyes on Maiken again. Because right now, her wounds have unscabbed themselves, and she feels raw. Does she want Carl back? Nope. She really doesn’t, not least because she’s seen new things with Jamie. But that pain she experienced all those months ago, the shock, the anguish and loss of self-esteem, has bubbled to the surface, despite her doing everything to disguise it.
